Australia's building code has set minimum accessibility Parts for new homes since NCC 2022 — as of 2026-09-24 New South Wales leaves both Parts blank in its version and Western Australia's Building Regulations delete both

What is happening?

Since the 2022 edition, the National Construction Code carries two Parts that set a minimum accessibility level for new homes. Part H8 in Volume Two covers Class 1a houses, and Part G7 in Volume One covers the individual units of Class 2 apartment buildings. Both describe the Silver level of the Livable Housing Design guidelines: a step-free path to the entry, a step-free entrance door, internal doors and corridors wide enough to move through, a toilet on the entry level, a step-free shower and walls reinforced so that grabrails can be fitted later. The national text took effect on 2023-10-01, and on 2024-10-01 in Tasmania.

The code does not apply itself. The Australian Building Codes Board states that each state and territory decides whether and how the new provisions apply in its jurisdiction. Two jurisdictions have used that room in different ways.

• New South Wales. In the NSW version of NCC 2022, both Part H8 and Part G7 are printed as deliberately left blank, with a note that livable housing design requirements do not apply in NSW to Class 1a buildings or to sole-occupancy units in Class 2 buildings. NSW applies NCC 2025 only from 2027-05-01, so the NCC 2022 version with the two blank Parts is the one in force as of 2026-09-24.
• Western Australia. Regulation 15C of the Building Regulations 2012, in the version current from 2026-05-01, modifies the Building Code in its 2022 and 2025 editions to delete Part G7 from Volume One and delete Part H8 from Volume Two. An amending regulation published on 2026-04-15 widened the deletion from the 2022 edition alone to both editions.

The standard reached the code by a majority decision of Building Ministers on 2021-04-30, after a voluntary guideline from 2010 had not reached its aspiration. The impact analysis prepared for that decision estimated that the costs of every option it tested would exceed the benefits it could value, and it also stated that the cost-benefit analysis was not the only input for decision makers.

Whose problem is this?

The two states that switched the Parts off are also the two bodies that can switch them back on. The national code offers the text but leaves the decision to apply it with each jurisdiction, and no opened source names a national body that can require it.

Where does this problem end?

The boundary matters because the national code already contains the rule and already went through a costed decision. What differs between states is not the text of the requirement but whether each state lets that text apply to buildings inside its borders.

What is the state now, and what should it be?

Now

What it should be. The objective clause of both Parts states that housing is to be designed to meet the needs of the community, including older people and those with a mobility-related disability. That is a purpose, not a number. The ABCB does not state that every jurisdiction must apply the Parts; it states that each jurisdiction decides. The Disability Royal Commission, in recommendation 7.35 of its final report in 2023-09, recommended that states and territories immediately adopt the mandatory standard for all new dwellings if they had not already done so. That is a recommendation, not a binding national standard.

Needs a new measurementno opened document of the NSW Government or the WA Government sets a target of its own for accessible new housing, whether a share of new homes, a date for applying the Parts or a condition for ending the variation. Targets proposed by advocacy or industry groups are not used to fill this space. The 2009 aspiration that all new homes meet an agreed design standard by 2020 is left out here because the impact analysis calls it aspirational and it came from a dialogue led mostly by industry and advocacy members.

How big is it?

The number of people affected by the two switch-offs cannot be derived from the sources opened for this dossier. What can be stated is the scale of what the national standard was aimed at, taken from the impact analysis and the national statistics office.

• The consultation analysis put Australians with a mobility-related disability at about 2.9 million on the 2018 survey basis, and the decision analysis described more than 3 million with a mobility or self-care limitation. The two reports project roughly 4.5 million to 4.7 million by around 2040, using different methods.
• The national survey of 2022 counted 5.5 million Australians with disability, 21.4 percent of the population, up from 17.7 percent in 2018.
• The decision analysis estimated that options 1 to 3 would touch about 1.9 million new dwellings over the 2022 to 2031 regulatory period, and that the change would address only 3 to 9 percent of the whole problem by the end of that period, because the code reaches new buildings only.
• Monthly dwelling approvals in 2026-07, seasonally adjusted, were 4,586 in New South Wales and 2,270 in Western Australia, against 17,687 nationally. These are approvals, not completions, and they are not split by building class.

Together the two states that do not apply the Parts accounted for 6,856 of the 17,687 dwellings approved nationally in 2026-07, but that is one month of approvals and not a count of homes or people affected. The population file records the estimate as not derivable and lists the missing terms.

Under what conditions does it arise?

1. The national code is a model that each jurisdiction adopts with variations. Every state and territory adopts the National Construction Code, but each can vary it for its own territory. The two switch-offs use two different instruments. NSW prints the Parts as blank inside its own version of the code. WA leaves the code text alone and deletes the Parts through a separate state regulation.

2. The inclusion decision was made by majority, not unanimity. A majority of Building Ministers agreed on 2021-04-30 to include the Silver level in NCC 2022. The record opened here does not say how each minister voted, but a majority decision to put a text into the model code does not itself compel any state to apply it, since the ABCB states that each jurisdiction decides.

3. The costed analysis came out against every option. The decision analysis estimated for option 1, which applies Silver to all new Class 1a and Class 2 buildings, a net present value of minus 4,136.94 million dollars and a benefit cost ratio of 0.39 over 2022 to 2031 at a 7 percent discount rate, rising to 0.54 when social and employment benefits were added. It stated that under all scenarios tested the costs of all regulatory options exceeded the benefits, and in the same passage that decision makers were best placed to weigh social justice, ageing in place and human rights obligations against that net cost. Both parts of that record are available to any jurisdiction deciding whether to apply the Parts.

4. The deletion in WA is written without a stated end. Subregulations 15C(7) and 15C(11) contain no end date or period, while other provisions in the same set of regulations do state dated periods, for example regulation 15D(2) with a period ending on 2028-04-30. Regulation 15C has already been amended three times since it was introduced, so the text as of 2026-05-01 is a statement about the current text and not about what the state will do next.

What has been tried?

The attempts split along two lines. One line, running through the impact analysis, the ministerial majority and the Royal Commission, moved the standard from a voluntary guideline into the model code. The other line runs at state level, where two governments have kept that text from applying and one of them has a review under way whose result was not found.

What the two governments have said. The WA Government announcement on implementing NCC 2022 states its intention to disallow the provisions but gives no reason on that page. A national public broadcaster reported on 2024-04-27 that the WA Government said it did not want to make building new homes more complex or expensive at that time. A 2021 NSW Government statement, known here only as reproduced on a non-government health and housing page, said NSW did not support including the standards as then proposed, citing housing affordability, the construction sector and cost to the community. The same 2024 broadcast reported that the NSW Government was actively monitoring policy settings and treated better homes as a priority, and the NSW Government release of 2024-12-20 set out the partial measures listed above.

What was found?

Why is it still unsolved?

Institutional exemption — the requirement exists in the national code, and the two jurisdictions keep it from applying to new homes inside their borders through a variation and a deletion.

A national model code only becomes binding where each state gives it force, and each state is also free to give force to everything except selected Parts. That is how the Australian system is built, and the ABCB states it plainly for this standard. The result is that the rule the ministers voted into the code applies in most of the country while newly built homes in two states are not required to meet it.

The exemption is stable because each instrument sits in a different place. In NSW the change lives inside the state version of the code, and the review that could remove it has published options but no outcome in the sources found. In WA the change lives in a state regulation that was extended to the newer code edition in 2026 and whose deletion clauses carry no end date in their current text. Neither instrument has to be renewed for the exemption to continue, so the exemption continues unless someone acts to end it.

The record on which both sides can stand is the same record. The impact analysis found that the valued costs exceeded the valued benefits under every scenario, and it also stated that other considerations were for decision makers to weigh. A state that applies the Parts and a state that does not can each point to that same analysis, and no document opened here sets a shared target or asks either one to justify its choice against one.

What observation would mean it is solved?

Candidates — (a) the NSW version of the code carries Part H8 and Part G7 as operative text rather than blank Parts (b) WA regulation 15C no longer deletes Part G7 and Part H8 from the editions in force (c) a public count of new dwellings built to the Silver level, by state, shows the share of new Class 1a and Class 2 homes meeting it.

(a) and (b) alone are weaker than they look. Adopting the Parts with wide exceptions, which is one of the four options in the NSW discussion paper, or with a distant start date would change the text without changing much of what gets built. Adoption can also be reversed by a later variation or regulation, as regulation 15C already shows by having been amended three times.

(c) alone cannot be read without (a) and (b). Some builders meet the standard voluntarily, so a rising share could reflect voluntary uptake while the exemption stays in place. And no opened source publishes such a count today, even for the jurisdictions that apply the Parts. The three have to be read together, and the solved state described here is only about whether the two states apply the national text, not about whether that text is the right one.

What is it connected to?

The relations above come from comparing mechanisms across dossiers in this corpus. None of them rests on a source saying the problems are causally linked.

What these sources do not say

• The reasons behind the 2021-04-30 ministerial decision. The communique could not be opened, and the breakdown of the majority is not in any opened source.
• The outcome of the NSW review. The sources opened stop at submissions made in 2025. Whether the NSW version of NCC 2025, which applies from 2027-05-01, still leaves the two Parts blank could not be checked, because that text was not opened.
• When the WA deletion will end. The regulation text carries no end date for the deletion clauses. Two industry notes summarise the arrangement differently, one describing a set transition period and the other simply a voluntary status; the regulation text is taken as the reference and no future date is inferred.
• How many homes have been built to the standard since 2023. No opened source publishes that count for any jurisdiction, and the national approval statistics carry no accessibility item.
• An actual measure of voluntary uptake before 2023. The figure of 5 to 10 percent is an estimate, and the consultation analysis records that advocacy and industry sources gave different values.
• The price base of the dollar figures in the decision analysis. The opened pages do not state whether the values are real or nominal or which year they are expressed in.
• Compliance and enforcement where the Parts apply. Not covered by any opened source.
• The denominator of the 18.4 percent mobility aid figure in the 2022 disability survey summary.
• The Royal Commission final report, its progress report and the table of jurisdiction responses. Not opened; recommendation 7.35 is taken from the Victorian Government response page.
• Whether the six other jurisdictions apply both Parts in their own legal texts. Only Victoria and South Australia are supported by sources closer to the legal position; the rest rests on secondary reports. The Tasmanian determination on Part H8 returned an access error.
• A current statement from either state government. The latest self-descriptions found for WA and NSW date from 2023 and 2024; no 2026 statement on this question was found.
• Proceedings. No court or tribunal proceeding on this question appears in the sources opened.

See the evidence

What was read directly and what was not. The national text of both Parts, both NSW variation pages, the WA regulation and its 2026 amending regulation, the ABCB adoption page and the decision analysis were opened directly, and every statement in this dossier about what the two states have done rests on those rows. The claim that the other six jurisdictions apply the Parts rests on secondary reports and is not used in any statement about the state of the law. Where industry notes disagree about the WA arrangement, the regulation text is taken as the reference. This is a Path A output (research-based definition), so observation_refs is empty and provenance_mode: press-derived.

People affected

Estimated range Not derivable

The reason and what is missing are listed under “What is missing” below