Tuesday, 12 May 2026

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Health, Minister for Water) (14:19): I move, by leave:

That this house authorises the President to permit the second-reading debates on the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026 and the Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill 2026 to be taken concurrently.

Motion agreed to.

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (14:20): I am pleased to rise and make a contribution to these two bills, being the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026 and the Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill 2026. They do different things, but they are related, and to that extent we are calm with them being debated concurrently – or cognately, as the phrase is correctly. They will be dealt with in committee separately and voted on separately.

I am going to, in the time I have allotted to me, explain these bills and explain our position on these bills. The Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026 is a very large bill. I think when the officials bring the actual bill into the chamber in a moment, which I think they are about to do, you will see that it is a doorstopper of a bill. It is about that fat, and that is because it is a major rewrite, a major change, that is being made here. The bill follows, the government says, years of serious concerns about failures in Victoria’s building system, and I agree. When I was shadow planning minister, across a number of periods there were serious issues with the quality of building in the state. The question, though, is not whether something needs to be done about it; the question is whether what the government is proposing will actually fix the problem. That is the question. We have got this massive change that is being made, but I am far from confident that it will actually provide the solutions that are needed.

The bill restructures Victoria’s building and plumbing regulatory framework, consolidating administrative, enforcement and disciplinary provisions currently contained across multiple acts, including the Building Act 1993 and the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, into a single legislative framework. There is something to be said for that, but it is the actual content that is in question. It establishes a new statutory structure governing the regulation of building and plumbing work, enforcement of standards and the disciplining of practitioners. The bill operates alongside existing legislation, which continues to deal primarily with technical building control and permits. The bill establishes the Building and Plumbing Commission as the central regulatory body, replacing the Victorian Building Authority. So we do not get, as it were, less authorities; we just change them, rename them and give them a slightly different set of functions. The commission’s functions include monitoring compliance with building legislation, undertaking enforcement action, administering disciplinary processes for registered and licensed practitioners, overseeing dispute resolution processes and administering levies and relevant insurance and bond schemes.

There is much that could be said about this bill, but the first thing I want to say is there is some, you know, significant concern amongst a number of the building industry groups. The Housing Industry Association (HIA) and Master Builders Victoria (MBV) have both expressed concern, and there is a direct criticism that they have not been involved in the process of bringing this together in the way they should have. At the end of the day, the building practitioners, the sector, are going to have to live with this and whether it works or not will depend in significant measure on their support and their constructive engagement with it – and I hope that that occurs. But I do want to read out some correspondence, and this is as recent as today, because the bill was rushed into the lower house, forced through, and then it has come here, and it is some weeks since that that occurred. But I went back and talked to a number of the building groups to get a sense of what their view is. I quote:

HIA does not support the Bill as it imposes even more regulation on the industry without any clear benefit.

We note the Building and Plumbing Commission has been very proactive using its existing powers over the past couple of years and it has been successful in pursuing bad actors in the industry.

I pay tribute to the more recent work of the commission. It has used the sticks and the weapons that it has got, and it should have done that earlier. So I pay tribute to the current administration and the fact that it has actually taken those steps – and that is a valuable set of steps.

HIA would argue that further enforcement powers are unnecessary –

so this doorstopper of a bill, as I pointed out to people, you could use as a paperweight if you wanted –

and especially when the introduction of the necessary laws has been rushed.

HIA would argue that regulatory problems with the home building industry arose due to the regulator not using the tools it already had. It does not necessarily need even more tools.

I am going to quote further, because I think this just puts the context of our position on the bill:

HIA is also extremely disappointed in the lack of consultation with the industry before this Bill was introduced. Industry associations did get a high-level briefing about the Bill and were informed that some new powers would be given to the regulator. We did not however get a reasonable opportunity to review the 600 plus pages of the legislation until it was in Parliament.

We know the government are very resistant to making even the slightest change. Once the bill is in the lower house, they crunch it through, and even here they are very resistant to practical, sensible changes that might be proposed. Quoting further:

We also did not appreciate that the next Bill would include such significant rewriting of existing laws.

In the limited time we have had we have managed to determine that most of the Bill is a remaking of existing laws. It is far from clear why the existing laws had to be rewritten.

I think their points are exactly right. The powers were there. They had more recently been using those previous powers and enforcement. That has been getting a better result. There is a criticism of a long tail of inaction by the existing body, and that is all legitimate. But it is not clear that what we have got now in this doorstopper will actually achieve the result of bad builders being policed and out of the industry, good builders not being harassed or dragged down and consumers being protected.

A final wing that I think is very important is that costs are kept down. We know the problem with home ownership: it is the cost of houses and the failure of the government to bring forward enough homes. The number of homes has fallen over recent years compared to what it was previously. Many permits are granted. The government points at the councils and says, ‘Oh, they’re naughty, they’re bad, they’re blocking permits.’ Actually, a lot of permits are issued that are never actioned, because the economics of a lot of developments does not stack up with the current layers and layers and layers of tax that are put on by this government and the Commonwealth government. Up to 45 per cent of the cost of a new home is covered in one three-letter word – tax. You wonder why there are not many homes. It is because the taxes have gone up and up and up and up, and the homes become less and less and less affordable. So I think these are important points. The letter continues:

In recent years the Victorian government has shown a disturbing tendency to make mistakes in its legislation. We would argue this is in part to unnecessary rushing and excessive secrecy.

I think that is right. I actually think that is a fair criticism across this government’s activity more generally. Quoting further:

… builders and others in the industry operate and little understanding of how their regulation is practically used or enforced. We expect that over the coming years many of these mistakes will become apparent. With proper consultation many of these mistakes could have been avoided.

I will ask some questions in the committee stage of this bill. We are not going to oppose the bill. We are going to move a reasoned amendment calling for more consultation, and it might be an appropriate time to circulate that reasoned amendment.

The PRESIDENT: If that could be circulated, please.

David DAVIS: The urgency that the government has tried to make out about this bill is not really accurate. I move:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with ‘the bill be withdrawn and not reintroduced until the government has allowed for proper consultation with the industry to occur.’

It is a very simple point. The HIA, the MBV and other organisations all understand that this has not been properly worked through with those who understand the industry. It is also important to note that the government’s achievements in this sector have not been remarkable. They have not been, I think, what people would want to see and want to hear. The Master Builders went on to say they have raised significant concerns with the proposed minimum financial requirements framework, arguing that it is not aligned with the actual drivers of insolvency in the construction sector. They contend that insolvency is primarily caused by cashflow volatility, risk allocation and cumulative regulatory burden rather than inefficient capital, and the proposed revenue to net tangible assets model fails to address these issues.

MBV is particularly critical of the shift from a work-in-progress, capacity-based model to a fixed annual revenue cap, which it argues does not reflect how builders manage risk and may artificially constrain viable businesses. They also highlight concerns about increased compliance costs, complexity in reporting requirements, treatment of trust structures and unrealistic transition frameworks and timeframes. Master Builders Victoria considers that the framework risks reducing builder capacity, increasing costs and negatively impacting housing supply without clear evidence of improved consumer protection. It therefore calls for the reforms to be deferred and redesigned based on stronger evidence and consultation.

What I am saying to the government now is you could just pause and get this right, and that would be a very sensible way forward. I do not expect that that is going to happen with the government and their general attitude. But what I think will happen is they will push forward and there will be bugs and problems in the bill. The bill will cause difficulties. We will be back in this chamber trying to fix problems.

There is strong support for stronger consumer protection and action against poor practice. I think that is the story of the current authority. They have in recent years ramped up their activities, and I for one think they have done a good job. I have put that on record, that they have ramped up, and I think this is the right step to take. They are not always going to be successful with prosecutions, I get that, but holding bad builders to account is an important part of their role. Not crushing good builders is also a part of their role. That is what I am concerned about with this bill. The cumulative effect of reforms, rising costs and fixed-price contract pressures are likely to reduce builder capacity, increase insolvencies and constrain housing supply. It is true that small and medium builders are particularly exposed, with risks of reduced participation, stalled growth or even market exit in some cases. The consolidation of the powers increases the risk that a single regulatory decision could severely disrupt or end a particular business.

There is a lot to be said here. I am going to talk briefly, to make sure I do get sufficient time in the period that we have got, about the other bill, the Cladding Safety Victoria repeal, and I will then come back to say a little more about what I would call the main bill. The Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill comes along as the government winds down Cladding Safety Victoria, which was established in response to the widespread combustible cladding crisis that followed the Lacrosse and Grenfell Tower incidents. Cladding Safety Victoria was created as a temporary body to coordinate the rectification of unsafe buildings and support affected communities, but its functions are now being transitioned back into the broader building regulatory system. This is the interplay with the other bill. As the initial emergency response phase concludes, the government is restructuring how cladding risks are managed, including shifting responsibilities to existing agencies and embedding ongoing work within the building framework.

It has been a very difficult road with the cladding challenges. I remember being briefed in those early days. I remember Richard Wynne, the then planning minister, got up and said, ‘It’s all hunky-dory; it’s all fine.’ A number of us in this chamber, me included, got up and said, ‘Actually, it’s not fine; it’s very dangerous.’ You can go and read Hansard. You can go and read the adjournment matter. I pointed to some of the English situations which we understand, and it was only a short while after that we had some of our own specific issues. I think the early management here was not good, and then the government realised it had to respond. It did set up the taskforce; Ted Baillieu was part of that. The taskforce, I might add, was very open in the way it briefed the opposition at the time, and we were impressed by those sets of steps that were taken through a lot of that period. There are still many criticisms you could make of the taskforce and the way the government managed it, not least the impact of the levy on housing costs more broadly.

There are levy changes that were explained in the briefing. The briefing said that once the bill is repealed there will be a small adjustment to the building permit levy. This new levy setting is intended to support the broader regulator. It will apply to certain class 2 to 8 apartment-style buildings. It claimed it will not affect traditional smaller homes – and the minister might in summing up just confirm that for the chamber – regional buildings or certain other classes of buildings. The government said apartment developments affected by the levy adjustment would still see an overall reduction in levy costs, because the replacement amount would be smaller than the current levy. The claimed saving mentioned in the briefing was between 47 and 67 per cent, and the minister again might want to make some comment about that.

There are questions that remain, and the minister might want to address some of these in her third reading. Whether the cladding program is truly complete, I am not sure. I am aware personally of a number of properties where the cladding has not yet been replaced, so there are obviously still issues and still risks. President, with your building background you will understand this more than most in the chamber. There are questions about whether there are still outstanding buildings or liabilities. Has enough money been collected to finish the scope of the works? How much money remains in the fund and what happens to those funds after repeal? That was taken on notice at the briefing. I am not aware of any response, but I stand to be corrected if there has been a response on that.

It is important I think, again, to put on record some of the industry concerns. The consulting architects see this as managing a significant regulatory change that would, they said, benefit from certainty and clarity. Further detail would assist in understanding how Cladding Safety Victoria functions will integrate with the Building and Plumbing Commission. Maintaining stability in existing levy arrangements is seen by them as important during the transition. If integration proceeds, a structured transition will be important to retain expertise and continuity. The minister might comment on those points. Additional clarity would be helpful on how residual or emerging cladding risks can be managed, including roles, funding and enforcement. Ensuring that existing data risk assessments and program insights are retained and effectively integrated is, I think, an important step.

The opposition did consult with a number of industry experts, and there was a recognition that Cladding Safety Victoria had made progress in addressing high-risk cladding and is now applying a more risk-based approach. The current approach allows for more proportionate and flexible solutions in some cases, and recent frameworks provide clearer guidance for councils, surveyors and property owners. There is, it was pointed out, still some uncertainty about how these align with existing standards and how they will operate in practice. The opposition will not oppose the bill. We understand there are a number of key points here. It is an administrative change – that is the essence of it. With those caveats, we want to indicate, again, as I say, that we will not oppose the particular bill.

I am very aware of the government’s failure to meet its various housing targets, and we have heard the federal government flapping around today on housing targets. Clearly they are not going to meet their targets either. But what is clear, and I am looking at a Master Builders table and some materials, is that the length of time from approval to completion for domestic houses and units and townhouses – all three – has increased under this government; the time to completion has increased. So permits are being given, but the time to completion has increased. I could put lots of figures on the record here, but that is the simple fact of the matter. The government is not reaching its housing targets. It is a long, long way short. They initially started to say 80,000 per year; they are tens of thousands short of that figure now. If the figure of 800,000 over 10 years is to be met, it is getting harder and harder because of the effluxion of time at a lower rate.

There are a number of points here. The government has been beating the drum about planning changes and planning approvals, trying to make them simple and easy. In theory, smoothing planning can provide some help, but it has to be good planning. Providing bad planning will provide bad outcomes for communities and individual property owners and neighbourhoods. That is the problem with where the government is heading at the moment. We have put on a revocation motion today because the government has forcibly imposed high-rise, high-density zones across the metropolitan area – 26 of them in the first instance, with more to come. They have imposed a so-called townhouse code. It is not really a townhouse code; it is actually a middle-rise code that provides a dogbox shape approved tick-a-box-type arrangement which will provide an ugly and inferior outcome across the city. It will not necessarily be wildly successful in bringing a lot of development forward, because the underlying cost structures have not been dealt with by government.

People like Max Shifman and others have made these points very clearly in the public domain. Some of the planning groups and the building associations have all made the point very clearly that you will not get more development – you will not get more houses and apartments and townhouses coming through – if you keep the heavy hand of the state government and the federal government’s tax bearing down on the sector. I mean, the truth is you want to build a tower in the suburbs. If you want to buy in one of those properties, the truth is that a new two-bedroom home or two-bedroom apartment in one of these towers is generally around $1 million or somewhere in that vicinity and many people – most young people – cannot afford that, so the economics do not stack up. They do not stack up because the government has not got the cost structures right. The government has not got the taxes right.

It does help to bring some new supply through. The government has sat still, becalmed on so many development areas, whether it is Fishermans Bend – and it is now nearly 12 years since the government changed. We had all the lectures and homilies in the world about Fishermans Bend, but actually the truth is that very little has happened down there in the last 12 years. Yet with the proper steps, it could have housed up to 80,000 people. Why is the government becalmed on this?

Then if you look around the edge of the city – at the recent inquiry on those planning changes we asked the City of Casey in the hearing about Clyde South. I asked how many people could be homed there, how many new residents. I said, ‘10,000?’ She said, ‘No, more – more like 20,000-odd.’ How long has this been delayed? Six and a half years. The thing has been stalled. Melbourne Water, other authorities, government authorities are the ones stalling it in many cases. The point here is that is entirely inside the government’s control. They could have worked with the council to get that ticked. It is a joint-use development. I am picking that as one example because there is sworn testimony on this case study. Tens of thousands of homes have been stalled and stalled for years – for aeons – because of an incompetent state government. For aeons they have been stalled – years. This is the incompetence of this government. Then they point to other communities and say, ‘We’re going to strip away your rights to have a say in your local community.’ That is their solution instead of cutting the taxes and making it more accessible by getting the costs down and bringing forward sensible supply where local councils are seeking to do so. There are so many other examples of councils. Maribyrnong is wanting to bring this forward. Many of the development changes that can occur there are quite significant.

Why is it that that big defence site there, the federal defence site, has been left languishing for decades? Why doesn’t the federal government – whatever colour it is; I do not care – get in and clean it up? They have been bad landholders, leaving parts of the site polluted. If they were a private sector landholder, the EPA would have been in there and thrown the book at them, but because it is the federal government, they are allowed to leave a site despoiled. It is time the federal government faced up to its responsibilities, cleaned it up and handed it back to the state government to develop. What is wrong with that? Why can’t the federal government do that? Why can’t the state government press for that? Why can’t we get that kind of development happening?

These are the solutions that are needed. These are the solutions that the state government should be looking at. This bill, to be honest, I think is going to be largely beside the point. We are going to seek to move our reasoned amendment to say there should be more consultation, but we are not going to oppose the bill per se. We are going to let that go through. But I do express our concern that there are likely to be bugs in the bill. There are likely to be many bugs that close consultation with the sector, with the industry, would have exposed and which would have led to shaking those out. This is a very reasonable position that we are adopting. We are saying we are not going to oppose the cladding safety bill. We understand it is fundamentally a transition. There are a couple of questions there. But this other bill is a major change, and it is not clear that it is going to get the outcomes that are desired.

Let us go back to what the outcomes should be. They should be protecting consumers, getting the bad builders out of the sector, making sure that good builders are not burdened unnecessarily and keeping the costs down. HIA and MBV are suggesting that 10 to 30 per cent is the increase in costs that will be attributed to the new bill. That is their figure, not my figure – 10 to 30 per cent in the costs of the running of the body. If the minister has different figures, I am happy to hear them, but that is what they are saying. To my mind, those costs will be sheeted straight home to home owners, to the new construction sector, to the renovation sector, all of that. People will pay more, and it will make homes less affordable.

The community is worried about housing affordability now – worried about the price of homes – so anything that increases the cost is something that we are very cautious about. Our preferred way is to have the proper consultation with the industry and get those key things right: protecting consumers, getting the shonks out of the industry, helping good builders and making sure costs are low.

 Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (14:50): I am pleased to speak on the bills being debated here in cognate today: the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026 and the Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill 2026. Building or buying a home is the biggest investment most Victorians will ever make, and with the housing affordability crisis, less and less young people in particular are able to purchase a house. It therefore becomes even more important that the one big purchase comes with up-to-date consumer protections and a contemporary regulatory framework. These bills are about making sure that people get what they pay for and that what they have purchased is safe and compliant. For example, when a first home buyer signs on the dotted line for an off-the-plan apartment or house, it means that what gets built will match what was promised. It is for the retiree who puts everything into a new home and expects it to stand or it is simply buying a block of land and building a new home that is located where the plans say it should be and includes the quality quoted and expected by the purchasers.

Trust in the building system is earned through consistent enforcement. One dodgy builder who walks away from shoddy work does not just harm one family, they damage confidence in every builder, every apartment and every new development that comes after them. When combustible cladding is approved and installed or when a dodgy builder cuts corners and walks away, the cost should fall to the companies and businesses responsible, not the owners and occupiers. But all too often it falls on the person living in the building. It falls as debt, as stress and quite often as years of fighting a system that was supposed to protect consumers in the first place.

In the case of the cladding crisis, the cost fell to owner-occupiers or renters in a devastating way. In June 2017 the Grenfell Tower fire in London killed 72 people. The cladding on that building, made from combustible aluminium-composite panels, turned a contained fire into a catastrophe that climbed 24 storeys. We had already seen the warning signs here in Victoria. The Lacrosse building fire in Melbourne’s Docklands in 2014 injured residents and narrowly avoided mass casualties. The same materials – the same failure – installed, with permits issued and inspections signed off. What followed was a state government audit that revealed that hundreds of privately owned residential buildings across Victoria had been constructed with combustible cladding. This was a regulatory failure of monumental proportions, a system that had allowed dangerous products to be imported, specified and installed with official approval. The people left carrying the risk were not the developers who built those buildings; they were the apartment owners, the first home buyers, the renters and the retirees who had purchased in good faith. They were working families who definitely could not afford to rectify. They could not afford to fix it alone. They deserved a government that was prepared to step in, and the Andrews Labor government did exactly that.

The Victorian Cladding Taskforce was established in 2017, and in 2019 it handed down its final report, recommending a dedicated agency. Cladding Safety Victoria was established with a $600 million commitment, later supplemented by a further $109 million in 2023 and $40 million for the cladding remediation partnership program. And the results are real: more than 99 per cent of the highest risk buildings in the rectification program have been remediated. That is over 450 buildings and more than 2000 apartments. More than 38,000 Victorians are safer now than they were six years ago. 130 government-owned and community buildings, including schools and hospitals, have also been made safe. The cladding remediation partnership program has delivered risk mitigation pathways for all 1210 lower risk buildings in the scope. Victoria is the only jurisdiction in the world to have done this. Cladding Safety Victoria also did something rare in public administration by contributing its methodology to the world. The protocols for mitigating cladding risk have been published and shared internationally. Victoria helped other jurisdictions understand how to approach this problem, and I am proud of that legacy, which goes beyond our borders.

The Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill 2026 now formally closes Cladding Safety Victoria as a standalone agency. Its functions, staff and liabilities transfer to the new Building and Plumbing Commission. The specialist knowledge built over six years does not disappear. It is retained inside the regulator that will carry forward any outstanding work. The bill also removes the cladding rectification levy and replaces it with a new lower element of the building permit levy until June 2029. This reduces the levy burden on impacted building classes by between 47 and 66 per cent. Domestic houses and non-metropolitan builds are exempt entirely. That is direct cost relief for builders and consumers made possible because the underlying program is now complete.

But fixing the cladding problem was never going to be enough on its own. The truth is that in over 30 years since the Building Act 1993 was first passed the industry has not been able to police the rogue operators in its midst. A small cohort of dodgy builders has been ripping off consumers, and over time that has eroded community trust in the industry. That erosion has consequences for everyone. It hurts the good builders and the tradies who take pride in their work – those who love nothing more than catching up with an old client and hearing how much they love their home. When trust in the industry falls, their businesses suffer too.

The Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill finalises the establishment of the Building and Plumbing Commission. This is a new, integrated building watchdog with the enforcement powers it needs to weed out those rogue operators. Stronger regulation means Victorians can build, buy and rent with confidence, and more confidence means more people building to buy and invest in off-the-plan apartments and houses, which means more homes are being built.

Building more homes starts with building better quality homes. The Allan Labor government housing agenda depends on both. I note that the opposition has not made it easy to get these reforms through. When working Victorians needed consumer protections debated and passed, the Liberals attempted to delay these proceedings, and it looks like those opposite are again blocking these protections, although I am unclear from what Mr Davis has said. The Liberals usually leave Victorians on their own despite having the chance to come to the table and help us fight for working Victorian homebuyers. After being lobbied by peak bodies representing the domestic building businesses, I was glad to hear Mr Davis say the Liberals will not oppose the bill.

I do believe, though, that we should be wary of Liberal support for this bill. Jess Wilson has announced her plan to make $40 billion in cuts to the public service, cutting one in seven public servant jobs in the process. We know that the Building and Plumbing Commission, which protects working Victorians from dodgy builders, is on Jess Wilson’s chopping block. No doubt the new commission is likely to fall into Ms Wilson’s back office public sector roles due to be cut. Labor answers to working people. We will keep fighting for them regardless.

Before I close, I want to acknowledge the Cladding Safety Victoria board and its CEO for the leadership that made this program possible: chairperson Rod Fehring; deputy chair Sarah Clarke; board members Genevieve Overell, Jo Pugsley and David Webster; chief executive officer Dan O’Brien; other people that were also in that role; and every member of the staff. It was a very challenging project. You saved building owners hundreds of millions of dollars which they would otherwise have been forced to find themselves. That deserves to be recognised in this chamber.

These two bills together represent what the Allan Labor government stands for. We intervene when the market fails, we fund and fix when consumers have been let down, we follow through on tidying up red tape and streamlining procedures into one unit as a result of the Silver review and we build the stronger regulatory system that makes sure it does not happen again. Tens of thousands of Victorians are safer because of this work, and thousands more will be protected by the stronger watchdog these reforms create. I commend the bill to the house.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (15:01): I am very pleased to rise to speak on the cognate debate of the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026 and the Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill 2026. Obviously these are two pieces of legislation which further this Labor government’s commitment to putting consumers and their rights and their protections at the heart of the building system here in Victoria. That is fundamentally what Labor is seeking to do. We are on the side of those Victorians who are making the biggest purchase of their lives in building a new home. We know that for many of them this is the only time that they will make such a commitment and the only time they will be involved in such a process, and therefore inherently the power imbalances and the knowledge imbalances that exist between those undertaking the works that they are paying for and those consumers themselves are pronounced.

That is why strong consumer protections need to be in place to support Victorians who are building a home, and that is exactly what our reforms to the building system do, because Labor is on the side of those who want to build their own home and Labor is on the side of those Victorians who want home ownership to become a reality for them. That stands in stark contrast to where the Liberals are, because what the Liberals want to do, as evidenced by the reasoned amendment Mr Davis moved today, is to stop and delay these protections. They want to leave Victorians out in the cold when it comes to consumer protections on our building sites.

What was worse than the reasoned amendment that Mr Davis moved today to delay this bill and withdraw it from the notice paper – so that more people, presumably, can be ripped off – was that we had the Leader of the Opposition standing up in the Legislative Assembly today reaffirming her commitment to sack the very public servants who are going to enforce the consumer protections outlined in this bill and sack the employees of the Building and Plumbing Commission. That is exactly what is on the chopping block here in the state of Victoria. That is exactly the choice that is awaiting Victorians in November. We have got a Liberal leader who wants to swing the axe at the public sector and has specifically named the entities that she has in the firing line, and that includes the VBA, the Victorian Building Authority, which is transitioning to become the Building and Plumbing Commission. What that means is that dodgy builders are going to be able to run rampant over consumers in the state of Victoria because there is going to be no-one there to support them, because Jess Wilson and her public sector hiring freeze will have sacked the lot.

We know that the choice Victorians face in November is between a Labor government that is on their side, supporting consumer protections and strengthening the regulatory and enforcement regime to make sure that they do not get ripped off in the biggest purchase of their lives, and a Liberal Party that wants to delay those new protections, delay the new enforcement and then take an axe to the inspectors and the compliance regime that are out there supporting Victorians. Labor will have support for first home buyers and new home builders; under the Liberals they will be on their own. That is the choice on building that we have before us today.

The first of the two bills that we are in cognate debate on today, the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill, is about shifting the dial on the building system to put consumers at the heart of the protection regime. A new principal act is being created which is going to make the system easier to navigate for consumers, hold dodgy builders to account and make the regulator’s activities more transparent. The new principal act that this legislation creates will be centred on a new building system objective which states in law that consumers must always be at the heart of the building and plumbing regulatory system and proposes tough new enforcement powers for that commission, including severe penalties, steep civil penalties, and the ability to hold directors liable for wrongdoing in order to weed out the phoenixing practices that so bedevil parts of the building industry. To ensure that Victorian people have confidence in this system, it will be underwritten by strong transparency measures that will hold the regulator to the high standards that Victorians rightly expect.

It is a bill that backs consumers and that backs those seeking to build a new home, and the Liberal Party wants to stop it. The Liberal Party want to delay it, and then they want to win an election and sack all the building enforcement regulators who will be out there making sure that consumers are not ripped off. I could not imagine a worse approach from a party that want to be in government if they are serious about the interests of both building more homes and protecting consumers. I think it sums up everything about the Liberal Party in the state of Victoria that they do not care that Victorians are being exploited and ripped off by dodgy builders. We are not going to let them enact that plan. We are not going to let them put those seeking to build their dream home at the mercy of dodgy builders here in the state of Victoria.

We know that under Labor not only are we strengthening the protections for those who are seeking to build their own home – not only reforming the old VBA and creating the new Building and Plumbing Commission with consumers at the centre, tougher enforcement and more transparency – but it is part of a broader sweep of policy reform in building and planning that is all about making home ownership more achievable and more affordable here in the state of Victoria. That is our policy goal, and it is working. What we can see in Victoria is a building system that is delivering more homes to more Victorians than any other jurisdiction right across the country. Victoria under Labor is approving, commencing and completing the construction of more homes than any other jurisdiction – more than New South Wales, more than Queensland. In the 12 months to January 2026 Victoria approved nearly 53,000 dwellings. We commenced building more than 55,000 in those 12 months, and we completed over 54,000 homes. That is, as I said, more than New South Wales, more than Queensland and more than any other jurisdiction anywhere in the country. But it did not happen by accident. It is not a coincidence that Victoria is ahead of the pack when it comes to approving, commencing and completing the construction of homes. It is because the Labor government has a policy agenda designed to support it.

We announced in 2023 in our housing statement a range of reforms designed to stop local councils jamming up the planning system and blocking projects because of certain local interests. We have led the way in ensuring that planning approval is easier to obtain, which lowers the cost of the new constructions that are underway, because we know that in construction time is money, and the longer developers have to hold land before development to get through the planning process, the more those costs are passed on to consumers. The faster we get through the planning process, the lower the cost of the end product, and that is a critical component of the work that is being led in this state by the Labor government to get more homes approved more quickly.

As I said, one of the benefits of the sustained investment that we have been making right across the economy but particularly in the skills and training system is that we have a construction sector that is running above other states in terms of the number of homes that are actually being started and being built. We have a very clear example here in the state of Victoria where a Labor government is facilitating better planning outcomes, investing in supporting the skills in the construction sector and supporting Victorians to get a home, and more are being approved, more being commenced and more being completed than in any other jurisdiction in the nation. What do we have from the Liberal Party? Persistent opposition to progress, using every opportunity to throw a spanner in the works of the construction that is occurring in the state of Victoria – throw a spanner in the works of those young Victorians who want desperately to be able to own their own home in the communities that they love. High and dry on your own under the Liberals or protected and supported under Labor – that is the choice. That is the difference.

This bill today does an exceptionally important job: creating a new principal act for the building sector and creating, in the principal act, the Building and Plumbing Commission, with consumers at the centre, with greater enforcement powers and with more transparency. The second of the two bills being debated in cognate debate today on cladding safety winds up the work of Cladding Safety Victoria and folds it into the new Building and Plumbing Commission. Largely the substantive, significant work that they have done over the last many years has come to the point where that is the appropriate course of action. Under Labor we are going to continue to focus on the interests of consumers, the interests of those who want to own their own home and want to build their own home. We are going to give them the protections in the system that they deserve. The Liberals want to delay those protections, they want to stop those protections and they want to take the axe to the very regulator that is out there to protect them. We are not going to let that happen. We are going to stand on the side of consumers. We are going to stand on the side of those who want the opportunity to own their own home, and under Labor that is what we are delivering.

 Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:15): I rise to speak on behalf of my Greens colleagues and on my behalf with respect to the two bills that we are debating today in a cognate manner, both of which the Greens will be supporting. Firstly, the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026 we support, as it improves protections for consumers and takes steps forward toward holding dodgy builders, in effect, to account. At a time when we need more homes for people here in this state it is critical that the homes are built well and that in so doing people have reassurance that their homes – that their apartments, for example, in a tower – are built to a good standard and that they are safe and they are not defective. For those who do find themselves taken advantage of by a dodgy builder it is important that they have the recourse available to them to fix their home, to fix whatever defects are apparent and to have the builders or the developers, in whichever case, held to account. This bill will make some of these improvements and will build on the recent buyer protection legislation that has been through this house previously.

One element that I know many people who have had the misfortune of dealing with more dodgy characters within the building sector will definitely appreciate is that this bill seeks to address the issue of companies phoenixing in order to avoid responsibility. There are provisions in the bill that make it harder for company directors to ultimately escape responsibility when their business is found liable for defective work. I know that the vast majority – and I want to put this clearly on record – of builders out there are working hard to do the right thing and to build great homes for people in this state. These increased consumer protections and relevant regulations will not and should not impact them, because they are not doing the wrong thing. But what I also know is that too many people have been left in awful, stressful and extremely costly, in many examples, situations where it has become apparent that their home has not been built properly or safely. I am glad that we are here today to improve some of these protections. It does, as always, come down to the resourcing of the Building and Plumbing Commission (BPC) to make sure that they have the tools and the resources that they need to complete this work. I hope to see this become reality as the various elements of building reforms, like within this legislation, take effect.

There does appear to be a gap, nonetheless, in the particular reforms that are before us. I very much support the introduction of rectification orders and the changes to domestic building insurance; however, there is a cohort of people that I am aware of who I fear will not be captured by either of those provisions – that is, owners in buildings over three storeys who have identified a defect, who have taken immediate action to rectify this problem and who, having done so already, therefore are not covered by rectification orders here. At this stage the BPC will not be able to issue rectification orders on an urgent basis, and this will mean that some owners and owners corporations (OCs) will find themselves having to fund the works themselves, not being able to access the rectification order scheme. Again, my fear is that we may see this shameful scenario where a group of people are therefore excluded from recourse due to the nature of the defect and the manner in which they promptly responded to it themselves. I would like to have seen further action on that particular matter, and I will raise it in the committee stage of deliberations on the bill. This is something that my colleagues and I will continue to push for to make sure that everyone possible can be covered by the scheme in an appropriate manner one way or another.

Another urgent matter which has been raised with me and my colleagues in various offices in the lower house, for example, is a situation that we see within owners corporations of some of these larger buildings regarding proxy votes. We have heard from a number of people in large apartment towers that their owners corporation meetings are increasingly being co-opted by individuals who hold many, many proxy votes in large towers with hundreds of apartments. I have heard examples of developers or real estate agents securing multiple proxy votes from disengaged owners and therefore taking control effectively of OC meetings for buildings where they do not live or even own an apartment. I acknowledge of course there is still a review of the relevant Owners Corporations Act 2006, which is currently underway, but I see this as a critical matter that really should not wait any longer. I think a number of people in this Parliament would be keen to see those reforms come through. The government has been considering the final report of the review since the end of last year. We need action now.

There are many changes that need to happen to that relevant act to improve things for people living in apartments, but this issue of proxy voting in particular is one that is quite glaring. There are a lot of people, within both my region and those of my lower house colleagues, who would like to see the number of proxy votes that any one person can hold for an owners corporation meeting reduced, while retaining existing limited exemptions such as those regarding family relationships. We see, for example, this ‘one person, one proxy’ rule being the case for smaller buildings. But when we look at these larger towers – these large buildings with hundreds of apartments that are subject to the legislation before us – where at relevant meetings we see proxies being misused and limited, this idea of limiting proxies per person can go a long way to stop some of this misuse and poor decision-making that results from these meetings, producing results that are far more fair and closely aligned to the wishes of the owners and people who actually live in the building.

To bring one particular matter to the attention of the chamber, for example, there is an instance we have seen in a large apartment building, around a thousand lots. At its owners corporation AGM 33 owners attended in person or online, plus a small number of people holding proxies, whereas one real estate agent attended holding 35 proxies. This meant that the one real estate agent had near control of that meeting and the decisions, despite not owning or even living in a dwelling in that building. So clearly change in that particular area is needed.

I will acknowledge that some of the matters I have just raised are actually beyond the scope of the bill that is before us. However, delaying reform on these matters is having real-world impacts on people who live in the apartments in the towers that are subject to the legislation before us, and it is affecting them each and every day, so that action is desperately needed. Owners corporations are holding meetings to decide on big decisions in their buildings, things like defect rectification – a subject of the legislation before us – being certainly one of these things, and with concentrated proxies continuing to influence this process, owners and residents are not getting their fair say. So that is why I raise it here before us today.

To speak briefly, though, to the Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill 2026, which is subject to this cognate debate, this bill, as I understand, will be wrapping up Cladding Safety Victoria and moving any outstanding work to the BPC. The Greens will be supporting this bill. As my colleague Ellen Sandell, MP for Melbourne in the other place, has already covered, when the issue of flammable cladding was first identified in this state there was a great deal of concern, as would be understandable, from residents, even once funding was announced to address these issues. Many of my colleagues, particularly in the other place, put in a huge amount of effort supporting residents through the complex and lengthy process of remediation. I am pleased to see that we are at a point where the job of addressing high-risk flammable cladding in Victoria has progressed to where it is now. The Lacrosse fire here in Melbourne and the absolutely tragic Grenfell Tower fire in the UK really highlighted systemic failures – these buildings that were not safe, that contained cheap and dangerous flammable material and were effectively putting people directly in harm’s way due to these failings.

Removing flammable cladding from buildings across Victoria has no doubt been difficult. There are many owners who will report from their lived experience that the process was long, it was confusing and that funds sometimes covered works and sometimes did not. But again, I am pleased to see that buildings now are in a safer position here in this state, and we can be in the position we are where we are able to see cladding safety staff transferred across directly and retained within the BPC. These are absolutely important matters, and as I have stated, both bills subject to today’s cognate debate will be supported by my Greens colleagues and me, and I commend both bills to the house.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:24): I am pleased to rise to speak on these two bills debated in cognate today and acknowledge the previous contributions, especially the contributions of Ms Ermacora and Mr Batchelor, in relation to and in underscoring why this bill is so important. As many others have said, the process of building your own home is one of the most significant financial investments you will make in your life. Certainly for the majority of Victorians that is the case, and this is a government that is focused on doing everything that we can to provide those housing options for young Victorians and for all Victorians as well. Especially when it comes to the building of a new house, which happens quite a lot in electorates such as mine in the thriving growth corridor of the south-east, it is something that is so critical for people and it is something that makes it so important that we get these regulations, these enforcement powers and these instruments for the Building and Plumbing Commission to be as strong and robust as we can.

It is one of the reasons I am pleased to speak in favour of this bill, particularly the provisions in which it will not only combine and correlate different functions of other agencies, including Cladding Safety Victoria, into the Building and Plumbing Commission proper but also the way it will empower the commission to take earlier action, to make those earlier interventions that in the past, under the current legislative and regulatory framework, have meant that where the BPC has acted – and we have seen it act quite a lot – it has sometimes been too late to actually rectify the situation. It is obviously a good thing that we have a strong regulator, and the new BPC is certainly, from all accounts, doing its job. It is one thing to be doing follow-up enforcement action and punishing dodgy builders, but it is perhaps even more beneficial for it to be given those powers at an earlier stage to actually make those early interventions so that a person’s individual livelihood cannot be thrown nearly as much off track as would otherwise be the case.

This is also not just about protecting consumers; it is about protecting what I would certainly presume to be the majority of builders who do the right thing by their clients and practise in an ethical and compliant way. They too are undercut by these shonky builders. I have had many people in my electorate come to speak to me about their concerns. Indeed, when I built a house myself, we went through various concerns of our own, including some appalling lapses that should never have been signed off on at the time that we only found out about afterwards. It was a very long and lengthy process to resolve that. I have had one constituent who, two years after their house was complete, is still fighting their builder step by step by step, inch by inch, because at every opportunity every supposed rectification is uncovering further issues – further deficiencies in their build – and they are having to fight their builder every step of the way. So it is really important that we see the Building and Plumbing Commission as strongly empowered as it can be.

I understand not too long ago the commission took significant enforcement action against a builder based in my electorate that had undertaken work on a property just outside my region which featured very prominently on a YouTube channel called Site Inspections, which specialises in exposing some of these bad practices across the country and highlighted a local example in the broader east of Melbourne. The Building and Plumbing Commission has taken extreme action, very serious action, as it rightly should have done. It is what we expect from any regulator, but when it comes to that most important decision, the most important financial commitment most of us will make in our lives, it is particularly important that Victorians can have that confidence. It is a confidence that is not a nice-to-have; it is essential, because we are trying to encourage and provide those opportunities for young people to buy or build their own home, wherever it is they want to live in this state – in the regions, in the inner city, or indeed in growing outer communities like the ones I am very proud to represent in the south-east of Melbourne. We do offer a great quality of life, and I do come into this place and talk fairly ad nauseam about all the many great things that are happening in communities such as Berwick and Clyde North and Cranbourne and Botanic Ridge and many others like them in the south-east. But to have that dream undermined by a shonky builder is of course going to impair confidence and is of course going to deter many, many people from having that faith to invest in and make that big decision.

The legislation before us today builds on what has already been done with the Building and Plumbing Commission, coalescing various other functions into it and providing that one-stop shop for consumers in particular. It means that we are giving every bit of power that we can to this commission to do its job as thoroughly and properly as it can. Whilst we are focused on that, I do notice that those opposite are focused on stripping away from it. The Liberals’ list of agencies they wish to cut was released just a few days ago. A detailed list was given to both the Herald Sun and Age newspapers outlining Cladding Safety Victoria as one of their targets as well as – what I presume they intended to write – the Building and Plumbing Commission. They actually wrote ‘Building and Pluming Commission’. Unless both newspapers just happened to make the same typo, I suspect the Liberals probably gave them a list. I find it particularly ironic that the party which is so expert at leaking against each other cannot spell the word ‘plumbing’. But there you are; that is in their list of cuts. The building and pluming commission, or the Building and Plumbing Commission, whichever way the Liberals want to call it, is on their list of cuts. They say that this is not front line, but really, if you are a Victorian going out and building your home, you want to have the surety – the peace of mind – that the regulator in charge of making sure that your largest single financial investment is being handled properly is well funded, not stripped away as the Liberals would seek to do, as evidenced by the Building and Plumbing Commission’s presence on their list of cuts. As Mr Batchelor said, it is in complete contradiction to what those of us on this side are seeking to do.

I do want to also briefly address some remarks made by Mr Davis in this debate in relation to housing. He specifically talked about Clyde South and the various ongoing rollouts of that precinct structure plan (PSP), which is taking a fair while. I think it is really important to draw on a few points here. Whilst the plan released by the Minister for Planning and current Attorney-General, with various other roles as well, in Plan for Victoria does certainly have ambitious outer suburban land releases, and there is much happening in the vicinity, including Cardinia Creek South stage 2, which has just recently been released as well, and there are continuing land releases that we are doing, I think it is really curious to see the Liberals come into this place, Mr Davis in particular, and talk about Clyde South, basically saying, from what I can infer from his speech, that we should be opening up 20,000 homes with no plan for infrastructure and no plan for services. This is the same Liberal Party that comes in this place and complains about things not being done. As a member of this region I am proud of the investments that we are making, but I am also one of the first to admit that we are doing a lot but we are barely keeping pace with the population growth in the existing areas of Clyde North that are being built right now.

Take the suburb of Clyde North, for example. I could talk about the community hospital, I could talk about the roads, I could talk about the bus routes, but I want to talk about the schools – six new schools that we have built and opened in the past three years alone in the suburb of Clyde North, which is, incidentally, more than the Liberals built in the entire state of Victoria in their last term of government. We have built more in just one suburb. There are these six schools, and there are two more new schools announced in the budget this year for Clyde North in the coming couple of years. Two of those schools that are open have already well over 1000 students in their enrolments. The area is booming. We are putting these investments in, but we are running to keep where we are.

Meanwhile if you look at the school enrolment data for somewhere like Boroondara, you will actually see that it is falling – falling by the thousands – over a medium-term period. So it is remarkable then that Mr Davis comes in and complains about our record on housing. It is actually him who is coming into this place week in, week out – he did it this morning in fact, in notices of motion – to complain about the very planning mechanisms that we are reforming so that more people can build or buy, not just in my electorate but in inner-city Melbourne too, in areas where we have the transport infrastructure and we have the school resources. The capacity is certainly there. We have that evidence from the Department of Education – over 10,000 spaces of capacity across an inner ring of Melbourne. That capacity is sitting there, but it is not being used, because people like Mr Davis and his fellow NIMBY friends have been for far too long in control of the planning controls and stopping young people from having that opportunity to live in, for example, Camberwell or Kew or Brighton or Malvern. ‘Housing for me, but not for thee’ – that is the mantra of Mr Davis, and that is what he brings into this place, day in, day out, with his NIMBY agenda to keep people out of homes in his electorate. It is not good enough then for him to just turn around and say, ‘Well, just unlock Clyde South, just unlock it, 20,000 homes,’ with no plan for that infrastructure and those services – infrastructure and services that you might get to enjoy in your community, Mr Davis, but you are withholding that opportunity from young people. It is absolutely egregious and outrageous to be coming into this place day after day blocking housing, blocking planning reforms.

Mr Davis said the government has not acted in this space. That is certainly not the case. We have done the thing that many experts have said governments have the most control over. The one thing that they all say is state government’s ability to affect this issue comes through planning controls. These are the levers we are pulling. We do not have nearly as much capacity to affect build costs as other levels of government may do. As a state government, the number one thing that we can do is planning controls, as has been said by many housing and urban policy experts. We are pulling those levers and making those reforms, and at every step of the way Mr Davis comes into this place and says, ‘No, not in my backyard.’ Today he says it is fine and we can just open up 20,000 houses in Clyde South. We are progressing the PSP in Clyde South and in other places, but what we will not do is an open-slather free-for-all with no plan for investment, no plan for services and no plan for infrastructure. As far as Mr Davis is concerned, as long as he has got what he wants in his inner-city community, anyone else can go jump, because that is what we have with the so-called modern Liberal Party that deigns to pretend to lecture the Labor Party on housing policy when they are the ones who at every opportunity are blocking housing, blocking activity centres, blocking the townhouse code and doing everything they can.

We saw an inquiry last year that Mr Davis sought to use to fabricate an excuse for him to attack and seek to revoke planning rules. Meanwhile he says, ‘Whilst we want to keep what we have in my suburb, you can all live in Clyde South, I don’t care.’ You have not brought forward a single discussion about buses, about schools, about roads, about hospitals for that part of the world. All you care about is that they are not living in your backyard. It is what we see week in, week out, time after time from Mr Davis and from the Liberal Party. I talk to people, unlike Mr Davis, and I would genuinely offer to bring him out to my electorate to talk to some of these people. I talk to people in my electorate, and they are very, very clear that they are happy to see development, the growth. They understand it needs to take place, but they are frankly sick and tired of their region, the outer suburbs of Melbourne, taking far more than our fair share of the housing growth in this state. They do not want to see another five suburbs built on the end of their commute – that is going to add to more traffic – without any plan to address the infrastructure problems and the services that those communities will need.

They do not want to see more laissez-faire development the way that Mr Davis would see it in the outer suburbs. It might suit him to keep his little pocket in the inner city, but it is not going to help my constituents in the outer south-east. What will help is doing both: releasing new greenfields land but also aggressively developing and allowing sensible, responsible development around activity centres, not the sort of ridiculously hysterical comments that Mr Davis has been making again today about dogboxes. Indeed, this is where we come back to the topic at hand, which is the Building and Plumbing Commission, and ensuring that we actually are building sustainable –

David Davis interjected.

Michael GALEA: Mr Davis, on this side we are very clear that we do want to provide housing for young people, so it is outrageous for you to be in here claiming that you want to see housing when all you want to do is push it to the outskirts where it is not in your view, not in your backyard and you can keep your nice low-rise street a few k’s out from the city.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:39): I also would like to say a few words on the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026 being debated in cognate with the Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill 2026. I would say from the outset that I agree with Mr Davis that this is a doorstopper of a bill. It is a very large bill, so I will not cover everything in it at all. But what I will say is this: the Libertarian Party agrees with what the government is trying to do in principle here. It is clear that there are problems with dodgy builders and regulating this, and I hope that what the government is intending to do here by fixing that will result in good outcomes. But I will say from the outset that unfortunately it has become typical of this government that they always do things that infringe on rights.

I have said a number of times in here that I am sick of seeing these bills come into this place where they give yet more warrantless powers of search, entry and seizure, and we will not be supporting any more bills that do that. Unfortunately, this bill is one of those bills that does that. Indeed, in clauses 94, 176, 264 and 266 it does exactly that. It gives expanded powers of entry without warrant or reasonable person tests. So the Libertarian Party will be opposing the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill. However, we do not have any problem with the Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill, and therefore we will not be opposing that.

It would appear that the Libertarian Party is not the only one to have concerns about these infringements on rights. In fact the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee –

David Davis interjected.

David LIMBRICK: Yes, the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee did some very detailed work on this, and I note that there were a number of questions put to the minister. I am not aware that the minister has responded. Maybe the minister can respond in summing up to some of these questions. SARC actually had some concerns where they queried the rights under the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. They had concerns that the application of subclause 176(1)(a) to residential buildings on land may trespass unduly upon rights or freedoms – for example, powers of entry. Also clauses 264 and 266 potentially trespass unduly upon rights and freedoms – again, entry and search with consent. Subclause 249(1) trespasses unduly upon rights or freedoms against self-incrimination and self-exposure to penalties – so the right to not incriminate oneself. Again, operation of the charter for subclause 176(1)(a) – powers of protection from liability. Presumption of innocence in clause 314 et cetera – it goes on and on and on. Basically, as Mr Davis pointed out, SARC also did a doorstopper of a response to this outlining many of the potential conflicts with human rights of this bill. I see that as a big problem.

Another issue that I have with this bill is around the cladding levy, which will disappear and be absorbed into this. Again, this is going to prove the statement – I think it was Milton Friedman’s statement – that there is nothing as permanent as a temporary tax. So we have that as well. The Libertarian Party will be opposing this for those reasons. Notwithstanding that, I do appreciate that the problems that this bill is trying to address are real problems. I hope that the intent of the government is realised here, but again, we do not support going through these infringements of people’s rights in order to achieve policy objectives.

 Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (15:43): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak in strong support of the Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill 2026 and the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026 in this cognate debate. This legislative package represents significant reforms for the construction industry. For most of us, building or buying a home is the single biggest investment we will ever make. It is an investment built on decades of hard work, savings and sacrifice. Yet for too long a small cohort of dodgy builders has been allowed to turn that dream into a nightmare, leaving families to deal with debilitating debt, heartbreak and extraordinary stress.

The Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill 2026 marks a milestone we should all be proud of, signalling the successful completion of the world-leading rectification program. This agency was established to protect our community following the harrowing Lacrosse tower fire in Docklands and the catastrophic Grenfell Tower fire in London. We all remember the footage from 2014, where noncompliant aluminium-composite cladding was set ablaze and spread 13 storeys in sheer minutes. It was a stark moment that proved our regulatory systems required urgent intervention. Successive Labor governments funded Cladding Safety Victoria to keep 150,000 Victorian homes safe, and by the time CSV is wound down it will have made 83,000 homes safer. It is on track to substantially complete its programs by June of 2026, at which time rectification works will have been completed on nearly 450 private residential apartment buildings and 132 government owned and community housing buildings. Our public use buildings are safer because of the work of CSV, like our hospitals, our schools, our sporting venues – places that millions of Victorians use every year. Because CSV has done its job, we are now able to repeal the cladding rectification levy, which will slash overall building levy costs by up to 66 per cent, putting money back in the pockets of homebuyers – exactly where it belongs. I want to extend my deep thanks to the entire team at CSV for their tireless work in protecting our state.

As we wind down one chapter of building safety, we must strengthen the next. This is where the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill comes in. For too long a small cohort of dodgy builders has been allowed to rip off consumers and erode trust in an industry where the vast majority of tradies work with immense pride and professionalism. When homebuyers are left to fight dodgy work on their own, they face debilitating debt and heartbreak. This bill finalises the establishment of our new integrated watchdog, the Building and Plumbing Commission (BPC) – which I spoke about during its introduction – and provides us with the necessary enforcement powers to weed out dodgy builders, and by ‘us’ I mean the state of Victoria.

At the heart of this new system is the building system objective. For the first time our laws will explicitly state that consumers must always be at the heart of the building and plumbing regulatory system. This is not just a minor change of language but a complete reorientation of the building system to place people first. One of the most insidious practices in the building industry is phoenixing. We have all heard stories of builders liquidating their businesses, only to appear a week later under a new name and with the same assets but no liability. This bill ends that. We are introducing director liability, allowing the BPC to issue a declared director notice that makes company directors, jointly and severally, liable for compliance. If you are a director of a company that rips off Victorians, you can no longer hide behind a corporate structure to avoid accountability. To back this up, we are introducing a civil penalty regime with fines of up to $600,000 for individuals. Courts will now be able to strip companies of the profits they made by cutting corners and disregarding safety. This is supported by ancillary orders such as adverse publicity orders. Reputation is everything for a builder, and homebuyers deserve to know if the person they are trusting with their entire life savings has a history of doing the wrong thing by their customers.

None of this happens without hard work and advocacy by the workers and unions, who have been calling for a fairer, safer industry for years. Our tradies take immense pride in showing off a house that they helped build. They are the ones on the tools every day, building the homes our state needs. I have got to say that pride carries on for many, many years, even decades. I have great pride in some of my memories of my uncle, who was a master builder. As he drives around places where he built homes he loves to point out the complexities in the work, the apprentice that came up on that site and how they managed to work in some great design elements to make that a beautiful home.

This bill supports the vast majority of builders and plumbers who do the right thing by driving out the rogue operators who undercut good businesses. I know this all too well from my own family experience. Can I just take a moment to honour the enormous legacy of my uncle Raymond Watt, who is a builder of such esteem and standing that I think our state will have homes built by him for many, many generations to come. I know how much pain it caused him personally when he saw a builder next door do the wrong thing. To you, my uncle, I am speaking to your experience and the stories that you shared with me about the pride that you have in your work, and I hope that this bill helps to eliminate some of those rogue operators. It also is a bill that introduces criminal offences to protect authorised persons at the commission from abuse or assault while they carry out their vital work. Labor is the party of working people and will always stand by the workers calling for a safer, more professional industry.

I could take a moment to talk about the opposition’s woeful, woeful history in this, but other speakers I am sure might go on to it. But I will say this is a party, those opposite, who have spoken about the need for action to protect consumers, yet their party has refused to publicly support this bill before us, and they have no plans or principles on this issue. They will speak against dodgy builders when they think they can leverage their constituents’ suffering for a few extra votes, but they will happily move against regulatory reform when the hard choices need to be made. I have seen recently senior Liberals on the back of a ute campaigning against more homes in their electorates, but the truth is that the Allan Labor government, by contrast, is delivering more affordable homes for working Victorians by boosting supply, particularly through the $6.3 billion Big Housing Build and the Regional Housing Fund. Victoria is approving, commencing and completing more homes than New South Wales and Queensland because our planning reforms are working.

Can I just say I am going to come back to the bill, but I want to talk about phoenixing and the hurt that it causes out there. What it does, this bill, is it provides for a consistent disciplinary framework for all licensed and registered persons. To protect consumers this bill provides expanded powers to suspend a licensed person with immediate effect for severe matters, such as performing work that poses a serious risk to health and safety. We are ensuring the commission acts in the public interest by introducing new eligibility requirements, including a ban on industry lobbyists from serving as commissioners, and I cannot tell you how much I absolutely support that one. These reforms are keeping more money in working people’s pockets and protecting them from that extraordinary, extraordinary stress.

Of course I have more to say on this – and I always do – but the truth is that under this government, working people will continue to get affordable, safe, high-quality homes that they deserve. We have built more homes every year since coming to government than those opposite did in their highest years of builds. We are exempting first home buyers from stamp duty for homes up to $600,000. We have banned underquoting. We are making real estate agents disclose actual sale prices. We are moving towards a future where every Victorian can have confidence in the biggest and most important investment they will ever make. You are either with the working families of Victoria or you are with the rogue builders who have exploited them for far too long. You are either with the tradies who want a professional industry or with the cowboys who tarnish their reputation. We will always put families first, and we will not leave them to fend for themselves in an unsafe building system. I, with great pride, commend these bills to the house.

 John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (15:53): I rise today to speak on the Cladding Safety Victoria Repeal Bill 2026 and the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026 consecutively. Before I go into the substance of these bills I would like to speak to the remarkable work of Cladding Safety Victoria (CSV) and the profound change that it has made to the lives of Victorians across this state, making our state a safer place to live and giving greater security to those seeking to purchase property, knowing that the risks of a building burning down have been either managed or removed. Cladding Safety Victoria is an agency established to protect building occupants from the very real and serious dangers of combustible cladding. It has been instrumental in transforming the safety landscape of our built environment and delivering enduring protections to thousands of Victorian residents and building occupants across the state. It brought together expertise across building assessments, risk classifications, project management and stakeholder engagement to develop and implement a comprehensive approach to cladding rectification. This was far from a simple task. It required the agency to engage with building owners, navigate complex legal and regulatory frameworks, coordinate with fire services and local councils and develop new technical approaches to cladding safety standards. Through the cladding remediation partnership program, for instance, the agency was able to provide all in-scope buildings assessed with lower cladding risks with a pathway to remediation. The partnership program also provided local councils with a consistent framework to support owners of these buildings to mitigate cladding risks at the lowest cost and satisfy any enforcement notices issued by the municipal building surveyor. This reduced the burden on both individual owners and local government and ensured that accountability and action went hand in hand.

Working in partnership with building owners, owners corporations and Fire Rescue Victoria, Cladding Safety Victoria has completed remediation of more than 99 per cent of the high-risk buildings in the cladding rectification program, with the remaining buildings to be completed this year. Let me repeat that: 99 per cent. That figure alone speaks volumes to the amount of work that the agency has done to keep Victorians safe. On top of that, the agency has also worked to remove the cladding risks on 130 government-owned and community buildings, including schools, hospitals and buildings of cultural significance. These are real, tangible results which demonstrate the value of bringing practical solutions to deal with problems before they develop into disasters. This is what responsible, prudent and proactive governments do.

One group of people who will benefit from this significantly will be the first home buyers in this state. Buying a home is complicated enough as it is, and it is often the single most significant financial decision that a family will make. One reason why fixing the issue of combustible cladding is important is because when somebody is looking to buy a home, they should be able to take for granted that the building is safe and well built. Homebuyers should not be placed at risk because of unsafe materials. Having a building should not be something for which you have to shop around, do your research and become an expert on construction materials. Homebuyers should feel secure that the place they are buying will be safe and that every measure has been taken to ensure that it will not expose them to any unreasonable risks. For a government which is taking the issue of home ownership more seriously than any other state government, this is just another reason why we can be proud of the work we have done through Cladding Safety Victoria. Both the purchasers and the sellers of existing properties will benefit from the greater security and greater certainty which it provides them.

Furthermore, Cladding Safety Victoria’s contributions have extended well beyond Victoria’s borders and into the international community. The agency has played a leading role in advancing global knowledge of combustible cladding risks and has developed its own groundbreaking evidence-based methodology to identify, assess, clarify and treat combustible cladding risks. This was a product of years of careful research and field experience, and as a result, protocols are mitigating cladding risks, which has reduced remediation costs for building owners. Published online and shared worldwide with other practitioners and policymakers, Victoria’s approach has been studied and cited by governments and agencies in other jurisdictions grappling with the same challenges. Cladding Safety Victoria’s staff have contributed to international forums and knowledge-sharing initiatives that have developed and helped raise the standard of cladding risk management globally. This is a remarkable achievement, and the scale of such work should not be underestimated. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank CSV chairperson Rod Fehring, deputy chairperson Sarah Clarke, Genevieve Overell, Jo Pugsley, David Webster and CEO Dan O’Brien, along with all the staff members who contributed to Cladding Safety Victoria over its course. Victoria is much safer because of their efforts. With that, Acting President, I will commend both bills to the house.

 Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (15:58): It is a pleasure to stand and support this bill, because we are here protecting Victorians against dodgy builders. When you have got Victorians making perhaps the single biggest investment in their life, they should get good-quality buildings. It is as simple as that. Our tradies here in Victoria are absolutely world-class. With the licensing and the regulations that they work to, you get quality outcomes. Of course if the Liberals and the Nationals had it their way, it would be all stripped away. You just give anyone a hammer: ‘Let it go, have a swing and let’s see what happens.’ Give people a set of pliers. We know that when we invest in our tradespeople, when we invest in the regulations that they work under and the training that they have, we get better outcomes. You do not have what the Liberals and Nationals would want, with lives shattered, with unsafe workplaces and with unsafe homes. If you go down that path, the costs escalate.

Poor work leads to billions of dollars in costs, whether that is insurance costs, whether that is the costs of people’s legal fees – let alone the time that is absorbed when people try to fight dodgy builders – or whether it is the detriment of the wellbeing of people trying to fight their way through. This is why this legislation is so important and so beneficial, to ensure that there are steeper penalties so that the Building and Plumbing Commission can get after people doing the wrong thing and ensure that those that are doing the right thing can be there doing the work, winning the jobs and building people quality homes. The BPC can compel dodgy operators to answer questions and ensure they cannot hide away. There will be more power for improvement and infringement notices so we can get onto things fast before things blow out and get after those dodgy operators that are trying to phoenix. I am very proud to support this legislation and to be supporting well-trained proud tradespeople building quality homes for Victorians and getting the cowboys out of this industry. Talking of cowboys, here comes one now, so I will leave my contribution there.

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Health, Minister for Water) (16:00): Mr Davis, I am glad you are here, because there might be a number of things that I can address in summing up on this debate to perhaps give you a bit of clarity and set a number of things in context. Firstly, thank you to everybody who has contributed to the debate and discussion on these two bills. I want to take us back to the point in time in October 2024 when we made a very clear indication that we were going to establish a new, stronger regulator. This bill, the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill 2026, is part of continuing that work. The bill simply completes that process by legally establishing the regulator and its powers. The transition, as I said, is already underway with the Victorian Building Authority trading as the Building and Plumbing Commission (BPC). Back in March last year the building statement that we released reinforced the direction that we were taking, confirming not only the new regulator, the Building and Plumbing Commission, but also a modern legislative model with clearer administration and enforcement frameworks. Since then, over the course of last year and this year, there has been wideranging consultation on key elements of the framework. We have had many conversations and discussions in this place with stakeholders and over the journey with and for and by the Building and Plumbing Commission.

I am going to address a number of the contributions that have been made in this place. In particular I might take us to Mr Davis and his remarks in relation to the volume of this particular bill and the work that has gone into getting us to this point. The vast majority of the content of this bill – and it is voluminous – relates to transitional processes and detail. There was concern raised about this bill being an undue increase on the burden on industry, and as a result of that Mr Davis has proposed by way of the reasoned amendment:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with ‘the bill be withdrawn and not reintroduced until the government has allowed for proper consultation with the industry to occur.’

That is effectively a proposal by the opposition to kick the can down the road. Mr Davis referred to it as a pause but then in the same contribution said that the opposition will not oppose the bill that we are introducing, and he has indicated that the opposition will not stand in the way of this particular bill and its passage. That is a welcome relief, noting of course that the opposition opposed the buyer protection legislation and that that debate was an interesting, I think, betrayal of the coalition’s faith and their effort and energy being put behind consumers – and it is indeed consumers that are at the heart of these reforms.

We have heard so many quotes from building business representatives over the course of these contributions. We have heard claims of ambiguity around the benefit that these changes will deliver, so I want to address that in being very, very clear. The fact that the opposition, purporting to speak on behalf of industry, cannot see the clear need to protect working Victorians in the building industry actually just shows and puts on the record whose side they are on and who they are leaving behind.

As many speakers have made abundantly clear from the government benches and indeed the crossbenches, we need to make sure that Victorian consumers, that buyers have that protection to ensure that what they put their money behind, in the biggest purchase of their lifetime, is something that is going to be what they pay for, and that in the event that it is not, there are going to be remedies that apply and processes that can be activated in order to ensure that they get a measure of protection that for too long has been missing from our building industry.

I also want to make it very clear, as I did in this place when we were debating and discussing the buyer protections legislation: the vast majority of builders take enormous pride and care in their work. They deploy their skill and their expertise and their passion to what they produce every single day, often over decades. They take enormous care. They operate safely and effectively. This bill, these changes, this reform, is about ensuring that we are able to act on and that consumers are able to seek remedy for bad behaviour. Just because the vast majority of builders do the right thing does not mean that we should not take action to create a system that applies enforcement mechanisms for that small proportion of the industry that does not.

This bill, in effect, gives Victorian buyers the confidence that they need to make that single largest purchase. I do want to touch on affordability. We have heard a lot about affordability of housing here in this chamber in the course of this debate and indeed over a very long period of time. I would encourage anybody who has questions about the comparative affordability of Melbourne, in houses and in units and apartments, to go and have a look at the data. Whether it is to buy a home or to rent a home, we are comparatively more affordable here in Melbourne than in other major cities – to buy and to rent.

David Davis interjected.

Harriet SHING: Mr Davis, I am going to pick you up on that interjection. You said, ‘Well, people don’t think that.’ Mr Davis, the reason perhaps that some people do not think that is because you keep ignoring the reality and the facts that because of the work that we have done here in Victoria to increase supply, to meet that demand, to provide support for first home owners and protections for people through residential rentals reform, it is more affordable, it is more secure, it is more accessible to buy or to rent a home. That is not to say that there is not further work to do, particularly when we think about how wages have not kept pace with property prices. We all know who it is that proposes that we put a dampener and put the brakes on wage growth. We all know who opposes an increase to minimum wages, and we all know that help with the cost of living is of essential importance in making sure that people can pay the bills. That is where there are a range of initiatives that are intended to do precisely that, intended to get two incomes into a household where previously there may only have been one, to assist with the cost of child care, to help with working from home, to help people to gain a qualification and to assist people with being able to access everything from cut-price registration – 20 per cent off – to free public transport until the end of May and half price from June until the end of the year. There are also the sorts of supports we have had with the first home buyers equity fund that helped more than 11,000 people in Victoria to get into home ownership, now translated into the Help to Buy scheme federally. We need to make sure that these initiatives sit alongside building reform that truly puts consumers at its heart.

To the size and complication issue. In the first instance, the Building and Plumbing Administration and Enforcement Bill brings together a really disparate system, as it relates to building legislation, into the one place. That is why the transitional arrangements are so voluminous, and in doing so, it actually makes the process simpler for practitioners and consumers alike. The bill itself also ensures that we are in a position to be able to provide ongoing discussion on the work that the Building and Plumbing Commission undertakes. Engagement, as it has happened to date, has leveraged the expertise of standing advisory groups to the minister and to the commissioner and CEO of the Building and Plumbing Commission Anna Cronin, with several briefings throughout last year and this year.

These reforms do not increase the burden on builders and plumbers who are doing the right thing. These reforms actually improve the system that exists around those who are doing the right thing. It leaves those who are doing the right thing without the burden of having to shoulder responsibility for the very small minority of builders who do the wrong thing, in many instances through ignorance, but in some instances by design. We need to make sure that we have a strengthened administration and enforcement side of the system, meaning that the regulator is better equipped to act rather than imposing new substantive compliance requirements on those who are already meeting their obligations. Again, builders and plumbers who are doing the right thing should experience less friction, not more, because that enforcement is targeted at bad actors and the expectations are made clear and consistent. The bill lifts the performance of the regulator and not the burden on those good industry participants. It creates a fairer, more level playing field for those already meeting the rules.

The opposition has asked for confirmation that the repeal of the cladding rectification levy and building permit levy adjustments will not affect smaller homes. Mr Davis, I can confirm that these changes will not affect class 1 buildings – that is, buildings of three storeys or less. The information sought by Mr Davis about how cladding risks will be managed forward can perhaps be assisted by reference to the fact that Victorians will continue to be protected from the harms of combustible cladding, even after Cladding Safety Victoria completes its work as planned. When the wind-down occurs, CSV staff and assets will be integrated into the Building and Plumbing Commission to allow completion of any cladding safety-related trailing activities. A trailing team of designated CSV staff will finalise those activities as they relate to the cladding rectification program and will facilitate completion of cladding rectification works on the final buildings in the program. It will also undertake completion of defects liabilities periods on buildings subject to funded rectification works and tasks required to successfully close CSV as an organisation. As part of the transition from CSV to the BPC, the knowledge and information base that CSV has built over six years of its operation will be transferred and managed appropriately, and that is to ensure that knowledge remains available to local councils, building practitioners and Victorians in the communities.

Victorians cannot wait any longer, though, for these reforms, and delay in the terms proposed by the opposition would only set back a reform that has been publicly communicated since 2024 and progressively implemented since that time. We have seen numerous opposition speakers get to their feet in this place and in the other place talking about the lack of remedy for people whose builders have died, disappeared or become insolvent – people whose hearts have been broken, their wallets emptied and their bank accounts drained. This is exactly why we are taking this action and so therefore to delay it would mean to deny consumers the protections that those opposite have called for. This is where, again, we will continue the work to deliver these reforms. I am glad to hear that the opposition will in fact vote in favour of these bills, that the opposition will be supporting these bills. We are looking forward to continuing the path of reform again in a way that recognises all of the good work that happens across the state, as well as ensuring that there are standards that apply to those who do not. What I want to do is to underscore the effort that is –

Members interjecting.

Sonja Terpstra: On a point of order, Acting President, there is a constant stream of unruly interjections that are coming from that side of the chamber, and I would ask that the minister be allowed to continue in silence.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jeff Bourman): Interjections are unruly. If the minister could continue without help, please.

Harriet SHING: We are determined to continue to support the Building and Plumbing Commission to support the work that is being undertaken, transformational work by Anna Cronin, the CEO, who was part of that transition, who we have –

Wendy Lovell interjected.

Harriet SHING: All right, Ms Lovell, I am going to take you up on that interjection. You are talking about what Ms Cronin has cleaned up. I could not agree with you more, because we have funded and resourced the Building and Plumbing Commission, Ms Cronin, to do her valuable work. We have done that, and you are recognising that we have done that. So thank you, Ms Lovell, for that endorsement of the work that we are doing. We will continue with these reforms because we know that they are important. It is a shame that the opposition sought earlier to oppose buyer protections legislation, and we are looking forward, again, to a spirit of collegiality, given that the opposition has now indicated that it will support both of these bills. I am looking forward to an opportunity to answer questions in the course of committee, but I self-evidently confirm that the government will not be supporting the amendment proposed by Mr Davis.