The current wailing and gnashing of teeth about the new definition of building defects has come too late to do anything about what is fundamentally a government cave-in to developers and right-wing elements in parliament.
As early as October this year, and again in December, we reported that the government was planning to strip away rights of apartment owners to make reasonable claims on a whole raft of building defects, by the simple expedient of redefining which defects were serious and which were minor.
It seems incredible that, at the same time as the Obeid family’s machinations were being paraded through ICAC, and a parade of government MPs was shuffling off to the cross benches because of allegedly dubious contacts with developers, the Fair Trading ministry was quietly pushing through this essentially pro-developer legislation.
All the time the Owners Corporation Network – the peak body for apartment owners – and a fair number of strata managers and lawyers were warning that new apartment owners needed to get their claims in quickly because, incredibly, this legislation was retrospective.
If your major defects were redefined as minor – your apartment has to be virtually uninhabitable for the defects to be considered major – the six-year claim period you thought you had would suddenly be only two years. If you were already over the two years and hadn’t claimed, too bad. You were already out of time.
Another problem was that these law changes were supposed to be enacted in conjunction with changes to strata laws that would have included a 2 percent defects “bond” lodged by developers. It has to be said that the better (and often bigger) developers were keen to see the bond in place, if only so they weren’t lumped in with the firms whose sub-standard blocks have given the whole industry a bad name.
Those law changes will now not see the light of day until this time next year – if at all. The push to have them on the statute books by July last year (2104) hit a brick wall after Anthony Roberts, the Fair Trading Minister behind them, was shuffled off to Energy to orchestrate the sale of poles and wires, and his successor Stuart Ayres, was made Police Minister following the resignation of premier Barry O’Farrell.
It was then realised that the Shooters – who were no fans of Ayres – and possibly the Christians planned to block the changes in the Upper House and it was decided that it was better to wait until the government saw the make-up of parliament after this year’s election, when its passage might be easier.
So what we have on the statute books, as of this week, is a half-cocked effort to simplify defect claims that has, as usual, left the people who actually pay for these new apartment blocks – the unit buyers – worse off and the developers given a free kick.
Meanwhile the new strata laws to protect consumers are far from guaranteed. The Labor opposition is likely to campaign hard against the “collective sale” aspect of the reforms – aka “throwing Auntie Mabel out of her flat” – which would allow a majority of owners to sell their entire block to developers, regardless of individuals who don’t want to leave their homes.
With three Fair Trading ministers in a little over a year, apartment owners are understandably feeling let down. Fair Trading has traditionally been regarded as the “training wheels” ministry – if you were any good, you got promoted, if you didn’t screw up too badly and didn’t upset the political donors, you could stay there for years.
Roberts and, to a lesser extent, Ayres, seemed to have bucked that trend. If the Home Building Act is the major item on the incumbent Matthew Mason-Cox’s report card, he could be with us for years.
But what the government doesn’t seem to have noticed is that, as the number of people owning and living in apartments grows exponentially, there is a substantial and burgeoning constituency that transcends geographic boundaries but whose members have a lot in common – including that they feel cheated and they might just let that be known at the ballot box.
In fact, the idea of a Strata Party has already been mooted for the future. The next election could be that last one in NSW where apartment owners and renters don’t have their own voice in parliament.