It included welcome measures that invest in housing supply, simplify building regulations, improve access to mandatory standards and make it easier to build.

While these are important steps, there is a broader conversation needed around productivity in construction. When we look at the best way to achieve high productivity, we know that reducing the standards that protect building compliance, quality and public confidence doesn’t lead to the best outcomes.

The productivity outcome we are aiming for is best achieved by designing a better system. This means one that is nationally consistent, technically clear, properly resourced and supported by a strong professional workforce. We know housing supply and productivity are deeply linked. Australia needs to build more homes, but it also needs to stop wasting time and money on avoidable defects, inconsistent rules and fragmented compliance systems.

The real cost of a system under strain

Productivity in construction is not about cutting corners. Rather, it is about creating certainty, consistency and confidence across the entire building process. Effective regulation gives industry participants confidence that the rules will be applied fairly and enforced consistently. It means businesses that invest in doing the right thing are competing on a level playing field rather than being undercut by those willing to ignore standards or take unacceptable risks.

Strong regulation also protects Australia from poor-quality products and materials. Builders, designers and consumers need confidence that every structural product, fire safety system or waterproofing material will perform to the standard expected under Australian conditions.

Importantly, a well-regulated sector also gives confidence to investors and insurers. Predictable compliance frameworks reduce uncertainty, improve risk assessment and support long-term investment in housing delivery. When confidence in building quality is strong, the entire market functions more efficiently.

Every dollar spent on avoidable rework is a dollar not invested in new supply. Waterproofing defects alone cost an estimated $2.5 billion annually. Broader estimates place total apartment defect remediation between $5.2 billion and $7.2 billion each year. These are productivity failures with direct consequences for housing delivery.

Investment without compliance reform is a leaky bucket

If governments pour money into housing supply without strengthening compliance capacity, the system becomes a leaky bucket. Investment goes in, but value drains out through defects, delays and uncertainty. If governments are serious about productivity, building compliance must be treated as productivity infrastructure.

The fragmented approach to NCC (National Construction Code) 2025 adoption illustrates the dysfunction currently undermining productivity. Victoria adopted the updated code from 1 May 2026. New South Wales has delayed adoption until 1 May 2027. Tasmania remains in a state of uncertainty, with legislation stalled in Parliament. Industry is being asked to plan, price and deliver projects without certainty about which rules apply or how jurisdictional variations will affect cost and compliance.

At the same time, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has stated that the NCC should simply be slashed by 90 percent and reduced to only 200 pages. This fundamentally misunderstands its purpose. The NCC exists to provide technical requirements for every type of building that may be constructed across one of the most geographically and climatically diverse countries in the world.

Australia has alpine regions, cyclone-prone areas, flood zones, deserts and coastal environments. We deal with reactive clay soils, sandy sites, landslip risks and extreme heat. Of course, the NCC is complex – it reflects the complexity of the environment we build in and the performance standards we rightly expect.

The answer is not to strip technical requirements out of the code. The answer is to invest in the Australian Building Codes Board so the NCC becomes easier and more efficient to use. Industry needs smarter digital access to requirements – systems that allow practitioners to identify the applicable standards for a particular building type and location quickly and clearly. That is how complexity is reduced without compromising safety, resilience or quality.

AIBS supports simplification where it improves clarity, consistency and efficiency. But simplification must not become a euphemism for weakening oversight. The risk is that red tape becomes a catch-all phrase that fails to distinguish between unnecessary duplication and essential compliance. What we need is smarter building regulations, not uninformed legislation that bureaucrats believe to be solutions, leaving the administrative burden of implementation to building surveyors.

The evidence leaves no room for doubt. The establishment of the NSW Building Commission, backed by significant state investment and stronger enforcement, has coincided with a measurable decline in serious defects in newer apartment buildings there. Compliance done well is not a brake on productivity; it’s one of the conditions that makes sustained productivity possible.

The bottleneck inside the pipeline

Housing supply does not increase simply because governments announce targets or fund enabling infrastructure. Homes still need to be designed, assessed, approved, inspected and certified. One of the most critical constraints in the housing delivery pipeline is the shortage of qualified building surveyors.

Trying to accelerate housing delivery without addressing that shortage is like widening a highway but leaving a single-lane bridge in the middle. The bottleneck remains regardless of what happens upstream. Building surveyors are part of the productivity infrastructure of the construction sector. Without qualified professionals to assess compliance and support approvals, the system cannot scale at the pace required.

A nationally consistent approach to accreditation, registration and workforce mobility would allow skilled practitioners to work where they are needed most. In a national housing crisis, maintaining a fragmented system where qualified professionals face unnecessary barriers to working across jurisdictions is a problem with a practical solution.

What needs to follow from this Budget

Funding, coordination and national leadership should be directed at reform that improves consistency and capacity. The industry has clear and practical ideas about how governments can improve productivity while maintaining public confidence and building quality.

That starts with treating building compliance as essential productivity infrastructure. It means supporting and investing in the building surveyor workforce, supporting nationally consistent NCC adoption, reducing duplication between jurisdictions and strengthening the capacity of regulators and the Australian Building Codes Board.

It also means modernising how practitioners access and apply technical requirements, improving digital tools and creating nationally aligned systems that reduce administrative burden without reducing standards.

Housing supply will not be solved by speed alone. It will be solved by speed with certainty, consistency and quality. The goal is not even less oversight. It provides better access to technical requirements, more effective legislation with less duplication, less rework and less uncertainty.

By Wayne Liddy, National President, AIBS

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