Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Home building industry

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:21): (781) My adjournment is to the Treasurer, and the action I seek is an extension of the liquidated builders customer support payment scheme to allow customers of Apex Homes to be included and have access to the scheme. On 6 March 2024 the government announced that customers of Montego Homes, Chatham Homes and Porter Davis Homes who were left without domestic building insurance – DBI, as it is known – through no fault of their own are now eligible to apply for the expanded scheme, which covers customers of builders that liquidated between 1 July 2023 and 20 February 2024. This includes Montego Home customers. However, many of my constituents in the South-Eastern Metropolitan Region of Melbourne entered into agreements with Apex Homes, which eight days later entered liquidation, on 28 February 2024. Consequently, customers of Apex Homes will not be able to access the support scheme. How is that fair, Minister? It is not right. The Liberal–Nationals believe that the scheme should be extended to include customers of Apex Homes, who are in an identical situation to customers of Montego, Chatham and Porter Davis Homes. The customers of Apex Homes deserve a positive outcome. Dodgy builders need to be held responsible for their reprehensible actions to prevent a recurrence of these situations.

The government has been saying that new offences that were introduced last month into the Domestic Buildings Contracts Act 1995 would incur a penalty of $96,000 for an individual and $480,000 for a company. Apex, like other builders mentioned, failed to take out appropriate insurance on behalf of its customers, and it has left its customers exposed. Under the government’s cut-off period, they have excluded people because the scheme has only been extended to the 20th. We believe the government should extend the scheme indefinitely, until the Victorian Building Authority can get on top of their enforcement of domestic building insurance requirements under law. Many constituents in the south-east are looking at losing figures of between $16,000 and $40,000, which they deposited in good faith with Apex Homes and now risk losing it all.

Imagine the hard work of these aspiring, hardworking people who have been losing their hard-earned money with no compensation. This will mean the end of their dreams of building their own homes. It is not fair, and it is not their fault. It is bad enough that this scheme has not protected innocent Victorians who have done all the right things, but then to allow certain extensions for some and not others because of the cut-off date is beyond belief.