Two countries are cutting approval times for the same reason. They have made opposite decisions about who checks the work, and only one of those bets is being tested right now.
Every Australian jurisdiction is under pressure to get homes approved faster, and most of them are doing something about it. Fast pathways, code based approvals, prefabricated frameworks, looser rules for small dwellings.
Underneath all of it sits a question almost nobody is asking out loud. When you speed up an approval, what happens to the person who was doing the checking, and where does their risk go?
New South Wales and New Zealand have now answered that question in opposite directions, within months of each other, both in the name of housing supply. One of those answers has been running live since January.
Australia keeps making approval faster without removing the checker
The pattern here is consistent. Speed up the pathway, keep the verification.
A secondary dwelling in New South Wales is generally capped at 60 square metres under the Housing State Environmental Planning Policy, and the complying development pathway needs a lot of at least 450 square metres. That route is fast. It is also still an approval. A council or registered certifier issues the certificate, carries out critical stage inspections during construction, and issues an occupation certificate before anyone can lawfully move in. That structure held even as secondary dwellings on the Sydney fringe were opened up.
The same is true of the smaller reforms. When tiny home rules loosened in Noosa, the certifier and the inspection regime stayed exactly where they were. Australia has been shortening the queue. It has not been removing the gate.
What the assurance layer is actually buying
It is worth being precise about what that gate does, because it is not the same thing as the standard.
The building code sets the standard. The assurance layer is the separate machinery that checks whether the standard was met: an approval before you start, inspections at defined stages, and a sign off at the end. Remove the code and you have lowered the standard. Remove the assurance layer and the standard is untouched. What changes is who finds out when it was not met, and when.
That distinction decides where licensing and compliance obligations sit in practice. It also decides how long a builder stays exposed, because an obligation nobody verifies does not disappear. It just goes quiet.
What is an assurance layer in building approvals?
The assurance layer is the machinery that verifies compliance with a building code, as distinct from the code itself. In Australian residential construction it typically means an approval or certificate issued before work starts, mandatory inspections at critical stages during construction, and an occupation or completion certificate before the building can be lawfully occupied. Removing the assurance layer does not change the technical standard a building must meet. It changes who checks that the standard was met, and at what point a failure is discovered.
New Zealand took the other bet
On 15 January 2026, New Zealand stopped requiring a building consent for new standalone dwellings up to 70 square metres, and stopped requiring a resource consent for most of them on the same day. It did this in a market where consents running ahead of building work had made the queue itself the target.
The Building Code still applies in full, with no waivers and no modifications. The standard did not move. The assurance layer was deleted.
The guidance the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment published is unusually blunt about what councils no longer do. The memorandum an owner obtains before starting is not an approval, and councils do not approve or refuse the work. They do not approve eligibility for the exemption either, and an owner can proceed regardless of what the council tells them, at their own risk. During construction the council has no duty to track or monitor the work and is not responsible for checking Building Code compliance. At the end it receives the completion records and has no duty to assess them. It is required to store them, and it holds good faith liability protection precisely because it is not required to read them.
One design rule tells you the drafters understood the trade. A dwelling built under the exemption cannot have a level entry shower requiring a waterproof membrane. The detail most likely to leak without an inspector behind it was written out of the scheme entirely.
Australia went the other way, hard
While that was happening across the Tasman, New South Wales was moving in the opposite direction on the same question.
The state rewrote its approvals and certifier rules this year, consolidating certifier, engineer, designer and builder registration into a single regime. Buried in it is a number worth sitting with. The maximum penalty for a certifier who breaches a conflict of interest requirement rises from $33,000 to $1.1 million, with an automatic 120 day registration suspension on conviction, and the old subjective conflict test is replaced with objective factors. The Act has passed and is awaiting commencement, with much of the detail still to come in regulations.
That is a thirty three fold increase in the penalty attached to the person doing the checking. New Zealand removed that person from small dwellings altogether. Same policy goal, same year, opposite mechanism.
Remove the code and you have lowered the standard. Remove the assurance layer and the standard is untouched. What changes is who finds out.
The certifier was never the builder’s shield anyway
Here is where this stops being a story about two countries and starts being useful.
Plenty of builders treat an approval and a passed inspection as protection. It is a reasonable instinct and it is wrong. In New South Wales the statutory duty of care carried into the new Act cannot be delegated, cannot be apportioned and cannot be excluded by contract. A certifier signing off does not transfer the builder’s obligation to the certifier. It never did.
What the assurance layer actually provides a builder is not immunity. It is early detection. An inspector who catches a problem at frame stage has handed you a cheap fix and a dated record that the work was seen. That is worth something on a job that goes wrong four years later, and it is worth more than most operators realise until they need it.
The failures will not surface on site
Which is why the New Zealand experiment is worth watching rather than copying.
The completion records an owner lodges go into the property file for the site. That file is what an insurer, a lender or a purchaser’s solicitor reads. So the verification moment has not been removed from the system. It has been moved from an inspector standing on the slab to a solicitor reading a file, potentially years later, at the precise point where a defect is most expensive and most contested.
That is a long feedback loop. Nothing in the first eight months tells you whether the bet worked, because the failure mode of a deleted assurance layer is slow by design. It shows up when a defect becomes a dispute, at resale or at claim, and not before.
The New Zealand Government projected savings of up to $5,650 per dwelling, up to 14 weeks off the process, and as many as 13,000 additional homes over a decade. Those are projections made on day one. No count of completed exempt dwellings has been published. The only figure the Government has offered since is that its guidance document was downloaded more than 52,000 times by late April, and downloads are interest, not houses.
THE GOOD BUILDER TAKE
When someone points at New Zealand in the red tape conversation, be precise about what they actually did. They did not lower the standard. They removed the machinery that checks it and handed the whole of that job to the licensed practitioner who signs the record of work. Australia has made the opposite call, and just put a $1.1 million penalty behind it. The useful takeaway is not which country is right. It is that an approval you were treating as protection was never protection. It was early detection, and it was cheap. If your state ever shortens that process, the exposure it was quietly absorbing lands on you, and it lands years after the job is finished. Build the file as though nobody is coming to check, because increasingly nobody is.
Frequently asked questions
No. In New South Wales the statutory duty of care carried into the Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Act 2026 cannot be delegated, apportioned or excluded by contract. An approval or a passed inspection does not transfer a builder’s obligation to the certifier. What the process provides is early detection and a dated record that the work was inspected, which is different from immunity.
From 15 January 2026, new standalone dwellings up to 70 square metres can be built without a building consent, and most without a resource consent. The New Zealand Building Code still applies in full with no waivers. What was removed was the approval, the inspections and the sign off. The council issues an information memorandum before work starts and stores the completion records afterwards, but does not approve the work, check compliance or monitor construction.
Not currently. Australian reforms have shortened approval pathways for secondary dwellings and small homes while keeping a certifier, mandatory inspections and a sign off. New South Wales has moved in the opposite direction on certifier accountability, lifting the maximum penalty for a conflict of interest breach from $33,000 to $1.1 million and adding an automatic 120 day registration suspension on conviction.
Generally 60 square metres under State Environmental Planning Policy (Housing) 2021, unless another planning instrument applying to the land allows more. To use the complying development pathway the lot must be at least 450 square metres. The certificate can be issued by a council or a registered certifier, who then carries out critical stage inspections and issues the occupation certificate.
There is no published answer yet. The Government projected savings of up to $5,650 per dwelling, up to 14 weeks off the process and as many as 13,000 additional homes over a decade, but those were estimates made at commencement. No count of completed dwellings built under the exemption has been published. The failure mode of removing an assurance layer is slow, surfacing at resale, insurance or claim rather than during construction.
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Sources: NSW Government Building Productivity Reforms; NSW Planning Portal secondary dwellings guidance; State Environmental Planning Policy (Housing) 2021; Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Building Performance news items dated 15 January 2026 and 2 July 2026; MBIE Granny Flats Exemption Guidance; New Zealand Government releases dated 15 January 2026 and 28 April 2026.
Last updated 2 September 2026. This article will be reviewed on proclamation of the NSW Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Act 2026 and when the New Zealand Building Amendment Bill reports back from select committee.
General information only. This article describes Australian and New Zealand regulatory settings for general interest and is not legal or planning advice. Requirements differ by jurisdiction and change over time. The Good Builder recommends confirming current obligations with the relevant regulator or a qualified professional before acting on anything set out here.
Author: TGB Editorial
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