Williams Poto: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9277. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Firstly I just want to pull up the member from ACT David Seymour on a matter of geology. He does not realise that in a volcanic region like Auckland when the volcanoes explode it will have an impact on the land. I would recommend to the member from ACT that what he should do is go to where the children of Auckland go to find out about geology and volcanology and that is the museum at the Auckland Domain. They have a very good exhibit there—Carmel Sepuloni: Isn’t Mount Eden—isn’t that in his electorate?POTO WILLIAMS: Yes. They have a very good exhibit there that actually shows you the impact on buildings of a volcano exploding. There are lots of buildings in Auckland that will be impacted if one of the many volcanoes—and let us face it there are what seven nine volcanoes in Auckland—happened to explode.However we are here to talk about the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill. As the previous speaker Joanne Hayes discussed it is around amending the Building Act to ensure that we deal with earthquake-prone buildings as a result of what has happened the earthquake sequence in Canterbury. There are some time frames in which to put that in place and also there are some definitions around risk and what types of buildings will be covered. This bill will have a huge impact on the territorial authorities; there is no doubt about that. But there are some specific issues I want to deal with.We know that it is impracticable to deal with all the buildings. However this bill actually excludes particular buildings such as farm buildings retaining walls and other such structures that will not pose a risk to human life should they come down in an earthquake. We know also that there are some things that are not covered in this bill that actually were impacted in the Canterbury earthquake sequence.One of the things that I really hope does get covered off is poor engineering. We know that with the CTV Building for example no one has really taken responsibility for the poor engineering that caused the deaths of all those people in that particular building. That was really a failure of engineering and I do not believe that we can really continue without actually having some way of determining whom to hold responsible for that. I would hope that this bill actually takes account of that.There are some priority buildings that are included in this bill: hospital and emergency facilities of course; certainly educational facilities; and parts of buildings that are reinforced—such as parapets—and that could fall in an earthquake. Actually some of these did fall and some of these did cause deaths in the earthquake sequence particularly in the 22 February quake. There are some issues that are not addressed in here that we are fully cognisant of in Canterbury and those are things such as the risks that become apparent from building materials once buildings either come down or are demolished—and I am speaking specifically about the risk of asbestos which is quite a risk when we are demolishing buildings.But what I want to do particularly is I want to honour a particular person for whom if this bill was in place and if our territorial authority had enacted what it should have done and assessed buildings—and assessed this particular building—as being risky then she would not have died. That is Mrs Maureen Valerie Fletcher. Mrs Fletcher is the mother and mother-in-law of very dear friends of mine and she was 74 when she passed away when a verandah of a cafe that she was having a cup of tea at collapsed on top of her during the earthquakes. What is particularly sad about Mrs Fletcher’s case is that she was unidentified for a couple of weeks. There were 2 weeks in which her family had not heard from her and they had no idea that she had actually perished. What had happened was her body was taken out of the building where she died but it was misidentified.There was a family in Christchurch who thought their mother had passed away and there was a family—my friends—in Auckland who had no idea that their mother had passed away. So for 2 weeks my friends were perplexed about what had happened to their mother. They travelled to Christchurch spent a lot of time on the ground and spent a lot of time with the emergency services trying to identify what had happened. When the mistaken identification did actually come to light of course it meant that another family realised that their loved one was safe and actually in a rest home in Auckland; and my friends of course realised that their mother had passed away.Why I bring this up is that this bill is about saving lives. If this bill had been in place if the Christchurch City Council had been able to assess its buildings and assess that building with the verandah as unsafe Mrs Maureen Valerie Fletcher might not have died. That is what this bill is about Mr Seymour. It is about ensuring that no one else is put at risk because we can do something about that. It is about ensuring—do not shake your head Mr Seymour—that there are no further families that have to go through the ordeal that the Fletchers had to go through while they waited to see where their mother was. It is not something to shake your head about Mr Seymour.This impacted 187 families directly who lost people in Canterbury but it also impacted the whole country. Even as recently as a couple of hours ago we are still experiencing aftershocks in Canterbury. Every time we have an aftershock or a major quake—we had a 5.7 on Valentine’s Day—what does that do to the structures that are already weakened by the severe force that has been impacted upon them? This is not a laughing matter Mr Seymour and it is an absolute responsibility of this Government and of the territorial authorities the councils around this country to make sure they get it right so that people in Auckland and Wellington and Tauranga do not have to go through the same kinds of dreadful dreadful things that have happened to the people of Canterbury.David Seymour: What with volcano-strengthened buildings?POTO WILLIAMS: We do not wish that upon anyone especially the people in Epsom if they are represented by someone who is as uncaring as you.We can do something about this and we should. I am getting quite emotional about this because people did lose their lives. This is a bill that will actually impact on the lives of people and ensure that they do not have to suffer the way 187 families have had to. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.