A very interesting decision which has implications not only for drainlaying, but plumbing and gasfitting as well.  Just how much research did the PGDB do in to this case before committing our money to prosecute it?  With more and more council inspectors not having relevant qualifications in drainlaying, plumbing or gasfitting - should they be held more accountable about decisions they take?  Should we be getting hold of our own councils and making them aware of this legal decision which will now be used surely as precedent and gives a defence to many going forward?  If you don't connect up the pipes, and say you never intended to - can you lay pipes out for plumbing and gasfitting with no licence?  After all you might just be "saving" the tradesman time?   It's a shame the judgement stopped short of speaking to supervision - that would have been very handy

Further more, does this decision mean that I no longer have to get a limited ticket for my "boy" to dig holes and hand me materials while I am in a trench?

Funnily enough I have just in the last few days finished writing a training course (one of those ones that isn't very popular in this forum so I wont mention its type by name) on Drainlaying Legislation. Having spent lots of time over the years looking at plumbing and gasfitting legislation there were a few things that surprised me when I started looking at the detail around drainlaying:

1. That there wasn't a comparable section in the act to define drainlaying in as much detail as there was for sanitary plumbing and gasfitting.
2. That there was no definition of the term "laying" in the act.
3. That drainlaying as defined in the PGD Act does not line up that well with what is in the building act (if you wanted to argue about it).

By the reading of the judgement the first worry is the bit about it isn't a drain until it can drain. Carried to the extreme does this mean until it has the final connection to the storm water, foul water or industrial liquid waste source? . And then downpipes aren't drainlaying so if are you allowed to stick a downpipe into a stormwater drain, does this mean if you take that action last, were you or weren't you drainlaying when you laid the rest of the stormwater pipes or if you laid them on a separate day or something? Or a separate individual is the one who sticks the downpipe into you stormwater pipe.

The second worry is the supervision gazette notice which is potentially a bit of a spanner in the works.

Now I know Alan Bickers ain't real popular around here and agreeing with anything he said might get me booted out but it is hard not to have some sympathy with the view he expressed that the legislation the industry operates under is far too complicated. If there are amendments to add a definition for "laying" or something then where does it stop - it just keeps getting more complicated. To (mis)quote Leia Skywalker "The more you tighten your grip, ....., the more .... will slip through your fingers" in this case - the tighter you make definitions the more the cracks tend to appear that the unscrupulous can try to exploit.

I think the Federation could do the industry a real service by drafting an alternative PGD act from scratch that addresses current issues so that arguments are coherently prepared when the public consultation of the review of the current act takes place.

I agree with Jaxcat that the legislation is not complicated and mostly provides for the Industry needs. Where it gets complicated is when the regulators attempt to stretch the legislation and go for amendments to meet their needs. That's what creates the issues. If it was applied using common sense then their wouldn't be an issue. I think people need to ask why an Licensing Authority needs five full time lawyers? The more they try to twist the rules the more people look for ways to avoid the rules.

If an organisation attempts to stretch the rules it creates conflict. The Board have done this a number of times and have got caught out so they blame the legislation as they don't have enough power to get their way. The Act allows for protection for us and them but every consultation of late shows the Board wanting to legislate themselves more power. 

Grants comment about the Federation writing a new Act is very interesting and I would ask the questions why do we pay 120 politicans $180,000 plus a year each, what do we pay for thousands of policy analysts and legislation drafters, why do we fund a Regulations Review Committee and support lawyers and staff, why do we pay a Board $500 dollars a day each and why to we pay a CEO quarter of a million dollars a year?.  You seem to be saying a voluntary organisation that doesn't get paid should be correcting the actions of all the above and doing their job for them. A very interesting concept.

Perhaps I can expand a bit on my suggestion of a Federation proposal for a PGD Act.

I recently went to a water heating conference in the USA. At the conference the US regulator announced a proposed new test method for water heater energy consumption and a relatively short consultation period. Like all these consultation things the chance to get any major changes made is pretty slim by the time it gets to this point. They are only really making sure that someone doesn't point out some huge flaw that they haven't thought about.

Over the previous few years two of the organisations in the US have developed their own water heater test standards. Not one water heater will ever be tested to these standards and they and the people developing them knew this would be the case. The reason they did it was to try to frame the discussion and highlight the areas where the current standard was faulty. They trotted their standard developments around various meetings over the past few years and refined them and this had the effect of getting focus on the issues that were important to the industry so when the DOE developed a new standard the major issues were addressed. Not in the exact same manner as either of the industry standards but at least in a way that everyone can live with.

Over a long period of time this has been proven as an effective and positive way to try to set the agenda and engage with regulators and politicians. If you wait for the consultation to start the argument is already framed in a way that tends to leave you arguing about the consultation structure rather than anything else.

You could just start with the high level topics which you feel need addressing and then populate them out with everyone's input as you go.

A starting list in no particular order might be:

Classes and scope of licences
How competence is initially demonstrated
How maintenance of ongoing competence should be demonstrated
Structure and role of an Industry regulator
Cost of industry governance
Prosecution of unregistered/unlicensed persons.
Prosecution of licensed persons.

There is of course no guarantee of success with this approach but it has been effective elsewhere.

Hi Robbo - I don't think Grant is suggesting that the board do this (what a hard task that would be!) - rather his suggestion is that perhaps this is the path the Fed should look at taking in order to positively engage people at all levels for due consideration pre empting the consultation process.

Do I have that right Grant?

Bloody good idea IMHO - big undertaking though!!

The elephant in the corner is.....you can have all the legislation and Acts you like, old or new....but if the powers that be only apply them to who it suits.....then it is a sham.

We need open transparent consistency with no favours for mates and administered with common sense and no personal/organisational agendas.

To restore confidence the corrupt should be ousted and dealt to publically.

Then we can start from scratch and rebuild.

If you have a very shonky building that had been left to go to pot, full of rot, with bad foundations and infrastructure......how much can you patch it and still be able to rely on its integrity?

Its best to knock it down and build a new and better one, with all the mistakes learnt from the past.