Two high rises in Melbourne, the Lacrosse Tower and the Neo200 building, have both had serious fire incidents related to unsafe cladding and the Victorian Building Authority (VBA) warned that it could take two years to remove and replace unsafe cladding.

The Labor and Coalition government have been unwilling to act urgently because they’re too reliant on donations from their big developer mates. It’s clear that both governments have had enough information to act, but have chosen not to. The Coalition rejected a Senate inquiry recommendation for a ban on the importation, sale and use of unsafe flammable cladding and the Victorian Government’s own taskforce found that the flammable cladding crisis has occurred because of a systematic failure of regulation, compliance and enforcement.

The Greens 5 point cladding plan:

1. Conduct a National Audit of all high-rise buildings in Australia;
2. The urgent removal or remediation of unsafe PE core cladding from all high-risk buildings, supported by the establishment of a ‘Emergency Cladding Safety Fund’ with an initial injection of $50 million;
3. Ban the importation of flammable unsafe cladding as recommended by a federal Senate inquiry;
4. Amend the Building Code to ban the use of flammable unsafe cladding in construction and;
5. Require the Commonwealth to lead a COAG decision to implement a new levy on developers to recoup costs of solving the unsafe cladding problem.