Smith Nick: Building Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Smith Nick: Building Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:10836] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 I put it to the House that the Building Amendment Bill is another sad chapter in the crisis of home affordability that we have in New Zealand. I want to share two very important basic statistics with this Parliament. 
First the latest statistics show that today it costs more for a section than it cost for a house when Labour became the Government. Let me just say that again; it is an extraordinary statistic. This is the worst Government in New Zealand’s history in respect of home affordability. Now the second— 
Darren Hughes 
: What is the point of the member’s statement—that land values shouldn’t go up? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I know that Darren Hughes does not care an iota for the families in Otaki that are struggling to own their own homes and I want to ask that member to please explain why during Labour’s tenure in office it now costs more for a section than the amount that would have bought a house in 1999. Today in New Zealand the average price of a section is more than the amount that would have bought a house. 
Hon Parekura Horomia 
: Who says? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Parekura Horomia interjects asking: “Who says?”. Statistics New Zealand says that. The Government’s own department provides the figures that show the appalling situation that we have in this country. 
The second thing I want to point out—and maybe those members opposite will trust the census data—is that when Labour came into Government in 1999 71 percent of New Zealand homes were owner-occupied. In every year that Labour has been in Government homeownership has fallen back to a level of just 66 percent now. That drop of 5 percent represents 120000 fewer New Zealanders who own the roof over their heads. To members opposite I say that is a tragedy. 
I also say that Labour pretends that somehow it is not part of that problem. Well the very Act that we are attempting to amend with this bill is actually part of the problem. Let me explain why that is the case. When Labour brought in the new Building Act in 2004 what was the very first decision it made? 
Jacqui Dean 
: What? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Labour trebled the building levy. The building levy is a bit like a tax—and we are used to Labour putting taxes up—on homeownership. It went from $6 million a year I say to Mr Hughes to $18 million a year. I also want to point something else out that members opposite probably do not know which is that this Labour Government amended the Resource Management Act in 2003. It removed the checks on the development levies that councils charge. Do members opposite know that the development levy imposed on a section price has gone from an average of $8000 a section to $24000 a section? And Labour wonders why house prices have gone through the roof! It needs only to look in the mirror. 
Then when we look at what is proposed in the bill we get some idea of the mess that we have in our building laws. What I find extraordinary is this. This is the first reading of the Building Amendment Bill intended to fix the botch-ups that Labour made in 2004. The ink is not dry on this bill yet we have a Supplementary Order Paper to the bill. What sort of incompetence do we now have on the Government benches that we have that sort of mess in the legislative process? 
Let me go through some of the detail in this bill. The first issue is that of do-it-yourself building—and I want to commend my colleague Bob Clarkson; he has been championing the cause of do-it-yourself builders. I want to read to the House the  
Hansard 
 of Bob Clarkson’s questions to the Minister because the Minister has said over and over again that the Building Act 2004 does not prohibit the do-it-yourself builder. Well is it not strange that we now have a bill that amends those very clauses so that we can allow the do-it-yourself builder to operate? Members on the Opposition side of the House have always said to the Government that it shot the wrong guy. It was not do-it-yourself builders who were responsible for the leaky homes debacle. It was always an error and a mistake to ban those people but there is a sneaky little provision in this bill to address that issue. National believes that the right to get the hammer and nail bag out and to build a house is a pretty fundamental right. We think— 
David Bennett 
: Norman Kirk did. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Norman Kirk would have been outlawed from building his own home by this Labour Government. 
Darren Hughes 
: Rubbish! 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Darren Hughes says that is rubbish. Well I say to Darren Hughes that Norm Kirk was not a licensed building practitioner—is that not a lovely bureaucratic term—when he built his home in Carew Street Kaiapoi. He would have been prohibited from doing that and I say full points to Bob Clarkson because the Minister has thrown up the white flag. 
I also say this: the sneaky little clause here is only a partial guarantee. All that this bill does is to give the power through an Order in Council by the Minister to change the definition of restricted building work. So any future Labour Government could go back and ban the Norm Kirks of this world. We say that measure is a step in the right direction but that it is still wrong and we want to see some changes in that regard. 
Then we come to the area of the Supplementary Order Paper. In every area of the huge bureaucracy that Labour has created around building regulation in New Zealand it is already behind schedule. For example the Minister for Building and Construction Clayton Cosgrove has gone up and down the country saying that every local authority has to meet his requirement to be an approved building regulating authority by 30 November. Over and over again he has said that no there will be no move and then today at the last moment in a Supplementary Order Paper on a bill at its first reading—have we ever heard of anything as stupid as amending a bill on the very day that it is tabled—he proposes to change that timetable. He is running late. Then there is the licensed building practitioner regime. It was to come into effect in 2009; now he says that will be in 2010. 
Here is the real daddy of them all in this bill: we are going to require that building consent authorities be regularly audited. That is OK but who will pay for the costs of that? This bill says the Government will make the rules the Government will do the auditing and the bill will be sent straight to the ratepayer. Members of the House up and down the country have been wondering why rates are going up and they have even set up an inquiry into that. Well I say to members opposite that they should look in the damn mirror! The reason that rates are going up is that they keep passing these sorts of bills which just add to the costs and the bureaucracy of the building industry. 
The last point I make to members opposite is that they have created a bureaucratic paper-war nightmare for the building industry. At the end of this debate I want to table details of the amount of paper that was required in order to get a building consent for a garage in 2002—eight pages. Do members know how many pages under the stupid Building Act that this Government has passed that a person must have now in order to do that? It is 45 pages. We are burying the industry in bureaucracy and rules. We need to pull that back and we need to improve home affordability. But sadly that will happen only under a John Key - led National Government.