Our role The role of the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner (ABCC) is to ensure that workplace relations laws are enforced in building and construction industry workplaces and to educate industry participants on their rights and obligations under relevant legislation.
Our responsibilities
The ABCC has prime responsibility for the following matters in respect to the building and construction industry:
- investigating alleged breaches of the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 (BCII Act) and the Building Code;
- the application of provisions of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (WR Act) relating to freedom of association, coercion in agreement making, right of entry and strike pay, including undertaking investigations;
- ensuring independent contractors legislation relating to unfair services contracts and sham arrangements is enforced in the building industry;
- intervening in matters before the AIRC or court proceedings that involve a building industry participant or building work (see also Definition of Building Work Fact Sheet);
- requests for assistance from parties associated with building and construction industry workplaces and construction sites;
- alleged breaches of collective agreements and awards;
- advice and assistance on the application of the BCII Act, WR Act, IC Act, federal awards, collective agreements and related legislation; and
- assessing matters and, if appropriate, referring matters to other Commonwealth or State and Territory bodies including the Australian Taxation Office , the Australian Federal Police , the Australian Securities and Investment Commission , the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
For more detailed information about the ABCC’s powers, see the Powers of ABCC Inspectors Fact Sheet.