Walker Holly: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWalker Holly: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 05 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16355. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]HOLLY WALKER (Green): It is my pleasure to take the second call for the Green Party on this bill the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill. I want to start by saying that the Green Party is very much in support of a programme to systematically earthquake strengthen buildings in New Zealand but as my colleague Mojo Mathers has outlined in her substantive contribution to this first reading debate we are at this stage opposing this bill. We are doing so on human rights grounds and that is human rights grounds on the basis of access to buildings.As we know this bill although it sets out the parameters of a strengthening programme for buildings around the country gives building owners the possibility of being exempt from meeting fire access and disability access requirements when they undertake that strengthening work on their buildings. That is a real problem from our point of view in the Green Party because what that does is lock people with limited mobility out of buildings. We are talking about a significant number of buildings—potentially between 15000 and 24000 buildings—around the country that require earthquake strengthening and that could potentially be made inaccessible long into the future by exempting building owners from the responsibility to upgrade the accessibility of their buildings when they undertake strengthening work.This breaches several international human rights covenants that New Zealand is a signatory to and it is an issue of extreme concern to the disability community as outlined by Mojo Mathers in her speech earlier in this debate. It affects not only those with impairments but also many other parts of the population. Parents with strollers—which is something that I have experienced myself recently—as well as older people with limited mobility all face being locked out of buildings if we do not take the opportunity that arises when buildings are earthquake strengthened to improve their access.We in the Green Party think that with an ageing population this is a significant missed opportunity because a very significant portion of our population will have mobility impairments in the future and they have a right to access buildings around the country. This could be an opportunity to make sure that that access improvement takesplace alongside the required strengthening work and we are missing that opportunity if we allow the bill to pass as it is currently drafted.At the moment earthquake-strengthening work is one of the only triggers in the Building Act that requires an upgrading of access and if this is removed it means that some buildings in our built environment may never be made accessible to those who need to access them. We do recognise that in a small number of cases it may simply be impossible or completely impractical to make certain buildings accessible. This is the argument that the Minister for Building and Construction has advanced to defend the exemption that he is proposing but we consider that this is already covered by the fact that in the existing Act you can be exempt from making those access upgrades on a ground of reasonable practicality. We think that is perfectly fair and would continue in the future. So for this reason we cannot support the bill as it is currently drafted. We would very much like to support it in subsequent stages if the Local Government and Environment Committee can adequately address these concerns. We will work constructively with all parties on the select committee to try to ensure that this happens.Aside from the access issue which is the substantive reason for our opposition to this bill at its first reading there are some other elements of the bill that we would like to explore in more detail in the select committee. I will briefly touch on these now. They include asking the Government to consider the cost implications of the bill. As we have heard from other speakers the cost to building owners of doing this upgrade work could be substantial and there is a case to be made that the Government needs to come to the party with some measures to assist. We would also like to see that if some buildings are going to be given an exemption from carrying out earthquake-strengthening work there should be criteria set out in the Act to set out who qualifies for those exemptions and why. That is missing from the bill as currently drafted.We think that there could be opportunities taken when improving access to look at ways to make buildings greener and more sustainable. Again it is another potentially missed opportunity in the bill as currently drafted and is worth some consideration by the select committee. We want to address the issue that Raymond Huo raised in his contribution earlier about giving building owners some certainty that once they have undertaken strengthening work they do not need to do so again for a decent period of time as the code changes over time. These are examples of some of the issues in the substance of the bill that we would like to get into in more detail in the select committee and we look forward to working constructively to address those and the fundamental issue of access. Thank you.