31 Aug 2026
Five minutes with Shay Singh on housing reform
This month the Senate Select Committee on Productivity in Australia released its interim report on housing. GBCA supported many of the measures of the report and its recognition of the scale of the task at hand – how to deliver more housing while maintaining standards that make homes healthy, resilient and affordable to run. We spent five minutes with Shay Singh, our Head of Policy, to understand how this challenge could be overcome, without taking the National Construction Code (NCC) back to 1988.
1. Shay, can you briefly take us back to 1988 when the first edition of a national building code was released – what did housing standards look like then?
The first Building Code of Australia (BCA), released in 1988, was part of a project to pool the resources of the States and Territories, who were responsible for eight distinct building regulatory systems. It was an important step on the journey to simplify regulatory requirements, create a national code and improve productivity.
The 1988 version of the BCA was a basic set of requirements. It was only 209 pages, but that number doesn’t tell the full story. The BCA didn’t cover plumbing and drainage – those were still separate regulations until the Plumbing Code of Australia and the BCA came together as the National Construction Code (NCC) in 2011 – and they did not cover everything we expect today in a safe and healthy home or building. Since 1988, we have been constantly learning, testing and analysing the features that make buildings safe and healthy – from wind tolerance, to energy efficiency, to fire risks and more. For example, energy efficiency provisions were not adopted until the early 2000s. Anyone who has lived through a hot summer or a cold winter in both a house built to 1980s minimum standards, and one built to today’s standards will know which one they would choose when it comes to comfort and paying the power bill.
There has been plenty of debate about the costs and benefits of the NCC, but some of the most common myths have been neatly busted here by our friends at the Energy Efficiency Council.
2. How could the NCC and regulation around it be modernised so it’s more accessible and less dense?
While building regulations have always been complex, we now have technology that can make vast amounts of information more accessible. While the full NCC is over 2000 pages long, most industry practitioners do not need to access all of those pages. The Australian Government’s project to modernise and streamline the NCC is an opportunity to create simpler ways for builders and other practitioners to access and understand the information that applies to their project.
For example, instead of asking users to navigate "Volume One → Section J → Part J1" to check energy efficiency requirements, a digital NCC could interact with the user to ask questions about what they are designing, then provide clear paths to relevant information. This is a very simplistic example, but there are plenty of instances where complex information has been turned into clear and interactive guidance.
3. Do you have any examples of public documents or processes that have used technology to simplify complex information, like a building code, well?
The Australian tax return is a good example of reducing complexity without simplifying the underlying law. Tax legislation is extraordinarily complex, but the average Australian taxpayer can do their own tax return. The user experience is simplified through things like, pre-filled information, context-sensitive questions, tailored guidance and automated calculations.
GOV.UK is another example of allowing users to access vast amounts of information from a simple interface. Instead of publishing thousands of pages of guidance as PDFs, the UK Government created a system that allows users to ask questions about regulatory or administrative tasks. An interactive process helps them find the answer, rather than navigating their way through the websites of various agencies and departments.
4. GBCA supports the development of a national pattern book. What could this look like and how could it boost productivity and affordability?
One of the recommendations in the interim report was to develop a national pattern book. Last year the NSW Government released a Housing Pattern Book which offers a range of home designs using sustainable design principles. A pattern book approach can help to keep costs low and standards high while speeding up delivery of homes.
One of the key benefits is that compliance can be built into the template. Some of the complex regulatory requirements are already designed into the pattern. The NSW designs are also light-filled, cross-ventilated and all-electric, and in some cases, eligible for fast-track approval.
5. The Senate Select Committee on Productivity will present its final report on September 30. What would put housing on the right track for the future?
Tackling the housing supply crisis will take leadership and a diverse range of solutions. In finalising its report, we urge the Senate Select Committee to look beyond the ongoing debate surrounding the NCC which risks creating a false choice between housing supply and building quality.
The lesson from the examples above, and many others we can learn from, is not that the underlying regulations became simpler. Instead, technology changed how users access and navigate information. The opportunity for the NCC is similar. We must continue to ensure the technical standards within the NCC can continue to evolve to meet the challenges and changing needs of community, industry and a changing climate. But we can harness the huge potential of digital tools and other technologies to make requirements easier to find, understand and apply.