New Victorian Building Minister must delay building code changes

HIA Victorian Executive Director, Keith Ryan, said the home building industry across Australia is not only dealing with fuel cost increases caused by the conflict in the Middle East but in Victoria is also many other law changes for which little detail is yet available.

"It is unreasonable to impose new laws at this difficult time." said Mr Ryan. "It is even worse to do so with little notice and little detail. Particularly with surging energy prices and continued global uncertainty.

"With the NCC 2025 the Victorian government gave the industry barely five weeks notice of the commencement date and worse still then took another two weeks to get around to providing the industry with more complete detail about the Victorian version of NCC 2025.

"And it was left to the regulator to provide this extra detail by email. With a disclaimer to say that the final version may be slightly differently worded.

"The other Australian governments have been acknowledging the current challenges and supporting their home building industry. New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory are not implementing NCC 2025 until 1 May 2027. They clearly understand now is not a good time to impose non-urgent regulatory changes.

"Victoria should do the same.

"The Victorian Government previously committed to support the home building industry to build 800,000 homes in ten years.

"The Victorian government needs to hold up its side of the bargain and provide support to help home builders to build more homes. The best way to do this is for Minister Staikos to get an early way and success is to delay unnecessary regulatory changes," concluded Mr Ryan.