Clark David: Construction Contracts Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: Construction Contracts Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6839. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): Look Labour does support the measures in this bill obviously because we think that it is important to speed up the resolving of disputes in construction contract cases. If I think back to the meetings I have had with the industry in the time that this bill has been in Parliament there is a real desire to solve this issue and that is regardless of whether those people in the conversations are from the big end of town or the small end of town. I have had two quite separate sets of conversations about this topic and certainly at the small end of town there is the concern about livelihoods concern about the borrowing that has to go on sometimes to sustain businesses and pay employees and concern about the fairness and justice of the system as it is presented.At the big end of town there is a concern about the costs of measures that set up protection mechanisms and the fact that that will be borne by an entire industry and there is a concern that that will push up building prices and therefore reduce the amount of activity that goes on in our country. These are I think tensions that sit in the system and they are legitimate tensions to be debated and to be worked out. I want to congratulate those members who have brought this bill through the House because it is an issue that needs to be improved on as we have seen with Mainzeal—that is the obvious example that is frequently cited. It is the subcontractors who are hit the hardest but that does not take away from the issue of increasing costs on the industry and where those costs will fall. It is really important that there are no unintended consequences when the final deal is struck.I am aware of some of the conversations that have gone on behind the scenes—Treasury and the Minister for Building and Housing are having a few differences of opinion on this and that—and that is healthy actually. That is the kind of robust debate that we in this Parliament think ought to be happening so I am glad that the Minister is having robust discussions whether I agree with him on every point that he makes or not. I think that in this Parliament we should acknowledge that good process and good robust debate are essential. We should also thank the officials who have worked on this and who have argued the principles because we need a fair solution and we need a better solution than the one that we have now.We supported the contractors’ liens option—that is the favoured approach of the Labour Party. We worked through with contractors in the industry to find out how they best thought these issues could be addressed and that is the point that we came to as a party. We support the measures in the bill that speed up the resolving of disputes and construction contract cases because that is something that sorts out the uncertainty and the uncertainty that carries costs but we want to see more done to make sure that subcontractors do not miss out on the money they are owed when things go wrong. We need to take action so that the situation we saw with Mainzeal does not happen again. That is where we are coming from when we are discussing this bill and Part 1 where the main action occurs—the principle of making sure that there are speedy mechanisms and that there is something that is fit for purpose for addressing the obvious issues.The second option that we considered was statutory construction trusts where money would flow through to a trust to ensure that subcontractors got paid first should a construction company collapse. We know that these solutions apply to significant commercial—Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I appreciate the contributions that the current speaker and the previous speaker are both making about the Supplementary Order Paper that addresses the retentions in Part 2. The contributions they are making are valuable. I wonder whether it would be helpful so that we can actually debate the bill as one debate to take leave for the debate to be on Parts 1 and 2 together and then for them to be voted on separately given that the major retention issues that members wish to discuss are in Part 2.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Well that is not a point of order. We will just let the member have his few seconds remaining if he wishes—only a few seconds—and then if you want to bring forward a point of order we can handle that then.Dr DAVID CLARK: In the few seconds available to me I would like to say that I think it is important to have a good strong debate on Part 1. I know that I have got colleagues still wishing to debate that part but we will make the call when the Minister puts the leave. Thank you.