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On 1 April 2020, the ABCB advised that a subcommittee of the Board agreed to delay the release of the Consultation RIS (due 3 April 2020) to enable time for further refinements to be carried out to the document, partly in response to comments received from the Disability Discrimination Commissioner.
The Commissioner is now in the process of formally documenting his suggested areas for improvement, which he has advised will be provided to the ABCB shortly. Once the Commissioner’s comments have been received, they will be provided to the ABCB’s consultants, the Centre for International Economics (CIE), who will consider how best to address the comments in their capacity as the independent authors of the Consultation RIS.
The ABCB will also review any changes made by CIE and, depending on the nature and extent of such changes, may be obligated to re-submit the amended Consultation RIS to the Office of Best Practice Regulation (OBPR) for clearance prior to public release. OBPR clearance is a requirement of the ABCB Inter-governmental Agreement and the COAG Principles for Best Practice Regulation.
Whilst these additional steps have caused a delay in releasing the Consultation RIS, The ABCB assures us that will be no reduction in the time available for stakeholders to submit comments once the RIS is released, nor will there be any impact on the overall timelines for any potential changes to be included in NCC 2022 public comment draft, if so agreed by Governments. At this stage, the ABCB is not in a position to estimate the likely timeframe for this delay.
The ABCB informs ANUHD that the objective for this review is to ensure that the Consultation RIS contains analysis that is sufficiently robust for public consultation and expressed in a way that is consistent with its purpose as a piece of economic analysis and cognisant of its importance to many Australians. It is in this spirit that the ABCB asks for your understanding and appreciates your patience in the lead-up to what will be an important stage of consultation in the ABCB’s Accessible Housing project.

When consulted in November 2019, ANUHD Convenors advised the ABCB that the CIE’s approach would result in a discriminatory, biased and inadequate RIS.  Clearly, our advice was not heeded.We now encourage the ABCB to take the time they need to get the document to the standard it should be, for Governments to consider any potential changes to the NCC in 2022.  
For more information on:

• the ABCB Accessible Housing project and the Regulatory Impact Statement go to the ABCB website
• ANUHD’s activities supporting the RIS, click here