Wednesday, 1 April 2026

 Lauren KATHAGE (Yan Yean) (18:01): I am really glad to have more time to talk about this bill, because it is a really important one for my community. What this bill does is it shows that we are a party that puts buyers and Victorians at the centre of regulation to make sure their protection financially, physically and mentally is the key objective of what we are doing. When you speak to the Whittlesea SES about the call-outs that they have in our community, so many of their call-outs are to first-time callers who, in the event of a large storm, discover for the first time that their home has not been built properly. It is only when the rain starts coming through the roof and the Whittlesea SES needs to come and help them that they discover that their builder has not done the right thing. For people who find themselves in that situation after having outlaid so much money, it can be really, really devastating. The purpose of this legislation is to give them protections so it is not something that they have to face alone; it is not something that they have to struggle against through the system to get the help they need, rather that dodgy builders will be punished for doing dodgy things, done dirt cheap.

The Liberals are going against protections for people that are building their family home – let that sink in. They say that increased protections will make housing more expensive. I just want to make two points around their contention. The first is that the cost of having to fix and maintain a dodgy house can be debilitating for people, so when you talk about the cost of housing, they are not factoring in what their willingness to let dodgy builders run rampant will do to Victorians’ back pocket. The other thing that they are failing to consider is that supply is of course the main driver of the housing costs, and the Liberals are reducing supply, and the way that they propose to do that is by gatekeeping suburbs that are close to amenities, public transport, health, education and the like.

Something else about their housing policy, which we should see through the prism of their reaction to this bill, is that not only are they gatekeeping housing in their suburbs, but they want to rush housing development in mine, in the outer suburbs.

We have spaced out the development of new estates. Their desire to rush development in suburbs like mine is not to benefit the homebuyer, it is to benefit developers. This is their housing policy: cut protections for Victorians and rush development with no infrastructure contribution. And who is benefiting from that? Remember the Whittlesea SES – they are the ones who end up consoling the homebuyer when they discover that their home is faulty. Those opposite, not once, not twice, but here we are, three times – three times the cock crowed – do not want to support increased protections for buyers. They do not want to see dodgy builders held accountable for the things that they do.

Those opposite are saying that the reason they are not supporting this bill is because there should be more consultation. That is purely the only rationale that they have given. But what those opposite know but are failing to mention is that consultation started in May last year, and there have been over 60 different consultations that have taken place in the development of this bill, with building groups and consumer groups, so their rationale for wanting to stop this bill is baseless, absolutely baseless. The reason why they are trying to do it, as we have covered earlier, is because – and we have seen it here from them before – they do not want to see increased protections for people building a home. They do not want to see anything that will stop a rushed version of housing development in the outer suburbs. Ask yourself, who does that benefit? Who do those positions benefit? It is not Victorians. That is why this bill must go ahead despite those opposite seeking to slow it down or indeed to stop it, because no working family or any family should be forced to take on the responsibility, the cost and the time to fix defective building work. As I said, placing the consumer at the centre of this regulatory approach means that we always have them at the heart of what we are doing and that when decisions are being made about regulations and enforcing regulations the consumer is thought of first, and that is absolutely the way it should be.

This party was built by working people to benefit working people, and reforms like these are how we support them even when those opposite try to stop us. It is absolutely paramount to protect the health and safety of Victorians, so when people are doing the wrong thing, those bad actors need to face consequences, and it is important that they do, because they need to stop undermining the good builders that are in the sector, the good builders who with pride create homes for families. It is the dodgy builders that we are focused on through this bill, who are breaking the rules on purpose, basically, who are cutting corners to make a profit out of people’s misery. We will not stand for it, which is why this bill is so important for Victorians and why I will celebrate when it passes the next house.

 Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (18:09): The Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026 – well, welcome to just another noose around the building industry’s neck in the state of Victoria. We have a housing crisis that has accelerated every single year that this government has been in control of the state. It is a housing crisis that has seen the average cost to build – whether it is a house and land package in the outer suburbs or regional Victoria or a high-rise apartment in an apartment complex in the inner or outer rings of Melbourne – reach average base-level prices of somewhere between $800,000 and $1 million.

We have heard Labor MP after Labor MP saying, ‘We’re doing this for the workers, we’re doing this for average families and we’re doing this for the people that we stand up for.’ Do they understand what the average income is of the people they say they are trying to help? Can I tell you, Acting Speaker Addison? Hopefully you know this already and as a member of the government will have been briefed on this. The average Victorian worker cannot take out a mortgage for $800,000 or $1 million. The average worker – the working poor and the people that this government says they are wanting to help with legislation like this – can afford around $600,000 max, if they are lucky. That is the figure we are talking about.

Fortunately for some Victorians, if they live in country communities such as my own, they might get a small house and land package at around $585,000 to $590,000. That is an exception to the rule; it is certainly not available in our bigger centres and is certainly not available in our metropolitan areas. The question is: why is it so much more expensive today to build a house than it was before? Well, the first thing we have learned in the process of listening to the industry – unlike the government – is that this massive tome, which has been introduced this week, has been given to the people that this government must work with: the builders, the plumbers, the electricians, the plasterers, the painters, the installers and the landscapers. Everyone who has a part in creating good, decent, affordable homes for Victorians needs to be listened to. They were shown this enormous tome two weeks ago. This has huge ramifications. What happens when governments create uncertainty? They increase risk and they increase cost, and they are going to make it even more difficult.

The question, quite simply, is: why would a government that say that they want to look after the workers, that they want to look after Victorians, that they want to solve the housing crisis and that they want affordable housing be so deaf to the people in the industry that want to create affordable, good-value homes for Victorians? Why would they ignore them? I can tell you this: no-one in this chamber has the skills, expertise and knowledge of the current building industry to sit there and make judgements on this. You must listen to the industry, and that is why I absolutely support the motion from the Shadow Minister for Housing and Building, the member for Caulfield, that we amend this until we have had proper consultation.

There is only one way to help cure the housing crisis in Victoria, and that is to force the cost of building down. We live on the most empty, uninhabited continent other than Antarctica on the whole planet. Land availability is not our ultimate issue, but the cost of building absolutely is. This government presents no path forward with these enormous changes that will not see downward pressure for builders, Victorian families and people desperate for a home. While that average cost of construction sits at $800,000 to $1 million just for something very basic, we cannot help to solve the housing crisis here in Victoria.

The member for Yan Yean before me made much of the fact that the Liberals want to make housing all in favour of the builders, are not looking after families and are rewarding dodgy builders. Well, can I say, that is the biggest load of nonsense that only someone who has no idea of how the industry works could come out with. This government, with whatever it touches, has a habit – a nasty, nasty, terrible habit – of organising regulations and legislation to demonise an entire industry for the actions of very few. We know as a fact that most building and housing projects are done well and competently, without unnecessary hold-ups in courts or through regulation.

There are some parts of the industry that have had problems, and we have certainly seen them in recent years. But these problems have arisen because the government has single-handedly failed to regulate in the areas it needs to regulate. It has failed to invest in the monitoring of issues such as plumbing and installation and waterproofing and other key elements to a good construction. They have failed to do that. So what they are trying to do through this legislation is move all that risk back onto the industry. When the government does that, when it forces all those extra costs and uncertainty onto the industry, the consumer has to pay, and that is who is paying for this. Rather than helping the consumer, rather than helping families get into homes, we are going to make it more difficult.

One of the key elements in this, from some of the consultation that I have managed to do over the week or so that we have had this legislation, is the financial elements in it, which once again have been devised quite possibly from the government consulting with large builders and large industry. The building and construction industry is a very dynamic industry, and the reason we want a dynamic building industry is it provides lots of competition. The building and construction industry has large, big-tier builders, mid-tier builders, all the way down to small family-operated businesses that may only create one to three homes a year. But it is that vibrancy, it is that dynamism that we actually need, because it helps keep costs down. Everyone I have spoken to says the uncertainty that this legislation has brought in, without proper consultation, means that a whole raft of particularly smaller family-owned, regional builders, country builders – people that do not have the resources and the backing of large institutional investors or others – will be put at a huge disadvantage.

I make the point that no-one wants someone who cannot afford to build a house or has not any backing to build it, but issues around insurance, issues around reputation – if a building company has demonstrated a long-term, fault-free existence in the industry, has produced good-quality homes without fault and has worked within the systems and obliged the government regulators, then there must be some credence given to that impact and they should not be penalised for it. So the concept that in many parts of the state we will see building companies put to one side and taken out of the system, either permanently or on an ad hoc basis, makes no sense. This clearly reeks of a government that has failed to do its homework to fully understand the industry and to work with those in the industry to get good outcomes. Unlike some of the contributions from those opposite this afternoon, who are hell-bent on demonising some players in the construction industry, we on this side believe that most people in the construction industry are good people. They are good people, they are good operators, and they want to leave a legacy of a well-built home, a well-finished home, a well-painted home, a well-roofed home, a well-wired home. They do not have an incentive to make a mess and leave disaster behind them. Unfortunately, this legislation has built so much cost confusion and regulation in to catch very few people but complicates and adds cost to the much larger majority of people.

Finally, with the minute or so I have left, the Building and Plumbing Commission was an invention of this government, and the right or wrongs of aggregating all our building regulators under one body has some merit. However, they are already hugely stressed and behind in their capacity to keep up with the demands and the concerns of the community. This legislation, again, without knowledge of how better resourced it will be, how much extra funding and support it will have, will be left clogged and burdened down with ongoing complaints, because some of the issues, with the widening of scope that it now has, is leaving one underfunded and poorly resourced organisation to deal with a potentially massive increase in its workload.

In conclusion, I support very much our amendment to see this bill laid over until it has had proper discussion with the industry, to iron out some of these issues, to restore confidence and to de-risk this policy for the betterment of housing in Victoria.

 Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (18:19): I rise to support the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026. Isn’t it remarkable that every time we bring a bill to this chamber that is about supporting consumers, supporting hardworking home owners, renters and families that are working hard to save or build or construct their first home, dwelling or apartment, on this side of the house Labor stands with working people to get a good deal, a fair deal and a good quality home built, and every time we bring a bill in here that supports consumers, what do the Liberal–National party do? They stand with the big end of town. They stand with their big construction mates. They stand against consumers and the best interests of consumers every single time.

In fact the foundation bill which led to this bill, of course, was the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025 that we moved some time ago through this chamber, which led to the creation of the new Building and Plumbing Commission. The Liberals opposed that bill. They opposed that bill, and today they pretend they are sort of supporting this bill, but they are moving a motion to say, ‘Let’s defer this bill until we conduct further consultation.’ It is a never-ending pipeline of consultation for these guys. It is their way of saying, ‘No, we don’t support it, because we support the big business, big-end-of-town construction companies to make profits over the hard-earned savings of home owners.’

Just look at the stats and the facts here as to why we need to progress with this bill as soon as possible. The Centre for International Economics estimates that Victoria has 1.04 defects per dwelling. That is higher than the national average. For apartments, rates of defects are 2.13 per apartment, and this is estimated to cost consumers – the guys, the people, the hardworking people saving to buy and build these homes and apartments – cumulatively $675 million annually.

Just look at the stats from Cladding Safety Victoria. We went through the Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill 2026 yesterday. Fifty per cent of the buildings in the cladding Victoria program had non-cladding issues. As they were going through auditing all the buildings that were part of that program with cladding issues, 50 per cent were also found to have non-cladding issues, mainly around water egress issues, water leakage issues, waterproofing issues. Seventy-eight per cent of those buildings were less than 10 years old. Building and Plumbing Commission data also says that 60 per cent of complaints relate to defects and noncompliance, so 60 per cent of their work is focused on defective building and construction work because of dodgy builders, because of poor workmanship. That is what this bill really is all about. It is simply about strengthening those protections for consumers to make sure we are lifting those standards of building and of construction.

It is also actually about saving money, not just for consumers but also for builders too, because when you have all these sort of defects, you have a lot more disputes going through the Building and Plumbing Commission. You have a lot more disputes going to the various entities and authorities, whether it is the local municipal council or whether it is VCAT and other avenues, consumer affairs, you name it. This costs time and money, not just for the families but also for the business people and the tradies that are involved here. This bill is just as much about helping those tradespeople and construction businesses save money as it is for the families and hardworking people in our communities, because at the moment we are in a cost-of-living crisis, as we all know. We heard that from the motion earlier today. Families are experiencing a cost-of-living crisis, and that has been compounded by what is happening in the Middle East. That will have a flow-on effect, whether we like that or agree or not, to the construction industry through materials and supplies, and through those global supply chains as well. So this is also about protecting consumers from the outset as best as we can with respect to those issues and protecting them from acquiring debilitating debts for those unforeseen rectification works as well. This is going to help a lot of people seeking to get into the market and who are in the market.

I would like to just turn to one constituent in particular who has contacted me, whose issue I would like to draw the house’s attention to. In January of 2026 I was contacted by a local resident, Arbab. Arbab contacted me to seek assistance in relation to his case of defective building construction works associated with his property and to seek state government consideration for further policy reform, which he is very passionate about, in this space to better protect home owners and consumers whilst better holding those dodgy builders and tradespeople to account. As per the information that he has provided me, he has gone through quite an ordeal, which has caused a lot of financial but also emotional and wellbeing issues for him and his family. Between 2017 and 2018 the off-the-plan purchase of his property occurred, with the permit issued in May 2018, with the settlement completed. The builder was appointed and the building permit was issued for the townhouses, one of which he purchased off the plan. Between 2020 and 2021, he states, defects began to be noticed once he eventually moved in, including leaks and cracking throughout the property, following which he sought to engage the builder in good faith to have it rectified, but the builder totally ceased engagement, totally stopped talking to him.

Correspondence from the Building and Plumbing Commission from 5 December 2025 – this has been a drawn-out saga for him – acknowledged and particularly substantiated many of the defective building concerns, including that the footings of the property appeared to have subsided, which appears to have led to the cracking in the brickwork. The balcony waterproofing had also failed, which had rendered the balcony uninhabitable, with Merri-bek City Council, I understand, later issuing an emergency order as a result of that work. Between 2022 and 2026, notwithstanding these issues and attempts by Arbab to engage with the builder to have these issues rectified again, I was informed that the builder refused to continue to engage or return to the property, with Arbab subsequently escalating the matter extensively through all his available channels, including VCAT, even the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. In 2024 and 2026, Arbab informs me, through these efforts the Building and Plumbing Commission ultimately investigated and found a 16(4A) breach and sought to discipline the builder. However, they confirmed that they had no rectification jurisdictional power at the time to enforce rectifications and subsequently closed the file. As a result of those experiences and extensive engagement, Arbab encouraged the government, through me as the local member, to seek further policy reform and legislative reform, and that is exactly what this bill is all about. It may not, sadly, address Arbab’s issue as he has experienced it, but going forward consumers in his shoes will be much more strongly protected to prevent such circumstances.

We know the building industry does touch on every aspect of our lives directly and indirectly. It is responsible for our homes, our hospitals, our workplaces, kinders, TAFEs, our transport network, our sporting clubs, parks, community facilities and so much more. But it is also an economic driver, so we need to make sure we continue to lift those standards to make sure it can continue to sustain that economic activity for our state. It contributes almost $40 billion in economic output for Victoria and 8.5 per cent of Victoria’s gross state product. There are 360,000 jobs associated with it. That is around 8 per cent of all jobs in Victoria. It is about our third-largest employer, collectively as a sector. 68,600 new workers are anticipated to be needed by 2027, and 162,900 further workers will be needed by 2034. In the short term it remains one of the strongest entry points into the workforce and skills, especially for young people. Around 12,800 apprenticeships and trainees are in construction and growing, namely around carpentry, plumbing, electrical works, bricklaying, civil construction and so much more. We have got 127,370 construction businesses in Victoria and 62.7 per cent of them are sole traders. Across Merri-bek in my community 6500 locals work in construction. That is about 7 per cent of my local community’s employment. It is the fourth-biggest employment sector in Merri-bek. In terms of businesses, there are 2500 businesses in construction that make up about 15.5 per cent of local businesses. It is the largest small business sector in my community.

But of course it is going to become even more important as we drive to build more homes for more Victorians through the Plan for Victoria, the 60-odd activity centres including Coburg, Brunswick and Sydney Road, which we have recently released final plans for – we want people to be living in good quality homes when it comes to my community and all of our communities; and the homes through the housing statement, the Big Housing Build and so much more. It is Victoria’s program of reform that is leading the nation to protect consumers in this regard, because while other states have sought to water down their building controls to catch up to Victoria, which is building and approving the highest number of homes – that is a fact – compared to any other part of the country, we want to make sure that we build these homes well and to a good quality and a high standard. The work of the Building and Plumbing Commission has been essential since we have established it in lifting those standards as well. Of course that is part of our ongoing work to continue to make reforms in this important space.

This bill creates a further number of reforms as well, mainly around providing for the administration and regulation of the building and plumbing industries in the standalone act; the strengthening and enforcement of building legislation and building plumbing standards to provide effective and streamlined disciplinary processes for licensed registered persons in building and plumbing industries; ensuring effective regulation through the continuation of the building permit levy; and making consequential amendments throughout the bill as well. There are quite a number of provisions, which I will run out of time to go through comprehensively, but again, this is all part of our plan to build more homes of a good quality, a higher standard, while creating more jobs and skills for the construction industry.

 John PESUTTO (Hawthorn) (18:29): I am pleased to rise on the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026, and I do so at a time when we see in the construction sector across Victoria that the rate of insolvency is going up, not down. It is very tough out there for builders to survive, and it is not because of the issues the government claims these measures will address. I will come to those in a moment.

We debate this bill at a time when completions are stagnating in this state and building approvals in this state have only been occurring at the rate they have because the government has been expediting approvals through its development facilitation program and clocking those numbers up as if they are putting roofs over people’s heads. We debate this bill at a time when the building and construction sector, particularly the residential construction sector, is struggling to find the workers it needs, and there are critical shortages right across the trades, which we rely upon to see homes delivered to markets so that families and individuals can buy their home and claim their little stake in the Australian dream. It is getting harder. It is taking longer. The delays in government are a blight on the aspirations of this state to deliver on its housing targets, which the government is nowhere near meeting. It is ironic because in the face of those headwinds, which mean that it is taking longer to get homes to market and it is costing more, the government comes into this chamber and it says that this two-volume set will be the solution to the problem. But I say that these measures, for the reasons which have been outlined by the member for Caulfield, our lead speaker, and the speakers on this side since, are actually going to lead to more expensive homes. That means housing affordability will be more distant and not more reachable for Australians, particularly young Victorians. It will take longer, and the building and residential construction sector will actually be smaller than it is now.

With all of those challenges which the sector is facing, which see it getting harder for Victorians to be able to acquire their own home, the government is actually putting more hurdles in the way, and it is hard to understand why. What the member for Caulfield as our lead speaker has pointed out is that it is very reasonable to put to the government that they should consult more, and a number of grounds for that call have been enunciated in the course of this debate. But the ones I wanted to echo in particular were those that surround the prudential obligations that are going to be imposed on registered builders, because as the Master Builders Association points out, the drivers of insolvency are not so much dependent on minimum prudential requirements and liquidity requirements. What is happening is cash flow and access to the workforce that builders need to be able to complete homes on time. Those insolvencies rest in part on government-driven delays in the process of delivering homes to market. I remember, with a number of colleagues, we on this side of the house convened a housing summit in 2023 and we asked the sector what it was that was driving so many insolvencies and seeing consumers hit hard, because ultimately they are the ones we want to benefit from a functioning, sustainable and secure residential construction sector. They said, ‘Government delays.’

I have met numerous builders – too numerous to mention – who explained to me that the costs of delivering homes is made all the more expensive because sometimes it can take years unnecessarily to complete homes and estates, which when you think about just land tax alone will add many millions of dollars, tens of millions in some cases of larger developments, to the prices of houses that builders bring to the market. We think on this side of the house – in fact we strongly believe on this side of the house – that the government is selling Victorians short by rushing headlong into this. It claims it has consulted, but the feedback from stakeholders indicates that is plainly not the case. Such a substantial overhaul of the regulatory framework is something I can understand the government believes can be done just as a matter of ticking a box administratively and ministerially. But what they do not appreciate is what this means out in the real world. As even speakers on the opposite side of the house have conceded, we have a sector that comprises residential construction firms that are largely small, often sole traders. They are not big operators, but most of them manage to deliver their homes for customers in the way we would expect and see customers be able to go into their homes.

If proceeded with in the manner the government is stubbornly intending to, what these changes will actually see is a huge chunk of the sector just leaving the sector. That is the real risk, because many of these construction firms, most of whom have not been the subject of the complaints these measures are intended to address, are going to have to increase substantially in size so that they can meet the prudential requirements that are going to be imposed on them, again without any real world reference to what these firms have to contend with when they are delivering on the wishes of their customers. You will see the smaller side of the sector withdraw from the sector and abandon it all together. That is the risk. The risk on the other side is that you will see bigger firms dominate the sector even more. And what does that mean? It means that for homebuyers, consumers, it will be far more expensive to purchase their home. There can be no other conclusion. I do not even think the government knows if it is being completely honest with this chamber and the Victorian people about what the regulatory impacts of such a substantial tranche of changes are going to mean for consumers. It has not done that, and nothing I have heard in the debate this afternoon convinces me that the government knows what the extent of these changes is going to visit.

We know that in Victoria it is already more expensive to complete homes compared with other jurisdictions in Australia. Whilst the government can claim that completions this year are higher than other states, when you look at the trend, particularly in Queensland and New South Wales, their rates of completion are actually positive, whereas in Victoria they are stagnant, and we know that we have the lowest number of completions in a decade. That is saying something, because after 12 years, after all of the warning signs this government has received over the years from us and from stakeholders in the sector, it has done nothing substantive to make the construction of homes easier, quicker and less expensive for Victorians. It means that their housing targets are, frankly, a bit of a joke. The housing statement, the economic growth statement, the Plan for Victoria statement are all just that – statements, or if you like, extended media releases; there is no real substance in them. Yet they bring a bill like this, which has no bearing to the aspirations in those statements. They talk about very ambitious targets, 80,000 homes a year. I know it tried to walk away from it, but it made the commitment of 80,000 homes a year – 800,000 over the decade to 2034. How can you reconcile those aspirations in each of those three documents alone with what is in here? What is in here will operate as a handbrake for more housing. It will create more risk. It will mean there will not be as many entrants into the market of construction firms, which adds to competition to keep prices more moderate in terms of the growth in construction inflation. It is already high, and we need to think of ways to arrest that increase in construction inflation. But you cannot at the one moment say that these regulations – I have already held this two-volume set up – will mean housing affordability will improve and then expect prices to moderate. They will not. It is already too expensive for most Victorians to buy a home in this state.

I support wholeheartedly the reasoned amendment moved by the member for Caulfield. I just implore the government, just for once, to be reasonable. Understand that what, as a government, you are trying to do is going to add to cost, it is going to constrain supply and it is going to mean residential prices for new stock coming onto the market, particularly for first home buyers, will be more unaffordable – precisely the outcome we do not want in this state.

 Meng Heang TAK (Clarinda) (18:39): I am delighted to rise today to make my contribution in support of the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026. This is another important bill and one that will establish a new principal act for the integrated administration and enforcement of building legislation and the building system and legally establish the Building and Plumbing Commission, BPC, as the successor of the Victorian Building Authority, VBA, with the stronger enforcement necessary to reinforce confidence in the Victorian building system.

These are important changes, and we know the challenges in housing and building at the moment. This is a concern across Victoria and in my electorate of Clarinda. There is a lot happening to combat these challenges, and this bill forms part of the broader package of reforms to Victoria’s regulatory framework for housing and building matters, as outlined in the building statement released by the Minister for Housing and Building in 2025. It builds on other recent legislation, including the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Act 2025, the Domestic Building Contracts Amendment Act 2025 and the Building Legislation Amendment (Fairer Payments on Jobsites and Other Matters) Bill 2025. As we know, this also sits together with the housing statement to increase the amount of housing construction in Victoria and to put consumers at the centre of the building system, strengthen the power of the building regulator and make sure it is easier for consumers to access insurance and resolve disputes. As my colleague on this side the member for Pascoe Vale said, it is all about consumer protection and consumer confidence in the building industry.

Not long ago I was honoured to welcome the minister for housing, who came to my electorate not far from where residential housing was built at the beautiful Development Victoria site in Springvale South to celebrate the completion of the 47 new townhouses at the Coomoora residential development. It is a great project located along Coomoora Road, with the townhouses including a mix of two-bedroom, three-bedroom and four-bedroom homes, providing a diverse range of housing options for people in Melbourne’s growing south-east suburbs. These are fantastic homes with 6.5-star energy ratings, double-glazed windows, induction cooktops and heat pump hot water system services, which means that they will help to minimise running costs as they require less energy to heat and cool. It was really great to meet with the residents and to see them settle into their new homes and to see what Coomoora offers residents outside with access to the dedicated open-space area, which makes up 20 per cent of the site, including landscaping, a park and also existing trees for outdoor recreation. I would like to take this opportunity once again to commend the minister on the development. It has delivered high-quality, affordable and sustainable homes, ensuring more Victorians have a place to call a home of their own. It is fantastic to see families settling into their new homes in Clarinda district, part of the south-east, with easy access to parks, sporting facilities, bushwalking, accessible primary schools and kindergartens. It is also a great community in Springvale South and Noble Park. I was out there doorknocking not long ago and again visiting residents in the area over the weekend, and it is really a great community and one that I am really proud to represent here in this space.

As we heard, we want to continue to support Victorians through challenges in housing and building, but also something that I hear a lot, particularly from my constituents in Springvale South, which has a really significant number of renters, is many of those are looking for their own home and looking at building their own home and want to have access and want to have confidence in this space.

In the meantime the government has been working really hard to support renters like those in Clayton South with more than 150 rental reforms coming into effect this week, which will see rental providers and agents required to use a standard form for rental applications. Applicants can also be asked to provide the information listed in the standard application, and it will now be an offence for renters to be charged a fee by rental apps and platforms. These changes came into effect in 2025 and include ensuring rentals meet the minimum standard, banning rental bidding and no-fault eviction, and having more notice for rent increases and notices to vacate.

As you can see, we are working to support all the challenges across housing, and we are here today with the new principal act to provide for administration and enforcement of laws regulating the building and plumbing industry and building and plumbing work. This will deliver on the government’s commitment to establish a new regulator that brings together all aspects of building quality control into a single agency by establishing the Building and Plumbing Commission. This is really important for consumers. Again, like the member for Pascoe Vale said, it is all about consumer protection and consumer confidence, which are at the heart of this bill.

We have heard that the single biggest investment most Victorians will make in their lifetime is their home. Whether Victorians are purchasing or renting, they should be able to do so with the confidence that they will be moving into a safe, high-quality and affordable home which is free from costly defects. The government made a commitment to overhaul the building regulator to provide Victorians with better access to insurance when builds go wrong and to introduce stronger financial protection for apartment owners. This bill delivers the next stage of reform to permanently establish the Building and Plumbing Commission. As mentioned, it is built on reform of the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Act 2025 and the Domestic Building Contracts Amendment Act 2025, which began the process of creating more integrated and effective building regulation. Furthermore, it is also a comprehensive overhaul of the system since the Building Act 1993, which was introduced 30 years ago. The scale of the change to our state since the Building Act was introduced in 1993 is also very important.

These are exciting and important changes that are another way in which the government is supporting Victorians and Victorian families in getting into new quality homes such as the ones I mentioned before in Coomoora. We want more housing – more affordable and more available for everyday Victorians – and we will keep working to make sure that Victorians have the access and confidence in housing that they deserve. I commend the minister for bringing this bill forward, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (18:48): I also rise with the graveyard shift tonight to speak on the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026. It is a pretty substantial bill, and we have heard some wideranging views from both sides of the house about the impact on their local community and broader housing supply. I just want to share a few comments from the Euroa electorate and how I see this – from listening to my community – potentially impacting us. It is being sold as a solution to a broken system, but I think there have been substantial concerns raised today about whether it is making the system and the process harder, rather than providing that greater scrutiny and greater flowthrough of houses on the other end. Because when you increase cost and complexity, you are not fixing housing – you are making the situation a lot worse and you are choking supply.

I was listening to our shadow minister and the reasoned amendment moved by the member for Caulfield, and I think it is a fairly acceptable to ask for more transparency and make sure it is not centralised power, which we have seen. In my communities right across the Euroa electorate – 12500 square kilometres – I cannot tell you how often a month we hear concerns about housing.

Just this week actually I wanted to raise a local matter with a family out of Broadford. They have got a young family, with several children that go to school in Seymour. They have purchased their own property in Avenel. They cannot afford to build. After being tenants for six years – great tenants, never having any issues – her family was given notice to vacate because the landlord is selling. Rising interest rates, insurance, council rates and extreme regulation are forcing small investors out, and this is subsequently reducing our rental supply. She is a property manager and gave me this wonderful insight into her own personal experience, but really you could extrapolate that across thousands of people in my electorate alone. Her family did buy land in Avenel, but the rising costs mean they can no longer afford to build. I think that that is a really concerning place that we are at in Victoria – that what was once a dream for so many is now just unachievable. They did everything right: they put the deposit down on the land, they found a conservative place to rent in the interim while they saved to build, and it is just not stacking up anymore. I think that regional Victoria needs more houses, there is no doubt about it, and we want that process to be streamlined and protected so that at the end you get the product that you have purchased. There are a lot of different ways we can get there, and I think that we have got more concerns in this bill.

I do want to be clear that we do absolutely need reform, no doubt about that, because there are so many failures in the system. We have seen the consequences of poor oversight and how many lives and livelihoods and people’s connections to communities are destroyed when they lose that place of residence. The family I referred to in Broadford are having to contemplate pulling their children out of school. They are contemplating where they can afford to live, and it is no longer that safety net where you choose to be around your family and the community. And I have got to say, for regional Victoria to have a waitlist of 50 people applying for a rental property shows how much this is a crisis. We would think it was competitive to have three or four, genuinely, in communities that might only have less than five rental properties available on the market. We are seeing it is dog-eat-dog to try and get a home in this state. And then subsequently when you can afford to build something there are defective buildings, combustible cladding as we have heard throughout the week, and consumers so exposed. No doubt we do acknowledge that Victorians deserve better, they need better. But this is not careful reform. It is rushed, it is unbalanced – this is an extraordinary amount of legislation that is going to impact the lives of just about every Victorian and every builder in Victoria. These are not just big operators. Most in our communities are mum-and-dad businesses. They are the construction workers that you bring out to do extensions and builds. These are not massive operators. I just think that, as has been raised today on our side of the house, we are concerned that it can do more harm than good.

The bill is restructuring the entire regulatory system. It is replacing the Victorian Building Authority with a new Building and Plumbing Commission, centralising significant power into a single regulator, and there are those expanding enforcement powers and penalties and introduction of tougher financial requirements on builders and new levies. On paper it sounds like the Labor government are trying to strengthen the system, but in reality they are increasing pressure on an industry under extraordinary strain as it is. I heard the member for Hawthorn making some really intelligent comments around a permit not being a home – you cannot live in a permit. So a lot of these housing statements that are being announced are really just press releases. There is not a lot of substance. They are permits that are coming through, and we are not seeing houses at the other end, certainly not in my electorate.

Before I go into some of the detail of the legislation, I wanted to highlight that in my community of the Euroa electorate in Benalla, we have got Benalla West.

It is a housing development that has been years and years and years delayed. It is taking an awful amount of time. In total – I just want to get these figures right – we have 48 new homes being built and about 21 that were demolished to build the exact same amount of bedrooms. They are demolishing a huge portion of our government housing to build the exact same amount. There is no increase in supply, but they are displacing many families in doing that. I think something is not right. You have got to be a bit practical in how we get to providing homes for Victorians. I think we need to see, one, our government and social housing maintained. A lot of people just want a safe, comfortable roof over their head – it changes the trajectory of their life – but we are displacing people. One constituent wanted to raise their family in Benalla, and their options were not Benalla, because it was going to take years. Their options were Bendigo and Ballarat. I know that we have criticised this government for not knowing regional Victoria, but boy, there is a big difference between Benalla, Bendigo and Ballarat. You do not have those connections and the family relationships or the school of your choice. It is forcing people to live where they do not necessarily want to.

This bill is concentrating more power in a system that is already struggling to carry it. It is sweeping authority into a single body, and the safeguards are certainly uncertain. You do not make housing more affordable by making it more expensive to build. The industry estimates this bill could increase construction costs by up to 30 per cent. We already have the trajectory of the fuel increase. This is outrageous. What was once this idea, the aspiration, to own your own home and raise your family, suddenly, is a rebellious idea. People are not even aspiring to it; they cannot imagine they will ever be in a position to own their own home. What has happened to Victoria? The Labor government. Those costs, all of this red tape and regulation, get passed on to the consumer. It gets passed on to Victorians – to buyers, to families and to renters. Fewer builds mean fewer homes.

I feel silly making such a simple contribution this evening, but I feel like we are speaking to legislators that are not listening to our community. Drive out towards the north-east – there are suburbs in areas that could provide affordable housing for Victorians. Give them an area where they can raise their children and go to a school of their choice. Allow them to go to a community where there are health services and mental health services. Give them the opportunity to have a life that is well connected to public transport. We have just forgotten what our values are in Victoria. We have been speaking about the cost overruns on the Big Build sites, the state-sponsored strippers and the government turning a blind eye to $15 billion of cost overruns; imagine how many homes we could have built with that. On this side of the house we want transparency, but importantly, we want houses for regional Victorians.

 Josh BULL (Sunbury) (18:58): I am pleased to have a very short amount of time to make what will be, hopefully, a very short and sharp contribution. I understand the Prime Minister is making a national address in a minute or two, so I will make sure that I make this very short and sharp before we adjourn. The Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026, as others have mentioned, particularly from this side of the house, goes to providing for those additional powers and that additional enforcement that are going to mean that building and the regulation of building in this state are improved. I was just having a good conversation with the member for Tarneit about these matters in his electorate. He was also making some reflections on the South Australian election and the losing of the Sheffield Shield. I do know that what I think we do very well in this state, other than the results in the cricket, is making sure that we are providing for a better, stronger system of building. The enforcement agency that will be in place as a result of this legislation goes to so many of those issues that have been raised within our community over a significant period of time. I want to acknowledge everyone that has played a really important role in making this bill come to fruition. It will do important work that goes to the importance of community safety and the importance of making sure we do the right thing. I commend the bill to the house.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.