9 November 2026

Your contract says 45 days. In New South Wales and Victoria it does not.

The statutory payment period in NSW and Victoria is a maximum, not a fallback for silence. A contract date later than it is a term with no effect to that extent.

Most people read the Security of Payment periods as a default: the Act supplies a date if the contract does not. In two states that is the wrong way round, and reading it the wrong way round costs weeks of cash flow on every claim.

New South Wales

Section 11(1A): a progress payment by a principal to a head contractor becomes due and payable on the date occurring 15 business days after a payment claim is made"except to the extent" paragraph (b) applies, and paragraph (b) is "an earlier date as provided in accordance with the terms of the contract".

Section 11(1B) is the same sentence for a subcontractor, at 20 business days. Read the words: the contract can only move the date EARLIER. A NSW subcontract saying 45 days does not produce a 45-day due date. It produces 20 business days.

Exempt residential construction contracts sit outside this under s 11(1C), where the contract governs and 10 business days applies only if it is silent.

Victoria

Section 12(1B), inserted by Act No. 43/2025: a term in a construction contract "has no effect to the extent that it provides for the payment of a progress payment ... later than the day that is 20 business days after" the payment claim is served. Same effect, expressed as a ceiling on the term rather than as a statutory date.

And if the Victorian contract is silent, s 12(1)(b) gives 10 business days counted from the earliest day the claim could have been served under s 14A, which is the last day of the named month, not the day you served.

Why this is worth money rather than just being interesting

The due date is the pivot of the whole scheme. Adjudication windows run from it. Interest runs from it. Suspension rights and the right to proceed on an unpaid scheduled amount depend on it. If your system holds a due date that is three weeks later than the statutory one, every downstream date is late as well, and the last of them is the one that expires.

Two things to check this week

• Every NSW and Victorian contract in progress: find the payment period clause and compare it against 15 or 20 business days. If it is longer, your real due date is earlier than your accounts system thinks.
• Whether your own subcontracts state a period longer than the ceiling. A clause with no effect is not a protection, and it invites an argument you will lose.

And be precise about business days. Each Act defines them differently, and the Christmas exclusions in particular are not the same in any two states.

What the product does with it

Where the Act was read for a ceiling, the clock applies it to the contract due date recorded against the claim: a date later than the statutory maximum is shown as a term with no effect to that extent, and the deadline runs to the statutory date instead. Four Acts have been read for one, in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and the ACT. Where no ceiling has been verified for that state, the contract date is taken as given rather than guessed at, and the citation panel says which rule produced the date.

General information, not legal advice. Which Act applies depends on where the work is carried out, and exemptions such as the NSW residential carve-out change the answer.