Bradford Sue: Building Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Bradford Sue: Building Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:643;Page:13011] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party continues to support this Building Amendment Bill as reported back to the House. We heard a number of submissions at the Social Services Committee from a range of groups including councils professionals and tradespeople in the building industry and the proprietors of large dams all of whom are particularly impacted by this legislation. The bill makes a number of often technical adjustments to the Building Act 2004 particularly around exemptions from needing a building consent in some situations the safety of dams and making the accreditation and audit fee system more flexible as part of the establishment of the new product certification scheme. 
We were told that in 2006 a large number of stakeholders had been consulted on a confidential basis in the preparation of the bill including 12 local government bodies 11 design and practitioner groups and nine accreditation organisations and other relevant organisations. People from the industry were talked with about how this bill was put together. Since the bill went to select committee I have heard several complaints about a lack of broader consultation but given the technical nature of the bill and the fact that a number of groups could and did make submissions to the select committee I think we probably did hear a fair representation of views. 
Alongside input on the building consent and fees issues already mentioned we also heard from organisations like the New Zealand Assembly of People with Disabilities and the Human Rights Commission both of which particularly endorsed the strengthening of project information memorandum requirements. This reinforced the imperative to comply with access provisions right from the early stages of building design rather than as an add-on at a later stage—even when it is a historic place that is in question. Some local authorities were less than happy with this as they believe among other things that the project information memorandum process should not be a tool to improve accessibility design and that this new amendment was unnecessary and will add to compliance costs. Given the story that we heard at the select committee from a local disability group in Gisborne about problems it had had with disability access to its own building—which because it was a designated historic place the council decided in the first instance did not even need to meet access regulations—I am glad that the select committee has chosen to stick to its guns in this particular section. 
In relation to the changes the bill makes to the way dams are dealt with the Green Party welcomes the new distinction between small dams and large. It is something that I am sure farmers around the country will be really pleased about. A large dam is now defined as “a dam that retains 3 or more metres depth and holds 20 000 or more cubic metres volume of water or other fluid”. The changes being made here will have the effect of ensuring that small dams which are the vast majority of dams on our farms cannot be regulated by territorial authorities as buildings and that their owners will not be subject to building consent requirements thus removing associated compliance costs. The Green Party will continue to support this bill through to its third reading and commends it to the House accordingly.