Regulatory Reform and National Economic Benefits

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The building and construction industry has undergone significant regulatory reform over the last twenty years. A number of these reforms have related to the work of the ABCB, including:

• The creation of a single, nationally consistent Building Code of Australia (BCA), which occurred in 1992;
• The move to a performance-based BCA, which occurred in 1996; and
• The consolidation of building and plumbing regulation, resulting in the National Construction Code, which occurred in 2011.

In an effort to ascertain the benefits of a national performance-based construction code the ABCB commissioned the Centre for International Economics to quantify the impact of building regulatory reform to date and identify any past, present, or potential barriers that may be preventing the full benefits of reform being realised.

The report has now been released and estimates annual national economic benefit of $1.1billion from the suite of building regulatory reforms introduced through the ABCB over the past 20 years. The full report is found below.