Labor's flip flopping on housing code changes 

After three days of discussion about how the government can cut red tape, Labor has committed to cutting exactly zero pieces of red tape.

In their first term, Labor introduced over 5,000 new regulations and 400 laws into the economy. These new rules carry with them a compliance cost of $5 billion.

One of the pieces of red tape the government made worse in their first term was the National Construction Code. The NCC now totals almost 3,000 pages, and was made bigger and more complicated by Labor in 2022. It is one of the major reasons why Labor is building far fewer homes than the Coalition did while in government.

Labor has been all over the shop when it comes to the NCC.

In just over 24 hours Labor shifted position three times.

On Wednesday afternoon former Industry Minister Ed Husic admitted: “we had to do a whole bunch of changes back in 2022. They were very big.”

By Thursday afternoon the Housing Minister was proud of those changes: “the 2022 code was a really important change that was made for the country.”

Then on Thursday evening, the Treasurer announced a “review” into the Code. 

Clear as mud. 

Labor didn’t need a three day roundtable to learn their NCC changes made the housing crisis worse. They already learned that from Abundance, apparently. 

It certainly looked like the Treasurer enjoyed sitting in the Prime Minister’s chair during his Roundtable, but frankly Australians deserve better. Labor is confused and incompetent on red tape and regulation. 

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