Answer
When the requirement is states as an Honours degree what it really is saying is that you have to have at least a 1 year research degree (that is an Honours in Australia - coursework is part of your Bachelors and then you apply for a research year and thats your Honours). Honours is where you prepare a research project, work on it with some supervision but mostly on your own, prepare the results, write the journal article etc. In order to be accepted into a PhD program where in many departments you are left to your own devises with only cursory supervision (1-2 meeting a week nothing else) you need to prove that you are capable of doing this. A standard BTech degree might have a short research project as part of a single subject but that is very different to having an entire year of only a research project to occupy yourself.