A building company has been named and shamed for failing to pay more than $300,000 it owed for work on a big construction project near Queanbeyan.
The federal government's Building and Construction Commission has taken the highly unusual step of naming Hardy Brothers Mining and Civil Construction for not paying the $337,070.29 it owed to contractors for work on the Ellerton Drive Extension project.
The commissioner said the failure of the company (which has since gone into liquidation) "to remediate their conduct, to demonstrate contrition or remorse, or to rectify their conduct warrants the publication of non-compliance".
The commissioner, Stephen McBurney, said he was making public the name of the company to deter others who might be thinking of not paying debts to contractors. It may be the first time this has been done.
The commissioner said he wanted to "call out" behaviour that constitute serious breaches of the industry code, and to deter others from similar non-compliant conduct.
According to the commission, Hardy Brothers Mining and Civil Construction owed the money to contracting firm Coopers, which it had contracted to move earth and do other construction work in 2018. Coopers moved its diggers and water trucks in.
"Coopers worked on the project for eight months, however Coopers' invoices from September to December 2018 went unpaid. Those invoices totaled $337,070.29," the commissioner said.
The company then went under and liquidators were appointed, leaving Coopers in severe difficulty.
The company's director, Sally Cooper, said not getting the money was "extremely stressful".
"We did everything we could to come to some arrangement," she said.
"We are responsible for not only the wellbeing and welfare of our family, but also that of the families who work for us. We are not a big company and to have over $300,000 owing to us coming up to Christmas was horrendous."
There is a similarly named company to the one at fault - Hardy Mining, based near Newcastle. This is a separate company and not cited by the commissioner as being at fault.
