Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Strata living is now a defining feature of Australia's housing system. Yet too often strata owners and renters are being asked to carry risks they did not create and cannot control. Almost half of households in the electorate of Warringah live in strata. Apartments are central to how we meet our housing needs, manage density and support diverse communities, but strata residents are often locked out of opportunity to access clean energy rebates while being loaded with responsibilities and rising costs.

In Warringah, I recently met with residents on a single street where five apartment buildings are all battling serious water ingress issues. These are families who bought homes in good faith. Yet years later they are still fighting developers, paying special levies, facing rising insurance premiums and living with stress, mould and uncertainty. They cannot sell. Some cannot safely stay, and they cannot compel accountability. And governments are abandoning them—are failing to be there for them.

Strata residents are also being left behind in the clean energy transition. While around 30 per cent of standalone homes in Warringah now have solar, only three to four per cent of apartments do, and renters are almost entirely excluded. Unfortunately, we see time and time again that government policies are designed in a way that excludes strata. People want to electrify their homes whether they live in single dwellings or in strata. They want to cut their power bills, install batteries and enable EV charging, but they are blocked by complex governance, outdated strata regulation, high upfront costs and inconsistent government pathways, including local government pathways. For example, the New South Wales government's bond scheme to address building defects has also fallen short, shifting the burden onto owners with few tools for recourse.

Australia is now racing to build 1.2 million homes. Many of those will be in strata and in medium-to-high density. Experts are warning that, without stronger standards and accountability, up to half of new apartments could have serious defects. We need to be focusing more on the quality of what is being built, not just on the nice-to-announce numbers when it comes to what is being approved or built. We need national consistency, transparent developer and builder ratings, stronger certification and a national recall scheme to support owners when developers dodge responsibility or go into liquidation.

Too often, the property developer has moved on, the builders go into liquidation and it is the owners who are left carrying the debt and the serious consequences. So that means aligning federal leadership with state systems, fixing incentives and ensuring strata communities can access the many different programs, including energy programs—for example, the home batteries one that we hear about so often in this place. It also means supporting existing buildings, not just future ones, with fair insurance practices and access to low-cost finance for rectification of building defects when developers and builders are not available to take responsibility.

Strata residents are not asking for special treatment. They're just asking for a fair system that works for them and recognises the very difficult situation they are all too often in compared to single-dwelling homeowners. I attended a workshop and roundtable in the North Sydney local government area, where so many were absolutely despairing at the financial circumstances they faced. They found themselves in the situation where the legal responsibility passed with them upon contract exchange. Developers move on—have made their profits—builders go into liquidation or build substandard buildings, and those left to pay for the rectifications to ensure they even have something liveable are the owners, who are left in the situation where the property they've purchased could be hundreds of thousands of dollars less in value—quite stark. They are left with hundreds of thousands of dollars of rectification costs. They are unable to sell, they're unable to live in it and they are unable to move. It was quite dire. The level of stress and anxiety was huge.

So I urge the government to start focusing on the question of more equitable arrangements so that people living in strata situations have a fairer system.

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