Davis Kelvin: Building Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Davis Kelvin: Building Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1791] 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to support the Building Amendment Bill (No 2). Quite simply the bill is about improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the building consent process therefore ensuring that quality homes and buildings are constructed quickly and at less cost. I am in favour of any legislation that makes it easier for whanau to get into new homes. 
I come from an area in the Bay of Islands where not too many kilometres from the townhouses and condominiums on the Paihia waterfront if one were to take the time to travel some of the gravel roads into the heart of Ngati Hine and Ngapuhi one would see whanau living in conditions that many would describe as Third World. It is not too uncommon to see homes that are little more than corrugated iron huts which one would expect to see overseas and not here in Aotearoa. Those homes are usually unlined leaking cold and damp dwellings. 
I think of my home valley of Karetu just below our urupa of Puketohunoa where there is a structure we call “the barn”. Not surprisingly it has been used as a barn at times but in-between being used as a barn it is used by cousins and family who come home to the valley and need somewhere to live while their homes are being built. So any legislation that shortens the length of time my whanau have to stay in the barn and in similar dwellings I am in support of. 
Legislation such as this that extends the Department of Building and Housing’s functions and powers to allow it to issue multiple-use approvals for dwellings and buildings and therefore to speed up and lower the costs of building homes gets my support. Given that 40 percent of all new homes in New Zealand are built by volume builders it makes sense that some efficiencies can be achieved by a streamlined approval process under the Building Act for buildings that are replicated on a nationwide basis. 
There is as a number of members have alluded to in the course of the debate the need for individual buildings to have consent sought at a local level because each site has unique characteristics such as ground conditions slope foundations connections to water and other utility services. So it makes sense that these are inspected and OK’d by the local authority. In fact one of the conditions in my home town of Kawakawa that needs to be looked at is the fact that there is subsidence due to historical coalmining in the town so that needs to be inspected at a local level. 
This bill—which Labour introduced while in Government—is designed to help reduce unnecessary delays in the building consent process which aside from causing frustration amongst builders also causes frustration for those whanau wishing to get into their new homes as quickly and as cheaply as possible. As well as cutting bureaucratic red tape around the issuing of approvals for dwellings this bill also seeks to reduce the statutory time frame for processing a building consent application from 20 working days to 10 working days—again as a number of members have alluded to. This is especially so when the application includes multiple-use approval. 
Again I say that I support any legislation that helps my whanau hapu and iwi members to move out of their small cold and dingy homes into larger new warm insulated homes. A point I failed to make earlier when describing the homes and living conditions of many of my whanau hapu and iwi up north is that those dwellings are without any doubt in my mind part of the reason many Maori suffer from poor health. I doubt that anyone in this House would be brave enough to say that living in cold damp cramped unheated and uninsulated homes would not put the health of the occupants at risk thus leaving them susceptible to flu colds pneumonia chickenpox measles and other diseases of poverty. If for no other reason the lives of families is reason enough to support this legislation. 
This legislation also differentiates between major and minor variations to consented building work. In other words the homeowners who want to make minor non-structural changes to their homes do not actually have to jump through major hoops in delays and costs in order to make simple alterations. This bill will also reduce for owners and developers both the direct and indirect costs associated with the construction process while ensuring that quality houses are constructed. This bill is part of a coordinated approach to assisting in increasing the supply of good-quality affordable homes. 
Late last year I attended a housing hui in Kaikohe a town not known for its glitzy homes and extravagant lifestyles. A local businessman there had a plan to build a housing estate for the elderly in three stages. Stage one consisted of 30 or so identical homes and if that stage was successful then stage two and stage three would be built with 30 more homes respectively for each stage. I applaud the attempts of this businessman in his desire to care for the elderly but if his plan is to be successfully embraced by the community I would like to think that those of us sitting here could make it as simple as possible for the plan to be achieved as we know that the elderly are some of our most vulnerable citizens. The intentions of this bill would help our kaumatua and kuia both Maori and non-Maori to have access to warm comfortable and in that case may I say modest dwellings close to whanau friends and community facilities. 
There are a lot of more important things we could be talking about such as developing work and jobs for New Zealanders so although not wanting to diminish what I have just been saying I will conclude. Basically multiple-use consents that reduce the statutory time frame for processing building consents from 20 to 10 days and the ability to make minor variations will help not only those elderly members of the Tai Tokerau community but also every other whanau up there living in their shanties—as well as the wider New Zealand population—to more easily afford warm comfortable and healthy dwellings. Therefore I support this bill.