I will begin my remarks with regard to these very, very, very late amendments that I was literally handed 3 or 4 minutes before the debate was due to begin. These comments in no way, shape or form reflect on the minister at the table—I want to make that very clear. It is not her fault. She is not responsible for this. But I must say the Minister for Planning is not here, and I do not believe any of his advisers are either. This is appalling behaviour. Often there are house amendments which are picking up typos—errors of form rather than substance. Now, it would appear that these are very substantial house amendments, and I frankly think that this debate should be adjourned until I have had at least a briefing and frankly some ability to get my head around what these amendments actually mean.
This is a substantial issue. This is an important issue of process and indeed of democratic accountability. I need a briefing from the minister’s office and indeed an ability to read the amendments before I can debate them. This is an important process matter for this house. This government is clearly falling apart at the seams if they cannot even have amendments tabled in good time for the shadow to at the very least read them before the debate begins. I put it to the government: adjourn this until tomorrow. This debate should be adjourned until tomorrow, Acting Speaker, so I suppose as a point of order I would like to raise the possibility of adjourning this debate until tomorrow.
The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Richards): That is a point of debate, not a point of order.
Mr T SMITH: I put on the record my absolute disgust that no attempt was made to contact me or my office with regard to these substantial amendments that were handed to me 3 minutes before this debate was due to begin.
A member: You said 4.30.
Mr T SMITH: No, that was actually incorrect. I was going through my emails. I thought I had seen an email from the minister’s office but it was not 4.30 today; it was 4.30 some months ago. I have checked with my office: no attempt has been made to contact me or my office today. The Minister for Planning’s office is usually, I have to say, very accommodating and very reasonable in briefing me and my office on these matters. A briefing was arranged literally weeks ago, which I appreciated and thank the minister’s office for. A briefing was arranged with his office and indeed with Cladding Safety Victoria, which was helpful. I think this is a broader malaise in this government which is literally falling to bits. It is falling to bits.
Mr Pearson: Are you going to speak on the bill?
Mr T SMITH: Well, I am speaking to the amendments. I am speaking about the amendments that were given to me 3 minutes before the bill was due to be debated. This is shocking breach of process—an arrogant government, falling apart at the seams, that cannot even do basic parliamentary processes correctly. I made the point at the outset that this is not the fault of the minister at the table. She is not the Minister for Planning, but she is part of a government that is clearly falling to bits.
I opposed the bill as it was presented to the house a month ago because it is nothing more than a tax grab. This $300 million building levy increase to pay for cladding rectification is yet another tax grab. It is yet another tax grab by the Andrews Labor government. In fact there have been 28 tax increases and new and expanded taxes under the Andrews Labor government: a new stamp duty on property transfers between spouses, 2017–18; an increased stamp duty on new cars, 2017–18; a new stamp duty on off-the-plan purchases; a new so-called vacant home tax; a widening of residential land tax to uninhabitable properties; a retrospective increase in insurance duty for overseas-based insurers; new annual property valuations to increase land tax; the cladding rectification tax, which we are debating here today; the environment mitigation levy; increased luxury car tax; increased land tax for homes with increased fire services property levy in 2015–16 and 2019–20; a new point-of-consumption gambling tax; a tripling of brown coal royalties; goldmining royalties; a new tax on Uber and taxi fares; a new corporate restructure duty; increased foreign stamp duty in 2019–20, 2016–17 and 2015–16; increased absentee landowner surcharge for foreign property owners, 2019–20, 2016–17 and 2015–16; a new city access tax for the West Gate Tunnel; a new on-dock rail tax on imported shipping containers; an increase in the municipal industrial landfill levy, the bin tax; and the road occupation charge on construction companies. So that is 28 new and expanded taxes in the period of the Andrews Labor government, and this is yet another one.
Now, what this bill will attempt to do is to create Cladding Safety Victoria. Well, the bill that I saw a month ago will attempt to create Cladding Safety Victoria as an independent agency, separating it from the Victorian Building Authority. But my grave concern is that CSV—well, the VBA—will still be collecting this increased tax at a time when there is enormous pressure on our economy. The Treasurer today refused to rule out new or increased taxes in the budget—I believe the budget is going to be on 10 November—but this is not the time to be increasing taxes. In fact the federal Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, brought down the federal budget last week and cut taxes. He gave people an income tax cut, and those are the sorts of economic settings we need to get out of this crisis to take the pressure off families and to take the pressure off businesses.
I mean, this government has closed down the economy in the world’s longest lockdown—longer than Wuhan—here in Victoria. Thousands and thousands of Victorians have lost their jobs. Thousands and thousands of businesses are destroyed. Yet this government is increasing taxes. This is yet another tax. This is not the way to rebuild our state after this pandemic—and as we know, this pandemic has been so poorly handled here in Victoria. This lockdown has gone on for so long. Victorians have enormous fatigue with their lives. They are sorry that their businesses have been closed. They are furious that this has occurred because of the greatest public administration failure in the nation’s history. It is not their fault that they cannot work. It is not their fault that their businesses have been shut down. It is the government’s fault because of the hotel quarantine failures that allowed the virus back out into the community. Unfortunately we have been locked down since July in the second wave. This second wave has cost the lives of 800 Victorians, and this is a very serious issue.
A member interjected.
Mr T SMITH: You are a clown. Do you know how many Victorians have died because of your government’s failures? Do you know how many businesses have been destroyed? We now have a mental health crisis. We have a mental health crisis because of the failures of this Labor government.
You know, they are raising taxes on one of the most productive parts of our economy, the construction sector, and I think that is entirely incorrect policy—the wrong thing to be doing at a time when we need to be taking the shackles off business, not putting the shackles on, not tying business down. Let business get on with business. Let people get back to work. Take the pressure off them.
I have been very supportive of the government’s attempts to rectify cladding on private buildings. I think that the way that the building industry has been regulated in Victoria, particularly by the Victorian Building Authority in the last five or six years, has been appalling. Some of the stories that have come across my desk over this time have been absolutely harrowing. To think that for all these months now people have been forced to spend 22 hours or 23 hours a day at home in these very, very dangerous properties that still are basically clad in combustible material is incredibly concerning.
Now, one of the most terrible episodes that I became aware of was an apartment tower in Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn. An apartment in this tower was owned by Blair Warren-Smith. Blair is a 28-year-old primary school teacher, and she did a lot of work, saved a lot of money and bought her first apartment just over two years ago. Fire experts, engineers, checked the apartment, and as of last year she had already paid $8000 to the government for emergency works. Now, this apartment tower was built by the notorious Corkman cowboys, Raman Shaqiri and Mr Kutlesovski. These individuals are notorious in the building industry and are notorious around Melbourne for illegally demolishing the Corkman hotel. They have also built dodgy clad apartments in Glenferrie Road in Hawthorn that received quite a lot of media attention at the time. Now, I do not believe these two characters should be allowed to practise in the building industry—that is a separate issue for the VBA to improve their enforcement activities and their regulation of the industry—but equally the activities of their then lobbyist, the now member for Burwood, also require scrutiny because back then the member for Burwood said that ‘they made a mistake’. This was referring to the Corkman cowboys after they had illegally knocked down a 140-year-old hotel and then dumped the asbestos near a childcare centre. The member for Burwood said:
… they made a mistake, they are sorry, and they are going to make it right …
Heritage consultants will be engaged in the next few weeks to commence the process of rebuilding.
Well, that is what the member for Burwood said.
Ms Green: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member for Kew knows quite rightly that this is not an opportunity to impugn another member of Parliament, especially when that member is not in here. He is deliberately using that to make up for his lack of argument, discrediting another member, and I urge him to desist.
Mr T SMITH: On the point of order, Acting Speaker, these are matters of historical record. I have not impugned the member for Burwood; I was referring to the member for Burwood’s activities as a lobbyist before he was elected to this place. Some of his clients have built buildings that are clad in very dangerous combustible material, and I was drawing the house to those facts.
The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Richards): There is no point of order. I will ask the member for Kew to come back to debating the bill.
Mr T SMITH: This bill obviously is separating Cladding Safety Victoria from the VBA. It is designed to rectify cladding on private property. One such building that I hope is rectified very quickly is a building on Glenferrie Road in Hawthorn that was built by the two characters that knocked down the Corkman hotel. Now, their lobbyist was the member for Burwood. The member for Burwood has not had a good day today. He is too lazy to write his own speeches, and he is certainly too lazy to open doors in the correct fashion.
Mr Pearson: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member is impugning the reputation of the hardworking member for Burwood by indicating that the member is lazy, and I would ask that he come back to the bill.
The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Richards): There is no point of order, but I do ask you to come back to debating the bill before us.
Mr T SMITH: So there are properties, literally hundreds of properties, around Melbourne where there are similar stories to Blair Warren-Smith’s, where they have saved a lot of money to potentially buy their first property, an apartment, only to find that that building is clad in very dangerous material—and they are still waiting for their properties to be rectified under this scheme by the Andrews Labor government. Now, I have my concerns about the way the money is being levied. I think a tax grab is inappropriate, particularly at this time. But I do—and I have supported it since I became Shadow Minister for Planning—support the urgent rectification of clad buildings because I know just how dangerous this material is.
Now, there have been properties in Mordialloc and in Clayton. Kardinia Park was a notable example of cladding on a significant public building. One of the biggest and most dangerous episodes was in Frankston, where—and I visited that apartment block during the easing of restrictions in late May, early June—those people are living in fear. They are living in fear with regard to their financial security and indeed their physical security, because the apartment tower in Frankston South that urgently requires rectification and is still yet to be rectified is so dangerous that a security guard was posted there for 24 hours a day, seven days a week to ensure that none of the occupants had a smoke on the balcony, lit a barbecue or did anything else that could literally send the place up in smoke.
We understand that the residents of this apartment tower have tried everything to get Cladding Safety Victoria and indeed the Andrews Labor government to take their concerns seriously and to get the property rectified as quickly as possible, and nothing has happened. I understand that there have been some significant teething issues with the setting up of CSV, and indeed organising the various different instrumentalities and legalities with regard to the rectification of cladding on private buildings, but a promise was made midway through last year by the Minister for Planning that these buildings would be rectified, particularly the buildings at the highest end of the scale in terms of their danger to the public—that they would be rectified as quickly as possible—and that has not happened. Time is running out and I know how worried these people are, having spent so much time in their properties over the last couple of months.
The Master Builders Association of Victoria equally have concerns with a few other aspects of this piece of legislation. They believe that this is a retrospective piece of legislation, by extending the time limit on compensation claims for the removal of combustible cladding from 10 to 12 years. They are concerned about the effect that will have on practitioners in their industry. I put that on the record in this house as a legitimate concern from an important peak body organisation, because obviously as we try and rebuild out of this debacle, largely caused by the antics of those on the other side of the house, we are going to need the construction sector and the building industry to lead the way. We need to let business get on with business, and we need to get out of their way quickly.
In conclusion, the fact that I have not had an opportunity to reflect on these amendments is a disgrace. It is an appalling breach of parliamentary process, and quite frankly, it has totally undermined the whole process and indeed the reason we are having this debate, because essentially the bill that I thought I was debating may not be the case at the moment.
I would like to conclude by saying that I will read these amendments. I note that the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change has offered a briefing, and I will be taking up that offer as quickly as I possibly can. We oppose this bill in the form that I believe it was presented to this house. I put that caveat on our position because obviously that is potentially going to change. Once I read these amendments there could be aspects to the bill that have been removed so that I might find it more palatable and the shadow cabinet might find it more palatable to be able to support. Yes, we understand that the numbers are what they are here, but in the other place they are quite different. This will be important as we go through this process before this bill goes to the other place as to what these amendments mean and what our position will be on them.