Woods Megan: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 10 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10921. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call on this bill as it ends its life and goes through this House to become law. I think it is law that many of us are very happy to see put in place. I would like to acknowledge the speaker who has just resumed his seat Scott Simpson the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee who chaired the select committee process. This is because it was in the select committee process where the heavy lifting on this bill was done.Back in March 2012 some terms of reference for a review into our earthquake-prone buildings in New Zealand were released. Out of that we saw a piece of legislation that was tabled in this House in 2013. That was not really a bill that was fit for purpose and other speakers have traversed some of the reasons why that bill was not fit for purpose. Then we fast-forward a period of time and the new Minister for Building and Housing Nick Smith announced at a National Party regional conference that there was going to be a thorough review of that piece of legislation and that we would go back to the drawing board. There was a lot of work done at the select committee. I think that this bill really was an example of what happens when this place works well—when submitters are listened to and when select committees work in a constructive way to come up with the best piece of legislation that is possible. Although a lot of work had been done on changing the bill that went back to the select committee we still had eleventh-hour changes to this bill.Speakers have referred to the unremitting lobbying by Ann Brower and her dedication to seeing this bill through and making sure that it was a constructive piece of legislation. It really did cause some eleventh-hour amendments to be made to this bill. I think the Minister back in September last year when these changes were brought about said they were going to be known as the “Brower amendments”. I would like to acknowledge Ann—she is not here yet but I know she is winging her way to Wellington to see the passage of the bill tonight because it is that important to her. I guess none of us can underestimate what being the sole survivor of something like being on that bus in Christchurch when we saw buildings fail—the impact that that would have on your life and your dedication to make sure that this never happens again.Mr Simpson the chair of the committee talked about when this bill first saw the light of day. There was a lot of expert evidence from scientists who said that averaged across the country the threat of earthquake risk was not that alarming. But of course what we know about seismic activity is that we do not average it across the country. It tends to follow geological patterns and does not equitably share itself amongst the centres of this country—it has its favoured places. Some of those favoured places are ones that we do not actually expect: as Cantabrians we never thought that Christchurch would be the city that copped “the big one” in this generation—we thought it would be Wellington. So we really do have to follow the expert evidence and the very good science that we have around seismic activity and seismic risk in this country.The suggestion that came forward was that we do the sensible thing and divide the country up according to the risk profiles. If you live in Wellington or Napier or Christchurch you are now deemed to be in a much riskier seismic place than if you live in Auckland or Dunedin. In the case of Auckland we will not talk about the volcanoes—there are other risks there. But in terms of seismic risk the time frame what you needed to do and how quickly you needed to put your house in order were determined by risk. This was the very sensible and pragmatic approach that the select committee took. It was from listening to those experts listening to the scientists from GNS Science listening to engineers listening to economists listening to local councils listening to geologists and listening to earthquake survivors like Ann Brower that we were able to make this a better bill. So I think this very much is about evidence-based lawmaking and I think that is something that we do need to celebrate.Not only did we have the terms of reference that the review in 2012 put in place to review the Acts which the previous Minister Maurice Williamson worked off we also had the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Building Failure Caused by the Canterbury Earthquakes—and what had happened with buildings during that sequence of events but particularly the February 2011 events. What we knew from that study is that 40 to 42 people died needlessly—and that very simple changes could have been made to buildings. Of the 185 people who lost their lives in the Canterbury earthquakes most of them were in the main building collapses—of the Pyne Gould Guinness Building the CTV Building—those very high-profile buildings where we all know the tragedies occurred. But I think it is now reasonably well known that a number of the losses of life—and in fact around 40 to 42 it is calculated—were caused by building failure around verandahs and parapets and what we know to be the particularly vulnerable parts of older buildings and what happens when these fail.It was this very point that Ann Brower brought to the attention of the select committee when she said “There’s a really sensible way you can do this. There’s some quite low-hanging fruit.” She pointed us to overseas jurisdictions and other quite earthquake-prone jurisdictions—such as California which has learnt a thing or two about how to deal with buildings in a seismically active area—and showed that you do not have to lose the whole heritage fabric of a building. As a historian myself I can say that that is reasonably important to me. There are much lighter materials that can be used for the parapets; there are much lighter materials that can be used for many of the embellishments that give our local streets and town centres in suburbs and in the centres of cities the character that we all want to preserve. There is a way of doing this without putting people’s lives at risk. It was the failure of those parapets of those verandahs and of those adornments that did prove to be fatal.When we came to consider this I know for myself that what would have once been quite a dry risk-assessment exercise of weighing up and looking up the expert evidence really was tempered by recent real experience of what does happen when buildings fail and the need for Governments to properly regulate and provide protection for people around these buildings. I do not think any of us want to see anyone lose their life unnecessarily when there are very simple measures that we need to take. Of course there will be costs associated with this. Of course there is going to be some hardship on some building owners who now need to bring their buildings up to code. We have to as a Parliament make sure that we are putting in place the proper protections in order to keep people safe. We need to know as a legislature that we are making the right changes that need to be made to protect people’s lives. It is in this legislation that we have the opportunity to do this—not just to say “Oh this is just a piece of dry regulation”—and to know from recent past experience that what we can and will make a difference to some people somewhere but I hope not any time soon.This is important work and I think it is important that this bill has got the support across the House that it needed. I think that it shows the people out there who might be a little bit cynical about politics and politicians from time to time that actually when it comes to some of the important issues we can work together and that we can work based on the evidence to come up with the best law possible. I think that is what many of us come to this House to do actually: to make things better.So it is my absolute pleasure to commend this legislation to the House to really acknowledge the people who have made this law possible and to acknowledge Ann Brower—and I know she will be getting embarrassed by all the acknowledgment but to acknowledge her once again for making her experiences and her harrowing experiences count—for making sure that what she went through will not be something that others need to go through needlessly again. It is our pleasure to be supporting this piece of legislation.