Editor: Michael Christie SC

摘要

The enactment of legislation with respect to security of payment and adjudication has changed the legal landscape of the Australian construction industry in a fundamental way. The first State to enact such legislation was New South Wales in 1999; subsequently, all States and Territories introduced analogous legislation. Similar legislation has been introduced in Singapore (which is based on the New South Wales statute). Statutory adjudication is also a feature of construction law in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. The short length of each of these statutes belies their underlying complexity. That complexity is unavoidable given the creation of novel statutory rights and the conceptual difficulty involved in linking statutory entitlements with contractual regimes. The statutes have generated a very substantial body of case law including hundreds of decisions of State and Territory Supreme Courts, many intermediate appeal court decisions and three recent decisions of the High Court of Australia. Billions of dollars have been paid pursuant to these Acts.