Home building costs to drop due to red tape reduction

A new report from the Productivity Commission into small businesses' engagement with regulators has been welcomed by the Housing Industry Association (HIA) who are claiming it will ultimately help to reduce building costs.

HIA chief executive industry policy and media, Graham Wolfe, said that with around 85% of the residential building industry being small businesses, they often do not have the capacity to manage excessive compliance or data collection burdens. 

"Red tape ultimately gets built into the cost of delivering a product or service, which in our case adds to the cost of building a home," said Wolfe.

Wolfe pointed to some of the approaches in the report to reduce the compliance burden on small businesses, including reference in the recommendations to regulators to take a more reasonable approach to the requirements for data and information collection.

"This is particularly current with the problem being faced by the housing industry of mandatory contractor payment reporting to the Australian Tax Office, which is an unnecessary demand on small business and a further example of business undertaking unpaid work for a government agency," he said.

"The incoming federal government has given a strong commitment to address the red tape burden on small business and we look forward to working with them to implement measures from this report where appropriate," concluded Mr Wolfe.