The report from the Government's Cladding Safety Panel delivered today is yet another failure in the bungled response to dangerous flammable cladding on buildings across NSW.
Today's announcement has not made a single building safer, and offers little more than a process for generating a list of suitable cladding products. Once again the NSW Coalition has offered not a single dollar to help impacted homeowners make their properties safe.
We know there are 214 high rise apartments with this cladding but not where they are, presenting a real concern for local communities who want to know the building they are in, as well as that their neighbours, family and friends are safe.
Greens MP David Shoebridge said:
"Four years after the Grenfell Fire there continues to be a woeful lack of action by the State Government on cladding with not a single dollar to remove dangerous flammable cladding.
"The Victorian Government has invested $600 million to directly remove flammable cladding, but the NSW Government has not put up a single cent.
"The toxic mix of private certification and deregulation created this problem, and the State Government needs to step up to help sort it out.
"In the last four years many homeowners will have replaced cladding and because of Government delay they may have installed inferior dangerous product and now face having to repeat this expensive process with a new product.
"Today's report isn't even a detailed list of what cladding has been designated safe, but a recipe for how this will be determined. It's not good enough.
"A number of the products proposed as alternatives in this report, such as solid aluminium have a number of serious question marks over them including providing seriously inadequate insulation.
"They inexcusably continue to refuse to release the details of the hundreds of residential apartment blocks and other buildings like shopping centres, hospitals and other public buildings which have this cladding.
"Every day they wait to fix this problem is a day where people are at risk in their homes and workplaces.
"This is a problem that they and their developer mates caused, but which they're expecting councils and homeowners to pay for it," Mr Shoebridge said.
Report is here: https://www.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-04/Cladding%20Product%20Safety%20Panel%20Report%201.pdf
Answers to Budget Estimates Questions on Notice: parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/other/15409/AQON%20and%20Attachment%20A%20-%20Minister%20Anderson.pdf
Cladding Taskforce Website: nsw.gov.au/nsw-cladding-taskforce
