Heatley Phil: Energy Safety Review Bill — First Reading 
Heatley Phil: Energy Safety Review Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:627;Page:21805] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I point out that we do have some agreement on the Opposition side of the House that the select committee process is to be used to tidy up the loose ends of a bill in order to get it perfect. But this bill is an example of the Hon Harry Duynhoven doing some very sloppy work using the select committee to do all his homework and thereby totally abusing the select committee process. He went in there with no consultation with the industry—none at all. There was no consultation with the tradespeople—master plumbers gasfitters or drainlayers. So the Minister sat around the table with his bureaucrats drafted up this bill which is full of compliance issues for those tradespeople and has taken it to Parliament where he is asking the select committee to do all the donkey work for him. I say to the “member for Amsterdam” Harry Duynhoven that he should do much more work as a Minister. He should consult people before he puts a bill through the select committee process and he should do the work himself. In future I will keep a keen eye on the Minister to make sure that other bills he introduces to the House are not as sloppy as this one is. 
A number of issues have been raised with us as National MPs. It is not only middle New Zealand that has been contacting us but plumbers gasfitters and drainlayers. They have been meeting with all the National Party MPs in their electorates and asking us what we can do to this interim Government—with only 3 months left—to put a halt to this legislation which will hurt their businesses irreversibly. First of all they talked about the issues around education. These are groups of tradespeople—professionals in their areas—who do not run from accountability or from professionalism. They believe in professional development. They believe in passing their skills down through the generations. They are not afraid of any of those things. Yet this Minister says that they have to go on education courses that will not help them at all in their trades or with their customers. Those courses will have viability for only a meagre 12 months and then they will have to start the cycle again. So Harry Duynhoven would have tradespeople sit in classrooms tick boxes and hand in assignments when we have a trades shortage in this country and we need those people to be out and about. 
The second-largest issue that tradespeople have raised with us concerns their becoming subject to the Department of Building and Housing rather than to the health legislation. I support what Mr Copeland said: that professional drainlaying sewage control and those sorts of initiatives all around the world have done more for the health of nations than anything else has done. Those trades should remain under the health legislation. I support the tradespeople on that. Why Harry Duynhoven wants to put those tradespeople under so much pressure when there is demand for them right across New Zealand in the building industry and they are doing very very well indeed we have no idea. Why would Harry Duynhoven pick on tradespeople? It is quite simple: he has 9 to 12 weeks left in his ministerial chair and he wants to make a mark. The “member for Amsterdam” wants to make a mark before he leaves his ministerial car at the door and goes back on to the back benches. I only wish that he had chosen to make his mark after he had done the homework and the legwork instead of using the select committee to do all that for him. 
We are quite concerned not just about drainlayers gasfitters and plumbers as individuals but also about the businesses they work in. We have an issue here. This bill—181 pages of it—will add more compliance costs to drainlaying gasfitting and plumbing businesses which have already had those costs piled up on them over the last 5 or 6 years. Harry Duynhoven has laid an egg. He has given birth to 181 pages of bureaucracy of regulation and of compliance costs. I would have liked to see how red Harry Duynhoven became when he tried to push this legislation out on to the Cabinet table. He would have become very red indeed. Harry Duynhoven has given birth to 181 pages of regulation. It is no wonder that he has gone red. This legislation will hurt those businesses. It will hurt plumbers and it will hurt all sorts of tradespeople. I can tell members that builders electricians fitters and turners and motor rewinders—all sorts of tradespeople—across this country fear that Harry Duynhoven will get such a thrill out of giving birth to this legislation that he will be looking out for who is next. 
Simon Power 
: Builders are next. 
PHIL HEATLEY 
: Builders will be next and then electricians. Harry Duynhoven will give birth to a thicket of regulation that will tie up engineers electricians and builders—good hard-working New Zealanders. That is what Harry Duynhoven wants to do. He wants to make his mark on this Parliament and the way he feels he needs to do that is through words and through giving the bureaucracy more jobs. He is building his own kingdom and that is embarrassing because it reflects on us all in this Parliament. Not all of us can give good speeches like this one but unfortunately the behaviour of Harry Duynhoven reflects on us all. He has given birth to 181 pages of regulation and compliance costs. 
I would like to talk a little more about the clauses that deal with the legislation that drainlayers gasfitters and plumbers will come under. As I said before I support Mr Copeland’s point. He said that drainlayers and those who deal in sewerage have done more for the world’s health than any other profession. It is quite amazing to think that that has happened over a millennium—1000 to 2000 years. It is quite a credit to those people that they managed to do it without Harry Duynhoven’s 181-page “how to do it” booklet. I am surprised that Minister Duynhoven the “member for Amsterdam” does not have pictures in this bill. We have 181 pages—a “how to do it” booklet. I bet the pharaohs and the plumbers who built the pyramids wished that they had had Harry Duynhoven’s compliance manual. I tell members that they would not have taken 1000 years to build the pyramids. They would not have taken 100 years or even 10 years. They would have been able to build a pyramid with this bill—there is so much paper. With this legislation the pharaohs could have built a pyramid and I believe that they could have done that no faster than in 3000 years by the time they had gone through this legislation and interpreted it. 
Seriously I do appeal to members. Over the last couple of thousand years how is it that this secret society of tradespeople was able to survive and do a good job without Harry Duynhoven’s legislation? I put that question on the floor. I ask members to respond to it and I really encourage them to do so.