No sooner had the Victorian Premier reshuffled the cabinet on Thursday than the Housing Industry Association called for the National Construction Code to be delayed. Following precisely on the heels of Tasmania confirming this week that it would delay implementation of the latest edition of the code.
Lobbying target for the HIA in its eternal objective of holding back the tide is Nick Staikos, who stepped in as new Housing and Building Minister and Suburban Rail Loop Minister
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan is in election mode, of course, and she’s only got till 28 November to see if her party can turn the negative tide and scrape back in. Given her government has done some good environmental work in recent times – banning gas in new homes for one – we would not object to another term. Other people place other items high on the agenda, we know.
The HIA knows how to woo the pollies. First, they congratulate him. Then they offer him their own special brand of Kool-Aid by telling him Staikos that he could be getting an “early win on the board” if he immediately delayed the NCC, scheduled to be implemented on 1 May.
The lobby group pointed out the New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory governments are not implementing the NCC 2025 changes until 1 May 2027 – saying these governments “clearly understand now is not a good time for urgent regulatory changes.”
Except what they aren’t pointing out, to the new building minister or even to the new Renters and Cost of Living Minister, Paul Edbrooke, is that not implementing NCC 2025 will leave the poor residents of Melbourne with leaky, mouldy, humid, hot or ice box houses.
Edbrooke, also the new Boys and Men Minister, may or may not support the NCC 2025 provisions for all-gender bathrooms, sanitary product dispensers and disposal units for women in commercial and public buildings, and making up for the dearth of toilets for women who are 50.8 per cent of the Victorian population but not at all well catered for in the bathroom department. (Check out the new Sydney Fish Markets for evidence of a dramatic under-provision of toilets for women in a site that was always expected and designed to accommodate thousands – actually 5000 – visitors at once.)
Other ministerial appointments include (note the number of portfolios crammed in for each): Colin Brooks as Industry and Advanced Manufacturing Minister, Defence Industry Minister and Skills for TAFE Minister; Jaclyn Symes, Development Victoria and Precincts Minister, in addition to her role as Treasurer, Industrial Relations Minister and the Leader of the government in the Legislative Council; Enver Erdogan, Environment Minister and Outdoor Recreation Minister in addition to his current role as Casino, Gaming and Liquor Regulation Minister; Sonya Kilkenny, Attorney-General and Minister for Planning, will also be Violence Reduction Minister and Finance Minister.
Carbon offsets are up, Safeguard Mechanism is failing
The nation’s flagship climate policy – the Safeguard Mechanism is failing, and industrial emitters are relying heavily on offsets to meet their emission reduction obligations rather than on long term systemic reduction of their onsite emissions.
This is according to new data released by the Australian government’s Clean Energy Regulator (CER), which finds the aggregate on site emissions from the country’s biggest emitter only dropped by 2.3 per cent in 2024 – 25.
Instead, offset use has surged by 45 per cent year on year, and more than 80 per cent of offsets surrendered come from methods that have been criticised for being low integrity.
The government claims net emissions (including offsets) have fallen 7 million tonnes, but according to analysis by Climate Integrity, the North Shelf expansion alone would wipe out all net emission reductions under the offset scheme, adding 7.7 million tonnes to the nation’s Scope 1 emissions every year. As executive director of the not-for-profit, Claire Snyder said, big emitters are “buying their way out of obligations” thanks to this “poor policy”, and the “safeguard mechanism” is just the “clearing house for low integrity offsets”.
Food network bringing soft plastic recycling bins
Box Divvy, a food network that sells distributed produce and pantry goods from Australian suppliers through community operated hubs, is setting up infrastructure for soft plastic recycling bins.
The NSW Environmental Protection Authority has funded 50 per cent of the upfront costs of rolling out 500, 240-litre bins made to collect soft plastic – while the network is funding the rest and covering ongoing collection and processing costs.
The organisation already had 140 bins installed in December and is now rolling out another 170 at Box Divvy Hubs around NSW and ACT, and additional sites will soon be joining the program.
The organisation expects to collect three tonnes a month.
Government should buy up degraded land
According to Justin Jonson, managing director of Threshold Environmental, Australia is sitting on a million hectares of degraded land, and we could be restoring it into natural capital that delivers carbon credits, helps build a more resilient landscape and holds long-term economic values.
According to analysis by Global Forest Watch, net native forest loss has averaged twenty million hectares per year for more than two decades, driven largely by logging, fire and agricultural clearing. Australia has lost an average of 100,000 hectares of tree cover per year over the last 20 years.
Jonson points to the Western Australian wheatbelt agriculture region, where saline and marginal farmland is costing farm productivity, but could be turning the remnant vegetation into a riparian corridor and wetland into a functioning ecosystem.
Biophilic Design awards closing submissions soon
Submissions for Living Futures Oceania’s 2026 Biophilic Design Awards are closing on 1 May. The awards are looking for exemplary projects for the categories: interior and renovation, building scale and community and urban scale, and all built and occupied projects across Australia and New Zealand are encouraged to apply.
Jobs – CRREM
The CRREM (Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor) Foundation has appointed Michael Hogenboom as its director of data, impact and innovation and Scape’s Chris Nunn to its ever-growing regional advisory board.
Hogenboom, who will be based between the foundation headquarters in the Netherlands and the UK, was previously at Celonis, a world-leading process mining platform, in a role driving sustainability change in multinational supply chains.
CRREM chief executive Andrea Palmer told The Fifth Estate about the appointment Thursday of Chris Nunn, general manager of ESG at student housing developers Scape to its regional advisory board, making Nunn the latest Australian to join CRREM’s decision making body.
Earlier in February, Megali Wardle, acting director of NABERS, was also appointed to the committee advising the APAC region, joining Rick Walters, senior manager of responsible ownership for Aware Super on its foundation board in November last year. In addition, Green Building Council of Australia’s chief impact officer, Jorge Chapa and UTS’s research director for engineering, Dr Sven Teske, sit on the organisation’s technical board.
Skills
According to airconditioning manufacturers Daikin, there is a strong demand in the heating, ventilation and airconditioning (HVAC) sector, but technicians are entering the trade without proper exposure to new software and technology used in products.
In order to develop skills for the next generation of tradies, the company is rolling out its apprentice technician and graduate engineer program in May to provide hands on training with diagnostics, controls and connected systems through its academies across Australia.
Director of human resources, corporate affairs and services Ian Hurley said the sector needs to offer modernised training to keep pace with the technological changes and there us a shared responsibility to prepare people for more advanced, and intelligent HVAC.