New agency, financial support, tougher laws coming to help tackle cladding crisis

Taxpayers’ money will be used to help apartment owners remove flammable cladding from their homes, with the Andrews Government considering “extraordinary” legal changes to try and recoup money from builders responsible for using dodgy cladding.

Apartment owners are set to receive taxpayer-funded help to remove flammable cladding which has turned hundreds of residential buildings into fire traps.

But the Andrews Government has been blasted for taking so long to step in to resolve a crisis more than four years in the making.

Premier Daniel Andrews says the government is on the verge of unveiling a “substantial” package of reforms to tackle the cladding issue, possibly including “quite extraordinary” new laws to try and recoup money from builders who used dangerous materials.

A website has also been created for a purported new agency called Cladding Safety Victoria, describing it as a “a one-stop-shop for advice and assistance to the community in relation to the removal of combustible cladding”.

The government’s reforms will be unveiled in the coming weeks as it waits on the final report from the state’s cladding taskforce.

Fire damage at the Neo200 building, which had flammable cladding. Picture: MFB

But Opposition spokesman David Davis said: “The time for new bodies, new authorities, new bureaucracies is over.”

“The government actually needs to help people … who are being burdened with this when it’s not their fault,” he said.

“Why has the government been dithering all this time? The government has had wake-up call after wake-up call … The risk is very clear.”

It is more than four years since flammable cladding fuelled a frightening blaze at the Lacrosse building in Docklands, and two years since 72 people died in London’s Grenfell Tower fire.

Greens leader Samantha Ratnam said the government’s response to the cladding issue had been “woefully inadequate to date”.

“Thousands of Victorians are facing huge costs to remove unsafe cladding thanks to an industry plagued by deregulation and poor enforcement,” she said.

“The Andrews Government must take on initial responsibility for funding the rectification of unsafe cladding and recoup costs later from those responsible for creating this dangerous mess.”

Mr Andrews said the government was considering legal changes to target phoenix companies which dissolved after projected were completed — although such laws would likely require the co-operation of the federal government.

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He said there was “a power of work going on” behind the scenes to inform the government’s response.

“It’s in everybody’s interests … that we get this rectified and get this fixed,” he said.

The state Budget included $160 million to remove flammable cladding from government-owned buildings, such as hospitals and schools, but no financial support has been made available so far for private building owners.

Apartment owners are able to access long-term, low-interest loans through their council rates to pay off cladding rectification works at their homes.

But the loan agreements have never been used since they were introduced by new laws last October.

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