Parker David: Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Bill — In Committee 
Parker David: Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:668;Page:14822] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I am going to address Part 1 of the Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Bill and in particular I will deal with limitations to the Building Act. The Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Bill sets out the ways that normal rules are being suspended or modified for the Rugby World Cup 2011. Part 1 lists the various Acts that are affected and also lists those that are not affected. Amongst those that are affected is the Building Act and this is an issue that we delved into in great detail at the Government Administration Committee. The underlying problem that seeks to be addressed here is that there will be a one-off influx of some 50000 people; I think that was the estimate— 
John Hayes 
: 85000. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I am told 85000 by John Hayes. Between those two numbers there will be a large number of extra people in Auckland and we do not have enough visitor accommodation for them. We do not have enough hotels and motels to accommodate between 50000 and 85000 extra people in Auckland and it certainly would not be economic for providers of accommodation to build extra accommodation in order to provide for them for that one event. That would not be economical for those who would be building that accommodation. Therefore it would not happen; therefore we would have a shortage of accommodation unless we open up some other existing accommodation for temporary use during the Rugby World Cup 2011. That is what this legislation attempts to do: it attempts to prescribe what we should do to facilitate that whilst having some safeguards. 
The normal rules that apply to visitor accommodation are quite stringent. Because we need to have our visitor accommodation normally meeting the needs of people with disabilities we have rules relating to ingress and egress; if it is a multi-storey dwelling we now generally require lifts. That obviously is not practical in respect of some of the multi-storeyed residential accommodation which currently does not have to have lifts. 
Jacqui Dean 
: They have lifts. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I am sorry but I tell Jacqui Dean that that is not correct. Not all multi-storey buildings used for residential accommodation and that are suitable for— 
Jacinda Ardern 
: I live in one. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Jacinda Ardern lives in one. There are many multi-storey buildings in Auckland. I am not talking about 20-storey buildings here but I am talking about multi-storey buildings that are suitable for use as temporary accommodation for visitors during the Rugby World Cup 2011 but would not meet the normal planning and Building Act controls for transient accommodation for visitors. The committee grappled with the issue about what we should do to limit the application of the Building Act that would otherwise apply. We did that by inserting clause 5A. We said that there are some circumstances when normally it would be illegal to have temporary visitor accommodation provided on a commercial basis to visitors but that that accommodation should be exempted from those normal rules in order to facilitate visitor accommodation. 
In respect of clause 5A one has to understand a bit of background in order to understand its meaning. The provision does not apply to single-storey dwellings; we learnt from officials that single-storey dwellings are not within the definition of what is caught by clause 5A(1)(a)(i). They are already exempt so we did not need to do anything for those dwellings. If the Minister in the chair the Minister of Immigration thinks that I have got that wrong he can correct me because I am not 100 percent sure in my recollection of that but that was my understanding. I think that the definition of “household unit” from the Building Act somehow exempts single-storey units. In any event multi-storey buildings generally are caught and we wanted to provide for the ability for multi-storey buildings to be used for short-term accommodation. There are lots of apartments where people live from day to day; if it is safe enough for them to live there from day to day it is safe enough to have some temporary accommodation in them during the Rugby World Cup 2011 without lots of red tape around that. 
What controls did we put in? We thought that there should be some obligation to take a bit of care so we provided two of what I thought were pretty practical things. The first was that we wanted apartments to have a smoke alarm. It does not have to be a fancy computerised smoke alarm linked throughout the building but at least someone should have to go to the trouble of putting on the ceiling a $15 smoke alarm with a battery so that if there is a bit of smoke in the apartment a big loud noise goes off and the people in the apartment know to get out. It seemed to me to be a pretty practical cheap thing to require those apartments to have. It would not be a legal requirement for people to have an alarm in their own home but something that they should have in any event and if they are going to let out their house then they must provide it. An alarm costs $15; installing one does not seem too big a step for people to take in a multi-storey apartment. 
The second control we put in was that apartments ought to have an evacuation plan. That is not a difficult thing; that is what one sees on the back of every motel door. It just shows the route that one has to take out— 
Hilary Calvert 
: Do you ever look at them David? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Is anyone going to look at them? Well some people will and if there was a fire I tell Hilary Calvert and there was not an evacuation plan and we in Parliament had authorised temporary accommodation without either smoke alarms or an evacuation plan I suggest that someone would be looking back after the event and criticising us in Parliament for being just a wee bit too fast and loose with the abolition of rules. I think that the two rules we have applied which are the need for a smoke alarm and the need for an evacuation plan—the likes of which one sees when one goes into a motel—are pretty practical. On that basis we have facilitated what will be a sensible source of residential accommodation for between 50000 and 85000 visitors to Auckland during the Rugby World Cup 2011 and in other parts of the country. This solves a problem that would otherwise have been difficult—that is the ability to accommodate that number of people. 
In some of the other changes to this part of the bill we made it clear that the definition of “ancillary events” should change. A doubt arose from legislation relating to liquor licensing laws. The definition in clause 4 of this bill used to read: “ancillary events means events whether or not sporting events wherever they occur that are reasonably closely connected to the Rugby World Cup 2011”. There was a decision—it might have been of a liquor licensing authority of some kind—that said that a replay or even a live playing of an event at a separate physical venue might not be reasonably closely connected to the Rugby World Cup 2011 and therefore would not have the benefit of these temporary exemptions from normal rules. We made it clear that we understood it to be the intention of Parliament that an event like the live public screening of a game was an ancillary event for the purposes of this legislation. That change seems sensible too. 
Various other changes were made to the definitions in clause 4. In clause 5 we made it clear that the Acts that this legislation does not apply to include the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. We did not think that that should be overridden by the Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Bill. We also clarified the definition of “transport legislation” to include the Land Transport Management Act 2003 which I think had been omitted in error. Other changes to the definitions included a change to the definition of “facility”. That was a flow-on from some other changes that were made to the definition of “Rugby World Cup 2011” which the Hon Trevor Mallard made reference to in his first contribution. 
In terms of the balance that we tried to strike here we wanted to make sure that the police have powers to learn about things during the process. We tidied up the notice provisions. In Part 1 new clause 5B(2) provides that “the following persons or bodies may apply to the Minister to declare by notice in the  
Gazette 
 that an activity or a facility to which subsection (1)”—of clause 5—“applies is a major maritime event for the purposes of … the Maritime Transport Act 1994:”. That is to make clear some of the things that will happen around the waterfront particularly in Auckland where there will be cruise ships used as temporary accommodation. There was a desire by the authorities to have it made clear that they could claim some right to manage safety issues. There was a need to make it clear that the authorities had the ability to regulate maritime safety around these areas.