Many influential people in Australia want to see zoning restrictions loosened so that apartment towers can be built in the ‘missing middle’ suburbs of the the nation’s major cities.
Their justifications ignore the mountain of data that shows the high-rise apartment boom of last decade was an unmitigated disaster.
Combustible and faulty apartment towers sprung up like mushrooms across Australia’s cities.
“Thousands and thousands of apartments have serious defects in their buildings. [The problem] is enormous”, warned building regulation consultant Bronwyn Weir.
“We have what is now you know, a systemic failure that is quite difficult to unravel”.
“Some of these buildings could potentially be a write-off”, she said.
Nearly four out of five new apartment towers in the state have severe faults, according to research conducted in October 2021 by the Strata Community Association of NSW.
The study was prompted after Mascot Towers and Opal Tower were temporarily evacuated after major structural issues were discovered.
A parliamentary inquiry in New South Wales also found major problems in recently built apartment buildings, while similar systemic issues were uncovered in throughout Melbourne’s apartment complexes, including one-in-four having balcony defects and many others containing toxic mold and leaks.
The situation is so serious that engineer Leith Dawes said buying off-the-plan is a game of “Russian roulette”.
In July, it was revealed that owners of 276 apartments in Sydney’s inner west Vicinity complex faced a $50 million repair bill to fix “concrete cancer” (rusting of steel reinforcement) in certain internal columns.
In order to prevent the collapse of the building, the owners’ corporation had to erect six large temporary columns on three floors.
Last week, the Courier Mail reported that the body corporate for a luxury $156 million 30-storey unit block built in Fortitude Valley six years ago is suing construction giant Brookfield Multiplex, claiming the building is riddled with defects.
Water “ponding” (lack of drainage) on the roof membrane is alleged, as is incorrect tiling installation in the men’s and women’s change rooms, and cracks in the carpark concrete slab.
One resident of the upscale building complained of “squishy flooring” in the kitchen, while numerous others reported leaks into their carpet, water marks from ceiling leaks, and mildew in their storage cupboard.
Fifteen years of pre-pandemic hyper-immigration led to the construction of tens of thousands of additional dwellings annually, prioritising speed above quality, and leading to the proliferation of faulty apartments.
Units and apartments made up the vast majority of new dwellings built in Australia’s major cities over the past decade, as illustrated in the chart above.
The Albanese Government has now opened the floodgates to immigration, with a record 454,000 migrants landing in Australia in the year to March 2023:
The latest Intergenerational Report also projects that Australia’s population will grow by 14.2 million people – equivalent to a combined Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide – in only 40 years, which will require at least 5 million new homes.
What will happen if Australia needs to expand housing supply quickly in order to accommodate unprecedented levels of immigration-driven population growth? Do we think building standards will remain stable, worsen, or improve?
The answer is obvious: building standards will be eroded even further in order to construct apartments as rapidly as possible to house the rapidly growing population.
To meet the Albanese Government’s reckless mass immigration strategy, hundreds of poor quality high-rise towers will be errected across Australia’s cities.
And for what? So elites like Highrise Harry and Tim Gurner can fatten their wallets while Australians live in shoe boxes? No thanks.
