Building regulations to be toughened

As the Government has sought to introduce measures to make building easier and more affordable, it has also decided to investigate strengthening legislation to hold negligent builders accountable 

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk has proposed a range of measures designed to make building cheaper and faster, including reforming the consent process, removing barriers to overseas building products, making remote inspections standard procedure and reducing oversight for low-risk work – which will be offset by strengthened requirements for building professionals. 

“For this to succeed, we must ensure that we have qualified tradespeople doing the work, standing by it and being accountable if things go wrong,” said Penk. 

“The current registration and licensing regimes are not working as well as they could and, while the vast majority of tradespeople are competent, highly skilled professionals, a small minority are holding the sector back.” 

Current deterrents aren’t working 

Currently, penalties prescribed under the Building Act are not proportionate to the cost of remediating defect work and don’t do enough to deter tradies from cutting corners, said Penk. 

“This lack of robust requirements also has an enormous flow-on effect, which means councils are more likely to be overly risk-averse out of fear that their ratepayers will be liable for paying the bill as the last man standing.” 

Penk said the Government is looking at four ways to strengthen registration and licensing regimes: 

• Lifting the competence and accountability requirements for building professionals. 

• Improving consumer protection measures in the Building Act to provide the right support for consumers. 

• Ensuring regulators have the right powers to hold people to account with a focus on licensing, complaints, and disciplinary processes. 

• Introducing new penalties to deter bad behaviour. The Government is currently consulting on creating a new offence to deter deceptive behaviour during a remote inspection with a $50,000 penalty for individuals and $150,000 for businesses.