The Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Building Cooperative Workplaces No. 1) Bill 2026 passed federal parliament in recent weeks. It lets the Commonwealth preference companies covered by union-negotiated enterprise agreements (EBAs) when awarding contracts and funding.

HIA Senior Executive Director Compliance & Workplace Relations, Stuart Collins says the Bill fast-tracks a Secure Jobs Code that treats enterprise bargaining as the only legitimate way to run a building business.

"This isn't the modest administrative change it's been sold as," Mr Collins said. "It entrenches EBA coverage as a filter for who gets access to government work, and forces residential builders to negotiate with the construction union despite adverse findings against it.”

HIA Executive Director Tasmania, Benjamin Price, has today written to Treasurer Eric Abetz asking the state government to rule out adopting a similar approach in Tasmanian procurement.

"Almost all our residential builders are small and medium operators, and government work needs to stay open to them on the basis of price, quality and capacity for Tasmanians," Mr Price said. 

"If industrial arrangements become part of that test, we risk losing builders from the pool at exactly the point we need more of them."

Tasmania is reliant on small and medium sized builders to help hit its social and affordable housing targets, much of it through Commonwealth-backed funding. Mr Price said any move to filter that work by industrial arrangement rather than merit would slow delivery when the state can least afford it.

"Government work should go to whoever can build well, safely and on budget. I've asked the Treasurer to make Tasmania's position clear before this becomes an issue here too."

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