Twyford PhilPart 1 Building Act 2004PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): We look forward to a full and vigorous debate on the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill. It is good to see Minister Mitchell in the chair and I am sure he is ready to take lots of questions because there are a lot of questions to be asked about this bill. It might seem a relatively innocuous bill going by the title but there are many aspects of this bill that are worth teasing out.Just for the benefit of people listening the bill is an omnibus bill. It is one of a package of three and we are dealing first with the building and housing amendment bill. The purpose of this bill the first of the three amendment bills is basically to clarify and update a number of provisions in the law—in this case the Building Act. It is designed to give effect to the purpose of the Act and its provisions to eliminate gaps and errors duplication inconsistencies and so on and to do a little bit of kind of updating and fine-tuning. The other objective that is listed in the bill's explanatory note is about removing unnecessary compliance costs and the costs of doing business. As people who have been observing this legislation for some time now will know that has actually been a critical factor underlying successive reviews of the Building Act.I want to talk about some of the items in Part 1 of the bill. There are not a huge number of provisions in Part 1 but I think there are some points that are worth touching on in Part 1 in relation to some of the points that were raised by submitters. Let us have a look at clause 4 of the bill which amends section 12 of the Building Act to cross-reference a specific clause in schedule 1. This is just a sort of a minor clarification you would have to say but a submitter by the name of Iain who was quite prolific in making submissions to the Local Government and Environment Committee on this—Hon Member: Oh dear!PHIL TWYFORD: I do not think it was Iain Lees-Galloway—Iain Lees-Galloway: No he spells his Iain" right though.PHIL TWYFORD: But "Iain" is spelt the same way. He asked why in section 12(2)(c) schedule 1 is being replaced with clause 2 of schedule 1. The officials explained that basically section 12 describes the role of building consent authorities and local councils and it is basically just fixing an incorrect cross-reference. So this is one of a number of fairly minor cross-references.Iain also asked the select committee—in fact he suggested that the current wording in clause 2 of schedule 1 be changed from "is likely" to "must" comply but the officials said that that actually would have been outside policy. It would have amounted to a substantive change to the clause and they rejected that.Section 96(1)(d) of the Act also gets a bit of attention in Part 1 of the bill—clause 5. It specifies a certain circumstance when a territorial building consent authority may issue a certificate of acceptance for residential building work that has already been done. The reason that that section is being repealed by this part is that it applies to applications for a certificate of acceptance that were made prior to 31 March 2010 and any applications like that were generally required to be granted or refused in 20 working days. So that is pretty simple and I do not think anybody would object to that.Another question that was raised in the committee about this part was how this is likely to affect homeowners and that is a pretty good question. I think it is fair to say that homeowners are the people who have borne the brunt of all of the kinds of inadequacies in our regulatory system for residential building and I think any electorate MP will have had people coming to their office who have been on the wrong end of a building job or a renovation that has gone wrong. This part—it is fair I think to ask that question about—[Bell rung] Mr Chairman.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member has started very well but let us see whether he can keep going.PHIL TWYFORD: I take that as a great vote of confidence Mr Chairman. So the question is how does the repeal of this section actually affect homeowners and the officials' response to that at the committee was that it is unlikely to have any impact on homeowners for the reasons that were outlined in relation to clause 5. In the unlikely event that any unresolved applications are still in the system there is an out clause and homeowners can apply to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment for a determination. So there was no change recommended on that particular discussion point.There are a few more points. It was proposed by a submitter that the current wording in clause 2 of schedule 1 in the Act should be changed from "is likely" to "must" comply. Again the officials recommended to the committee that actually that change not be made because it would introduce an element of compulsion that was not anticipated by the policy.Interestingly Transpower had a couple of things to say about Part 1 and came along to the committee. It proposed putting a new requirement into either the Building Act or the building code for building consent applications to state whether or not a particular part of the code applies to the building work concerned and the committee rejected that as basically being out of scope. It would have required a whole new round of analysis and consultation and that was rejected along with another kind of parallel issue relating to elements of the building code.So those are just some opening remarks on Part 1. There is a whole lot that can be said about this bill and everybody in the House knows that about the state of the building and construction industry and the constant ongoing need to improve the regulatory framework to put consumers in a much stronger position. These are all vital matters and we are going to be asking questions in the course of this debate on a whole range of issues about really whether or not the changes in this bill will make a significant difference to the Government's ability to deliver better outcomes for consumers.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No you won't—no you won't.PHIL TWYFORD: I mean to say Mr Chairman that—in closing—there are a whole lot of things in the building and construction area that need to be done. Mandatory warranties for homeowners are something that should be right up on the Minister's agenda and there are some things in this bill that—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am going to interrupt the member now and say that this is a very narrow bill. It has been accepted at the second reading and although the member spent about 4 minutes of his first speech talking very much about the details of the bill he has since then strayed away and what is not in the bill is certainly not appropriate discussion for the Committee of the whole House.PHIL TWYFORD: Thank you."