Leaked Treasury advice reveals possible freeze on changes to National Construction Code

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Leaked Treasury advice - prepared ahead of the Albanese government's productivity talks - reveals a number of possible announcements, including a freeze on changes to the National Construction Code.

Transcript

00:00So the National Construction Code is the rules that we have around making sure that buildings

00:08are safe and that they have the right amenities, that they have things like fire protection in

00:15them, that they're structurally sound and so it's a set of rules that deal with our plumbing

00:21and our standards for how we build buildings. It's a national document and then each state

00:27and territory calls up those technical standards in their state legislation which means that

00:33when builders build buildings they must comply with these technical obligations that tell

00:38us how we build homes and other buildings. And how often are changes made to the code Bronwyn

00:45are regular reviews carried out? So the code was introduced in the mid-90s and up until about

00:52eight years ago the code was changed every year with updates, technical updates to it

00:58and changes. There was then a decision that that was too frequent and so now the cycle is

01:03every three years. But the ministers can come together and decide to have urgent changes which

01:11happened for example after our cladding issues but otherwise it's a three-year cycle.

01:16And what are the most recent changes to be proposed where there was a question over freezing those

01:23changes? So some of the changes which are waiting to be approved at the moment are in relation to

01:29how we do waterproofing in buildings. Waterproofing defects are the highest rate of defects or the

01:36highest kind of defects that we have in buildings. They lead to structural problems as well as mould and

01:41other issues, very expensive issues to rectify. And it's been recognised over the last few years that

01:47this defect is significant and so work has been done on reviewing and updating and filling gaps

01:54to do with these waterproofing requirements. So this is an example of why it's important that the code

02:00is changed regularly as we have a living and breathing document where we can feed back issues that are

02:08occurring in building quality back into the code so that standards can be improved. And that needs to

02:13be an ongoing issue. Another example which I would give you, especially in light of the fact that we

02:19are building thousands of homes in coming years, is what we need to do to change the resilience of

02:25buildings to things like increased storm events, bushfires and other things. So there's been a lot of work

02:33and commitment by governments around increasing the resilience of buildings and that's done through

02:37changes to the NCC over time after there's been appropriate consultation and information given about

02:45how those changes need to be made to our technical standards. So they're just two examples of things that

02:52are ready now or that are coming forward through what we know about the resilience of buildings and

02:59standards in buildings. And this National Construction Code is an important document that needs to live and

03:05breathe and change as we get feedback from the system to make sure that our technical standards for

03:13buildings are appropriate. So the Treasury League suggests then that the government would like next

03:19week's economic reform roundtable to put forward a pause to these changes. Would you support that or not?

03:27I don't think it's necessary to put a blanket stop on things. I do think that sometimes when we're

03:35doing reform and new regulations are coming in, they need to be assessed appropriately for their impact.

03:41But stopping changes to the NCC is not going to help us build buildings more quickly. We need to build

03:49safe buildings. We can't have new buildings at any cost. The outcomes for consumers in the community

03:57when buildings aren't built correctly, when our standards aren't up to date and aren't refreshed

04:02regularly are significant. So we don't want to be taking away important changes that look to increase and

04:12improve our safety requirements in buildings and our resilience of buildings only to find that we are

04:19building a legacy of problems for communities in the future. So what are your thoughts then on how

04:25the Housing and Construction Centre can be improved or industry can be improved to increase housing stock

04:31without compromising quality and safety? So one of the big issues that industry raises is the lack of

04:40consistency across states and territories. So this is, I guess, a problem with our federal system where we have

04:48lots of different requirements that builders and companies need to grapple with in terms of compliance issues.

04:55And industries is often calling for some consistency around things like licensing requirements, building

05:02product safety and standards. And these sorts of laws are left to individual states and territories to deal

05:09with, and they can be very confusing and different. I'd like to see the federal government actually

05:15stepping in a little bit more and working with the states to come up with more national laws that give

05:22consistency and help with those compliance costs to businesses in order to improve productivity through

05:30some of those ways. If we're looking at regulatory issues, I think they're things that industry have

05:36complained about for a long time.

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