The Building Product Industry Council’s (BPIC’S) election platform outlines a policy agenda to advance building and construction standards through regulatory reform.
A message from our Executive Officer
BPIC represents Australia’s leading building products industries and related services with members and associated companies directly employing over 200,000 Australians with more than 470,000 employed indirectly. Their collective industries are worth over $54B in annual production to the Australian economy.
But fires in high-rise buildings in Melbourne’s Docklands, London’s Grenfell Tower fire, cracks in Sydney’s Opal building, and more recently Neo200 tower on Spencer Street, Melbourne, are tragic demonstrations of a building regulatory framework that is failing the industry and consumers alike.
BPIC’s 2019 Federal Election Platform outlines a policy agenda to advance building and construction standards through regulatory reform.
Our platform is backed by extensive industry and government consultation, and places a strong emphasis on immediate implementation.
We look forward to working with all political and government decision-makers to restore public confidence in our industry and ensure buildings are fit-for-purpose.
Rodger Hills
BPIC Executive Officer
Our plan to advance building and construction standards through regulatory reform:
- Elevate the Building Ministers’ Forum (BMF) to be a COAG reporting agency and require, with the input of industry via a National Discussion Paper and Summit, the development of both a set of Guiding Principals and a long-term Strategy/Roadmap for the reform of the national building regulatory framework.
- Introduce an effective penalties regime for practitioners who breach the National Construction Code (NCC).
- Extend the definition of ‘Consumer Products‘ in Australian Consumer Law (ACL) to include building and construction products so the ACCC can take action against suppliers of Non-Conforming Building Products (NCBPs).
- Encourage adoption of national building product conformity ‘chain of responsibility’ legislation by State and Territory jurisdictions (such as that enacted by the Queensland Parliament in 2017).
- Establish a requirement for product and material suppliers to demonstrate ongoing conformity testing of products.
- Official government recognition of Industry Associations that have ISO/IEC 17065:2013 compliant or JAS-ANZ accredited product compliance registers.
- Introduce a ‘conformity excise’ on imported and domestic building products. Products and materials that cannot demonstrate an appropriate level of conformity to Australian Standards and NCC requirements would be subject to a 100% excise recoverable via the same mechanisms that apply to tobacco, alcohol, oil and gas product sales.
- Subject all existing and proposed NCC variations by State and Territory jurisdictions to a mandatory justification process involving impact analysis (e.g. Regulatory Impact Statement [RIS]) at each jurisdiction’s cost.
- Establish a National Occupational Licencing Authority (NOLA) to licence all building practitioners with requirements for regular auditing of performance and practices, as well as mandatory continuing professional development.
- Ensure that Construction, Plumbing and Services – Industry Reference Committee training package material is delivered by RTO’s across the country in a consistent manner and that the same rigour is applied to tertiary institutions such that professionals enter the building supply chain with the requisite building compliance knowledge.
- Provide funding to train and grow a technical workforce that can deal with the increased volume and pace of change in legislative, regulatory and standards development.