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I have spent enough years watching Queensland payment disputes to know that construction adjudication is sold as a fast cash flow remedy, writes Albert Merolla.
In Brisbane practice, it is that – but only if the file survives a threshold most litigators still underestimate jurisdiction. The Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 (Qld) rewards speed. It does not forgive sloppy service, a thin payment claim, or an adjudicator who wanders off the parties’ case.
That is the point many practitioners miss when they treat adjudication as a shorter District Court claim. It is not. It is a statutory process with preconditions the Supreme Court continues to treat as essential.
The service problem is no longer theoretical. Section 79(4) requires a claimant to give the respondent a copy of the adjudication application and any accompanying submissions within four business days of lodging with the Queensland Building and Construction Commission. In Platform Constructions Pty Ltd v Fourth Dimension Au Pty Ltd [2025] QCA 264, the Court of Appeal declared an adjudication decision void because the claimant had not served seven files that comprised the subcontract. The lesson is unglamorous and expensive: if the respondent does not receive the complete application package, the decision may not exist.
A review of decisions between January 2025 and March 2026, reported by Mullins Lawyers, found that about 30 per cent of applications that reached determination were refused on jurisdictional grounds. That figure should change how firms staff these files. The work is front-loaded. The payment claim has to identify the construction work and request payment. The reference date has to be right. The reasons in the payment schedule still lock the respondent in. Those are not drafting niceties. They are the whole case.
The other shift this year is what happens after a decision is set aside. For a long time, Queensland practitioners treated an out-of-time or void decision as the end of the statutory process. Time limits under section 85 have been held to be essential; an adjudicator who decides late can produce a nullity. Tomkins Commercial & Industrial Builders Pty Ltd v Starline Interiors Pty Ltd [2026] QSC 21 has now confirmed that the court can remit a void decision back to the adjudicator and reset the section 85 clock under section 101(3)(b). Judicial review is no longer a clean kill. It may simply send the same dispute back, on a fresh timetable, to be decided according to law.
That changes the advice I give clients in Brisbane. A respondent who wins on jurisdictional error should plan for remittal, not assume the claim dies. A claimant whose decision is set aside should not assume the only remaining path is a final court proceeding. The interim statutory right can still be repaired.
None of this means adjudication has failed. The QBCC’s 2024–25 reporting recorded hundreds of valid applications and more than $81 million awarded under released decisions. The regime still moves money. What has failed, repeatedly, is the assumption that the act will paper over incomplete service or an adjudicator who does not confront the parties’ actual case.
For lawyers running these files, practical discipline is simple. Treat the four-day service obligation as jurisdictional. Serve the contract, the annexures and the submissions – not a covering letter and a hope. Put every withholding reason in the payment schedule. Do not invite the adjudicator to invent a valuation method the parties did not run. And if you are considering Supreme Court relief, model remittal as the likely outcome, not the exception.
“Pay now, argue later” still describes Queensland security of payment. The cases of the last 18 months add a rider: only if you first prove you were entitled to be in the room.
Albert Merolla is the principal and chief executive of Baker Merz Construction Lawyers. He is based in Brisbane and advises claimants and respondents in adjudication under the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 (Qld).
