Norman Russel William: Regulatory Reform Bill — First Reading 
Norman Russel William: Regulatory Reform Bill — First Reading 
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Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak briefly on the Regulatory Reform Bill. A bill like this raises the question of the role of regulation in our economy and also in our society more broadly. I think it is hard when having this debate not to talk about the leaky houses disaster in New Zealand. The leaky houses disaster was a result of lack of regulation. It was driven by an ideological agenda a so-called anti - red tape ideological agenda in the early 1990s caused by the 1991 Building Act that was brought in by the incoming National Government. 
I have had a chance to look at some length at some of the documents around the 1991 Building Act in order to engage in the debate around the role of regulation. What people often forget when they talk about the inefficiencies of regulation is the astronomical cost of lack of regulation. The leaky buildings crisis will cost our country something like $20 billion—somewhere more than $20 billion—in order to repair the buildings that were leaky and damaged as a result of lack of regulation. 
In terms of the debate around what kind of regulation we should or should not have what sits behind this bill is an anti-regulation position coming particularly out of the 1980s and 1990s which the ACT Party obviously goes back to. Coming out of that is the knowledge that in the past this kind of ideological position has caused massive damage to the New Zealand economy. When we say a cost of $20 billion it is difficult to put that into a debate; it sounds like just another number. We can think of some of the examples given earlier in this debate. People said that such and such a regulation cost the country a few million dollars or that something might have cost the country $10 million if so and so had not gone ahead with such a regulation. But lack of regulation of the building industry cost our country more than $20000 million; $20000 million worth of damage was caused by the ACT Party and National ideology as it was back then in the early 1990s and which is trying to get a life of its own again here. 
When National introduced the Building Act in 1991 during the last time it was in Government Treasury papers that sat behind that Act were very clear. They said that we did not need regulation of the building industry and we specifically did not need regulation around trying to make sure that building standards remained high. They said that the market would sort it out and that if there were any issues about shoddy building the courts would sort them out. This is exactly the wrong framework to have when it comes to dealing with the question of regulation. For this bill to come up again and for the National ideology from the 1990s to come back again and live again like some monster from the deep it seems to me extraordinary that there has not been a learning from the 1990s about what happened given the cost the phenomenal cost to our country. This cost is something like five times the cost of the Canterbury earthquake. 
People have talked a lot in this House about the cost of the Canterbury earthquake—maybe $4 billion to $5 billion. The decision by National in the early 1990s not to regulate the building industry not to have proper regulation of the building industry has cost our country four to five times the cost of the Canterbury earthquake. It is phenomenal when we think about adopting the wrong ideological framework. Adopting an anti-regulation ideological framework seems like the world of ideas. People spruik on about this that and the other; it is just an idea. 
Ideas can be immensely damaging and in this particular case the ideas coming out of Treasury—at that time headed up by a man who has since become an ACT Party candidate—the anti-regulation ideas that ACT has promulgated and that find their home in parts of National these days have cost our country more than four to five times the damage caused by the Canterbury earthquake. The Canterbury earthquake was a massive natural disaster yet the ideas coming out of the far right and finding a home in ACT and to some degree in National are a calamity of a scale four to five times greater than the disaster that was the Canterbury earthquake. 
Think of all the people in our country who have had to live inside leaky houses and with all of the fungi that grow inside leaky houses. People have probably died as a result of living in leaky houses whereas fortunately nobody died in the Canterbury earthquake. Those ideas that form part of the debate around this bill as to the role of regulation in our society have been immensely damaging to our country. So I say to the Government that when it plays footsie with the ACT Party using these kinds of ideas and when we are looking at a bill like this do we really want to relive the leaky houses disaster all over again? Those anti-regulation ideas that sat behind the leaky housing disaster were incredibly expensive and damaging to our country. 
That would be my contribution to the debate on the Regulatory Reform Bill. We need to have this debate in a mature way and an acknowledged way rather than simply using ideological slogans like “too much red tape” which is about as far as it gets with the ACT Party. Actually red tape could have saved our country $20 billion in the cost of the leaky houses disaster but we decided to let just anyone build a house. I mean who needs rules to keep out the water? Why should we have a rule? This is what the National Government said: “Why should we have a rule that says that houses should keep out water?”. That was what it said in the early 1990s. National asked why we should have such a rule. It turned its back on having a rule that stated that houses should keep out water. Actually that is quite a good rule to have. The leaky houses disaster proved why it is such a good rule and $20000 million later it is time to acknowledge that regulations play a positive role in our society. It means that houses keep out rain and do not rot from underneath people. In terms of framing the debate on this bill I say: think about regulations. They can play an extremely positive role and save us many tens of billions of dollars in costs and an immense amount of misery.