In the wake of June’s Grenfell tower disaster in London, which claimed the lives of around 80 people, ABC’s Four Corners has conducted an investigation into the widespread use of similar flammable cladding that has been knowingly used across Australia’s medium and high-rise apartment developments.
With the segment airing tonight, Four Corners has provided the following teaser:
More than a decade before the deadly Grenfell tower fire in London, Australian suppliers of aluminium composite cladding knew the product they were selling with a polyethylene (PE) core was highly flammable.
Despite more fire-resistant cladding being widely available in Europe and the USA, the cheaper PE core cladding continued to be installed on medium and high-rise buildings in Australia until 2013.
A Four Corners investigation has revealed that some international manufacturers and their Australian suppliers were aware of the risks associated with using PE cladding on high-rise buildings, but they continued to import it because Australia’s lax and ambiguous building standards allowed it.
Australia — in the grip of a once-in-a-generation building boom — now has a large legacy of buildings swathed in the potentially deadly material.
The number of affected properties is unknown but could be in the thousands, with a preliminary audit in NSW alone identifying 1,011 buildings that require investigation.
There could be thousands of home owners who are living in unsafe apartment buildings who face multimillion-dollar bills to fix their buildings…
Fire engineer Tony Enright says regulations have not kept up with the speed of development.
“Things have descended to the lowest common denominator,” he said.
“As soon as there’s an obstacle to a development, [the attitude is] ‘oh well, let’s fire engineer it away’.”
Most states have moved to a system of private certification where the building certifier is employed directly by the builder, rather than the council inspecting the building.
The ambiguous standards are combined with poor enforcement and, some say, a conflict of interest between safety and economy.
“We have, if you will, a builder, a certifier and a fire engineer who are incentivised to reduce cost,” Mr Enright said.
“The builder because it’s going straight on to their bottom line; the certifier because they want repeat work from the builder; the fire engineer because they want repeat work from the certifier and the builder.
“And so they’re all taking risks. It’s the building owners who bear those risks”…
Back in July, a Senate Inquiry was told that thousands of apartments in Sydney and Melbourne are potentially at risk from similar flammable cladding.
And last month, it was revealed that apartment owners in Sydney, rather than developers or builders, are likely to pick up the tab for remediation after the NSW Government reduced the warranty claim window to just two years from seven.
Here, folks, is yet another example of Australia’s dysfunctional ponzi economy in action. The federal government has chosen to flood Australia’s cities with additional people via immigration in an effort to juice the property industry. And in return, the property industry has built a fores of sub-standard, combustible high-rise dog boxes, passing the costs onto owners and the community while they make-out like bandits.
