Queensland’s building regulations are to undergo a major overhaul in a bid to speed up home construction by cutting costly red tape for thousands of builders, tradies and subcontractors.
The bureaucratic “renovation” will be implemented in stages beginning with an immediate pause on plans to extend the industry’s trust account system to private projects below $10 million.
It follows calls from the industry to scrap the system because it had been proven ineffective in protecting sub-contractor payments in insolvencies.
As well, it was claimed that if the “costly and complex”system was rolled out to privately-funded projects of more than $3 million and then $1 million it “could kill many small businesses”.
Under the planned regulatory changes, about 50,000 licensees—or more than 97 per cent of the state’s small builders—also will no longer be burdened by “unnecessary” paperwork with the removal of the need to provide annual financial reports to the Queensland Building and Construction Commission.
Housing and public works minister Sam O’Connor said the state government’s so-called Building Regulation Renovation was aimed at creating “a more efficient building industry that can deliver the homes and infrastructure Queensland needs”.
“We want Queensland to be the building capital of the nation but at the moment our construction sites are the least productive in Australia.
“We have a huge challenge ahead of us … this is about doing all we can to take the pressure off our building and construction industry to get more Queenslanders into homes.”
Other key reforms to be progressively introduced include providing additional time to meet new fire protection licensing rules to minimise disruption to important building works; scrapping occupational licence fees for plumbers doing fire protection work; fast-tracking the digitising of licensing and administrative processes; and amending legislation governing the QBCC to remove duplicate workplace safety notification requirements.
The overhaul comes as the state’s $59-billion construction industry continues to battle prevailing cost increases, economic uncertainty and market volatility.
Master Builders Queensland chief executive Paul Bidwell said he welcomed the long overdue regulatory changes.
“We’ve been banging on, calling for action on these challenges for years,” he said.
“Slashing red tape is crucial to unlocking construction in Queensland... the state government is better empowering our industry, particularly thousands of small businesses, to get on with the job.”
