Australian Building Codes Board and the Building Code of Australia

• The BCA should be considered the pre-eminent building regulatory document for all construction in Australia.
• The BCA should provide minimum cost effective regulation for the building industry as a first priority, and seek to provide nationally consistent regulation wherever possible.
• Deemed to comply and similar prescribed measures should always be available to the housing industry to reduce the compliance burden on small businesses. Deemed to comply provisions should reflect traditional construction techniques
• The ABCB should support voluntary industry initiatives, which provide a mechanism to analyse and adopt industry best practice where appropriate, to address construction issues, prior to seeking to develop mandatory regulation.
• As gatekeeper, new BCA provisions and amendments to existing BCA provisions should be subject to a detailed regulation impact assessment, in accordance with COAG principles for good regulatory practice.
• The ABCB’s role as ‘gatekeeper’ of the ‘national’ code, should ensure that state and local government variations are minimised and where necessary, subjected to a regulatory impact assessment.
• The makeup of the ABCB should include domestic residential building expertise at all times.