QBCC error leaves some builders exposed

22 February 2023

The Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC) recently provided the details to the media of over 500 licensees who had allegedly failed to provide annual reporting and had a condition of ‘no new work’ placed on their building licence.

This list was published by the Courier Mail on 20 February.

Master Builders has identified a number of members who have been caught up in what is a massive mistake by the Queensland building industry regulator.

Contrary to the news report, these members did not have an active condition placed on their licence at the time of publication. This has been verified by the QBCC’s own licensing register.

Moreover, some of these members had provided their annual reporting and should never have had a condition placed on their licence in the first place.

QBCC has seemingly fallen into the ‘robodebt’ trap by imposing licence restrictions by computer automation without the required human decision-making for such a significant matter.

To take this approach and then push the names of those impacted to the media is unconscionable. There are builders who have done the right thing and their livelihoods and reputations have been unfairly impacted.

Master Builders is calling on the QBCC to:

• Remove the licence conditions from the record entirely
• Publicly retract the statements made in the media
• Apologise to impacted licensees
• Review its procedures to ensure a bungle like this never happens again
• Implement due diligence checks before embarking on public naming and shaming exercises in future.