Jeremy Cordeaux rarely praises the opposition, but on this Garage edition of the Court of Public Opinion he found something to applaud: a plan to cut the national building code from around 2,000 pages to just 80. His response was instant. I like the sound of it, he said, then asked the obvious question, how did it ever reach 2,000 pages?
Two Thousand Pages, Eighty Left
The proposal, as Jeremy described it, would shrink the building code by more than 95 per cent, from roughly 2,000 pages to 80. To him, the length itself was the scandal. A set of building rules that runs that long, he argued, is not there to keep people safe so much as to keep a bureaucracy occupied.
His theory was blunt. Give a bureaucracy a job, he said, and it has to find something to do, and the obvious move is to make things more complicated, and so more expensive. Complexity, in his telling, is not accidental but a by-product of officials justifying their existence.
Complexity Is A Hidden Tax
For Jeremy, this is far from abstract. Every extra layer of code, every additional page of requirements, adds cost to the price of a home, at a moment when housing affordability is already stretched to breaking point. Red tape, in his view, is a hidden tax that falls on the buyer.
Strip the code back to something sensible and readable, he argued, and building becomes cheaper, faster and more affordable, without losing the genuine safety measures that actually matter. The skill lies in telling real protection apart from bureaucratic padding.
Now Do The Tax Act
Jeremy could not resist turning to his favourite target. Just imagine, he said, the fun we could have with the 17,000 pages of tax law. He doubted anyone had read all 17,000, and wondered how any citizen could be expected to comply with something no single person can absorb.
His principle was consistent: go through every unnecessary page of every bill and law, and bring it down to something sensible, understandable, affordable, logical and reasonable, clearing out the garbage. The building code, in that light, is a test case for a much bigger clean-up.
Simplicity As A Virtue
Beneath Jeremy’s enthusiasm was a broader conviction that simplicity is a public good. Rules ordinary people can read and follow are fairer, cheaper to obey and harder to hide waste inside. Rules that run to thousands of pages serve those who write them more than those who must live by them.
Cutting the building code, in his view, is worth doing on its own terms, but it is also a signal. If a government can find the will to take 2,000 pages down to 80, he suggested, it can find the will to tackle the rest of the mountain of rules that quietly make everything in this country cost more.
Listen To The Full Episode
Catch the complete Garage edition of The Court of Public Opinion, recorded live around the dining room table.
Watch The Full Episode
The Court of Public Opinion streams live every Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ACST), right here at jeremycordeaux.com. Download the podcast anytime on your favourite podcast app, and join the conversation with your calls and comments.
