The NCC pushback is the kind of regeneration we don’t want

COMMENT: We wish the rest of the built environment was as infinitely regenerating as the moves to cut and curb the National Construction Code seem to be.

At the last federal election, then Opposition Leader Peter Dutton threatened to freeze the periodic improvements to the code for 10 years, inspired no doubt by the South Australian government that had done exactly that for the chunks of the state that can least afford the extra energy bills that this engenders. Then the federal government bowed to pressure and agreed to “pause and streamline” policy on the NCC (whatever that means).

Tasmania has said it wants to go the same way, and other states are also considering various forms of freezing the regular updates or “editions” designed to progressively improve the quality of our buildings.

These moves appease broadscale house and land builders and developers who can’t be bothered finding ways to meet better energy provisions at little to no extra cost, as others somehow manage to do.

But it leaves consumers out in the cold. Literally. Unless it’s the searing heat in Queensland, that’s also considering similar moves.

The Australian Institute of Building Surveyors has now lobbed a protest at Tasmania over its Building Amendment Bill 2025 and associated Amendment Regulations that would allow deferral or non-adoption of NCC 2025 in Tasmania.

The institute which covers the professionals known as building certifiers in some states and building surveyors in others, says the move would “isolate the state from national reform and undermine the Intergovernmental Agreement that supports consistent code application”.

It would disadvantage Tasmania’s construction industry, consumers and economy and serve only “vested interests”.

It would “limit innovation built into NCC 2025, including improved design flexibility, enhanced safety, long-term cost efficiencies and updated compliance frameworks. Consumers risk missing out on cost savings and quality improvements that will be available in other states.”

Of course, there is no logical argument for holding back improvements to the energy provisions of housing, its accessibility, fire and flood resilience, and myriad other challenges that await this nation as the earth heats and storms intensify.

The only argument against doing so is short term cost and political persuasion.

And in this, the builders and developers lobby groups the HIA and MBA have paramount access to government ears.

The tradie mentality of yesteryear that these two associations represent don’t want to change what they do in any semblance of speed because …well….it’s not easy…they don’t know how, they say.

The result is that the desperate new homeowner or tenant will take whatever they can get and think that a lower price means savings in their pockets.

The problem is they don’t have the same political power as the tradies. They are not organised and don’t have powerful umbrella groups to represent them. Australia, after all, is an immigrant country whose wealth – and culture – is in large part built on the land boomers that came with the earliest European settlers.

This brings political clout all on its own.

Then there is how much of the economy they control.

Construction is 7 per cent of GDP but add in the value of residential development and the cultural commitment we have to property as a national obsession and you can see that if it tradies were a political party it might challenge Pauline Hanson herself. (Hanson’s One Nation, by the way, is hoovering up 18 per cent of the national voting preferences right now and after the Bondi massacre, no doubt a lot more.)

What could save the quality of our housing?

It might be naïve to assume logic has any sway on budgets and spending, but we’d like to think Treasury has the answers. More than any other parts of our world, Treasury fully understands the allocations it should make to compensate for poor housing (but routinely doesn’t) to hospitals, physical and mental health, transport, and poor functioning schools.

It’s probably already totted up the cost to productivity of people needing to work their butts off just to pay the energy bills instead of spending that money on all of the above.

In July last year there was a glimmer of hope: Treasury picked up responsibility for the Australian Building and Construction Board, the outfit that is designed to manage the NCC and roll out its periodic improvements, subject to each state and territory in the federation choosing to go along with it.

The ABCB had moved from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources and in the past two weeks has also picked up a new chief executive Adrian Piani who comes well regarded by insiders as a designer, and has hefty career portfolio in ACT government, GHD and Engineers Australia.

Will things change? Will design, political and financial sense prevail to ensure at least new housing and any significant refurb project meets modern standards and the challenges of the future we’d rather not have but must deal with?

Let’s see if Treasury can do what we all dream of and take a holistic view of federal government spending so that all of society benefits and not just a part of it.

It’s not that hard to improve the quality of construction.

We wish a whole raft of builders and developers would listen to home builder John King of JG King Group in our recent podcast where he describes how he’s routinely achieving 8 star NatHERS energy ratings for the houses his company constructs when the NCC code mandates 7 star. And at next to no extra cost.