Leaders across Australia’s construction sector have called for free access to Australian standards as the nation strives to increase productivity and address challenges with non-compliant building work.

On Monday, leaders of six industry groups joined Standards Australia at Parliament House in Canberra in order to present a united front in gaining easier access to standards.

The groups included Housing Industry Association (HIA), Master Builders Australia (MBA), Master Electricians Australia (MEA), National Electrical and Communications Association (NECA), Master Plumbers Australia and New Zealand (MPANZ) and Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC).

The groups would like to see standards available freely online, as is the case with the National Construction Code.

Essentially speaking, Australian standards are a set of voluntary technical specification and guidelines which have been developed by Standards Australia in order to ensure that products, services and systems are safe and reliable and consistently perform as intended.

Whilst compliance with many standards are generally voluntary, many others are referenced in the National Construction Code as well as in regulations and contracts.

According to a 2018 statement by the Housing Industry Association, as many as 1.400 standards are referenced in the NCC.

With the costs of purchasing individual standards often running into several hundreds of dollars each, cost considerations have served as a barrier to standard access.

Within their meeting, the groups acknowledged that Australian standards play a significant role in driving building quality and safety.

The groups also agreed that barriers to compliance have been created by access to standards which is fragmented, outdated and inconsistent.

In response, the groups agreed to work together to advocate for a national model in relation to the access of standards across the construction sector.

The model would aim to eliminate the costs and barriers to accessing any standards which are mandated by law as well as to create better functioning tools to assist firms to manage compliance.

The groups would then present a unified proposal to government.

The objective would be that standards would be available online and free of charge.

This would be funded by state and federal governments.

Jocelyn Martin, Managing Director of HIA, said that the importance of this should not be underestimated.

Martin pointed to the results achieved through a similar initiative in 2015 which saw the NCC become available online at no cost.

Prior to this occurring, the Code had been regularly accessed by only 12,000 practitioners.

Nowadays, this number has climbed to more than 400,000 practitioners.

“As small businesses continue to struggle with high operational and living costs, and increasing red, white and green tape, HIA and industry partners are calling for free access to Australian Standards to help ease the regulatory burden for builders and tradies.

“This increasing level and complexity of regulation all adds to the regulatory burdens being placed on small businesses and by removing the paywall to access Standards it would be an important step to reduce red tape and improve housing affordability.

“This change would additionally play an important role in progressing the Governments’ deregulation and industry productivity boosting agenda …

“… By reducing the upfront cost, it (funding for free access for standards) would provide a substantial red tape reduction boost for the industry and in turn improve the useability and penetration of the NCC and associated Australian Standards.

“With more innovation and new AI tools coming online, the move to free online Standards would also act as an important step towards smarter integrated standards and help support a more fit for purpose regulatory system in 2025 and beyond.”

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