By Karl Hoerr -
The need to make more housing available in Australia is something virtually everyone can agree on. So, when the Commonwealth recently announced a pause to the National Construction Code (NCC) as a means to speed up approvals, there was plenty of support, including from Master Builders Australia, the peak industry body for building and construction. But what does the pause mean for building design and does it risk leaving the country behind?
Chris Knierim is CEO of the Building Designers Association of Australia (BDAA) and an advocate for building designers and energy assessors across the country. He was less enthused about the government’s decision, releasing a statement at the time. “Locking the NCC in place for four years will not accelerate housing delivery, it will stall innovation, weaken our progress towards net-zero targets, and lock in higher running costs for households,” he said.
The NCC is described as the nation’s “primary set of technical design and construction provisions for buildings”, setting out the “minimum required level for the safety, health, amenity, accessibility and sustainability of certain buildings”.
In addition to pausing further residential changes to the code until mid-2029, the government also plans to streamline the 2,000-page code, using AI to make it more useable.
In a statement at the time of the announcement, Master Builders Australia CEO Denita Wawn said the body had been vocal about the need for the pause. “The constant churn of regulatory change has added pressure to an already complex and costly system, so a focus on fixing the system first is a welcome relief,” she said.
The government said essential safety and quality changes would be excluded from the pause.
But Knierim tells the Journal the code must be able to quickly adapt to proven advancements in building performance and design. “If they stall it for four years … we’re already behind a lot of the world and it just falls further behind.”
He says he’s not advocating for changing all codes every three years. “I am saying that what we need to focus on is … energy efficiency, because if we can have better performing homes, we’re going to have cheaper homes to run … (and) if we can look at housing affordability and there are ways of making housing more affordable, then these need to be taken into consideration.”
Knierim also argues there are many other opportunities to reduce red tape, which would be more effective in stimulating the construction of new homes. He says recent natural disasters have highlighted the barriers caused by state and territory regulation.
“[W]hen we have a flood there is no fence that stops a flood going from Queensland to New South Wales. So if there is going to be a different regulation in New South Wales as opposed to Queensland where this border line is, to me (that) is absolutely ridiculous.”
Knierim says he supports the National Registration Framework for Building Practitioners proposed by the Australian Building Codes Board, which would allow tradespeople to work in different jurisdictions.
“[T]hat significantly will reduce the amount of red tape … We don’t have to go, ‘now I’ve got to go and apply for a licence in Victoria’. No, there needs to be some form of recognition for these people,” he says.
Knierim says it’s all increasingly acting as a handbrake for members. “[T]hey’re saying that because of all of these requirements now, one third of every project is now spent on admin.”
He also says too many basic errors are being allowed to go unchecked on building sites. “These 101 mistakes to me should be something that is never, ever happening. And they happen far too frequently,” he says.
“We’ve got issues with waterproofing … It’s not mandatory that all wet areas need to be inspected, which I don’t believe consumers are aware of and I believe that every wet area should be inspected and signed off on and not just say, ‘well, we’ve inspected 10 per cent, therefore the rest of them are ok’. And that’s the downfall.”
Knierim is critical of the NSW Planning Portal, which he describes as “un-user friendly”. He also believes councils can act as an unreasonable barrier. “[I]f the streetscape … has a whole row of homes that are poorly designed and built, does that mean we need to continue that pathway of poorly designed and built homes, or can we change the design to set a precedent for future builds?”
He would also like to see more strategic thinking about the type of stock needed. “People just talk about the housing, ‘we just need housing’, but they don’t really look into who the housing is for and there’s a lot of people out there that will never, in the current climate, ever be able to afford to own their own home and they’re going to be renting,” he says.
“And so how can we actually get those people into the market? There was talk about the government owning portions of homes, I think that’s an excellent idea. All these ideas need to be put forward because everyone deserves the right to have a home.”
