Page 3670 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 27 October 2015
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Some of these changes were made in March this year and some are before us today. The most difficult set of amendments in this bill relate to the settings for establishing the land rent scheme that is created for Mr Fluffy owners. This has been challenging and there are many people who are Mr Fluffy home owners who are financially stretched and will find it difficult to replace their old home with a similar sized home on the same block, but I will come back to this in a minute.
The amendments in this bill today cover a few key issues. Firstly, relating to demolition, usually when a house is to be demolished it requires a building approval and a private certifier to approve the proposal. Given the high number of houses that need to be demolished under this scheme, rather than individual building approvals, the Construction Occupations Registrar is able to issue a demolition order for a batch of houses at a time.
The amendments in this bill today will allow for demolition orders to make this authorisation and make clear that the demolition is exempt from needing to comply with part 3 of the Building Act. Demolition orders will contain asbestos removal control plans, place management plans and other plans as necessary—for instance, for relevant utility management such as sewerage, water and stormwater. The principal contractor who is responsible for demolitions that involve any structures containing loose-fill asbestos insulation will be responsible for the demolition plans.
These principal contractors have the responsibility of ensuring that these Mr Fluffy houses have clear, safe and adequate demolition plans and for ensuring that all demolitions are undertaken in accordance with these plans. These principal contractors are required to operate under work health and safety laws and will be informed and trained throughout this extensive process on the particular aspects of this program under the watchful coordination of the Asbestos Response Taskforce.
Of course, demolition orders will need to be approved by the registrar. Thus it makes sense to remove the need for individual private building certifiers to approve the demolition for each individual house when there is a broader system for demolition approvals in place. This bill also clarifies that any works undertaken under these demolition orders will still attract the 0.2 per cent building and construction industry training levy.
There is also an issue of heritage houses with Mr Fluffy. The bill makes amendments to the Planning and Development Act to allow for heritage houses that have been affected by Mr Fluffy. At present, any proposals to demolish a heritage listed building must automatically be assessed under the impact track, meaning that an impact assessment must be undertaken. However, and very unfortunately, there are quite a few houses in our older established suburbs that have been affected by Mr Fluffy that will need to be demolished.
Heritage is important as a legacy but we do not need to be handing on the toxic legacy to accompany this heritage to future generations. So this bill allows for those affected houses to be demolished under the same demolition orders as outlined earlier in my
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