Katene Rahui: Building Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Katene Rahui: Building Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1787] 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 Less than a month ago I stood up during question time and asked the Minister of Housing what steps he would be taking to address the reported decline of homeownership rates amongst Maori. The context for my question was the staggering fact that the proportion of Maori who own their home has fallen from 61.4 percent in 1991 to 45.2 percent in 2006. Putting it another way the proportion of Maori now relying on rental tenure has increased from 38.6 percent to 54.8 percent. Here we are before a month has gone with a solution of sorts. The  
Maori Housing Trends 2008 
 report told us that although the hike in property prices and rents has impacted negatively on Maori as it has on other New Zealanders the impact has been exacerbated for Maori particularly because they often need larger houses which are more costly to rent. So any initiative to help first home buyers is an initiative we look at with particular interest in terms of how well it will assist Maori into homes. 
The Building Amendment Bill (No 2) is a fast-track approach which we in the Maori Party hope will be an avenue to providing starter homes to first home buyers at a quicker and more affordable rate. That would be good news for Maori and good news for Aotearoa. Maori homeownership is of particular concern to me as the member for Te Tai Tonga with the Canterbury region having the lowest ratio of Maori homeownership in New Zealand. This bill amends the Building Act to reduce compliance requirements and costs to developers and homeowners in order to improve the efficiency of the building consents process. According to the Registered Master Builders Federation approximately 40 percent of all new homes in New Zealand are built by volume builders. 
A key initiative introduced in this bill is that of national multiple-use approval. Multiple-use approvals will streamline the consent process for building work that uses the same design and that will be replicated nationwide. There will be a Lockwood in every street—Lockwood Homes that is. Having multiple-use approvals in place will mean that developers and project managers can devote more time to the building itself. All of the time devoted to the paperwork can be compressed into one focused approach. A new pre-approval system will fast track the building consent process but councils will still need to assess site-specific matters. 
Another initiative introduced in the bill is the voluntary project information memorandum (PIM) proposal. PIMs—not the liquor—are currently required before any building projects can begin. In the usual order of things project information memoranda are applied for at about the same time as a building consent is issued. Yet when we looked into that we found that on the basis of evidence less than 5 percent of project information memoranda are actually applied for in practice before the building consent application is made so the point of the whole process is lost. What started off as a good idea—that the project information memoranda would be a one-stop shop boutique hosting all information related to building consent—failed in reality because only a few project information memoranda were actually applied for prior to building consent application being made. This bill will make it optional for a building consent applicant to obtain a project information memorandum from a territorial authority. These measures are honourable in the intent to dramatically increase the supply of good-quality affordable homes. The thinking is that the bill will help to reduce unnecessary delays in the building consent process in order to streamline the process. 
The whole point of the legislation is to increase flexibility and efficiency in the building consent process. The amendments include the reduction in the statutory time frame for processing a building consent application from 20 working days to 10 working days when the application includes a national multiple-use approval. The hope is that owners and developers will benefit from reduced costs associated with the construction process while at the same time ensuring that quality homes and buildings are constructed. This is where the key concern rests for the Maori Party. Although we can fully appreciate that the potential economies of scale are able to be achieved through volume we must not see any compromise in quality or building compliance. This is where we are pleased that the capacity to record the process is still formalised through the functions and powers of the Department of Building and Housing. There are still some specific requirements to meet the technical application as set out in clause 30B of the bill. In short this is that the application will be in writing and contain prescribed information with the required plans and specifications necessary. The last thing we ever want to see replicated is leaky building syndrome. 
Although this bill speeds up the process removes unnecessary compliance requirements and will achieve economies of scale we must be mindful that in the haste to speed up things we do not dilute quality. We will be looking to the select committee process to ensure that there is due support for best-practice models to be expressed in managing amendments to building consents. Although we are sure that every party in this House will gladly support any proposals that reduce and remove unnecessary costs and delays to the building process we must be careful that in streamlining the process we do not end up creating a rod for our backs. This is where I return to the questions I asked of the Minister not too long ago. In his response about how to improve the levels of Maori homeownership the Minister said he would be speaking to a number of iwi and hapu groups and to the Maori Party. He also suggested that he would be seeking specific feedback from these groups about how the Housing Innovation Fund can help and how papakainga housing can be advanced. 
These were welcome signals from a Minister who is expressing a commitment to increase the availability of affordable social housing. We want that commitment to come alongside the goal to resource iwi and Maori organisations themselves to develop sustainable housing initiatives. We will therefore support this bill at its first reading to facilitate housing opportunities that we hope will reap benefits for Maori alongside other New Zealanders. But we will be watching particularly for submitters to bring to the select committee their assurance that the quality of building construction will not be compromised by the amendments. We want to see too that the reduced construction costs for developers will actually translate to reduced housing costs for buyers and renters and that the downstream costs will contribute to improved housing affordability. And we want to be absolutely convinced that the monetary savings are actually substantial enough to affect housing affordability.  
Having all of these factors in mind we will support the bill today in the hope for a better tomorrow for so many of our whanau who have not yet enjoyed the opportunity to buy their own homes. Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker.