Seymour David: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 01 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9275. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill. This debate has been characterised by overflowing wells of empathy from members around the House—and it is difficult not to when we recall the tragic losses in Canterbury and when that city Christchurch is still shaking anew even in the past few days. However the warmth in some members’ hearts appears to have drifted up to their heads into policy making because when you make public policy real empathy is about making it for people.The first mistake in this policy process was not to base the policy making on the risks faced by New Zealanders but to apply an arbitrary standard of 34 percent of new building code across the country.What that did from the point of view of individual New Zealanders was it meant that the costs and benefits of applying this policy were vastly different for the risks that New Zealanders face as individuals and also vastly different in terms of cost-benefit analysis between different regions of New Zealand. In fact some analysis of the initial bill said that the Auckland population would be spending 3000 times more to save a life than people in Wellington. Minister Nick Smith made a very revealing comment in his speech to this second reading. He said that even as an engineer he was surprised at how much variability there is to earthquake risk across New Zealand.With respect only a member from the South Island could say that. We Aucklanders know that although for our excesses and sins we may well one day drown in runs of lava from our many volcanoes the risk of an earthquake in our part of the country is practically nil.The Minister got pushed back hard and he introduced a differential level of strengthening for different parts of the country. He said: “It’s OK. We’ll exclude some buildings and some structures.” and that was admirable. He said that we would have more time—up to 50 years—to strengthen in low-risk areas. But it raises the question: if it is not important to do this for the next 50 years then how urgent and how important is this strengthening overall? The bill was somewhat improved but according to the regulatory impact statement for the bill in its new state the net present value for this particular piece of legislation is negative three-quarters of a billion dollars. In Auckland even just to find out whether a particular building complies with the requirements of the legislation is estimated to cost $10000 to $20000 per building.If we were making empathic public policy we would be highly focused on ensuring that the amount of money spent and the resources that go into earthquake-strengthening are commensurate with the price that we are prepared to pay to avoid and mitigate other risks. And yet in Auckland we will be spending money on earthquake strengthening when the risks that we face by being in those buildings are hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of times lower than the risks that we face every day in the course of riding bikes driving cars and flying planes. GNS Science was commissioned by the Auckland Council and it suggested that in Auckland this legislation might reduce deaths over 10000 years by three lives. It would save only three lives.There is a very simple way that this bill could be enhanced and could be passed and that would simply be to exempt the low-risk areas that have already been identified in the enhanced bill. Take away those $10000 and $20000 costs that the Minister has admitted are not addressing any urgent concern—because he says he has got 50 years to do it—and that would be a bill that the ACT Party could support. But right now it is an unempathic bill which does not deal with the risks faced by New Zealanders but seeks to preserve an arbitrary standard at all costs. Thank you.