Consult Australia’s Liability & Contracts Roundtable, which met in person on Friday 14 June, is a key avenue for ‘member-led advocacy’. Find out more about the Roundtable’s priorities.

“Consult Australia’s advocacy work is member-driven, and our national roundtables and forums are vital mechanisms to push for change,” says Consult Australia’s Head of Policy and Government Relations, Kristy Eulenstein.

The Liability & Contracts Roundtable is exclusive to Consult Australia members. Member representatives include legal practitioners and commercial managers.
 
Participants share best practice initiatives on contracting, support state and territory committees to tackle local issues, and represent Consult Australia at government forums. Roundtable participants also support the development of member resources on law reform, legal requirements and contracting issues.

The roundtable meets every eight weeks online and once a year in-person, including recently, thanks to hosts Piper Alderman.

The in-person event, led by Roundtable Chair David Saunders of GHD, also included guests from the Australian Construction Association and Bellrock Advisory. Topics covered included risk allocation in contracts and the state of the professional indemnity insurance market. 

“It was great to have these open robust discussions on contract pain points with constructor representatives. Our members are seeking to ensure consultant concerns are reflected back to government, especially in a Design & Construct contracting environment,” Kristy says.

“The representatives from the Australian Constructors Association were keen to explore collaborative approaches, which sparked ideas about future collaborative efforts between our associations which I will continue to action”.

The Roundtable's work contributed to several contract wins in 2023 and leverages strong relationships to achieve regulatory reform. This includes a collaboration with the Insurance Council of Australia to secure changes to the NSW Practice Standard for Professional Engineers.

The Roundtable also maintains strong relationships with counterparts at Consult Australia’s New Zealand sister association, ACE New Zealand, to compare experiences, challenges and government approaches. 

The Roundtable members focus for the 2024 advocacy agenda, includes:

• Advocate to the Treasury’s Competition Review
  
  On 23 August 2023, the federal Treasurer announced a two-year Competition Review, which will focus on priorities to modernise the Australian economy. This is another avenue for Consult Australia to advocate reforms to misleading and deceptive conduct provisions, and to defend existing exemption for engineers and architects from the fit for purpose consumer guarantee.

• Shape laws on unfair business practices 
  
  In 2023, the Commonwealth led public consultation on options to address unfair trading practices on behalf of all jurisdictions. In our November 2023 submission, we called out behaviour that might not meet the ‘unfair contract terms’ provisions but is otherwise unfair, such as insurance requirements that would cause a business to break commercial-in-confidence of insurance. We will continue to champion this position to governments.

• Pursue ‘unravelling risk’ advocacy
  
  We will continue to build the evidence base and share resources through Consult Australia’s Centre for Contracting & Risk. 
  

Thank you to the team at Piper Alderman, including Lis Boyce and Teodor Lomaca, for hosting the event, and for the contributions of Bellrock’s Simon Gray and Carina Bogaard, for their market insights.

To find out more about how you can get involved in Consult Australia’s Liability & Contracts Roundtable, contact Kristy Eulenstein or Kristine Banks.

Image caption: From left to right, Kristine Banks (Consult Australia), Simon Gray (Bellrock Advisory), Lis Boyce (Piper Alderman), Jonathan Cartledge (Consult Australia), David Saunders (GHD), Kristy Eulenstein (Consult Australia), Carina Bogaard (Bellrock Advisory) and Teodor Lomaca (Piper Alderman).