Same Build, Different Rules Across the Border
NCC 2025 applies in some states and not in others, and Victoria changed its payment rules. What the split does to build finance and to cashflow.
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Australia is running more than one edition of the building code at once, and Victoria's payment rules changed underneath contracts that were already signed. Same build, two rulebooks, and the funding file reads differently on each side of the border.
Quick Answer
Australian building rules are no longer uniform. The code edition you build to, and the payment regime you claim under, now depend on the state your site sits in. That shapes specification, program and cashflow, which is exactly what a construction or development finance assessment is built on.
Is There One Building Code Across Australia Right Now?
No, and the split is wider than at any previous code change. As at August 2026 there is no single edition of the National Construction Code in force across the country, and which edition applies to your project depends on the state or territory the site sits in.
Three things follow from that, and they compound. The specification you price to is jurisdictional. The licence that permits the work is jurisdictional. And the statutory rules governing when you can claim and when you must be paid are jurisdictional as well. Any one of those alone is manageable. Together they mean a template carried across a border is a risk rather than an efficiency.
NCC 2025 was published on 1 May 2026 and each jurisdiction decides its own adoption timing, which the Australian Building Codes Board confirms when it describes adoption as progressive and subject to individual implementation arrangements. Several jurisdictions deferred. At least one adopted and then reversed. The result is a genuinely fragmented compliance picture and it will stay fragmented into 2027.
From a funding perspective this is not a compliance footnote. The code edition is a funding input, because it moves the specification, the contract sum and the program, and those 3 things are exactly what a construction facility is sized and staged against. A feasibility built in one state and reused in another can carry a specification allowance that no longer matches what the local certifier will pass.
Which Edition Applies Where Your Site Sits?
Which edition applies depends entirely on the jurisdiction, and in several of them the position has moved at least once since May. The table below is a starting point for the conversation with your certifier, not a substitute for it.
| Jurisdiction | Position on the current edition | What to confirm before you price |
|---|---|---|
| Victoria | In force from 1 May 2026 | Current edition, plus a new statutory payment regime |
| New South Wales | Deferred to 1 May 2027 | Previous edition, with a transition period running |
| Queensland | Deferred to 1 May 2027 | Previous edition, with voluntary early adoption available |
| Tasmania | Commenced 1 May 2026, then reverted to the previous edition from 5 June 2026 | Previous edition until 1 May 2027, and any transitional cases |
| Australian Capital Territory | Transition running to 1 May 2027, either edition until then | Which edition your approval will actually be issued under |
| South Australia | Plumbing volume adopted, building volume deferred | Which volume your scope sits in, and what you priced to |
| Western Australia | Adopted from 1 May 2026, with local transition arrangements | The applicable edition with your permit authority |
| Northern Territory | Declared not to apply from 1 May 2026 | That the previous edition still governs your approval |
Tasmania is the one worth reading twice. The current edition commenced there on 1 May 2026 and was then reversed by the Building Amendment Act 2026, which took effect on 5 June 2026 and reinstated the previous edition until 1 May 2027. A Tasmanian project priced in May under one rulebook may be certified under another, and transitional provisions decide which.
The practical rule is that the edition applying to a project is generally the one operative when the approval is granted rather than when the application is lodged, and a project cannot mix provisions from two editions. Nominate one, apply it consistently, and confirm it with the certifier in writing before the contract sum is fixed.
What Changed in Victorian Payment Rules?
Victoria's security of payment regime was overhauled with effect from 15 April 2026, and the changes reach further into cashflow than most builders expected. The Victorian building regulator sets out the changed scheme in plain terms, including the 20 business day cap on payment, the 10 business day default where a contract does not specify a due date, and the 6 month window to serve a claim after practical completion, on its changes to the security of payment scheme page.
| What changed | Position before | Position now |
|---|---|---|
| Excluded amounts | Variations, delay costs and latent conditions were barred from claims | Abolished, so those amounts are claimable |
| Reference dates | Entitlement tied to contractual reference dates | Replaced by a statutory monthly entitlement |
| Payment timing | Whatever the contract provided, which could run long | Capped at 20 business days from service of a claim, with a 10 business day default where the contract is silent |
| Claiming after practical completion | A shorter window | Extended to 6 months after completion of the works |
| Reasons for withholding | New reasons could surface at adjudication | Limited to what was set out in the payment schedule |
| Notice-based time bars | Enforceable as drafted | Can be declared unfair and set aside |
| Business day count | 22 December to 10 January counted like any other period | Excluded, so the statutory clocks pause across the shutdown |
Read together, that pushes more of the contract sum into claimable progress claims and shortens the tail on final money, including how retention and defects liability interact with the last payments on a job. For a builder, more of the contract becomes recoverable through the statutory process rather than through negotiation.
Other jurisdictions run their own timetables and have not been confirmed to have made the same change, so a builder operating in two of them is running two claim routines side by side. What each of these provisions means for your specific contract, and whether a particular time bar in it is at risk of being set aside, is a question for a construction solicitor rather than for a broker.
Do Contracts Signed Years Ago Now Run on the New Rules?
Yes, with one important limit. The Victorian amendments apply to construction contracts regardless of when they were entered into, so a contract signed in 2024 is now administered under a regime that did not exist when it was negotiated.
The limit is that the new provisions do not apply to payment claims served before 15 April 2026, or to adjudication applications made but not determined as at that date. Everything from that point forward runs on the new rules. The effect is that the entitlement changed on a live job while the administration habit did not, and habit is what most sites actually run on.
That is the group most exposed: builders still working an older contract administration routine on contracts signed years ago. The reference date logic they are used to no longer applies, the amounts they have been parking as unclaimable are now claimable, and the payment terms written into the contract no longer control if they exceed the statutory cap.
For a funder, the relevance is straightforward. A claim cycle that has changed underneath a live project changes the timing of the cashflow the facility is modelled against. In deals I have seen, the builders who came through this cleanly were the ones who re-papered their claim process in the first month rather than discovering the change through a disputed payment schedule three claims later.
How Does a Jurisdiction Split Reach the Funding File?
A jurisdiction split reaches the funding file indirectly and late, because a funder does not lend against a rulebook. It lends against a program and a contract, and the rulebook is upstream of both.
Compliance friction shows up as a cashflow gap rather than as a compliance line item: a certifier query that holds a stage sign-off, a variation priced under one edition and built under another, a claim submitted on a timetable borrowed from a different state. None of those appear in a feasibility as a cost. All of them appear in the staged drawdowns calendar as a delay, and delay on a development facility is capitalised interest.
In original terms, 205,249 dwellings were approved across Australia over the 2025-26 financial year, a 9.2 per cent increase on the 187,944 approved the year before.Source: ABS Building Approvals, Australia, as at June 2026The volume backdrop is not the problem here. Work is being approved at pace. What decides whether a given builder converts approvals into funded, billed, banked revenue is whether the paperwork behind each stage matches the jurisdiction it sits in.
The mechanism by which a delay becomes a funding problem is set out in what capitalised interest does to your development loan, and the drawdown machinery that sits on top of the contract is covered in how a development lender reads your quantity surveyor report.
How Do You Rebuild the Claim Calendar for Each State?
You rebuild the claim calendar by starting from the statutory position in the state the work is happening, then checking what the contract adds on top, rather than the other way round. The contract cannot shorten what the statute guarantees, and in Victoria it can no longer extend the payment window past the cap.
That sounds obvious and it is routinely done backwards. Most builders build the calendar from the contract they signed, which was usually drafted from a template originating in whichever state they normally work in. The statutory timetable then quietly overrides parts of it, and the difference between the two is the gap that shows up as a late drawdown.
The fix is administrative rather than commercial. One claim calendar per jurisdiction, built from the statute up, with the contract read against it and any conflict escalated before the first claim rather than after a disputed payment schedule.
What Policy Sits Above All of This?
Three separate policy movements sit above the jurisdiction split, and only two of them are actually in force. Nothing below is a forecast and none of it should be read as one.
| Measure | Status | What it touches |
|---|---|---|
| The current code edition | Live, but adopted differently in each jurisdiction | Specification, contract sum and program |
| Victorian payment reform | In force from 15 April 2026, including on existing contracts | Claim timing, claimable amounts and cashflow |
| NSW Pre-sale Finance Guarantee | Live and expanding, with further projects announced 30 July 2026 | Presale cover on approved NSW residential projects |
| APRA presales proposal | Consultation only, submissions closing 7 September 2026 | Bank capital treatment of development lending |
On the state-level measure, the NSW Government announced on 30 July 2026 that construction of nearly 650 homes at Rhodes and Auburn would be brought forward under its $1 billion Pre-sale Finance Guarantee, a revolving fund under which the state guarantees a portion of a project's presales. The programme has now helped accelerate more than 1,200 homes across the state, according to the NSW Government release.
The federal proposal attacks the same bottleneck from the other end and is not in force. Because it is a capital rule affecting how banks weight development exposures rather than a rule about your project, we have covered it from the underwriting side in the builder your lender has to approve too. Nothing in a current feasibility should be built on it.
How Should You Sequence a Cross-Border Build Program?
Sequence the jurisdiction question first, before the finance question, because the finance follows the contract and the contract follows the code. Confirm the edition that applies at the site, confirm your licence and registration are current in that state, and confirm the statutory payment timetable you will actually be claiming under.
Those 3 answers change the contract you sign, and the contract is the document a funder reads hardest. A cross-border program is not riskier because it crosses a border. It becomes riskier when the paperwork does not admit that it did, and a fixed-price contract written to the right jurisdiction with variations and delay costs priced rather than assumed reads far better than a larger contingency bolted onto the wrong template.
Get the document set together before you go looking for funding. The construction loan pack sets out what a funder expects to see and in what order, and the construction hub maps how a facility is staged against it. If the site is not yet under a build contract, the funding that carries the land and approval stage behaves differently again, which is covered in funding a development before the build loan starts.
One last point on scope. Everything above is about how these rules reach a funding decision. What a particular code provision requires of your design, and what a particular clause in your contract obliges you to do, are questions for your certifier and your solicitor respectively. Get both answers in writing before the contract sum is fixed, because a funder will read the contract you signed rather than the intention behind it.
Australia is running more than one building rulebook at once, and the split is not cosmetic. The code edition that applies, the licensing that permits the work, and the statutory payment timetable you claim under all now depend on the jurisdiction your site sits in. Every one of those differences reaches the funding file through the same 3 channels: specification, program and claim timing. A funder reads the contract, not the intention behind it.
Key takeaway: Confirm the code edition and the payment regime for the state your site sits in before you sign the contract, and re-confirm both if the project runs past the middle of next year.Frequently Asked Questions
As at 6 August 2026 the position differs by jurisdiction. Victoria has been on the current edition since 1 May 2026. New South Wales and Queensland deferred to 1 May 2027. Tasmania commenced on 1 May 2026 and then reverted to the previous edition from 5 June 2026 until May 2027. South Australia adopted the plumbing volume only, and the remaining jurisdictions run their own arrangements, so confirm the applicable edition with your certifier before pricing a job or before relying on any fixed-price building contract written elsewhere.
They do. The amendments apply to construction contracts regardless of when they were entered into, so a contract signed in 2024 is now administered under the regime that commenced on 15 April 2026. The limit is that they do not apply to payment claims served, or adjudication applications made and not determined, before that date. Builders still running an older claim routine are the most exposed, because the entitlement changed while the habit did not, which flows straight through to the interest carried on the facility.
It does, because the code edition, the licensing regime and the statutory payment rules all feed the contract sum, the program and the claim cycle a funder advances against. The credit questions stay the same but the evidence behind them is jurisdiction specific. Where the site sits also drives which valuer, quantity surveyor and certifier the funder will accept, so a panel that worked on your last project may not travel with you.
It varies by contract and by jurisdiction. In Victoria the current regime caps payment at 20 business days from service of a claim, and where the contract is silent payment falls due 10 business days after the claim could first have been served. The period from 22 December to 10 January no longer counts as business days, so the statutory clock pauses across the shutdown. A funder models the cycle you actually experience rather than the one in the contract, against certified progress in the quantity surveyor report.
Not without a jurisdiction-specific review. The code edition referenced, the licensing that permits the work and the statutory payment provisions all differ, and a template drafted for one state can conflict with the statute in another, which then overrides it. Have a construction solicitor adapt the contract for each jurisdiction before signing, and check how the funder wants the claim schedule structured, which is set out alongside the rest of the evidence in the builder your lender has to approve too.
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