Among the concerns around freezing the National Construction Code, before and after the Economic Reform Roundtable in Canberra last week, came some cut-through comments from Adam Haddow, national president of the Australian Institute of Architects. The NCC is about minimum standards, he pointed out. And while it’s true that it’s around 2000 pages, this covers every building from schools to caravan parks. Housing takes up about 200 pages. Yes, the NCC is difficult to read, but what the institute would like is for the government to take a “more aggressive approach” and look at 12 monthly reviews of the NCC to modernise it and ensure it’s easier to read.
On Sunday, Treasurer Jim Chalmers and a slew of ministers emerged from their economic roundtable to do what many experts warned against doing – freezing the National Construction Code (NCC).
The joint statement between Housing, Homelessness and Cities minister Claire O’Neill and Environment and Water Minister Murray Watt said “there was a broad consensus” to “reduce regulatory burden for builders”.
The argument from the property building and development lobbies – and that they clearly accepted – was that this would boost housing supply.
Among the five key reforms related to housing was a “pause and streamline” policy on the NCC. This will be effective immediately after the finalisation of NCC 2025 and will last until the end of the national housing accord period, which is around mid-2029, effectively a year later than the normal three year period between “editions”.
The ministers say this will exclude “essential safety and quality changes” and will still maintain the “strong residential standards adopted in 2022, including 7-star energy efficiency.”
The streamlining of the code will involve consultation with stakeholders on:
- using artificial intelligence to improve the usability of the three volume, 2000 page code to assist tradies, small businesses and households (of which the Australian Institute of Architects says only 200 pages or so relate to housing – the rest is for other types of buildings)
- removing barriers to the uptake of modern methods of construction to encourage prefab and modular housing to save on costs with energy efficiency
- how to “improve” the development of code provisions by the Australian Building Codes Board to “consider the appropriate cadence of future NCC updates”
Also effective immediately are actions to fast track assessment for the 26,000 homes currently under consideration of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act – as well as speed up assessment of new applications.
This includes establishing a new strike team within the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water dedicated to fast tracking assessments, enacting new ministerial guidelines to prioritise “robust development applications” that provide required information upfront, and piloting AI to simplify and speed up assessments and approvals.
The two ministers said they were “grateful for the clear consensus” on the housing reforms. Clare O’Neil further added, “It’s too hard to build a home in this country. We want builders on site, not filling in forms to get their approval.
“In the middle of a housing crisis, a generation in the making, we want builders building good quality homes of the future – not figuring out how to incorporate another set of rules.
“We’re pausing changes to the construction code and speeding up housing approvals – without cutting corners on standards.”
Murray Watt said, “Fast-tracked projects will continue to be required to meet all environmental requirements, but they will incentivise developers to provide required information upfront.
“This approach will ensure strong national environmental protections, while also leading to faster decision making, more certainty for industry and more homes for Australians.”
The discussion was part of a wider movement from the government to “fast track EPBC reform”. Watt added that the government was committed to establishing a Federal Environmental Protection Agency, with consultation on the exact model “ongoing.”
He said the government will have a strong focus on “removing duplication within the environmental approvals and assessments system, while introducing strong new national environmental standards.” This will be in accordance with the Samuel Review – an independent review of the EPBC Act, which was delivered to the Environmental Minister and Opposition leader Sussan Ley in 2021.
What the industry is saying
In the weeks leading up to the roundtable, RMIT’s senior industry fellow, Alan Pears, one of Australia’s most highly regarded sustainability experts, wrote in a Spinifex OpEd for The Fifth Estate that the residential sector.
“Has few advocates in the institutional frameworks, and no representatives on the boards of mainstream industry associations. Certainly, they have little influence.
“Mainstream building industry organisations are part of the problem. “In contrast, there is strong progress with commercial buildings, where NABERS, Green Star and major increases in building regulatory requirements have progressed.”
Pears detailed the long and troubled past of the code including delays leading up to the 2022 NCC changes, which “came more than a decade after the last significant change.”
He said the government’s Productivity Commission argues that it costs more to retrofit performance improvements, but “has this cost, driven by climate change, been considered by the Productivity Commission?”
The AFR noted that the Labor government had previously attacked then Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s election pledge to freeze the NCC for a decade, warning it would risk a “Grenfell Tower inferno”, but is not insisting its own proposed pause is different, even though it “lasts only four years and will still allow for changes to essential safety and quality standards.”
It was noted that the only holdout among roundtable participants to the universal support was Australian Council of Social Services chief executive officer Cassandra Goldie, who was worried that pausing changes to energy efficiency would lead to higher power bills. [This is a view echoed by many observers in the built environment.]
Former Industry and Science Minister and now Labor backbencher Ed Husic said the pause was “misguided” and it would increase the number of changes that would be made once the freeze ends. [Another view echoed by experts outside the roundtable]
As Pears predicted, the building industry organisations were among the first to welcome the reforms.
The ABC followed up on Pears’ article, and Master Builders Australia CEO Denita Wawn soon after said that her organisation had lobbied for the pause for a long time, arguing “it increased cost and complexities.”
Pears responded that the building industry is giving the impression that this has been thrust upon them unexpectedly, but they have had years to “get their act into gear”.
The 2025 update brings in enhanced energy efficiency standards, EV charging and electrification provisions, fire safety and waterproofing, among other things.
Greens spokesperson for housing and homelessness, Senator Barbara Pocock, said this showed the government “caved to demands of the property lobby”.
Qualified support
A coalition of industry organisations from across the industry, from the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council and others, banded together to release a statement saying it “recognised the pressures” that the government was facing and that “streamlining and removing unnecessary regulation can and should continue during this period”.
However, it said that since the next round of code changes will move from 2028 to 2029, the next round of code changes “must be used productively and should not be extended.”
Additionally, the group calls for the swift and uniform implementation of NCC 2025 across all jurisdictions, a clear national plan for ongoing NCC updates aligned with emission reduction commitments and climate resilience, adequate resources for the ABCB, as well as support for the building sector, trades and supply chain.
The group consisted of Australian Council of Social Service, Australian Passivhaus Association, Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council, Australian Institute of Architects, Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, Building Designers Association of Australia, Climateworks Centre, Design Matters National, Energy Consumers Australia, Energy Efficiency Council, Green Building Council of Australia, Facility Management Association of Australia, Justice and Equity Centre, and the Property Council of Australia.
The Property Council of Australia chief executive Mike Zorbas in a separate statement, said the announcement “represents a big boost to housing supply” and will “unlock tens of thousands of new homes across the country” while also “improve cycle for vital safety, quality and sustainability upgrades”.
“Now, instead of an unproductive 10-year freeze, we will get both extra new homes, the continuation of a working commercial code and a residential construction code that states might actually sign up to.
“Let’s not kid ourselves. The wheels fell off a nationally harmonious residential construction code several years ago when states determined to go their own way in their own time.”
Independent member of Wentworth, Allegra Spender, was also present at the roundtable. In a debrief with her community, she said, “There’s some [concerns] also on housing [deregulation]. My concern is how you change the mindset within departments within regulators, to balance both the protective nature of regulation and the growth that we need in the economy; you have to have both.
“It’s easy to want to pass legislation and pass regulations, and no one’s job really is to say, ‘Well, is that the right balance?’. There’s a lot of work to do on this, and I’ll be holding the government to a very strong account. To be honest, I think they recognise the issue. Now, the question is, will that translate into implementation?”
The wheels fell off a nationally harmonious residential construction code several years ago when states determined to go their own way in their own time.
Architects want a more coordinated housing policy and yearly updates to the NCC to modernise it and make it easier to read
Adam Haddow, president of the Australian Institute of Architects, told ABC radio that the government seemed to be “barking up the wrong tree”.
“The NCC establishes the lowest safety standards and amenities for housing in Australia, so to suggest that we need to pause it is a problem. But realistically, they’re not actually pausing it. They’re just pushing out its implementation by an extra year.”
What’s important to realise, he said, is that the role of the NCC is to ensure that our dwellings are future proofed.
“So, for example, the current update for the NCC is looking at the electrification of houses so that people can install batteries at a later date, and they could plug their cars into their houses at a later date. If we’re removing that kind of future proofing of housing…. what we’re doing is condemning the next four years of houses being built to the bottom of the pile.”
Haddow said the code is to ensure minimum standards are met. But there were a “whole lot of other areas in terms of planning reforms” that could be streamlined.
And while the entire document is around 2000 pages, it covers everything from housing to schools and caravan parks. Housing takes up about 200 pages, he said.
“The content of the NCC is great. We agree it’s difficult to read and difficult to get your head into.”
What the institute would like, he said, is for the government to take a “more aggressive approach” and look at 12 monthly reviews of the NCC to modernise it and ensure it’s easier to read.
What’s slowing construction, he said, is that there’s no one actually “bringing everything together” with ministries dissociated and sitting in siloes.
A federal government architect would be a good place to start, he said.
To make the NCC easier to use we could look at a clean out of state & territory variations. Yes, maybe they can’t all go, but surely for the most part the regulations could be consistent across the land. I wonder if any mention was made of making Australian Standards government funded, or privately funded by levy, so that the contractors have ready access & no financial excuse not to keep up to date.
Are builders really spending that much time on paperwork? I’m not a builder and am happy to be corrected, but the intensive paperwork is in the planning approval not the building approval. Yes, builders are required to compile numerous compliance certificate to demonstrate works have been completed to required standards. We can’t & shouldn’t be going soft in this area. I don’t think anyone is suggesting this.
I think it’s a bit of a furphy to hint that the NCC is a continually changing. It’s the opposite if anything. The core parts rarely, if ever change & don’t need to e.g. fire resistance provisions, balustrade heights, stair dimensions. And when new provisions are added, the ABCB provides plenty of notice, explanation etc. Take ventilated roof cavity provisions for example. Even before this had come into force, the mainstream building product manufacturers had a ridge capping product that is a relatively straightforward substitution. And if you were born in the twentieth century chances are that you lived in a house with ventilation holes in the eaves. None of this is earth shattering stuff.
I must walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Next time I see something in the NCC that could be streamlined or simplified or refined, I must send a suggestion to the ABCB & cc my industry representative body.
Recently I struggled to find, then understand the wording of a provision that permits fire protected in certain circumstances for class 2 & 3 buildings. The concession is tucked away in one of the specification sections, disconnected from the body provisions and I had to Google the terminology of “notwithstanding” to understand which clause overrode the other.
Anyway, there’s a lot of excellent information in the NCC, and we really should be grateful that we have such a resource to protect life & property.
And what about the great work the guys at Tools™ have done. Not working against the NCC, instead working with it, to make it easier for all. Lets stay positive and constructive (pun intended).