Twyford Phil: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 10 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10918. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Labour is supporting the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill. We have supported it all the way through the House and we are supporting it in this third reading.I want it read into Hansard that I am not always ferociously critical of the work of the Hon Dr Nick Smith. I do not often get the opportunity to stand in the House and praise the Hon Dr Nick Smith for his work—but in this case I will. When this bill was brought to the House by Nick Smith’s predecessor the Hon Maurice Williamson on I think 7 August 2013 the Labour spokesperson at the time our former colleague Raymond Huo made a number of comments that I thought were on the mark. He said that it was very important that there was not a one-size-fits-all approach taken with the legislation and that we needed to take into account the importance of protecting heritage buildings and he urged a bit of a rethink of the policy that Maurice Williamson proposed.Where we need to give credit to the Hon Dr Nick Smith is that he did listen to the concerns that were being raised by members of this House and at the Local Government and Environment Committee. I think that the select committee came to the view pretty quickly that if the bill had progressed in the form in which it was introduced by Maurice Williamson there would have been some pretty calamitous consequences for the economy and for towns and cities around New Zealand that had a stock of old heritage buildings; and there would have been huge unnecessary costs and impositions on building owners around New Zealand. So the select committee came to that view and I think sensed that the approach in the bill was not appropriate and that it needed a pretty fundamental rethink. Shortly after that Dr Nick Smith made an announcement—at I think the National Party conference—that there would be a comprehensive rewrite. He was true to his word and the bill that we see now is largely a result of that rewrite.There are number of key changes that I want to refer to. The first is that basically a graded system is applied across the country based on estimates of seismic risk. So under the bill the country is split into zones according to their risk of having a large earthquake and both the time frames for assessment and the degree of strengthening required are varied according to the level of seismic risk in each zone. That is the fundamental change that was made. It forms the basis of the new bill and it is something that we wholeheartedly support.So as a result of that affected buildings in low-risk areas such as Auckland Northland and Dunedin will now need to be identified and assessed within 15 years and strengthened within a further 35 years. Under this legislation owners of heritage buildings can apply for an additional 10 years’ extension. What that means is that a heritage building in the northern part of the country or in Dunedin may not be strengthened for 60 years. That is at one extreme of the spectrum but that does show that the graded risk-based approach that is embodied in the bill actually does give building owners a pretty reasonable time frame within which to address the need to strengthen those buildings. So if you look at an area like Hamilton and Tauranga the time frame will be between 10 years and 25 years—that is a medium-risk area. The high-risk areas like Wellington and Christchurch keep their existing time frame in the bill of 25 years.One of the other improvements in the bill was that there is a new category of priority buildings and that will cover those buildings with unreinforced masonry features like a parapet or a verandah where there is a risk that those things could fall into the public road or a footpath or some other thoroughfare. A number of colleagues in the course of the various debates we have had have paid tribute to Ann Brower the citizen in Christchurch who I think was the sole survivor of a bus crash in the February 2011 quake when her bus was crushed by falling masonry. Ann Brower spoke up and she lobbied very effectively for the need to address particularly this issue of falling masonry and parapets and so on. So I think that was a major improvement to the bill. The priority buildings will constitute I think about 2000 buildings across the country and the times for both the assessment and the upgrade requirements are halved for that special category. So for example a building in Auckland would need to be identified and assessed within 7½ years and strengthened within a further 17 years if it is classified as one of those priority buildings.My late father used to refer affectionately to New Zealand as the Shaky Isles. We live with the constant presence and the constant risk of earthquakes—here in Wellington we do. It is a little less of a factor in Auckland—but then Auckland has volcanoes. So it is appropriate and timely that our legislation appropriately takes into account the risks faced by buildings and what happened in Christchurch where out of a population of 370000 people there were 255 fatalities. That was a huge price to pay and what we know is that the consequences of those quakes in Canterbury showed us that buildings that are properly built and constructed to the modern building standards actually do really well. When buildings are not constructed to the modern standard they do not do nearly so well and the consequence when a major quake happens is that there is considerable loss of life and risk to property.So we support this bill. I think it is a really good example of the House—including the select committee process—working really well. I think the fact that the bill as it was initially introduced by Maurice Williamson was so far off the mark and had such significant flaws should be a cautionary tale actually to us all in the legislative process here. It should make us pause whenever the Government proposes that bills should be pushed through under urgency without taking the time that is available at a select committee to give the kind of proper scrutiny and consideration that important or complex bills deserve. It should give us pause to reflect that none of us has a monopoly on wisdom and what seems like a good idea—or the best idea at the time—might actually be significantly improved through public debate through debate in this House and through expert advice and public scrutiny at the select committee stage. Thank you.