SA President’s comment – November 2025
Perhaps it’s South Australia’s proud free settler status that shapes our government’s strong focus on matters of legality, but contract changes and updates are an ever-present topic of discussion for the ACA SA. We are a relatively small state, where government projects can make up a significant proportion of our members’ workload. As a result, the South Australian branch has developed a longstanding and consistent program of advocacy and research around contractual terms.
Another peculiarity of the SA branch is that we have a dedicated budget line each year committed to funding something that we can then contribute to the ACA nationally. In the last two years, we have funded two rounds of work relating to contracts for engagement of consultancy services.
I have written on this topic before, but there are many contractual terms we see at both state and national levels where the immediate response must be “that is just not fair”.
Items such as payment legislation, proportionate liability, copyright and moral rights have all been placed in law to protect or correctly recognise authors, only to be challenged in most contracts for professional services. So, when federal government boosted the reach of its Unfair Contracts Legislation to cover the majority of our member practices it seemed self-evident that we could compare the contracts we all receive, with the legislation the government says defines what is fair.
SA funded the work of Phillip Greenham, a recognised expert in the field to undertake this task, and the paper is now available for members. It is enlightening about what is fair, what is most likely unfair, what is pragmatically worth worrying about, and if so, what you may be able to do to mitigate it. The paper is a valuable tool for educating our members in contract discussion and sharing an expert third party assessment.
Coincidentally, it was not long ago that our own state government issued their updated consultancy contract terms for review, and this platform seemed an excellent basis to do so.
Maybe this time it’s our proud history of winemaking and sandy beaches but South Australians are a convivial lot, and we joined forces with the AIA to engage Phillip once again to conduct a review of the contract on consultation against Unfair Contracts legislation. While government is curiously absolved of compliance with their own legislation whilst in the pursuit of governing, it is debatable whether this includes the engagement of consultants for development, and irrespective, it is a powerful discussion point about whether their own terms should breach this legislation. This review was a useful piece in the armoury and discussions are ongoing.
Our AIA partnership also extends to ongoing representation in what we call DCCIF, where the ACA represents directly to government alongside other representative bodies on a regular basis around matters of contract and engagement.