A few comments:
1 - don’t we have qualifications and registration for builders now so they can’t fold a company, walk away and restart again as easily, which wasn’t the case during peak leaky building? Do you think this will have an effect?
2 - most houses are designed by architects/ designers with the builders just using what’s the highly qualified architect/ designer specifies. The leaky building issues were mainly due to monolithic cladding, lack of eaves, untreated timber, etc (all designer specified - not builders). Councils were involved then and it still happened. I kind of feel it was all systemic and nothing could have been done to averted it as experienced, knowledgeable, independent and highly qualified people oversaw it all happen. A sharp industry wide learning curve. With these issues now known, are we building better? Are engineers, architects and a lot more highly qualified builders enough safeguards?
3 - I feel with less compliance, and less double and sometimes triple checking, I could see house build costs dropping maybe 20%? With those sort of savings and a more highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce, a small amount of shoddy work is more than compensated by overall costs savings, benefits to first home buyers, reduction in homelessness and all the social issues driven from lower property ownership.
Our double gold plating of housing is costing to much in negative social issues.