On 12 August 2026, Shadow Housing Minister Senator Andrew Bragg used a National Press Club address to propose the most radical change to Australian building regulation in decades.

The pitch: replace the current National Construction Code, which runs to more than 2,000 pages, with a Basic Australian Standard of around 80 pages. His office later clarified the target as roughly 80 to 90 pages for the residential code.

What would stay mandatory:

•       Structural integrity

•       Fire safety

•       Core health requirements

•       Basic amenity, including things like a window in a room

What would become optional:

•       Energy efficiency provisions, including the 7 star NatHERS requirement introduced in NCC 2022

•       Liveable Housing accessibility provisions such as step free entry and wider doorways

•       A range of other requirements the Coalition considers cost drivers

Bragg described the resulting product as a simple house that will not fall down, is secure and will not burn down. Much of the current guidance would be retained, but as optional rather than mandatory. The model he points to is New Zealand, which runs a building code of roughly 83 pages.

The proposal sits alongside two other Coalition housing policies announced in the same speech: capping net overseas migration at around 180,000 based on the previous year’s housing completions, and winding back Labor’s changes to property investor tax breaks.

The argument rests on cost, and the numbers cited are not trivial.

The regulatory cost figures

Bragg chaired a Senate committee on productivity which found the last seven years of code changes added somewhere between $3,600 and $33,000 to the cost of a new house. The Housing Industry Association has calculated that the 2022 and 2025 NCC changes together added around $33,000 to a new house build.

A Productivity Commission report went further, finding that regulation across all levels of government adds up to $320,000 to the cost of a new house and up to $175,000 to a new unit. That figure covers far more than the NCC, but it is the number driving the political argument.

The supply argument

The core logic is that if it costs less to build, more homes get built. Bragg has argued it is now effectively illegal to build a cheap house in Australia, and that the code mandates a standard of home that many buyers cannot afford. Only around 174,000 dwellings were completed nationally in the year to March 2026, well short of what the National Housing Accord requires.

The complexity argument

Even people who disagree with the 80 page target agree the code has become hard to navigate. It has grown from roughly 208 pages in its first edition in 1988 to more than 2,000 today. For a small builder or a certifier, that complexity is a real cost in time, errors and rework.

Industry reaction

The HIA welcomed the announcement as a timely contribution to a debate the country needs to have, though with caveats. HIA chief policy executive Simon Croft made the point that the exact page count matters less than the principle of untangling the complexity.

The pushback has been strong, and it comes from several directions.

The government response

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil described the speech as genuinely unhinged. Substantively, she agreed the code is too complex but argued that rewriting it requires a diligent reform process involving the sector, and characterised the 80 page proposal as scrapping housing standards rather than simplifying them.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers argued the Coalition was late to the issue, pointing out the government has already paused NCC changes until 2029 and has been working with states and industry on streamlining. O’Neil has met industry representatives around 30 times over the past year, with a final plan due to building ministers later this year.

The defects argument

This one should land hardest with builders. Labor minister Tim Ayres pointed to recent code changes that improved balcony waterproofing, noting the roughly $2 billion in rectification costs the industry has faced from leaking balconies. His argument is that some of the provisions being labelled red tape were written in response to expensive, systemic failures.

Any builder who has been through a defect claim knows that the cheapest possible build is not always the cheapest outcome. What gets saved at construction can come back as rectification, litigation and reputational damage years later.

The social equity argument

Asked on ABC Radio National whether his policy meant low income earners should accept living in substandard housing, Bragg answered yes, adding that having a house matters more than not having one, and that the policy involves trade offs.

That answer drew criticism from housing and social service groups. ACOSS chief executive Cassandra Goldie argued that energy performance and accessibility are fundamental to health, safety and wellbeing, and that making energy performance optional locks households into higher power bills for decades. Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azize argued the change primarily makes building cheaper for developers.

The broader critique is that removing energy efficiency requirements shifts cost from the builder to the household, and that accessibility provisions matter for an ageing population.

The is it even the right target argument

This is the most interesting technical objection. The Productivity Commission’s own inquiry into the construction sector found that zoning and the regulatory approvals process were more burdensome than building regulations. Its terms of reference did not directly cover the construction code.

In other words, the biggest regulatory handbrake on housing supply may be planning, not building standards. Anyone who has waited eight months for a DA will have views on that.

Here is where it gets practical, and where NSW has some particular wrinkles.

1. NSW has its own overlays

The NCC is a national code, but NSW applies its own requirements on top, including BASIX for energy and water performance in residential development. A federal government cutting the NCC does not automatically remove state based requirements. Building ministers from all jurisdictions have to agree on code changes, and states retain the ability to vary and add. So the practical outcome in NSW would depend heavily on what the NSW government did in response, which is genuinely unknown.

2. Optional does not mean nobody asks for it

If energy efficiency and accessibility become optional rather than mandatory, they do not disappear. Clients will still specify them. Lenders and insurers may still expect them. Some councils may still want them. What changes is that they move from a code requirement to a contract negotiation, which means the responsibility for getting the specification right lands on you.

3. More options means more risk to manage

A shorter mandatory code with a large body of optional guidance is not automatically simpler for a builder. It can mean more decisions, more variation in what different clients want, and more scope for disputes about what was and was not included. Documentation and clear contracts would matter more, not less.

4. Two tier housing stock is a real possibility

If some homes are built to the basic standard and others are not, valuers, buyers and insurers will eventually price that difference. Builders working at the basic end may find their product harder to sell or finance down the track. That is a commercial risk worth thinking about before it arrives.

5. Modern Methods of Construction is the quieter story

Federal, state and territory treasurers recently agreed to review the barriers to wider adoption of Modern Methods of Construction, which covers prefabricated and modular building. Bragg supports it, the government is funding it, and it has genuine cross party backing. For builders looking at where the industry is actually heading, that may matter more than the page count argument.

•       The Coalition proposal is opposition policy with no election due until 2028, and final details are not settled

•       The government has paused NCC changes until 2029 and is running its own simplification process

•       A final government plan is expected to go to building ministers later this year

•       NCC changes require agreement across federal, state and territory building ministers, so no single government can rewrite it alone

•       NSW state based requirements including BASIX sit outside the NCC and would need separate decisions

•       The Modern Methods of Construction review has cross party support and may move faster than the code debate

For builders on the tools, the practical position is straightforward: nothing changes today, keep building to the current code, but keep an eye on the building ministers process later this year because that is where real change will come from first.

•       Keep building to the current NCC, because it remains the law and will for some time

•       Watch the building ministers meeting outcomes later this year, since the government process is further advanced than the opposition proposal

•       If you have a view, tell your industry association, because HIA and Master Builders are actively feeding into both processes

•       Get your contracts and specifications tight now, since any move toward optional provisions puts more weight on what your contract says

•       Keep your code knowledge current regardless of which way the politics goes, because you are still liable for what you build under the code that applied at the time

•       Take a look at Modern Methods of Construction if you have not, since that reform has genuine bipartisan momentum