ASI continued its advocacy in 2023-2024 on local content, compliance and certification schemes; technical education, steel careers, student awards; continued engagement with industry associations; and increased level of activity with WorldSkills Australia.
Key advocacy initiatives in 2023-2024 included:
ASI called for restrictions on export of unprocessed scrap steel by making a submission to a Federal Government Senate Inquiry into Waste Reduction and Recycling Policies and by supporting the National Waste and Recycling Industry Council initiative to ban the export of unprocessed scrap.
Worked with domestic steel producers to meet the Federal Government’s emission reduction requirements under the Australian Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The ASI contends the CBAM design needs to include the provision of a comprehensive traceability scheme that is capable of providing verification of the provenance of the carbon emission intensity value associated with any given parcel of semi-finished steel or finished steel products.
Initiated a three-year traceability-of-steel project to better define, educate, certify and standardise local steel products so all the parts of a finished steel product have production records.
Continued to push for compliance with Australian Standards in fabrication to protect local community from inferior steelwork. Steelwork Compliance Australia (SCA) has now audited and certified 152 steelwork fabricators to construction classes as per the standard across all states. It is notable that the latest version of AS 4100 calls up AS/NZS 5131 as a secondary reference, embedding this into regulation and that the National Construction Code (NCC) update 2022 also reflects this.
Facilitated the development and publication of the Designing to NCC 2022. ASI worked with the National Association of Steel-framed Housing (NASH) to develop a number of industry reference documents in areas that relate to changes in the NCC 2022. Further to this, ASI provided representations and submissions to the NCC 2025 review and consultation process.
