The ACT's ban on construction has forced people to live in half-finished homes with no insulation, boarded up windows and open holes in the floor, builders have warned.
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The construction industry has continued to mount pressure on the ACT government to allow building to restart on single residential sites.
But Chief Minister Andrew Barr doubled down on his stance that compliance on smaller residential sites had led the government to be cautious of reopening the sector.
Meanwhile, ACT Senator Zed Seselja said the territory government had a moral responsibility to compensate builders affected by the lockdown.
There will be a staged reopening of construction in the territory, with large-scale sites allowed to resume from Friday.
However, builders said homeowners had been left in limbo, with some in uncomfortable circumstances.
Mark Gillett of P&G Builders is a residential builder based in Canberra, who specialises in extensions and renovations, many of which take place with the residents still inside.
"We've got clients who have already been living for quite a period of time in very uncomfortable circumstances, just waiting for the last few pieces of the rest of their house to be finished so they can move back in, but we're now obviously not going to be able to do that and possibly won't be able to do anything for another three weeks or so," Mr Gillett said.
"From my point of view, we could get those jobs up and running using very few people.
"It wouldn't be as efficient as we would normally be operating, but at least we could be working to turn those jobs over and to get our clients back into safe, secure, comfortable houses, not four people sleeping in a master bedroom in an uninsulated house at the end of a Canberra winter."
That's the reality for Simon O'Mahony and his family, one of P&G Builders' clients, who are currently confined to one bedroom while the rest of the house is still part-way through major renovations.
"Both my wife and I are working from home ... we don't have an office or anything, so we have to work in the bedroom and then just do shifts [looking after] the kids," Mr O'Mahony said.
"The other issue is [the house] is not entirely safe and normally that's not an issue because we're not stuck at home all day."
Mr Gillett said the impact of the construction shutdown will be felt long after his projects get the green light to start up again.
"By opening up commercial before residential, we're now going to have a situation where subcontractors that were working primarily in the residential side of things will now be looking for work on commercial building sites, which you can't blame them for," he said.
"So that's going to pose a problem for us when we do return back to work, our subcontractors that we had lined up for jobs could potentially have moved on to jobs on commercial sites, which is going to drag out timeframes again while we try to get them to come back over to our jobs."
The ACT branch of the Housing Industry Association has called on the government to allow all sites to reopen by Friday. The organisation rejected the assertion that one part of the industry was safer than another.
"We don't accept the characterisation by the Chief Minister that the current approach is based on risk, as residential sites have proved their capacity to operate safely throughout the pandemic," HIA ACT said in a statement.
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The ACT government's own guidelines for reopening construction say: "large and complex building and construction sites provide a greater risk of coronavirus (COVID-19) transmission in the event of a confirmed case on site".
But Mr Barr doubled down on Monday. He pointed to the fact a residential site in Taylor had undertaken illegal work on the first weekend of lockdown.
"In the Delta outbreak, you are only as strong as your weakest link, so that is why we are being cautious here," Mr Barr said.
"We will return all construction activity when it is safe to do so, starting with the area that we believe will have the greatest level of compliance."
Senator Seselja said it was discriminatory to exclude small builders from reopening, saying it was "crushing" for those businesses. He said the territory government should compensate the sector.
"If you're going to carve out one part of the sector and deny them the ability to make a living, then I think there is a moral responsibility for the ACT government to come up with compensation because they still have to pay for that," Senator Seselja said.
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