Security of payment: eight jurisdictions, eight sets of deadlines

Australia does not have a security of payment act. It has eight, and a builder who works across a border is working under two different statutes with two different clocks.

This is not a technicality. The regime is built on time limits, and a time limit missed is a right lost — not weakened, lost. A payment schedule served on the eleventh business day is late in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra and on time in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. A payment claim served fourteen months after the last day on site is alive in New South Wales and dead in Queensland.

Below is what each jurisdiction actually says, with the section numbers, so you can check us.

The two models

Seven jurisdictions use what the industry calls the east coast model: you serve a payment claim, the other side must respond with a payment schedule inside a fixed period, and if they do not, they owe the whole claimed amount and cannot argue about it afterwards.

The Northern Territory is different. Its Construction Contracts (Security of Payments) Act 2004 does not override your contract; it fills gaps in it. Section 20 says the provisions in Schedule 1, Division 5, about "when and how a party must respond to a payment claim made by another party" and "by when a payment must be made" are "implied in a construction contract that does not have a written provision about the matter". If your NT contract deals with the subject, your contract governs.

Payment schedules: how long they have to answer

Two things are easy to misread here.

"Whichever expires earlier." The statutory period is a ceiling, not the rule. New South Wales s 14(4) requires a schedule "within the time required by the relevant construction contract, or within 10 business days after the payment claim is served, whichever time expires earlier". If your subcontract says five business days, five business days is the deadline — and if you are the one responding, the ten in the table will not save you.

Queensland makes it an offence. Section 76(1) carries a maximum penalty of 100 penalty units for failing to give a payment schedule, and a note adds that failure "is also grounds for taking disciplinary action under the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act 1991". Elsewhere the sanction is civil only.

When the money falls due

This is the number most contracts get wrong, because several jurisdictions now cap what a contract may say.

New South Wales and Victoria both cap the contract, in opposite drafting styles

New South Wales s 11(8): "A provision in a construction contract has no effect to the extent it allows for payment of a progress payment later than the relevant date it becomes due and payable under subsection (1A) or (1B)." So 15 and 20 business days are hard limits, not defaults — the full New South Wales timetable, including the ten business days to answer and what silence costs, is in 20 business days, 10 to answer.

Victoria arrived at the same place in 2025, through s 12(1B), inserted by Act No. 43/2025 and in force in version 015 of the Act — the rest of that rewrite, including the two December service dates and the new claim for a bank guarantee's release, is in what the 2025 rewrite changed:

"A term or provision in a construction contract has no effect to the extent that it provides for the payment of a progress payment or the release of a performance security later than the day that is 20 business days after — (a) a payment claim is served under Division 1 of Part 3 in relation to the progress payment; or (b) a performance security claim is served under Division 1A of Part 3 in relation to the performance security."

Victorian subcontracts written before that change, with 30- or 45-day terms, are now unenforceable to the extent of the excess. Note also that the Victorian Act now extends the same machinery to performance security — a claim to have a bank guarantee or retention released runs on the same clocks.

Queensland's cap lives in a different Act

Section 73(1) of the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 looks permissive — the contract decides — but it carries three notes that are not decoration:

"2 A provision in a construction management trade contract or subcontract providing for payment of a progress payment later than 25 business days is void, see the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act 1991, section 67U. 3 A provision in a commercial building contract providing for payment of a progress payment later than 15 business days is void, see the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act 1991, section 67W."

And s 73(4) then treats those contracts as if they were silent, which pulls them back to the 10-business-day default in s 73(1)(b). The fifteen business days to answer a claim, the offence for staying silent, and the statutory trust layered on top are set out in 15 business days to answer.

How long you have to serve a claim

Queensland and Western Australia both give a longer window for the final claim. Queensland s 75(3): the longest of the contract period, "28 days after the end of the last defects liability period", six months after completion of all construction work, or six months after the complete supply of related goods and services. Western Australia s 23(5) is drafted the same way.

The practical effect: a Queensland or Western Australian claimant who sits on a progress claim for eight months has lost it, while the same claimant in New South Wales still has four months left.

What happens when nobody responds

This is the engine of the whole regime and it is consistent across the east coast jurisdictions. Queensland s 77(2) states it in one line: "The respondent is liable to pay the amount claimed under the payment claim to the claimant on the due date for the progress payment to which the payment claim relates."

New South Wales s 15(4) then removes the defences: in proceedings to recover that amount as a debt, "the respondent is not, in those proceedings, entitled — (i) to bring any cross-claim against the claimant, or (ii) to raise any defence in relation to matters arising under the construction contract."

The same logic runs through Western Australia. Section 25(1) is the schedule deadline; s 26 supplies the consequence: "The respondent becomes liable to pay the claimed amount to the claimant on the due date for the progress payment to which the payment claim relates if the respondent does not respond to the claim by giving a payment schedule to the claimant within the time allowed for the response." And the notes to s 25 spell out what else is lost: a respondent who gave no schedule "cannot make an adjudication response to an adjudication application", and one who did give a schedule "cannot include in an adjudication response reasons for withholding payment that were not identified in the payment schedule."

That last rule is the one that decides most adjudications. Reasons omitted from the payment schedule are gone. If you are the respondent, the payment schedule is not an acknowledgement — it is your entire case.

Adjudication clocks

Once the deadline has passed, a second set of clocks starts, and these are shorter.

• New South Wales, s 17(3): 10 business days after receiving a payment schedule that underpays; 20 business days after the due date where a scheduled amount was not paid; and where no schedule was given at all, notice within 20 business days of the due date (s 17(2)(a)), a five-business-day second chance for the respondent, then 10 business days to apply.
• Queensland, s 79(2)(b): 30 business days where no payment schedule was given, measured from the later of the due date and the last day the schedule could have been given; 20 business days where a schedule was given but not paid.
• South Australia, s 17(3): 15 business days after receiving the payment schedule; 20 business days after the due date; or 15 business days after the end of the five-day second chance.
• Northern Territory, s 28(1): 65 working days after the payment dispute arises — much longer, but the NT has no payment-schedule mechanism to shorten the fight beforehand.

Pay when paid is void everywhere

Whatever else differs, this does not. New South Wales s 12(1), Victoria s 13, Queensland s 74(1), and the ACT s 14(1) all provide that a pay when paid provision "has no effect". The definitions catch three shapes:

"(a) that makes the liability of 1 party … to pay money owing to another party … contingent on payment to the first party by a further party …; or (b) that makes the due date for payment of money owing by the first party to the second party dependent on the date on which payment of the whole or any part of that money is made to the first party by the third party; or (c) that otherwise makes the liability to pay money owing, or the due date for payment of money owing, contingent or dependent on the operation of another contract." (ACT s 14(2); NSW s 12(2) and Qld s 74(2) are in substantially the same terms.)

Paragraph (b) is the one that catches the clause most head contractors think is safe — "payment within 7 days of receipt of funds from the principal". That fixes the due date to another contract's performance, and it is void.

What this means for how you invoice

Three habits survive every border crossing:

1. Put "This is a payment claim made under the [correct Act]" on the claim. New South Wales s 13(2)(c), Queensland's equivalent, ACT s 15(2)(c) and Western Australia s 24(1)(d) all require the claim to state that it is made under the Act. The Western Australian Act is explicit that an ordinary invoice will do the job otherwise: s 24(3) provides that "a payment claim may be a document described as an invoice and, if so, the amount stated in the invoice is sufficient indication of the claimed amount." The naming line is the cheap part and the part people forget.
2. Record the date of service, not the date on the invoice. Every deadline in this article runs from service. An invoice dated the 30th and emailed on the 3rd has a due date calculated from the 3rd.
3. Diarise two dates per claim — the last day for their payment schedule, and the due date — using the numbers for the jurisdiction the work is in, not the one your head office is in.

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Checked on 29 August 2026 against the consolidated versions of each Act linked above. The South Australian Act was read in the authorised version dated 10 December 2011; the Victorian Act in version 015, in force 24 June 2026; the Western Australian Act in consolidation 00-e0-00, in force from 1 February 2024. This is a description of the legislation, not legal advice, and adjudication is a field where the case law matters as much as the text.

What Zirko does: it records when a document was created and sent, and keeps quotes, invoices and time against the project they belong to, so the date of service and the amount claimed are not a matter of memory. What Zirko does not do: it does not know which Act applies to your job, does not calculate statutory deadlines, and does not draft payment claims or payment schedules. Those are decisions for you and your lawyer.