Shanks Katrina: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Shanks Katrina: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:645;Page:14681] 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to talk to the Building Amendment Bill tonight. Firstly I thank the officials who are sitting here tonight at 10 to 10. They have been very dedicated officials to the Social Services Committee. They have done an absolutely great job once again of informing the committee of the views on and concerns about this bill. They articulated them in such a way that we could sit there and understand very easily the issues of the submitters and how they impact on the bill for us. So I thank the officials and I thank them for coming in tonight because we do appreciate the effort that officials put into our select committees in the making of law. 
While I am standing here I would like to congratulate Shane Jones on being the Minister for Building and Construction. We all know that when one becomes the Minister for Building and Construction it is the gateway to Cabinet. Since 1999 10 Ministers have gone through the gateway into Cabinet by being the Minister for Building and Construction. In fact Mr Jones has some pretty impressive shoes to fill including those of George Hawkins Rick Barker Lianne Dalziel John Tamihere Margaret Wilson Chris Carter Clayton Cosgrove and Mark Burton. Now Shane Jones is the Minister so I welcome him. Let us hope Mr Jones can make more of an impact on the building industry than his predecessors have made because this portfolio is obviously the gateway to greater things and greater portfolios. I congratulate Mr Jones because he has made the first step into Cabinet and he may be in transition. 
We are speaking to Part 2 of the bill tonight but the thing about this bill is that it has come about through the Building Act 2004. That came in then the Building Amendment Bill came in to make the 2004 Act more workable—so people could understand it. That is actually a shame because we would like to think that legislation is not out of date within 2 years of its enactment. Part 2 of this bill talks about “Validation in respect of levies on estimated value of building work” “Transitional provision for content of project information memorandum” “Transitional provision for refusal of application for code compliance certificate” and “Transitional provision for refusal of application for certificate of acceptance”. Obviously it is a very very narrow part of the bill but it is one that has had to be reworked since 2004. The need for that came out in the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service and this is the fifth bill relating to the building industry since 2002. That is a fair bit of legislation to change for an industry in such a short period of time—it is really 5 years since this is a 2007 bill. Let us hope that we are making the legislation a bit better for the industry because we are here to make good legislation for it and to give it a good framework to work within. 
The leaky homes issue has impacted severely on the building industry and it has caused a lot of litigation in this country—and not good litigation. Many many thousands of homeowners out there are very very unhappy with the homes they have had built. That issue goes back to many things such as the legislation we have put in place how we have tried to protect the homeowner previously the consents and a lot of other things such as materials. The sad thing is that we continue to make homes that are not at par and we will continue to have leaky homes. This legislation is not meant to address that problem and it does not address it. It is an outstanding problem in our community. I could talk about copper pipes and the new ones coming in that are guaranteed only to go for 7 years before they burst as opposed to ones certified to last for 50 years. But that is not what this bill is about; it does not address that issue. That is addressed in the weathertight homes resolution services legislation which has been revised three times. 
It was interesting for me to sit on the select committee because we had many submitters come in to talk to us about this bill.