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REPORT ON PROCEEDINGS BEFORE PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY COMMITTEE INQUIRY INTO REGULATION OF BUILDING STANDARDS, BUILDING QUALITY AND BUILDING DISPUTES CORRECTED At Sydney on Tuesday 5 November 2019 The Committee met at 9:30. PRESENT Mr David Shoebridge (Chair) The Hon. Robert Borsak (Deputy Chair) The Hon. Mark Buttigieg The Hon. Scott Farlow The Hon. Sam Farraway The Hon. John Graham The Hon. Courtney Houssos Tuesday, 5 November 2019 Legislative Council Page 1 The CHAIR: Welcome to the fourth hearing of the Public Accountability Committee Inquiry into Regulation of Building Standards, Building Quality and Building Disputes. Before I commence I acknowledge the Gadigal people, who are the traditional custodians of this land. I also pay my respects and those of the Committee to the Elders past and present of the Eora nation and extend that respect to other Aborigines present. This land always was and always will be Aboriginal land. Today's hearing will examine the Design and Building Practitioners Bill 2019, which was introduced into the Legislative Assembly on 23 October 2019. Throughout the Committee's inquiry the Government has indicated it would introduce legislation to address many of the problems we have seen in the building regulation in New South Wales. The Committee is due to release its interim report on the inquiry soon and we feel it is important for the report to include examination of that bill. Today's hearing will start with evidence from a number of building industry professionals and unions. We will finish the day by taking evidence from New South Wales Government officials, as well as the NSW Building Commissioner, Mr David Chandler, and Ms Bronwyn Weir in her capacity as advisor to the commissioner. Before we commence I make some brief comments about the procedures. Today's hearing is open to the public and is being broadcast live via the Parliament's website. A transcript of today's hearing will be placed on the Committee's website when it becomes available. In accordance with the broadcasting guidelines, while members of the media may film or record Committee members and witnesses, people in the public gallery should not be the primary focus of any filming or photography. I also remind media representatives they must take responsibility for what they publish about the Committee's proceedings. It is important to remember that parliamentary privilege does not apply to what witnesses may say outside of their evidence at the hearing. I urge witnesses to be careful about any comments they may make to the media or to others after they complete their evidence as such comments would not be protected by parliamentary privilege if another person decided to take an action for defamation. The Guidelines for the Broadcast of Proceedings are available from the secretariat. We have a very short time frame for delivering our interim report so there will be no capacity for a witness to take a question on notice at today's hearing. I remind everyone here today that Committee meetings are not intended to provide a forum for people to make adverse reflections about others under the protection of parliamentary privilege. I therefore request that witnesses focus on the issues raised by the inquiry's terms of reference and avoid naming individuals unnecessarily. Witnesses are advised that any messages should be delivered to Committee members through the Committee staff. To aid the audibility of this hearing I remind Committee members and witnesses to speak into the long microphones. The room is fitted with induction loops compatible with hearing aid systems that have telecoil receivers. Finally, I ask everybody, including members of the Committee, to turn their mobile phones to silent for the duration of the hearing. I welcome our first witnesses. Mr Jonathan Russell, Mr Greg Ewing and Mr John Roydhouse. Mr Russell and Mr Ewing have previously been sworn as witnesses and will not be required to swear again, they will continue on their former oath or affirmation. PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY COMMITTEE CORRECTED Tuesday, 5 November 2019 Legislative Council Page 2 GREG EWING, General Manager, Sydney Division, Engineers Australia, on former affirmation JONATHAN RUSSELL, National Manager for Public Affairs, Engineers Australia, on former oath JOHN ROYDHOUSE, Chief Executive Officer, Institute of Public Work Engineering Australasia NSW, sworn and examined The CHAIR: Thank you for your attendance today and your assistance with submissions to the inquiry. Do each of you, or certain of you, wish to make a brief opening statement? Mr RUSSELL: My name is Jonathan Russell. I work for Engineers Australia as the national manager for public affairs, and I am joined by Greg Ewing, the general manager of our Sydney division. As you have heard, but I will state again for the benefit of anyone who might be listening for the first time, Engineers Australia is a professional association. We have been around for 100 years. We represent about 100,000 engineers. Our evidence to you in the past, and again today, is going to be centred on the role of the regulatory reform process to enhance professional standards in the engineering sector, in the building sector and hopefully beyond. In the last set of evidence we have given you our main arguments for why greater regulation of engineering practice is required. Today we are hoping to be able to explore the merits of looking at not just the Design and Building Practitioners Bill 2019 from the Government, but also the non-government bill, the Professional Engineers Registration Bill 2019, which was introduced in recent weeks as well. The reason for this is the two are very much complimentary. We do not see them as an either/or proposition but definitely the two need to work together. If we have just the Government bill passed there will be a lot of benefits for the building sector, but there will remain two things. One is some loopholes in regulating engineering practice. The second thing is that it could be a missed opportunity to broaden the benefits of what we are doing now to engineering practice in other industries, things like public infrastructure, manufacturing, electricity networks and the like, other things that the community also relies on. With that, I think that is enough as an introductory comment to flag our interest and the scope of what we would like to talk about today. Mr ROYDHOUSE: The Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia [IPWEA] NSW Division has considerable interest in the terms of reference of this inquiry. Not only are we interested in what happens in the building construction sector in residential and commercial spaces, but we are also interested in the realm of what happens outside those boundaries in terms of public infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our footpaths, our sporting fields, our water and sewerage supply, just for example. As soon as you step outside—and the inquiry did start in many ways through the misfortunes of the Opal Tower and Mascot Towers, and buildings like that— those buildings on the footpath one of our IPWEA engineers is responsible for that. Many of those engineers work in the field of local government, so they are also involved with the development process through the development applications and that planning stage of building construction, which again is an interest for our members and for this inquiry. As Mr Russell has mentioned, there are two pieces of legislation currently before the Parliament and IPWEA also supports that joint approach. We do believe that they are complimentary pieces of legislation and should be looked at and treated accordingly. The CHAIR: Mr Ewing? Or did Mr Russell address your matters? Mr EWING: Mr Russell's words will stand for me. The Hon. JOHN GRAHAM: Thank you for the Engineers Australia submission in particular, I think it really steps through the issues quite well. I take you to some of the observations you have made just to spell out exactly what you are saying. Firstly, the classes of structures to which the bill applies—this is the Government bill we are referring to now. You understand the intention is to begin with Class 2 apartment buildings only. Can you spell out for us what will be missed out if that is the approach that the Government takes? Mr RUSSELL: Since writing the submission to the inquiry we have had the Government bill introduced to Parliament and the second reading speech. The Government took the advice of not just us but many other stakeholders and used the second reading speech to spell out in a lot of detail how they plan to role out their reforms. At the time of writing the submission we were very concerned that the reform process would only apply to class 2 buildings, which are residential apartments. It does appear, from the Government's second reading speech, that it is committed to broadening that out, over time, to all classes of building. At least, that is how I have taken the message. The Government did not list every single class of structure but I believe the intention of the second reading speech is that it is those. It would, of course, be better if this was spelled out in the bill. PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY COMMITTEE CORRECTED Tuesday, 5 November 2019 Legislative Council Page 3 Acts are where laws are made; everything else comes later. Regulations come later. But acknowledging that the Government has been working very fast on this, our advice is to slow down a little bit so that we can get it right in the Act first time. Acknowledging that the community wants to see some evidence of action the Government has been moving pretty quickly.

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