Dalziel Lianne: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading 
[Volume:678;Page:921] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 That repeats the consistent message that we have heard from the Government in respect of our concern about the Building Amendment Bill (No 3) being a piecemeal approach. I think the Minister for Building and Construction said that it was one in a series of measures and it was not piecemeal because it was one piece or one building block. He then suggested that I had raised a concern about needing to have all the blocks together— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: I withdrew that. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: —but he has now reneged on that and understands that it was the Hon Annette King who said it. And Annette King said it for a very good reason and that is that it is true that the foundation needs to be built first. But actually the foundation needs to be built first in the legislative sense as well. This is not the full framework of the legislation and it is not the foundation; it is a component of the framework. And without a foundation to secure it to I believe that many of the risks that currently exist in our regulatory framework will continue to exist. 
When I spoke during the Committee stage I made a point on more than one occasion and I want to repeat it here and now. I heard the Minister chipping our spokesperson in this area Raymond Huo with his comments about the 1991 legislation and making the point that it was a Labour Government that introduced that bill. Yes it was. The point that I am making and have continued to make throughout this debate is that the fact that both of us were culpable in terms of the deregulation of the building industry does not make it right. And the fact that we introduced legislation and National saw it through into its legislative form does not make either one of us any better than the other. In fact it exposes the risk that we have when we pass legislation without recognising what the impact will be. 
This is more than an unintended consequence. I mean we have all brought bills back to the House shortly after something has been enacted and the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeal have told us that it means something different from what we intended. We have all had to bring legislation to the House to resolve interpretive matters where there have been unintended consequences. This is not an unintended consequence; it is a consequence that arose directly because of a number of decisions that all combined and the legislative framework was just one element of it. I heard the previous comments from the member who has just resumed her seat Nicky Wagner talking about the need to deregulate get rid of red tape and reduce compliance costs. It is all very well and good to be speaking about those things when there are no risks but there are significant risks and I do not believe that we are talking about just health and safety when we talk about risks. I know people and obviously people in this House know constituents who face financial ruin because of the leaky building syndrome. I hate calling it a syndrome as well because it is actually a failure of the regulatory framework to provide protections that ought to have been there. 
This is why I have been making this plea on behalf of the people whom I have certainly been privileged to represent for a number of years—that is to make sure that we get this right. That is why I really think that this legislation should have been delayed until we had all of the foundation prepared. I do not believe that the foundation is secure at the moment. I was the Minister as I said in the House yesterday that was responsible for the discussion document going out which ultimately led to the introduction and passage of the 2004 Building Act. But I also made the point that I was the Minister who was in charge of this area when John Scarry wrote his open letter to the Institution of Professional Engineers. He actually wrote his letter to the institution at the request or suggestion of the vice-president of the institution at the time after he had disclosed to him the level of concern that he had around a number of buildings in respect of both Auckland and Wellington which were I think the primary focus of his concern at the time. Rather than raise it as a complaint to the institution the suggestion was that it come in the form of a letter. He wanted to write it as an article for the institution magazine and they said that no he should write them a letter. Well the letter became quite a substantial document in its own right at some 100-odd pages long; I have a copy of it here. It is a major major document. 
This is the point that I think my colleague Raymond Huo has been trying to make in this House: when this individual made his stand as it were in order to bring the politicians’ attention and the professionals’ attention to the parlous state of some practices within structural engineering in this country he was doing so knowing that there were some risks around speaking out. And actually some of the risks have been met in the sense that there is a sense that people who speak out in this area are at risk of being denigrated publicly put down and then told that actually they do not have the backing of the profession. An organisation like the Institution of Professional Engineers has 10000 members; obviously not one of them agrees with him! Well that is simply unfair. 
I think it is a concern when I have a copy of the report that was done for the institution and also the report that was done for the Building Industry Authority as it was in those days and I read that both organisations acknowledged that he had major and very real concerns about the state of some of the buildings. He would not tell me at the time which buildings he was particularly concerned about but because I know what I know I actually know what some of those buildings are. It is very difficult to have that knowledge and know—with Wellington being the seismic risk that it is—that if something happens then you would obviously be carrying that weight if the consequences were as severe as they might well be. 
I guess that is what I took with me when I received this open letter. I could not sleep because it was essentially a warning and once it was in the hands of a decision maker there was an obligation to do something. And so we did do something. We referred it on for advice and the advice indicated to us that the changes that we were to implement in the Building Act 2004 would address the concerns that had been raised. I was comforted by that. We were going down the right track to correct the problem. The problem had been correctly identified; the solution was there waiting for introduction. 
But now having spoken to John Scarry since and having heard him in the media in recent times I hear that the Building Act 2004 did not address all of the concerns that he raised. And that is what worries me. He was right when he wrote in 2002 warning of these issues and what I am worried about Minister is that he might be right again. I do not know because I am not a technical expert in this area and that is why his work needs to be referred for independent analysis so that it can be checked for the concerns that have been raised. As I have said in the House over the last couple of days as well I have spoken to other engineers who totally agree with and support his concerns and they too want to have these matters opened up. I think that we owe it not just to Mr Scarry whose reputation has been tarnished yet again but actually to the people who live and work in those buildings to know that we are taking those claims seriously. I believe that proceeding with changes to our building regulation without getting it right first time is just as bad as building the building and not getting it right first time.