Under s 84(4) of the Domestic Building Contracts Act 2000 (Qld), a building contractor seeking tribunal approval to recover for a non-compliant variation must demonstrate more than the ordinary incidents of a poorly documented variation to establish 'exceptional circumstances', and must adduce evidence of the actual consequences of non-payment — not merely the fact of non-payment — to establish 'unreasonable hardship'. The availability of an alternative quantum meruit claim is irrelevant to the statutory tests. The test of unreasonable hardship requires both subjective evidence of hardship to the builder and an objective assessment that the hardship is unreasonable in the circumstances.
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