Australia’s building industry is being burdened by a fragmented regulatory landscape, as state and territories add their own variations to the National Construction Code (NCC).
The Building Products Industry Council (BPIC) has raised the alarm that the push for national consistency is being eroded by a wave of jurisdiction-specific red tape. Despite the NCC being designed as a harmonised framework, the BPIC claims that escalating local amendments are driving up compliance costs and placing unnecessary pressure on an already strained construction sector.
“Although the NCC is intended to operate as a nationally harmonised regulatory framework, states and territories have continued to go their separate ways,” BPIC executive officer Rodger Hills said.
The scale of the divergence is alarming. In New South Wales, state-specific variations have ballooned from just 16 in the 2022 code to more than 210 in the 2025 edition, adding roughly 70 pages of extra regulation. Tasmania has followed a similar path, introducing 125 new variations on top of existing ones, forcing local trades and designers to navigate over 150 unique changes.
“Whether a variation substitutes a clause, a sentence, or just a single word, the effect is the same: greater time spent interpreting the code and a higher risk of non-compliance,” Hills said.
Industry leaders are particularly concerned that these local add-ons often circumvent the standard public comment periods. Unlike the national code, state variations aren’t required to undergo rigorous economic impact statements or policy-neutrality tests, meaning their effect on productivity is rarely measured before they become law.
The timing of the roll-out is also causing headaches. Only Victoria and Tasmania met the original May 1 start date for the new code. Other states have delayed adoption until 2026 or 2027, creating a staggered, confusing timeline for manufacturers and builders operating across borders.
While the BPIC has welcomed the Federal Treasury’s NCC Modernisation Project, it warns that any modernisation will be undermined if states continue to go their own way.
Without a return to a truly national system, the council fears the industry will remain burdened by a fragmented environment that stifles supply chains and inflates the cost of building a home.
“Without effective reform to jurisdictional variation practices, the benefits of a modernised NCC risk being overshadowed by continued regulatory fragmentation,” Hills said.
