Every Government Has Now Signed Up to Modernise the National Construction Code — Digital, AI-Ready, One National Market. No Dates Yet and the Residential Pause Holds to Mid-2029. Keep Building to Today's Code and Get Your Pain Points In.

Every government has now signed the same NCC reform plan

Commonwealth, state and territory ministers responsible for housing, homelessness, planning and building met at Parliament House on Friday 16 October 2026 for their second Joint Ministerial Meeting on Housing Supply and Affordability. According to the official communiqué published by Treasury, they "committed to modernise the National Construction Code (NCC)", calling it "a once‑in‑a‑generation opportunity to transform how Australia builds".

The meeting produced a shared statement of reform commitment with five reform directions and a list of preliminary work for the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB). The directions themselves are not new. They track the five reforms Treasury set out in its NCC Modernisation Project interim report on 30 April 2026. What is new is that every jurisdiction has now agreed to them in writing, and it is the states and territories that give the Code legal effect, as The Good Builder pointed out on 19 October.

Nothing changes on site yet. The statement has no dates attached, the ABCB's work is described as "preliminary", and the pause on residential NCC changes agreed in 2025 still stands.

This article summarises the communiqué and related public material. It is not legal or compliance advice.

The five reform directions

According to the shared statement, jurisdictions agree to:

• Simplify NCC access and use. The ABCB will start preliminary work, with jurisdictions and industry, to deliver NCC 2025 digitally and make it "AI‑ready", explore pilot digital tools (including AI), and improve readability: clearer language, removing "excess content, outdated, duplicated and inconsistent provisions", reordering requirements around user needs and building classifications, creating simple solution manuals and working towards national evidence registers.
• Recommit to a national market. Support "a single national market through a national code", and work on a process to analyse state and territory variations to identify inconsistencies and understand why they exist.
• Reform governance. Ministers set policy direction; the ABCB makes technical code decisions, informed by regulators, jurisdictions and industry. Decisions should be backed, where practical, by transparent cost–benefit analysis, "including consideration of impact on commercial feasibility for new housing".
• Enable innovation and products. Establish "clear, nationally consistent and scalable pathways" for safe, innovative products and methods, including support for modular and prefabricated construction.
• Reduce the cost of demonstrating compliance. Design "risk‑based proportionate ways of demonstrating compliance", tailored to building type and complexity.

After the meeting, ministers held a roundtable with investors, modular housing manufacturers, unions and construction companies on modern methods of construction.

What the communiqué does not change

The residential pause still applies. At their October 2025 meeting, building ministers agreed that no further residential changes to the NCC would be made until mid‑2029, except essential quality and safety measures. The October 2026 statement does not alter that, and says modernisation will maintain "the high building quality standards expected by Australians".

Adoption is still state by state. The 2025 communiqué said states and territories could adopt NCC 2025 from 1 May 2026, and that adoption "is a matter for each jurisdiction". The commitment on variations is to analyse them, not to remove them.

No timetable. Treasury says the NCC Modernisation Project's final report "will be released later this year". That is where the directions are expected to turn into decisions.

Industry has been asking for this

The peak bodies have pushed for a rewrite for most of the year. HIA's NCC campaign page calls for a "knock-down and rebuild" of the Code. It says the latest edition is more than 8.5 times longer than the original code and that defined terms have grown from 64 to 363. HIA wants a fully digital NCC with free referenced standards, faster acceptance of new products and performance solutions, and more practical deemed-to-satisfy alternatives for low-risk Class 1a homes. It cites its 2026 Small Business Conditions Survey finding that 62% of small business owners report NCC changes causing a moderate to major negative impact.

Master Builders Australia called Treasury's interim report "a positive step forward". In April, Master Builders CEO Denita Wawn told SBS News that "the NCC's sheer size, poor drafting, complexity and scope have made it unwieldy and impractical".

The numbers ministers quoted, in context

Ministers welcomed dwelling completions up 15.9% over the year to the June quarter 2026 and a record 248,733 homes under construction. Both match the ABS Building Activity release for the June quarter (7 October 2026). The 15.9% compares one quarter with another: 47,168 dwellings completed in the June 2026 quarter against 40,699 a year earlier, seasonally adjusted. The ABS also shows commencements rose 7.0% in the quarter to 52,201.

Ministers also said August approvals were 10.3% higher than a year earlier. In the same month, the ABS Building Approvals release shows total dwellings approved fell 6.1% to 16,953, with private dwellings excluding houses down 21.2%.

| Item | Where it stands | | --- | --- | | Agreement | Shared statement on NCC modernisation, all jurisdictions, 16 October 2026 | | First concrete work | ABCB preliminary work: digital, AI‑ready NCC 2025; readability clean-up; simple solution manuals; national evidence registers | | State variations | To be analysed to identify inconsistencies and reasons; no commitment to remove them | | Innovation | Nationally consistent pathways for new products and methods, including modular and prefab | | Compliance | Risk‑based, proportionate ways to show compliance, by building type and complexity | | Residential pause | No residential changes until mid‑2029, except essential safety and quality measures | | Timing | No dates; Treasury final report due later in 2026 |

What it means for the builder's desk

• Build to the code that applies in your state today. Nothing in the communiqué changes technical requirements. Check which NCC edition and state variations apply to each job, as you do now.
• Expect the format to change before the content. The first visible change is likely to be a digital, searchable NCC and plain-language rewrites. When pilot tools appear, test them, but keep relying on the adopted edition and your certifier.
• If you build modular or prefab, get involved. The "innovation and products" direction is where approval pathways for modern methods will be designed. Feed your product certification problems to HIA or Master Builders while the design is open.
• Keep a file of compliance pain points. The compliance direction promises cheaper, risk-based ways to show compliance. Examples of documentation that costs time without adding safety are useful evidence for your association's submissions.
• Working across borders? Note your variation headaches. The variations analysis is the opening for builders working in more than one state to show where differences add cost.
• Watch for Treasury's final report. That is the next real step, and the point where dates, governance changes and any ABCB restructure should become clear.

Sources: Treasury, Meeting communiqué: Joint Ministerial Meeting on Housing Supply and Affordability, October 2026 (16 October 2026); Treasury, NCC Modernisation Project interim report (30 April 2026); Treasury, Meeting communiqué: Building Ministers' Meeting, October 2025 (22 October 2025); ABS, Building Activity, Australia, June 2026 (7 October 2026); ABS, Building Approvals, Australia, August 2026; HIA, Modernising the NCC; Master Builders Australia, National Construction Code Interim Report a positive step forward; SBS News (15 April 2026); The Good Builder (19 October 2026).