Des Houghton: Building watchdog fails to protect homeowners

Queensland’s building watchdog is under a cloud over serious allegations that it has failed to protect Queenslanders from dangerous building practices, writes Des Houghton.

After a six-year battle with government regulators blocking his every move, Shaun McCrystal has succeeded in tearing down a wall of official secrecy to expose the building industry’s dirty little secret: Some apartment blocks are fire hazards, built too close to family homes just like his.

The 37-year-old junior surgeon from Yeronga, 7km south of the Brisbane CBD, reserves special criticism for the Queensland Building and Construction Commission, the Ombudsman, the Information Commissioner and The Speaker of Parliament.

Fire nightmare: Surgeon Shaun McCrystal near the neighbouring apartment block that experts said was built too close.

The QBCC not only failed its watchdog role, but repeatedly blocked his efforts to seek the truth, he said.

And he can prove it. An independent fire engineer’s report was damning.

McCrystal has every reason to be angry because he first raised serious questions about the project with the QBCC in July 2014. Refusing to be fobbed off, he took a scalpel to slice open the mysterious world of building codes and laws and the questionable approvals processes. And he found cancer.

McCrystal said the three-storey building on a sloping block was designed, certified and constructed in breach of the minimum fire safety requirements of the Building Code of Australia.

Much of it is wood where there should be concrete, and it is all too close for comfort. He blames a questionable relaxation of the distance required between the apartment block and his home.

“The buildings represented an unmitigated and unacceptable risk of the spread of fire to my property and endangering the lives of myself, my wife and two young children,” he said.

“The QBCC and Minister for Housing and Public Works (Mick de Brenni) refused to act.”

And the fire danger is a two-way street. A fire at his home, he said, could quickly jump to the apartment block with calamitous human cost.

“In at least one of those apartments there is a family with a young child,” he told me.

McCrystal is clearly not short of brainpower, and can reel off the dates of distant meetings and recall who attended them. And he sounds like a barrister when discussing various government laws and regulations he believes have been bent or broken.

Worryingly, McCrystal also found other cases of unit blocks without the necessary fire resistant materials that were built too close to one another or family homes.

And he has stumbled on many other cases where the QBCC and some members of the Ombudsman’s office seem to have adopted a cavalier approach to complaints of substandard work.

McCrystal also questioned the status of a certain builder associated with the project next to his home.

McCrystal complained to the Ombudsman without any joy, although assistant Ombudsman, Geoff Airo-Farulla, investigating his case, agreed there had been some questionable conduct _ and concealment.

Later, McCrystal was gobsmacked when he turned up to a meeting with the QBCC and found Airo-Farulla in attendance. He had been appointed the QBCC’s new director of ethics and review.

McCrystal was concerned because he previously made certain allegations of wrongdoing against the QBCC to Airo-Farulla.

He also complained to the Speaker, Curtis Pitt, suggesting the Ombudsman’s office had not met reporting obligations.

McCrystal also began freedom-of-information searches.

“For six years my rights under Right-to-Information laws have continuously been obstructed,” he said.

So he wrote an impassioned letter to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

“I have serious concerns that many more families like mine are living in constant danger of immolation and as a result I am seeking public disclosure of this alleged corrupt behaviour,” he said.

On the eve of the October state election he got an email from the chief of the Premier’s department saying the matter had been referred to the Crime and Corruption Commission.

Meanwhile, the state Archivist has asked the CCC to investigate how certain files relating to the case seem to have gone missing.

McCrystal himself remains in a quandary. He says he can’t sell up and move.

“I can’t in all conscience allow myself or my family _ or any other family _ to be put at risk,” he said.

What happens next?

“I don’t know. It shouldn’t be my problem to fix.”

De Brenni declined a request for an interview. “The minister won’t discuss cases before the QBCC,” said a minder.

A spokesman for QBCC said privacy laws prevented the Commission speaking about individual cases.