Each state and territory in Australia has a distinct construction security of payment legislative framework in place. This can present uncertainty and pose a challenge for industry stakeholders, particularly principals and contractors that operate across multiple states and territories in Australia. In order to assist, we have prepared an Australia-wide comparison table of every security of payment legislation in place. You can download the table by clicking on the image below. Our …
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New laws to expose lengthy business payment terms
Today, the Coalition Government introduced a bill into Federal Parliament that will require businesses and government enterprises with an annual total income of >$100 million to publicly report on their payment terms/practices for ‘small business suppliers’ (entities with less than $10 million annual turnover) every six months. The Payment Times Reporting Bill 2020 (Cth) (the Bill) will not mandate any specific payment terms or time requirements, however it will introduce a Payment Times …
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Queensland Building Industry Law Reform – Building Industry Fairness Bill 2020 – Part 2
The idea in brief: We recently prepared our first article in a two-part series (available here) on the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2020 (the BIF Amendment Bill). The introduction of the BIF Amendment Bill came as a result of the combined recommendations of the Building Industry Fairness Reforms Evaluation and Implementation Panel and the recent Special Joint Taskforce into Fraud in the Construction Industry, which resulted in …
“Never waste a good crisis” – Post-COVID-19 Federal Government reform agenda
The Prime Minister flagged yesterday (23 April 2020) that the Federal Government is actively reviewing policy options presented in a multitude of review papers from the past decade to identify, and implement, productivity enhancing reforms in order to ready Australia’s economy for a post-COVID recovery. You can read the transcript of that press conference here. What reforms might be involved? In yesterday’s press conference, the Prime Minister made clear that all previously mooted …
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COVID-19 National SME Commercial Leasing Code may see commercial landlords forced to fund profitable tenants
The National Cabinet of the Commonwealth and State and Territory Governments in Australia, which has been regularly meeting to lead Australia through the COVID-19 pandemic response, recently released the ‘COVID-19 National SME Commercial Leasing Code’ (the Code). You can read the Code here. The Code states that it is designed to ‘impose a set of good faith leasing principles for application to commercial tenancies’ in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic and ‘to aid the management of …