Dr HUGH McDERMOTT (Prospect) (12:08): My question is addressed to the Minister for Building. Will the Minister update the House on the Minns Labor Government's work to improve standards in the building sector, giving renewed confidence to home buyers across the State?
Mr ANOULACK CHANTHIVONG (Macquarie Fields—Minister for Better Regulation and Fair Trading, Minister for Industry and Trade, Minister for Innovation, Science and Technology, Minister for Building, and Minister for Corrections) (12:09): I thank the member for Prospect for his question and his interest in the very important subject of housing. The Government has made no secret of making housing its number one priority to ensure that people in our community can have accessible, affordable and high-quality housing. That is why we have acted to double down on quality standards across all kinds of housing. As the House knows, last year we created the Building Commission NSW, a single one-stop shop for building quality in New South Wales. We ended the patchwork of regulation that covered housing and gave the Building Commission broader powers over all residential housing in our communities. We changed the law to make it harder for directors to engage in phoenixing activity, which all members know drives down confidence for consumers.
Those changes are already having a significant impact. In the previous financial year, the Building Commission issued more than 440 orders requiring builders to fix poor work on standalone homes; it issued almost 80 orders on apartment buildings; it issued more than 600 infringement notices; and it audited or inspected over 2,000 building sites in the State. Using sophisticated intelligence and data matching, the Building Commission is weeding out the bad players in this sector, who have been giving all the good players a very bad name. For the first time, under this Government the Building Commission is doing that across both class 1 and class 2 builders. We are committed to changing behaviour and lifting the standard of quality building in our State.
While those opposite did not provide the Building Commissioner David Chandler with the broad powers he has today, they did appoint him in the first place. When we came to government, we had a clear set of priorities and we worked closely with David to get them done. We set him on the path and he delivered on each priority. We wanted to set up the Building Commission NSW; we did it in record time. There are now dedicated public servants, over 400 of them, enforcing standards and policing the sector. We wanted to find a resolution to Mascot Towers; that is now done, with no small effort from the commissioner.
The SPEAKER: I call the member for Willoughby to order for the first time.
Mr ANOULACK CHANTHIVONG: Thanks to his work, the owners of Mascot Towers units have been— [Extension of time]
As I mentioned, we wanted to find a resolution to Mascot Towers, an issue that had been brewing for so many years, and that has now been done, with no small effort from David and his team. Thanks to that work, the owners of Mascot Towers units have been able to move on after three Premiers and four Ministers for over half a decade. We wanted to give people in New South Wales confidence about building in New South Wales and we are well on that path. I pay tribute to David's dedication and passion for the industry. He is, as he has told The Sydney Morning Herald, a very challenging bureaucrat but a tireless public servant. I am enormously proud to say that in my tenure as Minister, David has only resigned once, and it really is to spend more time with his family.
We know it will not be easy to replace Mr Chandler, but that is why we have built a mature sector‑wide regulator to carry on his work. It is a testament to the commissioner's work that people across the State want to know how we will ever replace him. The truth is that he is one of a kind. I will be making an announcement about the new Building Commissioner in the coming weeks, but people should not expect a new David Chandler. The new Building Commissioner will not be a one-person regulator. The Building Commissioner will lead a mature professional regulator made up of hundreds of dedicated staff. This is now a regulator that uses sophisticated data matching and intelligence to target bad players, and it is a regulator that has a presence in regions around the State, including in the Illawarra.
I am proud of the work the Government has done to get to this point, and I hope the commissioner is too. I am looking forward to the next stage of this work. We are now working through the statute books to develop and deliver a single building Act that simplifies and centralises the licensing, enforcement and regulation of the sector. The future of the State is bright. On behalf of the Government and everyone in this House who wants to build better homes, I thank the outgoing commissioner for his great work.
