Franks Stephen: Architects Bill — Second Reading 
Franks Stephen: Architects Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:19913] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I have to say that I was dying to get the call immediately after the last Government speaker the senior Government whip because it was so amusing to see what pure lip service was being paid to the Architects Bill. No Minister was paying any attention. The speaker the Government put up was reading essentially from the notes of the Government Administration Committee and was applauding what the committee had done not knowing that her own Minister had a Supplementary Order Paper sitting on the Table to undo all the good work she was applauding. Mr Brown thinks that the undoing is a good idea; he thinks that Mr Tamihere’s amendments are a sound idea. I do not. 
I think it is quite wrong for any profession to seize a general descriptive word a word that has a meaning in common language that goes far wider than the technical meaning and then to say: “That’s ours.” and that anyone else cannot use it. What that seems to mean for example is that a landscape architect could be in trouble if he or she were involved in helping to draw up plans for a building. A financial architect doing a financing plan would be in trouble. There are all sorts of uses of the term “architect”—for example the architect of the Iraq war. It is a general term a general piece of language. 
We simply do not do that in other ways. Accountants for example were not allowed to seize ownership of the term “accountant”—the description that was given protection is “chartered accountant”. I think that Mrs Pettis was absolutely right in her praise for what the select committee did. She very correctly identified the contribution the select committee made. It heard submissions and it resisted the self-interested whining of the establishment of the profession which wanted something far too wide. So for her to draw attention to what the select committee did and to praise it in her speech as she just did was sensible. 
The sad thing is that Mrs Pettis’ own Government colleagues and Cabinet do not agree with her and they seem to— 
Jill Pettis 
: Mr Franks you are putting words into my mouth. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: If Mrs Pettis cares to look at her  
Hansard 
 she will find that she praised the change of title of the bill to the Registered Architects Bill. She praised the change the committee made to ensure that the term “registered architect” is protected. What the Supplementary Order Paper on the Table will do even though it may not have been read by anyone on the Government benches is reverse that good work. I see that the honourable Minister Mr Barker has just suggested that Mrs Pettis hold her tongue because he knows that I am dead right and that she was dead right the first time. This Government wants to suck up to the professional body and has decided that it is far better to grease to the people with the money—the people who run the professional organisation—and to give them what they have asked for. 
That is not usually how this Government portrays consumer protection. This Government usually says that it is making businessmen whine and is making trouble for business because that is the way it claims it is doing something for the consumer. Instead in this case it has succumbed to the representations from the industry. It has taken away a perfectly descriptive word for a whole host of people who should be able to refer to themselves as architects but not as registered architects and this bill now changes that. I hope that the National Party will vote against the Supplementary Order Paper because it is wrong. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: We’ll vote against it unless I get my Supplementary Order Paper changed. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: OK so there is a qualification. Well I will be interested to follow it and I hope that we can vote on the same side. I always prefer that. 
I am certainly very disappointed to hear that New Zealand First is going to go along with a move to lock up a sensibly descriptive word and give it to one profession. We do not for example say that only engineers who are members of the institute can use the term “engineer”. They have to be registered engineers. We do not lock up the term “accountant” for accountants. The new bill for lawyer regulation will not give the degree of absolute assurance that the Registered Architects Bill will now give. 
I am glad to see a relatively simple and straightforward piece of law coming in to reform the law that regulates the architecture profession. I am interested that consists of only 48 pages. I compare that with Mr Goff’s disaster bill for the law society of over 300 pages in which he hands to them just about everything they ever wanted. 
I am interested of course in one or two of the other things that the Supplementary Order Paper does—in the other last-minute thoughts. One of the problems in this bill that one would have thought would be looked at closely flows from the very poor drafting. The bill refers to plans but it does not say what a plan is. In this case for example I expect we will explore in the Committee of the whole House what a plan that someone draws for a building is. Does it include the landscaping plan? Does it include the plan for example of a shopping centre which would be a very detailed plan outlining how the letting is to be done and exactly which shops will go where? 
That would not normally be considered something that the Government would regulate in an Architects Bill. But this legislation is so poorly conceived like the Building Act that we will probably end up with some poor real estate agents suddenly being advised someday by their lawyers that they are caught by an Act they would never have dreamt would touch them There would be a plan obviously for the letting progressive opening and sharing of income—in essence the terms that are used in everyday language to do everyday things. This bill now carelessly seems to give a prior right or so-called protection to the architect’s profession in relation to those. 
I think that commonsense will apply. Probably most people will simply ignore those meanings of the law but it is just bad handling of Government business to end up with legislation that is so easy for a lawyer to criticise when he or she looks at it for the first time. ACT is not represented on the Government Administration Committee; I wish we did have enough entitlements to allow us to be on that committee because the Government seems to send to it everything that it wants to slide through and pretend is unimportant. The committee simply has not done a good job on the technical aspects of the bill. The definitions are sloppy and casual and they will require people to say: “Surely Parliament can’t have meant that. We will read it as if it doesn’t say what it actually says.” 
That is the same phenomenon we are seeing at the moment in relation to the Building Act. The Minister in charge Mr Carter has had to stand up here and tell us all that he has instructed his officials to tell local authorities that they ought not to apply the law as it reads and that they should simply not enforce it—in other words do something that we have tried always to get away from constitutionally: exercise administrative discretions to overcome poorly written law. 
This bill is likely to be supported overall by the ACT party. We will vote against the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper. We will do that for the reasons so ably outlined by Mrs Pettis the Government’s chief whip before she realised that the Government had done a back-flip and put in a Supplementary Order Paper that completely undoes the good work of the select committee. We hope that Mrs Pettis will have the courage of her convictions and join us in voting down the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper and in voting against New Zealand First and United Future which I expect will also support the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper. It will be very gratifying indeed to see such a fine speech as that made by Mrs Pettis followed up by a vote that is in line with her own rhetoric.