John MULLAHY (Glen Waverley)
(12:25): It is an honour to rise in support of the Building Legislation Amendment (Fairer Payments on Jobsites and Other Matters) Bill 2025. This bill is about one thing above all else, and that is fairness – fairness for every bricklayer, carpenter, concreter, sparkie, plumber and plasterer who gets up before dawn and drives to site and does the work that quite literally builds Victoria. This bill is about stopping a disgrace that has gone on for far too long: the deliberate refusal by some contractors and companies to pay subcontractors for the work that they have already done. I know, Acting Speaker Farnham, that we have had many conversations about these exact experiences, and I would like to acknowledge your contribution earlier and also the member for Morwell. I will take the contributions of people who have actually lifted a tool in their life as opposed to others.
Non-payment is theft, and that is plain and simple. It is not a cash flow issue, it is not a commercial dispute; it is stealing. It is taking the sweat of the worker or the small family business and converting it into profit for someone else. For too long these practices have been written off as just part of the game. But when the game is rigged, when the rules allow bullies to squeeze the life out of small businesses, then the Parliament has a duty to step in, and this bill does just that – it rewrites the rules of the game.
I know this issue not as a politician but as someone who grew up in it. My parents migrated from Ireland for a better life and started a small family construction business in Geelong. As a young man for 10 years I worked on sites as a chippie, building formwork, pouring concrete and building structural steel, roads, bridges, schools and commercial apartments, and I watched how easily honest families can be ripped off by operators who make fortunes off the backs of others. One of them is Frank Nadinic, a con man who left devastation across Victoria. He would pay the first invoice when you had done about 20 per cent of the contract, and then he would hold back the rest of the moneys – he would get up to 80 per cent. He had clauses in his contract that if you stopped working, you basically broke the contract, and he would never pay you. He destroyed hundreds of small businesses and families across this state. He is a disgrace not only to the construction industry but to humanity.
That experience and many others, including the experience of thousands of others like it, is why this bill is so important. Victoria’s construction industry contributes 12 per cent of gross state product and employs one in 10 Victorians, but it has also been plagued by decades of deeply unfair payment culture, a system where financial risk is shoved down the contracting chain until it lands on the smallest players, the people who are least able to absorb it – as the member for Narracan so eloquently put it, the pyramid nature of this industry. Inquiries have shown that subcontractors complete more than 80 per cent of all construction work, the highest proportion in the world, yet they carry all the financial risk. That is obscene. These are the people mortgaging their homes to pay wages while multimillion-dollar developers delay invoices to pad their cash flow. This bill finally says ‘enough’.
The Environment and Planning Committee found what so many already knew: that non-payment is systematic and devastating. It is not just a few bad apples, it is a culture of corporate bullying, of bosses and head contractors who exploit every loophole. The committee heard stories of small family firms going bankrupt waiting for payments that never came, tradies losing their homes, marriages collapsing and children seeing their parents’ pride broken because someone higher up the chain decided not to pay. I thank the committee for their important work hearing that evidence of the pain and devastation experienced by Victorians working on building sites in this state, and I thank the Minister for Housing and Building for acting so quickly to ensure this problem is snuffed out.
This bill is the government’s answer to that report. It delivers a tranche of reforms, the fairer payment reforms, to make sure that every person who does work gets paid for it. This bill reforms the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 2002 to make it faster, fairer and tougher on those who exploit others, including these changes. Contractors and subcontractors will now have a clear right to claim progress payments at least once a month. No company can hide behind reference dates or confusing legalese. Strict payment deadlines: payment terms will be capped at 20 business days with a default of 10 days, so if you do not pay on time, you are in breach – no excuse.
Performance securities: the bill creates a right to claim the release of performance securities, retentions, bonds and guarantees so companies cannot sit on subcontractors’ money indefinitely. Fair adjudication: adjudicators will have more time and clearer powers to make fair decisions. Dodgy builders will no longer be able to raise new excuses after the fact to avoid paying. Unfair contract terms outlawed: adjudicators can now declare notice-based time bar clauses unfair that make compliance impossible. And simpler enforcement: unpaid determinations can be enforced directly as judgement debts – fast, streamlined and effective. These are not technical tweaks. They are a fundamental shift in power back to the people who do the work and build our state.
The worst offenders are not mum-and-dad builders. They are the large developers, the multinationals and the tier 1 contractors who use their scale to suffocate small business. They hide behind subsidiaries, change company names and move assets offshore while small operators are left holding the bag. These are companies that roll out slick advertising campaigns about partnership and community while destroying communities through unpaid bills and bankruptcy. It is hypocrisy of the highest order, and it all stops here.
Behind every unpaid invoice is a story – a plumber who cannot pay apprentices before Christmas, a concreter who sells his ute to cover wages, a small business owner who shuts down after 30 years because someone has starved them of cash – and we cannot allow that to continue. We talk about mental health in the construction industry, and rightly so, but financial abuse is mental abuse. It crushes people. It robs them of dignity, stability and hope. This bill will not just change contracts, it will change lives.
Laws mean nothing if they are not enforced. That is why this bill strengthens the power of the Building and Plumbing Commission, formerly the Victorian Building Authority, to educate, regulate and hold offenders to account. The commission will now be required to take on an educational role, publishing guidance and training manuals and promoting the law across the industry. But more than education, this bill gives teeth to the regulator. Dodgy operators will be investigated, sanctioned and, where necessary, stripped of the right to operate. Those who systematically fail to pay their subcontractors should never again be entrusted with public moneys. If you want a government contract in Victoria, pay your people first.
This bill is part of a broader cultural shift, a statement that Victoria will not tolerate wage theft or payment theft in any form. We have already led the nation in criminalising wage theft. Now we are leading again in protecting subcontractors and small business owners. Let me be clear, fair payment is not anti business; it is pro integrity, pro productivity and pro justice. A construction industry built on honesty is good for everyone – for workers, for consumers and for the economy. Where subcontractors are paid on time, projects run smoother, families thrive and local economies grow.
The Allan Labor government committed to this reform after the 2023 parliamentary inquiry, which found chronic, persistent abuse of subcontractors across the sector. We promised to act, and we are acting. The fairer payments on jobsites bill is more than a technical reform, it is a moral stand that tells every worker, every subcontractor and every family business, ‘We see you, we value you and we have your back.’ And to the cowboys who refuse to pay, the free ride is over. To the companies that think they are too big to be held accountable: think again. And to the hardworking Victorians who have been ripped off, cheated and left behind, help is finally here. When the history books look back on this Parliament, let them say that we stood with people who build Victoria, that we ended an injustice generations old and that we made the industry fairer, safer and stronger for all.
Now, on indulgence, I would like to just take a moment to thank my father, a man of integrity, a man who would never take a step backwards when someone tried to rip him off. He is a man of principle who believed that if he and his workers had done the job, they deserved to be paid for it, and he made sure he had the receipts to prove it. Time and again when one of the unscrupulous operators tried to take advantage, he did everything he could to protect our family and the people who worked alongside him. It did not mean that we were immune to it, but I am proud of the fight that he always showed in an unfair system. And I am proud today that we are taking action to fix these issues. But I know, as every honest builder and subcontractor knows, that we will have to remain steadfast as a Parliament, because as we change the rules, the dodgy operators will look for new ways to dodge them. So as a government we must keep our eyes open and our resolve strong. We will continue to protect the working men and women of Victoria, to stand up for them, to back them in and to ensure that they do not again bear the pain and cost inflicted by these crooks who call themselves businessmen. I commend the bill to the house.