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BUILDING BILL 2000 (No. 36)

Second Reading

Mr LENNON (Franklin - Minister for Infrastructure, Energy and Resources - 2R) - Mr Deputy Speaker, I move -

That the bill be now read the second time.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the new Building Bill is based on the policies of prevention, consumer protection and equity. It will introduce a complete system of reform to building control in Tasmania. It will re-balance the various aspects of building regulation by addressing existing market failures and implementing further policy reform in the area of liability and insurance.

It is not an entirely innovative proposal, as much of the bill is based on the Model Legislative Provisions - model building legislation - developed by the Australian Uniform Building Regulations Co-ordinating Council for use by States and Territories to develop national consistency in building laws.

The bill completes a building legislation reform process begun in Tasmania in 1983 by the Development Review Working Group and reinforced in 1990 by the national Building Regulation Review task force. The issues were further progressed in the liability and insurance areas by a number of reports to local government ministers' conferences in 1988, 1989 and 1990.

This bill has been guided by the 1991 Model Building Act Project and the Victorian Building Act 1993 and was both constrained and advanced by National Competition Policy. Most importantly, Mr Deputy Speaker, the recent industry audits conducted by this Government identified the completion and implementation of a new building act as one of the highest priorities of the building industry.

The bill consolidates and updates applicable provisions of the Local Government (Building and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1993, the Town Building Act 1962, the Building (Action Limitation) Act 1997, the Building Regulations 1994 and the Plumbing Regulations 1994.

The objectives of the Building Bill 2000, Mr Deputy Speaker, are consistent with the objectives of the Model Legislative Provisions and the Victorian act. As these objectives are quite detailed, I seek leave of the House to table a copy of the objectives of the Building Bill 2000.

This is a large and complex bill. A number of new principles are introduced which are:

Crown to be fully bound;

private certification;

replacement of joint and several liability with proportionate liability;

mandatory insurance;

accreditation of building practitioners;

maintenance of essential safety and health requirements in buildings;

legal defences in relation to standards and performance designs; and

duties and infringement notices.

Those areas that are essentially unchanged from existing legislation are:

building and plumbing standards;

existing buildings (except maintenance provisions);

restrictions on buildings;

appeals; and

regulations.

The intent of some of the existing provisions has been retained, but rewording has been required in the following areas:

building and plumbing permit;

building work, plumbing work, inspection, occupation and completion; and

enforcement.

I will now outline those areas of major reform for members.

Binding of the Crown

The bill fully binds the Crown. Currently the Crown is not bound to comply with the technical standards but carries out its own compliance checking and approvals. Consistent with probity and equity principles, the Crown will have to seek building permits from the permit authority like any other building proponent. This brings building legislation into line with planning legislation.

Private certification

The bill includes a system of private certification of compliance with the Building Code of Australia and provides the ability for council building surveyors to operate competitively against private building surveyors and other councils.

Previously, Mr Deputy Speaker, council-employed building surveyors have enjoyed a monopoly on assessment of building applications. The bill requires a building surveyor - either a private building surveyor or one employed by a council - to issue a Certificate of Likely Compliance.

The permit authority - appointed by the council - issues the building permit within specified times as the public authority responsible for building control. The permit authority's role does not include checking the design or the work done by the building surveyor. Councils retain a building health and safety governance role. Mr Deputy Speaker, the opening-up of the Council's monopoly on compliance assessment addresses competition policy principles and will lead to increased efficiency and effectiveness within the building industry.

Proportionate liability

The recommendations for liability reform are based on preventative policy and equity. Liability reform, including a ten-year liability cap - to eliminate indefinite exposure - commenced in Tasmania with the Building (Action Limitation) Act 1997. Mr Deputy Speaker, those provisions are to be transferred to the new Building Act. The other major component of liability reform which is a component of the Model Legislative Provisions is the change from joint and several liability to proportionate liability.

Substantial evidence exists, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the absence of proportionate liability disadvantages insured defendants, particularly councils and Government, and increases insurance premiums. Proportionate liability creates a fairer situation where damages are awarded according to responsibility. Under the existing joint and several liability, one defendant may have to pay all the damages where the other defendants are insolvent.

Insured building practitioners

In the context of the Building Bill, 'consumers' does not mean only home builders. Consumers include all building owners, building practitioners - architects, engineers, building designers, building surveyors and builders - and the general public. To ensure that insolvent defendants do not disadvantage consumers under a proportionate liability scheme, this bill introduces insurance against latent defects for building practitioners. The Housing Indemnity Act 1992 provides a warranty against builder default or bad workmanship in housing for six years but does not cover latent damage up to ten years. At present, Mr Deputy Speaker, if there is latent damage after six years, home owners have to sue the builder to recover damages. Statistics show that latent damage may occur in the period from year six to year ten. Other non-housing building owners currently have no guarantee of financially viable defendants. This compulsory insurance scheme for all building practitioners is designed to provide consumers with financial redress in the event of building failure.

Compulsory insurance under a proportionate liability system will ensure that there are funds to meet the successful claims by consumers and also enable practitioners to defend themselves when such claims are made. Premiums should reduce in a competitive compulsory insurance market.

Building practitioner accreditation

The bill establishes a co-regulatory accreditation scheme which will establish that a building practitioner has acceptable qualifications, experience and, most importantly, the required insurance to practise as a building practitioner in a reformed liability climate. Building practitioners will be assessed by authorised industry/professional organisations against appropriate accreditation criteria.

In the bill, Mr Deputy Speaker, 'building practitioner' includes persons who contract directly with owners to be responsible for the carrying out of building work that requires a building permit and is valued over $5 000. It also includes designers who are responsible for the building work design - architects, engineers, or building designers - as well as building surveyors who are responsible for assessment and inspection.

I would like to emphasise that the requirement for accreditation does not include tradespeople or subcontractors. It also does not include people who work for building practitioners. If the responsible building practitioner is accredited and insured there is no need for subcontractors and employees to be accredited.

Mr Deputy Speaker, in relation to plumbing, I confirm that the bill excludes a plumber who does plumbing work as defined in the Plumbers and Gas-fitters Registration Act 1951 from the requirement for accreditation as a building practitioner. This includes plumbers doing roof plumbing as defined under that act. If plumbing work is the major component of a job, the bill does not require a plumber to be accredited as a building practitioner if the value of the remaining building component of the job is less than $5 000.

Building practitioner accreditation is not just simply a consumer protection issue, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is about maintaining acceptable levels of health, safety and amenity in a changed building environment. This changed environment includes: performance-based, non-prescriptive building codes and standards; clear accountability for building work including private certification, as well as proportionate liability and the ten-year liability cap.

Designers, architects, engineers and draughtspersons, whose designs are critical to the performance of a building, need to be technically competent to design buildings in accordance with the performance codes and standards. Building surveyors need to be technically competent to assess designs, inspect work and administer the regulations either privately or within a council. Builders need to be technically competent to build buildings as reflected in the designs to the regulated standard.

All other States have systems of mandatory builder accreditation or registration.

Introduction of the accreditation scheme will benefit Tasmanian building practitioners who are currently disadvantaged by the lack of any accreditation or registration scheme in this State. It is currently very difficult for Tasmanian builders to work interstate because of the lack of official recognition in this State.

Owner-builders

Genuine owner-builders will still be able to build their own homes without the requirement for accreditation provided they are not in the business of building. Under this bill, owner-builders will be required to demonstrate that they are aware of their obligations. It is a simple and straightforward step that will not stop competent owner-builders.

Levy

A small building permit levy is proposed in the bill for all building work valued at over $5 000. This levy is to pay for the administration of the act or any other purpose relating to building or plumbing matters that the minister determines. These matters would primarily relate to the administration of the Building Practitioner Accreditation Scheme, regulatory training issues and the State's contribution to the Australian Building Codes Board.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I acknowledge that the cost of the levy would be generally passed on to the owners of the new building work. However it has been demonstrated in the Regulatory Impact Statement that the benefits will outweigh the costs.

Maintenance of essential safety features throughout the life of the building

By interstate standards Tasmania currently has the weakest powers to require building owners to maintain essential safety and health features in buildings to the standard required when new. Building standards for new buildings are worthless if those standards are not maintained throughout the life of the building.

The bill requires owners to maintain the essential safety and health features and measures of a building throughout the life of the building and publicly display an annual statement that the maintenance has taken place. That maintenance may range from actions as simple as checking that exits are clear to checking the efficiency of alarms and sprinkler systems.

Legal defences in relation to standards and performance-based designs

Mr Deputy Speaker, this bill introduces two very important legal defences that are critical to the ongoing development of innovative performance-based building design and construction. The first relates to the relationship between standards - including Australian Standards - and the building legislation. The bill puts beyond doubt the legal hierarchy of the Building Code of Australia and Australian Standards and clarifies that a building standard does not apply unless specifically adopted by the Building Code of Australia.

The second important provision, Mr Deputy Speaker, relates to certainty of performance-based alternative solutions. It is critical that designers are afforded legal certainty when using innovative and cost-effective designs.

In summary, the Building Bill 2000 is a large and complex bill. It introduces a complete system reform for building control legislation with many new features but at the same time continuing many provisions which will be familiar to consumers and the industry. It continues liability reform in the building sector and provides for improved consumer protection through mandatory building practitioner accreditation and insurance. It also brings about a number of other reforms. Mr Deputy Speaker, the regulatory impact statement prepared for this bill found that the bill represents the greatest net benefit/least net cost solution for market reform.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I commend this bill to the House.

Mr HIDDING (Lyons - Deputy Leader of the Opposition) - We finally have the bill before the House. This was promised by Labor when in opposition and it is time to deliver. We are here now a couple of years on with a very complex piece of legislation that goes some way to doing some good things in the building industry but loses its way on some very important principles. For that reason we believe it loses its way entirely.

I would like to start at the end of the second reading speech of the minister where he says:

'... the regulatory impact statement prepared for this bill found that the bill represents the greatest net benefit/least net cost solution for market reform.'

The one thing we found with most stakeholders who had done a lot of work on this matter was a feeling that the regulatory impact statement was not a solid document and it ought to have been. It should be a document that actually underpins the thinking behind the whole thing. Indeed there has been a series of comments from people in and around the industry about a number of problems and assumptions in the regulatory impact statement that simply could not be sustained. One of them, there was not a genuine attempt in the regulatory impact statement to understand the end cost to the consumer because the bill is simply that complex and leaves that much to regulation that it cannot be judged as to just what the cost is likely to be. The minister has used words in his speech - and it is through the legislation itself - that actually says, 'a small levy will be imposed'. 'Small' is an adjective that could mean absolutely anything and, given that public financial models these days require full cost recovery such as in the fisheries industries where you have a regulatory model for a particular fishery, it is generally accepted that whatever the bureaucracy cost it has to be met by the people who benefit, generally.

They have a direct interest in keeping the bureaucracy down. In this particular bill there seems to be the ability for the Government to grow an entire bureaucracy as a result of this. Indeed other States showed just that in spite of protestations by the architects of their legislation. They have grown into quite large bureaucracies which have resulted in simply higher costs for the consumer at the end of the day.

We have a bill that sets up a deal of bureaucracy. It does not disclose what the cost to the consumer is going to be. Anybody listening to most of the second reading speech would conclude from that that the building industry in Tasmania was in a deal of trouble, that there were consistent complaints against builders, that there were consistent and many complaints in the Consumer Affairs area from people who had been ripped off as a result of people purporting to be builders when they were not builders at all. When we make inquires as to the actual level and quantity and nature of the complaints, we find that relatively speaking compared to other States it is basically tiny. We really do not have an industry that is in huge trouble from consumer affairs issues, or certainly nowhere to the point where the minister has said publicly in defence of his bill in the past, that the situation in Tasmania is very bad.

It is unclear to us on this side of the House just what a mischief it is that the minister is seeking to achieve here. One can only assume that the mischief he is seeking to address here is the fact that somebody made a statement prior to the election and now somebody else has to deliver. It reminds me of St Marys hospital where, even though almost everybody in the Government understands that it is a ridiculous notion to return the St Marys hospital to a 24-hour acute-care hospital, because it was said prior to the election they have to do it. So $800 000 up front is being spent this year plus $800 000 a year to run something, but there will be nobody in the beds.

Mr Llewellyn - Well, that'll be interesting.

Mr HIDDING - Yes, you are one of the ones -

Mr Groom - And Judy rolls her eyes.

Mr HIDDING - Yes, that is right. You ought to see your Health minister carry on and all your bureaucrats about that. There you go. Here was a government that actually promised reform in the building industry. It, no doubt, attracted a deal of support because of their statement and now it is time to deliver and we have to, as a government, construct a scenario where the world is coming to an end as far as consumer affairs in the building industry goes. It really is not so bad and the bill goes much too far in many areas.

I have to say we generally agree with some quite large sections of the bill. It is hard to argue with the fact that the Crown will now be fully bound; it is hard to argue with private certification. We, on this side of the House, have a natural bent towards deregulation, I suppose, and this is a deregulation of something that local governments have had exclusively and now private certification will be available; it will mean that a building company down here in Hobart, for instance, will be able to deal with one certifier who can travel the entire State and work for that organisation. Without that builder having to actually negotiate with different councils everywhere, he negotiates with one building surveyor. He still has to apply to that council but the essential work has been done - that can only be good for the industry. So therefore that is something that we would support.

However there are things in there that we do not support. Surveyor shopping in a world of competition principles: we have an arrangement proposed here where if a consumer or somebody wants to build a house - a private individual wants to build a house - goes to a building surveyor and asks for a job of work to be done, you get half-way through that and you find that that building surveyor is, in your opinion, way over the top, specifying right to the very ends of the standards for a certain arrangement and you are unhappy with that - this bill actually says you are not allowed to go somewhere else. You are trapped with that one person you selected and, while there is a case to be made for banning surveying shopping, I would say that the market itself would determine a sensible arrangement.

We do not have an arrangement where somebody cannot go doctor shopping - doctor shopping is an issue in the health field - but you do not actually legislate to say to somebody, 'If you don't like that doctor, if you're uncomfortable with that doctor, if you don't trust that doctor, you can't go to another doctor' - of course you can, and you are proposing in this bill to say, 'No, you started with a building surveyor and you're stuck with him'. That is just an example of the over-regulation that this bill actually seeks to visit on Tasmanians.

The replacement of joint and several liability with proportionate liability is sensible. Mandatory insurance - well, it already exists of course; mandatory insurance is here. It is a six-year mandatory indemnity insurance and, yes, there might be a case for extending it a little bit but you actually want to extend it to ten years.

I want to hear from the minister - we must hear from the minister before we are prepared to proceed with this bill - what this actually means to the bottom line; what it actually means to the cost of a dwelling or a commercial building that this mandatory insurance is going to bring. You know, I have asked around and I cannot find any insurance companies jumping around and saying, 'This is terrific'. Insurance companies just love the concept of legislation saying, 'There must be mandatory insurance' - I mean, it is a licence to print money. But they are not jumping around about a ten-year indemnity insurance because there is - and somebody very well connected with this particular industry told me that he believed that it was a technical impossibility to actually construct a program whereby you could provide that sort of insurance for that long and insurers not having to charge huge premiums because of the long tail.

You may well, at nine years and eleven months, still have absolutely no idea whether you are going to be whacked with a $200 000 problem with that house and so therefore there is a huge tail at the end of this insurance and there are genuine industry concerns about whether the industry can deliver what you actually want here. Just as most Tasmanians do not recognise that commercial building in Tasmania currently does not carry mandatory indemnity insurance - just does not carry it - and that is because it has not needed to be. There is a very high standard of commercial building in Tasmania because most people who want to invest in a commercial property want to know it is properly built and in any case for years now councils have demanded full engineering designs of not only the slab and the foundations but the rest of the construction and you have had to go off and get full engineering work done on anything bigger than a chook shed in the way of commercial buildings.

This minister is now saying, 'Oh, why don't we just hang insurance on that as well? Let's make it ten years as well'. What on earth is that going to do to the building industry in Tasmania where there are people ready to invest; they have money to invest in Tasmania. There is land waiting for investment, there are buildings crying out for people to buy them, invest in them and develop them and have the property market bubbling along again in Tasmania. But this legislation slaps a ten-year mandatory insurance on commercial buildings that did not exist before and I can tell you that the property market is appalled by that.

Already we have six-year indemnity insurance and a lot of people do not even know that exists because people have been living in their own homes for quite some time. Sure, for owner-builders you do not actually have to go and get it up front; if you do sell your house within the six-year period you have to get it retrospectively and that is a hassle. It is expensive and you might just as well get it up front if you have any thought of selling your house.

We have before us a proposal that we limit owner-builders in this State to a whole new regime that overnight goes from the most relaxed provisions in the nation to the most draconian. Two jobs in ten years, and backdated - this is legislation that backdates, as soon as it becomes official, to 1990. Anybody who has done two jobs in that time has a time-out until they have a ten-year clear period again. That means that if I did a job as I did on my property I think in 1998 and I think - no, in fact that was for our company, so that was probably clear - but if I was to do one other before or after this legislation because it is totally retrospective - if I were to do another next week to extend my garage, get a building permit and it is over $5 000 then until the year 2008 I can do nothing to my house.

I can tell you now I have no intention of selling my house and I want to improve my property but this minister tells me that until the year 2008 you have to go and get yourself one of these expensive builders who is fully accredited, do a deal with him, contract him to do my garage. I cannot do it myself; I have to go to someone else and I am banned until the year 2008. When Tasmanians wake up to what this is about - there is no association of owner-builders in this State, that is the trouble; normally you would have this or that association, but because of the transitory nature of owner-builders, they do a job and they cease to be an owner-builder, there is no such group.

But when Tasmanians wake up, the people who for years have done jobs on their own places and who just recently are buying shack after shack from this minister, and they go in and say, 'Now that I've bought this shack from you, Minister, I want to do some work on it'. Whoops! Because I did a garage back then and I replaced a window in the house I have to get a fully-qualified, fully-accredited building company from Hobart to go up with a full team of men and do this job on my shack. When Tasmanians wake up to the fact that you have done that to them there will be riots in the streets!

Mr Lennon - You haven't read the bill, Rene.

Mr Rundle - You hadn't either until just now.

Mr HIDDING - Have you changed the bill?

Mr Lennon - Since when have garages and shacks been involved? You know they're not. Stick with the facts; you go all right when you stick with the facts.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER - Order.

Mr Rundle - When does a house become a shack?

Mr HIDDING - I am prepared to argue exactly what category buildings are what and I can tell you that a garage over 3 metres by 3 metres can in fact be involved. There are some exclusions but I know that there is a job I want to do on my son's house with my son sometime when he comes back from Western Australia and it involves a deck and that does not qualify, and it involves some other work that does not qualify but we do want to take out a window and replace it with a door, and we can do that because that is an owner-builder's job. That is just another job that is over $5 000 so I can tell you it does qualify.

Mr Rundle - Red tape.

Mr HIDDING - You are right, it is red tape for no good reason other than that you promised something to the industry. The industry has held out for something and guess what? Two jobs in ten years is what you have hung out for and guess what has happened: the industry has dumped you. The industry, this week, has dumped you. The HIA has written to me this week and said, 'We want you to support the Queensland model: one job in six years'. Some people would say, 'One job in six years, is that not worse than two jobs in ten years?' No, it is not, because one job in six years - I mean, you are only timed out for six years - if you do the job this year, you have to wait until the year 2006. With two jobs in ten years, it is quite conceivable that you do two jobs and you have to wait nine and a half years before you can pick up a hammer again. We already have one major industry bailing out of your owner-builder provision.

Mr Lennon - Don't be silly.

Mr HIDDING - No, I am serious. They are bailing out of your bill already because they realise, I am sure - I am not quoting you here -

Mr Lennon - They are not bailing out of our bill at all. Don't misrepresent their position, Rene. They're supporting the bill, you know they are.

Mr HIDDING - They are.

Mr Lennon - Well, don't say they're bailing out.

Mr HIDDING - They are bailing out of a major provision -

Mr Lennon - No, they're not.

Mr HIDDING - of your bill which is the owner-builder provision.

Mr Lennon - They would have preferred something more stringent but they are supporting our bill, so don't misrepresent them.

Mr Groom - So are you saying they agree with you?

Mr HIDDING - There is a major issue in this bill.

Mr Lennon - They don't agree with you, that's for sure, they're supporting our bill.

Mr HIDDING - They do, they do!

Mr Groom - Do they agree with you on this?

Mr Lennon - Don't misrepresent their position, he said they were bailing out of the bill.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER - Order.

Mr HIDDING - They certainly do not agree with you on the owner-builder's legislation, they have bailed out of it because they realise that out there the building industry actually needs credibility and credibility in the marketplace will not be tying up the entire Tasmanian community for nine and a half years after doing just two jobs from picking up a hammer. That is not something that the building industry out there really wants. I think it was an ambit claim and you fell into it and they are now starting to back-pedal and to realise that overnight we go from the most relaxed provisions to the most draconian, just like that. That is something the Tasmanian people will wake up to and will have plenty to say to you on.

But let us just get back to what this is about. The building industry - both the HIA and the MBA - want more legitimacy and they talked to us about that for quite some time when we were in government and we did actually want to find them some legitimacy in the marketplace. In the end we said, 'I'm sorry, you are going to have to do it yourself, it will have to be self-regulation and not government regulation' because it went against everything that was current in public policy thinking at that time, including national competition principles. And I was amazed when I was first briefed on this bill that a great deal of it is based on the Victorian model which recently had been through a review for national competition reasons and it had not raised any problems with it. So I have to say that whole process of the NCP principles is, in my mind, flawed that they did not pick up this over-regulation in Victoria and in fact gave it a tick and it then graduated across the Bass Strait to here.

So here we are - a Victorian model - and where does that ring a bell? Where have we seen on television recently, furious home owners, great swathes of them, marching on whom? Not on Parliament House; marching down to the industry headquarters of the MBA, saying, 'This is a disgrace and an outrage', because a certain major housing company had gone broke and left all these unfinished jobs. Just recently on television again, there was a case of appalling workmanship; where were they marching? Down to the industry headquarters again to complain. Why? Because a co-regulatory model says, 'Oh yes, you can have your regulation, we'll set up a bit of legislation that gives you the regulation', and then you do the bureaucracy, you take all the heat, you have your problems and, with all that stuff built in, has that protected the Victorian consumer? It does not look like it. These are not Queensland builders going belly up, these are not Queensland builders who are doing amazingly shoddy work; these are Victorians whose very legislation is the mirror for the proposed legislation here.

So you would say, if you want to bring that into Tasmania, the building industry in Tasmania must be in an appalling state and I submit that it is not. While there might be some trouble - and I know the minister is now going to defend his situation on this and is going to give us some lurid descriptions of some terrible things that have happened to people - based on what the Labor Party said on 9 August 1998 when they first proposed this, just before the election, Mrs Bladel, the member for Franklin, said, 'Some so-called reputable builders have created nightmares for some owners'. All right, based on what was said there, this legislation now appears before us. I would like to know what those nightmares actually are - the quantum and the quantity of those nightmares - given that for quite some years now we have had compulsory six-year indemnity insurance and most problems in a house are going to manifest themselves by about year six, but this legislation is trying to take it out to ten years. It is good if you can get away with it and it did not cost much, but it is going to cost a poultice. But given that there is six years' indemnity, given that to build a slab or foundation now anywhere in Tasmania you are required to do a soil test, you are required to provide full engineering drawings and compared with what happened in the Maloney v. Bryan case where there were very small footings and a couple of bits of steel with a little bit of concrete, if you saw what was actually going into foundations now you could build the Taj Mahal on it.

Given all those constraints, what on earth are the huge complaints that are out there? This minister is going to have to come clean and say just exactly how many problems there are - and were they from owner-builders or, as I suspect - in fact, as I know because I looked into it back then - are most of the complaints about registered builders?

Mr Rundle - An interesting suggestion.

Mr HIDDING - Yes, that is right. Let us see where the real hassles are - are they with this group or with that group? The HIA is finding that 28 per cent of building activity in Tasmania is done by owner-builders. When I first started looking at this nearly twelve months ago, it was more in the area of about 50 per cent and I checked the statistics of one major council in this State and, of the 100 building applications, 48 per cent were in fact owner builders. So there is a very large percentage of owner-builders, no question. I can see why the building industry wants to claw back some percentage of that, but where does the mischief lie here? Does it lie with this group or does it lie with that group? If it lies with the registered builders, you are not going build in one scrap of protection more for the consumer from those people because you are actually elevating those people to a position of quite some privilege once they are accredited.

Mr Groom - They will not be accredited surely?

Mr HIDDING - They will be accredited and this is how accreditation happens. They will go to their own organisation or to another organisation within the building industry, HIA, MBA. Now, it could be BISCO, the smaller group, it could be some other group. We believe that if you are going to go down that model, it has to be a fairly major group, but let us say that they go to the MBA; he is a tradesperson and has some experience and he or she says, 'I want to be an accredited builder, thank you very much. I have worked for that person for years, I have this experience'. So with an unspecified set of tests, nothing specified in here, that person gets the tick from the MBA to be an accredited builder.

What happens when there is a problem with a house that he has built or a job that he has done, and the roof is leaking and the shower leaks, with this problem and that problem, what happens? Where is the consumer supposed to go to complain? Back to the HIA.

Mr Groom - His own organisation.

Mr HIDDING - His own organisation. As I say, I am going to complain against Lennon Builders for doing this dreadful job. 'Oh, that is awful, let us have a look at it'. He happens to be a member who just happens to throw into question our accreditation proceedings, but we will have a look at this job for you. I do not want to throw into question the personal integrity of anybody associated with those organisations, right?

Mr Lennon - The Law Society.

Mr HIDDING - What?

Mr Lennon - Where are you with the Law Society, Rene?

Mr Groom - That is another issue.

Mr HIDDING - That is right, just another issue. I think when Tasmanians wake up that they actually have to go - that is the trouble with mirror legislation: you say it is quite a good model, let us put that in in Tasmania, but look what is happening over there - they are marching in the streets down to the local MBA office, that is where they are actually protesting.

Mr Rundle - What Paul is saying is we have a few unsatisfactory ones, we will have another one.

Mr HIDDING - That is right. So this legislation really is wrong-headed on the matter of owner building and if that were the only issue in this, we would say, 'Let us talk this through, you are the Government, you have a mandate and it is what you called for' and the rest of it, we could talk to you. But quite seriously there are such fundamental problems in this with people accrediting, inspecting, checking, all the way through; there is this incestuous arrangement that will not engender any trust by the ordinary consumer in the building industry in Tasmania - a trust that I believe genuinely exists at this moment.

The matter of commercial building insurance, the whole issue of property investment, is so knife-edged, why would you be in it? If you have enough money to buy a half a billion property why would you actually invest in one in Tasmania? You know, there are some serious thoughts as to why you would do that. But we need people to invest in Tasmanian property, we need people to invest in property and once they have done so, to upgrade that property and then enter into a commercial lease, and that is then their superannuation. You ring your builder and you say, 'I want to spend a couple of hundred thousand on this property. I want to put in a new floor there, update offices there, different parking' - that is what you want to do. But now you are saying that the builder, the accredited person with whom you sit down to negotiate with to do that $200 000 job, has to provide you with ten years' defect liability on his work. In spite of the fact that he has all the engineering drawings and he has everything checked by full professionals, he still has to provide ten years' work guarantee for something that the insurance industry cannot even give me a clue as to what it might cost, except to say that it will be horrendously expensive.

So what you are doing here is not just mucking about, tinkering around with the building industry, you are actually going to the heart of the investment industry in this State and that is a very serious matter indeed. I wonder whether your Cabinet, including your Treasurer actually understood when this Building Bill went through, these huge raft of amendments went through, that you really did want to bring in compulsory insurance, mandatory ten-year insurance on commercial buildings.

Mr Rundle - Commercial buildings?

Mr HIDDING - Yes, which does not exist now. It is one small edge that the Tasmanian investors have had over other States, that they have not had this compulsory insurance.

Just getting back to the accrediting issue, I serve notice on you that we have a problem with the accreditation matters where it may well be considered by people that in order to be accredited, you have to go down to your local, your own industry body and seek accreditation. We have had representations from a Christian group that wants to lay on the table this issue of compulsory membership of an organisation in order to be accredited. If that is the case, then that is discriminatory and cannot be allowed, and so we will be moving to amend, I think it is section 20 of the bill that simply calls on those accrediting bodies not to make accreditation subject to membership of that organisation, which could be a side complication for people.

Some might say, 'Oh, but that would not happen, you should not have to have that in the bill', but of course, this is outside your control. These are industry bodies who are desperate for membership and once they wake up to how much their own bureaucracy is going to cost them in running this accreditation they will want as many members taking up very expensive memberships as they can possibly get. It has happened in many other places around Australia where people are forced into joining an organisation in order to have the benefits of accreditation. We believe that is wrong and we will be moving to address that.

I have a series of other amendments we will be proposing but many of them seek to tidy this up as much as we can, if you are determined to go on with this, and in so saying I am flagging that we are actually going to move to withdraw the bill and redraft it but I will get to that in a minute.

Just to finalise then this part of my contribution to the second reading debate, you have built in here as well a provision that all current commercial buildings have to be compulsorily inspected. It seems to me that this is something local government has not picked up on. Because local government as an industry has looked at this legislation, there is substantial response there from an eminent QC who has provided a very good synopsis of the bill but it has not picked up on the fact that somebody is going to have to actually inspect these buildings.

Let us say the Hobart City Council is going to be, once this bill goes through, responsible for the annual inspection - or somebody is going to be responsible and I suspect it is going to have to be the council, or it could be the private surveyors, I do not really know. But here is another cost on commercial building where your building has to be inspected every single year. I understand at least a period, and I suspect it would be every year, and I think you mentioned in your second reading speech that sprinkler systems and things all have to be checked. Well, they are currently not checked so nobody does it now. Who is going to do it? Let us say it is local government - I know who is going to pay.

Local government are not going to say, 'Oh, out of the goodness of our heart, now that we have lost the rights to building surveying, to the exclusivity of that, we will run around every building in Hobart and check it every year. We will do that for nothing'. Rubbish! There will be a substantial cost to the council to do this, and guess who is going to pay? There will be a substantial cost on every building to have an annual inspection because whoever inspects it is going to have to be trained in the operation of sprinkler systems - perhaps you might have to get the fire brigade in for that separately, another charge - there will be OH and S inspectors, there will be all sorts of inspectors who will need to come in to look at your business, to give you another certificate to hang on your wall, to say, 'This building has been inspected. It's got a tick'. How much do you reckon that is going to cost? Nobody has a clue.

Mr Rundle - You've just convinced me. I was thinking of selling mine and you've made up my mind for me.

Mr HIDDING - You are dead right. This legislation is going to say to people, 'Let's bail out of the property we already own and certainly don't buy any more because it is not friendly to investment at all'.

Mr Lennon - Who told you that, Rene, that assertion you just made, that people are going to get out of the industry?

Mr HIDDING - There was a quip made just then and I agree with the fact -

Mr Lennon - So he's the expert?

Mr Rundle - I'm selling mine.

Mr HIDDING - that if people own property in this State right now -

Mr Lennon - It's your assertion.

Mr HIDDING - it is a marginal prospect that you -

Mr Rundle - You can't borrow money now on a lot of commercial buildings in Tasmania. The banks have jacked up on it.

Mr HIDDING - That is right, the banks are leading with their chin. When you go along and say, 'I'm interested in that building; would you loan me 70 per cent?', the bank's are saying, 'Well, how about 50 per cent and I need three more valuations because I'm not absolutely sure'. On top of that, you are bringing in this -

Mr Lennon - So you think we should put standards in and not enforce them, that's what you're saying?

Mr HIDDING - But the standards are there and they have not been enforced for ages. Show me where the mischief is. Tell us how many buildings out there do not actually have sprinkler systems that work. Tell us the buildings out there that have OH and S problems; tell us where the problems are. Where have you dreamt this stuff up from? You have brought this over the water from Victoria because it exists over there. It is just a whole bunch of bureaucracy that nobody ever asked for; it is being foisted on Tasmanians and they have no clue what it means. The Local Government Association of Tasmania had no idea that somebody had to inspect every single commercial building in Tasmania annually. So what will it cost? You, as a government bringing forward this legislation, should not just drop this legislation and expect us to go on with it.

Mr Lennon - We haven't just dropped it; it's been around for ever.

Mr HIDDING - You ought to be bringing forward reasons for it -

Mr Lennon - It's been around since 1994.

Mr HIDDING - and you ought to be bringing forward reasons for doing it and what it is going to cost. There has to be an understanding of what these things cost.

There are other matters in here of building permits. I will lay this on the record to give your staff time to consider these matters. There are a number of areas where there are - I think there are at least two areas where there are deemed refusals. If a council - I think it is an official body - does not provide material to a surveyor within a specific period then it is deemed to have been refused and that building surveyor can go ahead without that information; it is not taken into consideration. It is deemed to have been provided and off he goes. In another case there is a situation where the same thing exists: a council has a period of time that is yet to be determined to issue a building ticket - and that could be three days, ten days, whatever you pick. Let us pick a ten-day figure. If that has not been provided within ten days, the legislation 'deems it to have been approved'. I have just confused myself with that. Whichever way, it is wrong-headed and we want to have a close look at this business of local government being able to drag its feet for a period of time and then being timed out. There is no protection there for a consumer and we would be seeking to replace it with measures in this legislation that say to local government, 'On the eleventh day that you haven't provided something you face a $100 fine; on the twelfth day you face another $100 fine; the thirteenth day, another $100 fine' - an actual fee that kicks in, that says to their local government, 'Perform or it'll cost you', rather than having to penalise the consumer for a council purposely sitting on its hands. That is a matter that we want to have a close look at.

To summarise, we have too many problems for us to proceed with this bill in spite of the fact that we actually do agree with quite a deal of it. So, Mr Speaker, I want to move an amendment to the proposition before the House that the bill be read a second time. I move -

That the motion be amended by leaving out all the words after 'be' and inserting 'withdrawn and redrafted to provide for -

(1) protection for building practitioners from excessive fees and levies as a result of the bureaucratic processes this bill proposes;

(2) protection for consumers from substantial price rises on building costs as a result of increased bureaucracy in both the public and private sectors as a result of this bill;

(3) clarification of the availability of ten-year product insurance in the marketplace; and

(4) less prohibition on owner-builders from improving their own property.'

To speak to the withdraw-and-redraft proposal, to summarise, we assert that there is not just the possibility but the certainty that this bill will institute a whole raft of bureaucracy, not just in the government, not just for the director of building who will need people and workers but as the whole thing grows there will be more and more bureaucracy such as has been proved in other States where these provisions exist; there will be bureaucracies in the HIA, the MBA and any other accrediting bodies - there needs to be whole bureaucracies within those that need to be paid for by somebody. We know exactly who is going to pay; we know who will pay. We know that it is the consumer at the end of the day who will pay and we believe on this side of the House that when the consumer pays the industry loses heat and there will be actually less building activity - there will be fewer homes built as a result of this, not more.

Mr Rundle - How could there be? It's down now.

Mr HIDDING - We are so far down now that we are in a very weak building environment. There was a lovely peak there just prior to the GST that everybody appreciated very much. It was a windfall but they all recognised that it was a windfall before the storm, before things got really crook indeed, and they are just starting to see now that things are not flash. It is going to take quite some time to - as I have said before, that the building industry was probably the worst affected industry in terms of the structural taxation changes in this country.

Therefore in an environment where you have a very weak building industry, to bring in legislation like this that sticks in whole slabs of bureaucracy will do nothing for the industry other than hose it down and cost more jobs. There is a plain shortage of customers at the moment and the concern that this bill will bring about in the next week or two will do absolutely nothing for the confidence of buyers out there to go and see a builder about getting a home built or a current owner of a commercial building to say, 'Let's get something built' because suddenly he has to have ten years' insurance and where on earth is it coming from?

Mr Cheek - Ten years!

Mr HIDDING - Ten-year insurance - and where on earth is it coming from - and who is going to pay for it and how much is it? Nobody has any idea. For that reason, it will be like an ice age in the building industry. There will be just a frozen period of time while people scratch their heads and try to make sense of this and find out where you can get ten-year insurance, wondering whether they are paying far too much for it and whether next week another one is going to pop up and provide a better deal. It is just fraught with danger for the building industry and the building industry themselves are nervous and confused, I have to say. Sure, the leading bodies support this legislation but many of the major players within the industry have been contacting me; they are nervous and confused about this legislation and really do not know where it is leading.

The most important matter is that this does absolutely nothing for the consumer. There is nothing in this for the consumer other than what the minister is saying, that there is protection here from people who are purporting to sell their own private home and it is actually the third or fourth home that that person has built in a couple of years, but the fact is that was a position that you could take a few years ago, before the Liberal Government brought in a housing indemnity scheme where it is an absolute must now if you want to sell your property it has to have this insurance, and if there are any owner-builders out there who are - and I know the minister has said there are, so we will accept that there are - building for profit and who are not registered builders, then not only will the GST flush out a lot of that activity, but to up the six-year to ten-year insurance, the requirement to sell something and to get it retrospectively, where somebody does not come and check it as you build, you say, 'I'm an owner-builder so I'm not going to have it done'. Then next year if you say, 'Oh, now I'm going to sell it to profit from this', you have to then call the building surveyor in to give you a retrospective ten-year tick. That costs a fortune right now, and for the ten-year one it is going to cost even more. Then you are simply not accepting there is a reasonable deal of protection to the general Tasmanian consumer already.

If that is what this Government wants you can proceed with this legislation; if not, then I suggest that you agree to the withdrawal and redraft motion and sit down with us and work out how we can actually bring all these matters to fruition. As I say, there is much in here that we support, but because of the underlying concerns, the fundamental concerns on a number of matters, we could not possibly give our support to this bill and we will vote against this bill on the second reading, if we are defeated on this current amendment before the Chair, which is to withdraw and redraft.

Mr FRY (Bass) - Mr Speaker, certainly the building industry at the moment is not going through one of its most fantastic times. I think it would be well acknowledged by anyone in this State that the least amount of restrictions that we can place on this industry, the better as far as trying to encourage employment and trying to encourage growth in this State, which is desperately needed at the moment. The actual size of this bill is testament to the number of changes that have been made to the regulatory framework that we have in place at the moment and, as the Deputy Leader of the Opposition quite correctly pointed out in his second reading speech, the issue of indemnity and insurance was certainly addressed by the Liberal Government.

Obviously most people would be aware of a couple of difficult situations, one particularly in Launceston where a builder was taken to court and actually found liable for work he had done many years before. That issue has been addressed and, as I understand it, it is not possible for that to arise again under the current legislation. Having been, I guess you would say, on the edges of this industry for a number of years before being in this place, I have spoken to a number of builders who have expressed concern with regard to some of the provisions in the bill. It does appear on the face of it that it is red tape gone mad and over-regulation. The other difficult thing at the moment is of course the additional cost that it is going to put into building a home for most people. I am not sure what the levy is; I do not know if anyone is sure what the levy is or what it is going to be, but that is obviously going to add a significant amount to the cost, plus a lot of other processes that are going to have to be gone through for people who are building.

As I said, there is a number of quite large changes, obviously, in this, and that is going to create some difficulties for people who may have been in the industry for a long time, who have never been registered builders simply because they are not members of the MBA or the HIA. I know personally of at least one builder who has actually moved to Queensland and I wondered why at the time he did move to Queensland because I thought they obviously had registration for builders up there. He was not a registered builder, though I am aware he has built 20, 30 or 40 quite fine properties in this State. I guess I discovered the answer to that from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition's second reading speech because obviously they have a much better model of regulation in Queensland than the one we are looking at here. He took one look at it and said, 'Well, that's enough, I'm leaving', and there goes another Tasmanian off to the mainland, and I think that is unfortunate as well.

I wonder whether we really need to look at some transitory provisions for these people. I understand that anyone who is not a registered builder is going to have to go through quite a significant amount of retraining and recertification before they will be able to continue on. I think that also has a lot of implications for people in some of the peripheral industries too, people who are involved in renovations, maybe remodelling kitchens, bathrooms, decks, garages, carports and so on, because not every building job is going to be a huge one, but obviously a lot of them are going to be covered under the scope of this bill, and it is not every job that would necessarily require the skills of a registered builder, if you like, to be able to complete the work. Certainly, in the business I used to run, we used to engage builders to do some of the larger projects because we did not have the expertise within our business to be able to do that and that worked quite well, but I was quite surprised to discover that the fellow I had used for years was not a registered builder but certainly he was a builder of some quality homes and extensions.

So the additional cost, the additional impost and the additional red tape, I do not think are going to be helpful. This is a major change and I just do not think enough thought has gone into the transitional arrangements and the costs to the people who are going to be involved, with the time they are going to need to get themselves registered. I understand there is quite a significant amount of training et cetera that is going to need to take place before these people can continue to do what they have been doing, in some cases for 30 or 40 years in this State.

The last issue that I do want to raise is one which I raised also in relation to the industrial relations legislation and that is the issue of those who, for religious or other reasons, have a conscientious objection to being involved with associations. For that reason they have not joined the HIA or the MBA and they now find themselves in the probable position of having to deal with those organisations in regard to their accreditation. I have had some people come to see me in regard to this particular issue and whether we agree with them or not is not the point. They have a conscientious objection to having an association with these associations and should this bill go through, I would think that we should be, obviously, making some sort of provision there for them.

I understand these people who have approached the minister in regard to that issue, have not had a positive response at this stage and the only possibility left open to them, at this point in time, is that a department of the Victorian Government may be prepared to act as accreditor under this legislation. Seems to me to be a convoluted way of trying to handle the problem and also a bit of buck-passing by the Tasmanian Government where they are not prepared for this small number - maybe not so small a number, but certainly a number of people who have a conscientious objection to dealing with the HIA or the MBA as accrediting agents for the Government.

Unfortunately the response that I received in that regard was, 'Well, let's get the legislation through and then we'll see what we can do about it'. That is a little bit unfortunate if once the legislation is through, the Government decides, 'They'll just have to like it or lump it'. We are not just talking about one or two businesses either here; we are talking about some people who came to see me who represented 23 building businesses who would be affected by the provisions of this bill in Launceston alone and so, certainly on the north-west coast, in Hobart and some of the other major centres around the State, that would certainly be a significant issue.

Mr Lennon - Sorry, was that 23 under conscientious objection?

Mr FRY - Yes, that is correct, in Launceston. That is something we really need to consider on behalf of those people. We may have a different point of view on whether they are right or wrong, but certainly they do claim a conscientious objection to being involved with those associations and I would certainly like to see, at the very least, some sort of provision made here whereby a government department could possibly issue the certification which is all they are after. That concludes my contribution to the second reading and I will leave it to my colleagues to follow up.

Mr CHEEK (Denison) - Mr Speaker, I rise to support my colleagues in the arguments they have put forward.

Basically, I guess, in a lot of ways I am philosophically opposed to what the minister is trying to do and that is, in my opinion, to add more red tape and cost to an industry that is already struggling under almost insurmountable odds in this regard and also the minister's propensity to have done sweetheart deals with everybody he could find before the last election. On the one hand, he is in for deregulating - when you take shop trading hours or the dairy industry or whatever it might be for this Government - but on the other hand they did the deal before the election to buy themselves a few votes and, let us face it, that is what he did when any organisation that came to him before the last State election, if he thought there were a few votes in it he would say, 'Yes, we'll do it for you'. While I do not blame the MBA and the HIA for where they are coming from - they are looking after the people who are members of those organisations and if I were them I would be doing the same thing - we have a minister over here who is falling over himself to do a deal - not the minister by himself, but the State Government - and that is why you have the same sort of deal done with the hotel industry, with the AHA before the last election for a moratorium on hotel licences, which he has never been able to actually get into Parliament to do anythi ng about. At least with this one I suppose he has eventually got it in here but it is the same thing in a lot of ways where he wants to reconstitute the board of the Licensing Board of Tasmania to include representatives from the AHA and other self-interest groups to decide what they want to do to protect their own interests. From what I can understand here, it is the same in a lot of ways with the builders being accredited by the HIA or the MBA and then, if they have a problem with anyone, they have to go back to those organisations as well.

Mr Lennon - Where does the bill say they will be the accrediting authorities?

Mr CHEEK - Well, I understand from what I have been able to glean from the bill that that is the case, that they will be the people who will be responsible for accrediting builders.

Mr Lennon - Whereabouts, Bob? You've all been making this assertion. Since when has it been decided that the HIA and the MBA will be the accrediting authorities?

Mr Hidding - You say they won't then?

Mr Lennon - You're saying they will; I want to know where you get it from.

Mr CHEEK - Are you ruling that out now?

Mr Lennon - No, you are making the assertions, Bob, so you tell me where you got it from.

Mr CHEEK - You are the minister, just rule it out now then and we will not go any further with it. That is what I would like to know. We are here to ask you questions about the bill; I thought that was the idea.

Mr Lennon - You're making a lot of assertions, as usual.

Mr CHEEK - The main problem with this is, in the building industry - and especially the commercial building industry at the moment - the fact is, I think, we know the prices are at rock bottom in Tasmania. It is not only the commercial building industry; it is probably right across the board. Anybody who actually bought anything or built anything in Tasmania in the last ten years is probably lucky to get their money back. You have revaluations of existing buildings that are way below what people paid for them. We have the highest land tax in Australia, despite the fact that our friend, Dr Crean, tries to argue that it is not really a high land tax because he has depressed the property values so low that we do not actually pay as much as interstate people. It is a rather spurious argument, as I have pointed out in this House before, and now the minister wants to add a bit more red tape and a bit more regulation to make it even dearer.

I think the fact that the ten-year insurance which he is insisting on goes on building projects, both private and commercial, I think he is unable to separate out commercial buildings from private housing. But now he is going to ask everybody to have a ten-year insurance on commercial buildings. The fact is, I think, from what my colleague, Mr Hidding, said he has contacted insurance companies and they do not really know what the cost of that will be. The thing is, Minister, as you probably know, it is going to be passed on and the poor old property investor will pay in the long run because, if the builder has to pay insurance on the building, it gets passed on to the property investor.

So what you are trying to do is add even more bureaucratic red tape and cost to the building industry in Tasmania. That is what this is all about. This is from the minister who says, on the one hand, that he wants to deregulate shop trading hours and free everything up; on the other hand, he wants to bring in regulation. Where do you stand? Do you want to deregulate or do you want to regulate? Make up your mind. Once again, as I said earlier, it is where you can buy the most votes - that is what it is all about.

I just think that in the commercial building industry, which is really struggling at the moment, to be bringing in legislation which is going to make it even more difficult is something that you should have considered beforehand. The fact is I do not think you really realise what you were letting yourself into.

The fact that commercial buildings have to be compulsorily inspected every year is another thing that is going to be passed on. First of all, it will be passed on to the owners and then the owners will pass it on to the business or whatever it is leasing the building and they end up paying, so it adds to business costs overall in Tasmania. Goodness knows, we have enough red tape in there at the moment as it is without trying to add more. Just the fact of the cost of doing business in Tasmania going up all the time because of fairly ignorant, narrow-minded governments who do not really know what they are doing, to protect members of groups that they have done a deal with, I think just ignores a vast majority of Tasmanians.

Also, the other fact is in getting legislation from another State or national legislation, as he is wont to do, in tying Tasmania - a place of 470 000 people - into legislation that is suitable for a place of 5 million or Victoria, with Melbourne being 3.5 million people, but the whole State, I think, a population of probably 4.5 million - tying Tasmania in, with our small population, into other States or copying legislation from other States is a lazy way of doing things but it is just trying to compare apples and pears, if you like, because it is like national legislation that we tend to get ourselves locked into: where it might be all right for a lot of big cities, it might be all right for a lot of people on the mainland, it is not all right for Tasmania, but we blindly go along with it and the next best thing is to get something from Victoria to impose on Tasmania.

The Premier runs around half his life telling people that just because they do it in other places we are not going to do it in Tasmania, which just puts the lie to this sort of claim. The fact is we will tie ourselves and we will do what other States are doing, whether we think it is good for Tasmania or not. I think it is a great pity that the minister cannot think for himself a bit more and bring in something that is suitable for Tasmania and not something that is suitable for Victoria.

Then we get to the question of owner-builders. I guess owner-builders are a rare breed in a lot of ways but this really gets to the core of the whole thing ; you can almost go back to our forebears 200 years ago when people could get in do things themselves. Owner-builders are people who can actually - and I think it is a great tradition in Australia and particularly in Tasmania where people have been able to do these sorts of things and I think they still should be able to do these things without the restrictions placed on them by the minister. It is very draconian legislation. Owner renovation is a booming business as far as I know and the hardware industry has a very large do-it-yourself component and now the Government is trying to bring in legislation and people are doing the very thing that this Government in their ignorance are trying to stop.

You have to ask why and I think I know the reasons. I do not want to be up here slagging off the HIA or the MBA; I know they are sticking up for their members and I commend them for that the same as I did the AHA for sticking up for their members and doing the right thing, but they have dragged the minister along who at their behest will virtually do anything because he did that deal two years ago. We are going through, I suppose, a GST-inspired boom but times are getting tough again in the building industry and I think they will get even tougher and I suppose this is a time when the building bodies want to move to make sure their members are protected but I think although it may win points from their members it does not seem to prevent a lot of them still being out of work.

I think it is a fact of life that builders with good reputations have continuous work, building slump or no building slump, basically because they are good builders, whether they have had regulations or not and I just think it is a great pity that we have to go to these lengths to try to solve those sorts of problems where you are stopping people who want to get out and have a go themselves. We are not trying to solve their problems, we are trying to impose ourselves on them. I do not profess to be an expert on the building industry but it seems to me that there seem to be certainly enough safeguards in place anyway through local government without having to go this far in trying to solve all the problems.

Any renovations have to approved by council, structural modifications have to be certified by a structural engineer and then the work must be inspected by a council or an approved building inspector, both during progress and on completion. What more could you want than that? I still believe that in this country - Tasmania and the rest of Australia - as a whole, the can-do, get-up-and-do-things-for-yourself approach is what makes this country great. It made the United States great as far as it is an entrepreneurial, very wealthy country that is the envy of most other people especially in the Western World, and it is this same can-do approach in Australia that we want to encourage. But this bill knocks all these people out. It just flies in the face of that and goes in the opposite direction. It introduces another layer of red tape, and I am not sure how all of this is going to be policed but it will probably drive renovators underground anyway and that is why it is counter-productive.

Mr Hidding - It will too; there'll be a lot of that.

Mr CHEEK - Yes, I think there will be a lot of that. They will be going underground doing the jobs and maybe the minister can tell us how he is going to police it and how many extra people he is going to put on to police it. Is he going to have cars driving around Tasmania all the time like dog-catchers? Is he going to lock people up in the back of his van as they drive around? What is he going to do to police it? If people want to do renovations, a lot of them will break the law, probably, if they were doing it cash in hand and hoping that nobody worries about it. You are going to be like a police state running around trying to inspect all these things. That is what you are letting us in for, for no reason at all. I think for the number of people who want to just do their small renovations - there are retired people and I know of several retired people who just want to do a little bit of work in their retirement or a few little jobs here and there. Why should they not do these sorts of things, a lot of them are very competent to be able to do that. The closed shop, closed market is not something we should be encouraging in this State.

The Government has come up with, I suppose, some clever semantics to try to allay people's fears by saying you can paint your house and it is only if you want to do serious structural works where it is a worry, but I do not know how you are actually defining these things as to what counts as doing a building or renovation job. Are you going to define the things that are and the things that are not? How close are you going to get? If you paint, I presume that is not a renovation job. What do you have to do? Do you have to put in a new window in a place? Is that a renovation job where you can only do two in ten years? It is just ridiculous when you think about it. Some people might do two fairly close together and they have to wait another nine years, which I think Mr Hidding has pointed out. It just a dog's breakfast of nonsense that is going to make things even more complicated now that the minister is trying to regulate it in his regulation mode over there. I do not know whether he will be in his deregulation mode next week - he will not be here next week - in three weeks' time when we come back - or his regulation mode. He switches from one to the other.

Mr Hidding - A hotel moratorium.

Mr CHEEK - That is right, maybe we will get the legislation on the hotel moratorium; after more than two years maybe we will finally get that in the Parliament and then he will be in regulation mode again and the shop trading legislation will probably be in after that and then it will be deregulation mode. It is all to suit himself and other interests.

I have friends in the building industry who would probably in some way support this; a lot of them are saying that it is totally unnecessary, so it is a very mixed bag there. But the one thing for sure is that the owner-builders in Tasmania are the ones who are certainly being stomped all over in this particular instance. It is retrospective, it goes back to 1990 and anything that does that is bad legislation anyway. As I keep saying, it is really the desire for people to improve themselves and do things for themselves that we are stamping out; we want to regulate everything too much. The desire of governments to regulate is overwhelming - the desire for red tape - and, from what I can see about this bill, there certainly was not consultation with the number of people we have had to see us. He has pulled it out and messed around with it for quite some time when he can see a little bit of opposition coming up to it. People like the plumbers of course were left out of it altogether and it is certainly, I think, a sad day when this sort of thing has to happen.

Rather than helping the building industry, I suspect that although the HIA and the MBA will be very pleased about finally getting this legislation in - I know they have wanted it for a long time - I think there are people in this world who want to have a go and do things. We can regulate everything if we want to, but does it make a better country or a better State because of it? Anything that takes away from people's ability to get up and have a go in this world is wrong, and that is what we are doing. We are trying to take away the incentives and the ability of people to make decisions for themselves and what they want to do. You should not just have to run to regulations all the time; regulations drive people mad, there are too many of them. When it comes to probably the main thing, it is adding to the costs of doing business in this State, in a State where it is hard enough doing business as it is, and only really dedicated people remain in business.

I have said many times that most people on that side of the House would not know what it is like to be in business, would not know what it is like to employ people. They have always had the fairly cosy jobs of sitting back using other people's money to make decisions. They have not actually had to get out and do things themselves and spend their own money. We take away incentives for people in Tasmania to do this; from the entrepreneurs - the people who just want to have a go, do a renovation for themselves, improve themselves for their family, for their lifestyle and everything else. They have now to run to a registered builder who will decide who is going to be accredited and who is not going to be accredited and that is not good.

I know a lot of the commercial property owners around Tasmania are really suffering at the moment - people who have invested in this State and lost money and are losing money and see the revaluations come in from Government; or when they have to refinance their loans from the bank and have the revaluations done and see they have paid $1 million for a property, $500 000 or $300 000, see it come in 10 per cent or 20 per cent less, and usually the values are inflated by the government valuations and they are paying land tax or whatever it might be on extremely high costs, they are losing money hand over fist. What does this Government do to help them? Are they going to reduce land tax, are they going to make things easier? No, they are actually going to make it dearer, they are going to make it cost more to build in this State. They are going to regulate everything and make it cost more for people. Their answer to providing incentive in Tasmania, whether it be to business, the building industry, anything in Tasmania, is to make it more costly and harder to do business. That is the great tragedy for Tasmania of this Government they do not fully understand what they are trying to do.

Yes, they may have caught onto John Howard's coat-tails because the national economy is performing so well. But the fact is they have not improved the fundamentals in Tasmania at all and they have not given people in this State any incentive to want to get out and do things themselves and this is just another example of legislation that I think is sadly un-Australian. I support my colleagues and our spokesman, Mr Hidding, on what he proposes with this bill.

The House divided -

AYES 9 NOES 12

Mr Bonde Mr Jim Bacon
Mr Cheek
Mr Fry (Teller)

Mr Groom

Mr Hidding

Mr Hodgman

Mr Rundle

Mr Smith

Mrs Swan
Mr Ken Bacon
Mr Best

Mrs Bladel

Mr Cox

Mr Green (Teller)

Mrs Jackson

Mr Kons

Mr Lennon

Mr Llewellyn

Dr Patmore

Ms Wriedt

PAIR

Mrs Napier Mrs James

Amendment so negatived .

Mr LENNON (Franklin - Minister for Infrastructure, Energy and Resources) - Mr Speaker, I am not going to respond to all the points that have been made by the shadow spokesperson; there will be ample time to go through it all - the range of technical issues that he put forward - during the clauses, but there are a couple of matters which I want to refer to.

First of all, for what it is worth, you did make some comments in respect of the regulatory impact statement. The Australian Institute of Building, for your information, advised us that they believe it is a model example of a regulatory impact statement to other States, so there is a bit of independent assessment about it.

Mr Cheek - Who advised you of that?

Mr Hidding - What did the owner-builders say? You didn't ask them.

Mr LENNON - I am just making the point to you.

Mr Cheek - Who said it was? Who said it was a model -

Mr LENNON - It is an organisation you might not be aware of, Bob - it is called the Australian Institute of Building.

Mr Cheek - And they said it was a model?

Mr LENNON - Yes, they praised it as a model example of regulatory impact statements for other States.

Mr Cheek - That doesn't mean that it's good though, necessarily; it might be a model that's not good.

Mr LENNON - Well, if you want to attack that organisation, good luck to you.

I do want to make some comments though with respect to the conscientious objection issue. I want to say from the outset, Mr Speaker, that I respect the religious beliefs of individuals and organisations and I can assure you and the organisations who came to see you that we will ensure that their religious convictions are observed during the implementation of this legislation. I think they have corresponded with me twice, the first time some time ago. We indicated to them then that if necessary we would make arrangements for the Victorian Government which is an accrediting authority to accredit them; if that arrangement is not suitable to them, I will ensure other suitable arrangements are made for them and nothing in this legislation will go forward which in any way impinges on their conscientious objection due to religious beliefs. I did want to put that on the record because, David, you made particular mention of it in your contribution and I checked with some of the advisers here and I understand they have written to me again recently; the reply is still in drafting and I have not seen it yet so -

Mr Hidding - We've got some proposals -

Mr LENNON - I might not be up-to-date - well, I am prepared to look at your proposals.

Mr Hidding - Let's have a look at them and -

Mr LENNON - But I believe we can organise things to the satisfaction of those organisations, I just wanted to let you know that. You are quite right and I think that we ought to be prepared to respect those beliefs. Whether we agree with them or not, it is not the point, so that will be done for you.

Mr Groom - What about in the IR bill, too?

Mr LENNON - It is already in the IR bill, Ray - no need for you to butt in, I am trying to reply to the members.

Mr SPEAKER - Order!

Mr LENNON - I am trying to reply to the members who have put a submission to me, if you do not mind. Thank you, Mr Speaker, I will stop there now.

Opposition members interjecting.

Bill read the second time.