Defence Housing Australia (DHA) has responded to recent media coverage about the enterprise’s use of engineered stone. 

DHA rebuts a recent article’s claims regarding DHA ‘ignoring’ direction from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) on use of engineered stone. 

The article is misrepresentative of DHA’s efforts in moving away from using engineered stone containing more than one per cent crystalline silica by the official prohibition of 1 July 2024.  

Formal correspondence received from the DEWR on 21 December 2023 noted the earlier December 2023 WHS Ministers decision ‘discouraging’ construction use of the stone. While the 21 December 2023 correspondence references encouragement to implement the Procurement Policy Note, it also stated that DHA is not subject to the note or Commonwealth Procurement Framework. This is due to DHA being a non-prescribed Corporate Commonwealth Entity. However, DHA is subject to and complies with work health and safety legislation pursuant to procurement.  

DHA commenced looking for alternative products and updated its scope of works documentation to reference zero silica benchtops in February 2024. References in DHA’s scope of works documentation were updated to ‘zero silica engineered stone’ and then evolved to ‘zero silica benchtops’ in June 2024 to avoid confusion. 

DHA has asked the relevant news outlet to reflect DHA’s efforts in moving away from engineered stone prior to the official mandated ban from 1 July 2024 onwards, and issue a correction to the published article on this basis.