Section 75 supporting statements: what a Queensland head contractor must give with every payment claim

A Queensland head contractor's payment claim is required by statute to arrive with a supporting statement about subcontractor payment. The requirement is in section 75(7) of the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 (Qld), it is backed by a penalty, and it is routinely confused with the statutory declaration the head contract requires under its own payment clause. This article explains what section 75 actually requires, what happens when the statement is missing, and why the two documents are usually dealt with by one witnessed declaration.

Who section 75(7) applies to

Section 75 of the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 (Qld) governs the making of a payment claim. Subsection (6) confines the supporting statement requirement to a claimant whose construction contract has a subcontract under it, where the construction contract is not itself a subcontract for another construction contract. That describes a head contractor claiming from a principal, and it excludes a subcontractor claiming from the builder above it. A subcontractor may still have to give a statutory declaration under its subcontract, but that is a contractual obligation, not a section 75 one.

The offence

Section 75(7) provides that the claimant must ensure the payment claim is accompanied with a supporting statement, and attaches a maximum penalty of 100 penalty units. The value of a penalty unit in Queensland is fixed by the Penalties and Sentences Act 1992 (Qld) and indexed each year, so the dollar figure moves; what does not move is that the omission is an offence committed by the claimant, on every claim it gives without the statement.

The New South Wales equivalent, section 13(7) of the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW), carries a maximum penalty of 1,000 penalty units for a corporation or 200 for an individual, and section 13(8) adds a separate offence, with possible imprisonment, for serving a statement known to be false or misleading. The Queensland provision is lighter, but it is the same idea: the legislature wants the principal told, every month, whether the subcontractors have been paid.

The claim is still valid without one

Section 75(8) provides that a failure to comply with section 75(7) does not affect the validity of a payment claim. This is the point most often misunderstood on both sides of a claim. A principal who receives a head contractor's claim without a supporting statement cannot treat the claim as a nullity, ignore the payment schedule deadline, or resist adjudication on that ground. The claim runs. The head contractor has committed an offence, and the principal may say so, but the statutory consequence is a penalty, not a defective claim.

The 2021 Queensland adjudication in ASM Builders Pty Ltd v Hidden Valley Harvest (Facility) Pty Ltd (adjudicator Joram Murray AM, decision 1103290, 25 October 2021) illustrates the distinction. The claimant's payment claim of $1,378,221.57 attached a supporting statement made under section 75(7), but the respondent pointed out that none of the claimant's earlier claims had, and argued that this showed the claimant had been concealing its use of subcontractors in breach of the contract. The adjudicator accepted that, if the allegation were correct, the earlier omissions “would have the effect of exposing the Claimant to a penalty”, and went on to hold that “It is not a decisive factor” in the question actually before him, which was whether the claimant had breached the contract by the way it engaged its trades. The claimant was awarded $757,744.34. The missing statements were a compliance problem for the claimant; they were not a reason to refuse the claim.

What the statement must say

Section 75(9) defines a supporting statement, for a payment claim, as a written document that does one of two things. Either it declares that all subcontractors have been paid all amounts owed to them by the claimant at the date of the payment claim, or it states, for each subcontractor who has not been paid in full, the subcontractor's name, the amount still unpaid, the details of the subcontractor's unpaid payment claim, the date the subcontractor did the work or supplied the goods and services, and the reasons the amount was not paid in full, together with a statement that all other subcontractors have been paid in full.

The 2025 decision in Tomkins Commercial & Industrial Builders Pty Ltd v York Property Holdings Pty Ltd (adjudicator John Tuhtan, decision 2760615, 8 April 2025), a $57.5 million claim on the Midwater Residences project at Main Beach, sets section 75 out in full in the course of considering whether the payment claim was validly made, describing the section as prescribing the time by which the claimant may submit “a payment claim and the supporting statement”. The decision is a useful reminder that adjudicators do check the claim against section 75 as a whole, and that the supporting statement is part of what they expect to see with a head contractor's claim.

Two things follow from the definition. First, the “all paid” limb and the “some unpaid” limb are alternatives, and the second is the honest one whenever retention is held, a back-charge is in dispute or a subcontractor's claim has been assessed down. A statement that everyone has been paid, given while a subcontractor's claim is being contested, is not a supporting statement that complies with section 75(9). Second, the definition requires a written document making those declarations. It does not require the document to be sworn, affirmed or witnessed.

Supporting statement and statutory declaration are different documents

The reason the two get confused is that the head contract almost always requires something with the same content. The payment clause of the Australian Standard forms, clause 43 of AS 2124-1992 and clause 38 of AS 4000-1997 and AS 4902-2000, together with the annexure forms used by Queensland Government agencies and larger principals, require the contractor to give with each progress claim a statutory declaration that workers and subcontractors have been paid. That document is explained in detail in the article on the subcontractor payment declaration under AS 2124, AS 4000 and AS 4902.

	Section 75 supporting statement	Contractual statutory declaration
Where the requirement comes from	Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 (Qld) s 75(7)	The head contract's payment clause and annexure
Form	A written document meeting the s 75(9) definition. No prescribed form, no witness	A statutory declaration under the Oaths Act 1867 (Qld), in the annexed form
Who signs	The claimant, through an authorised person	A director or authorised officer, who declares the contents to be true
Witnessed?	No	Yes, by a person within s 16B of the Oaths Act 1867 (Qld): a justice of the peace, commissioner for declarations, notary public, lawyer, or conveyancer or other person authorised to administer an oath
If it is missing	An offence, maximum 100 penalty units; the claim remains valid (s 75(8))	The principal may withhold payment under the contract until it is provided
If it is false	Exposure under the general law about false statements	A false declaration is an offence under the oaths legislation, committed by the declarant personally

Why one witnessed declaration does both jobs

Nearly every Queensland head contractor deals with the overlap in the same way: it prepares one statutory declaration in the contractual form, has it witnessed, and serves it with the payment claim as both the contractual declaration and the section 75 supporting statement. That is sensible, for three reasons.

• The content required by section 75(9) is a subset of what the contractual declaration already says. A declaration that all subcontractors have been paid, or that lists the unpaid ones with amounts and reasons, satisfies the definition.
• Preparing a second, unwitnessed document with the same content is duplicated effort that creates a risk of the two documents saying different things.
• A sworn document carries more weight with the principal, and with an adjudicator, than a bare signed statement.

The trade-off is that the execution requirements of the statutory declaration then apply. It must be made under the Oaths Act 1867 (Qld) before a person within section 16B, or by audio visual link under Part 6A before a special witness, a class that includes Australian lawyers. If the declaration is served unwitnessed because someone treated it as a section 75 statement, the section 75 obligation may well be satisfied, since the Act does not require a witness, but the contractual obligation is not, and the principal may withhold. Where the contract makes the declaration a precondition to payment, that is the more expensive of the two failures.

Two practical points. A head contractor whose contract does not require a statutory declaration still has to give a section 75 supporting statement; the statutory obligation stands on its own. And a head contractor should be careful about who signs. Section 75(9) requires declarations of fact about every subcontractor on the project at the date of the claim. The person signing should be the person who knows, which usually means a director or the officer responsible for subcontractor payments, not whoever is in the office when the claim goes out.

Checklist for each claim

1. Confirm you are a head contractor with subcontracts below you. If so, section 75(7) applies to every payment claim you give.
2. Reconcile subcontractor payments to the date of the claim. Decide which limb of section 75(9) applies: all paid, or some unpaid with details.
3. Prepare the declaration in the form the head contract requires, making sure it covers the section 75(9) content.
4. Have it made before an authorised witness under the Oaths Act 1867 (Qld), in person or by audio visual link, on the day it is ready.
5. Serve it with the payment claim, expressed as accompanying that claim.
6. Keep the original with the claim file. If a subcontractor later disputes payment, the declaration is the document that will be read.

Auswitness witnesses Queensland statutory declarations by video link with an Australian lawyer, including at month end and outside business hours. See how the statutory declaration session works, the page for builders and contractors, or the companion article on the statutory declaration that holds up your progress claim.

This note is general information about how section 75 operates. It is not legal advice and is not a substitute for reviewing your own contract or obtaining advice on your own circumstances. Adjudication decisions bind only the parties to them and are cited here as illustrations. Current as at 22 September 2026.