Your membership helps give our industry a stronger voice
ACFA has been working across a busy advocacy agenda, preparing submissions and communicating directly with government representatives and regulators to ensure our industry’s voice is heard.
For cabinetmakers, furniture manufacturers, designers, and businesses across our supply chain, policy decisions can affect everything from employment and registration to payment, safety and access to work. ACFA brings these practical business concerns into consultations, advocating for requirements that improve industry outcomes without creating unnecessary costs or complexity.
Our work combines ACFA’s direct submissions and regulatory engagement with national advocacy through the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI). Both give us opportunities to influence policy and represent members before decisions are finalised.
ACFA’s direct advocacy: putting members’ needs before government
Recent priorities include:
- Non-compete reforms: ACFA lodged a submission on the proposed ban, supporting ACCI’s central position and seeking to retain reasonable protections for confidential information and customer relationships. Our concern is the impact on businesses that invest in their people and develop valuable commercial relationships.
- Commonwealth construction standards: ACFA will lodge an independent submission and has prepared industry feedback to inform ACCI’s submission. We are advocating for effective enforcement, protection against reprisals, fair payment and obligations that reflect each business’s actual role and control. Small specialist businesses should not inherit broad project obligations simply because they sit further down the supply chain.
- NSW building reforms: ACFA wrote directly to Building Commission NSW seeking clarity on requirements affecting designers, manufacturers and suppliers. We are awaiting a response and will follow up to ensure members’ questions are addressed.
- Victorian carpentry registration and licensing: ACFA is preparing a submission on the Department of Transport and Planning’s proposed framework, starting with carpenters and potentially extending to other priority building trades. Our focus is on its application to cabinetmaking and joinery installation, recognition of qualifications and experience, and avoiding duplicated or unnecessary requirements.
- Victorian designer registration: ACFA corresponded directly with the Building and Plumbing Commission seeking clarification of kitchen and bathroom designers’ registration obligations, so members can understand where their work sits within the regulatory framework.
- Health and air monitoring: ACFA lodged a submission to Safe Work Australia’s review, seeking practical guidance, recognised monitoring methods and requirements proportionate to workplace risk and the capacity of small businesses.
- Recognition of cabinetmaking: ACFA lodged a submission to the ABS’s Occupation Standard Classification for Australia review, seeking definitions that reflect modern cabinetmaking, including kitchens, bathrooms, commercial joinery, installation and digital manufacturing.
Across this work, our position is consistent: regulation should address demonstrated gaps, recognise how our industry operates and avoid imposing unnecessary burdens on businesses already meeting their obligations.
ACCI: taking our industry’s concerns into national discussions
ACFA’s membership of ACCI connects our industry with a broader national business voice that engages directly with government. ACFA also serves on ACCI’s Workplace Policy Committee, giving us a place in discussions that help shape its workplace policy and advocacy.
This strengthens our direct work. We can raise issues specific to our members, contribute industry feedback to ACCI’s submissions and build support where other sectors share our concerns.
On 23 September, ACFA attended the Committee’s face-to-face meeting in Adelaide with employer representatives from across Australia and ACCI CEO Andrew McKellar. The agenda included workplace relations reforms, proposed non-compete restrictions, the Closing Loopholes Review, employer compliance and workplace artificial intelligence.
ACFA also attended a separate online meeting on 2 October to discuss the proposed Commonwealth construction standards and draft Joint Construction Industry Charter. We highlighted concerns about duplicated requirements, enforcement, protection for subcontractors reporting misconduct and responsibility being passed to businesses without the power to manage it.
Through the Committee, ACFA also met with ACCI to discuss the draft Secure Australian Jobs Framework and draft amendments to the Commonwealth Supplier Code of Conduct, including implications for members’ access to government work and compliance costs.
Your membership supports this work
As a not-for-profit industry association, ACFA relies on membership support to sustain advocacy alongside workplace advice, industry updates and practical member resources.
Your membership helps fund the research, submissions, meetings and follow-up needed to keep our industry’s concerns before decision-makers. It supports the advice your business needs today and the ongoing representation needed as laws and policy change.
Member feedback also makes that representation stronger. When you share a compliance concern or explain how a proposal would affect your business, you help ACFA put a clearer, more informed industry position to government.
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ACFA Members benefit from our Workplace Advice Team to assist their business in navigating these topics. With unlimited calls to our team and 600 + resources on our portal, ACFA is here to support businesses!
