Mallard Trevor: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mallard Trevor: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:639. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I must say that I am somewhat surprised at that speech from Nicky Wagner a member from Christchurch. I would have thought that members from Christchurch would not be supporting bills that undermine standards and in fact that they would be working in the opposite direction.  
Hon Tau Henare 
: That’s why she won.  
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Yes the member might have won in Christchurch but she should not sacrifice the standards of building around the rest of the country just to stay in line with the free-market approach of Maurice Williamson who has never believed in decent standards—never believed in decent standards. As a member for Christchurch she should be ashamed of herself for putting her name behind the Building Amendment Bill (No 3) for being the lackey and the puppet of the Minister for Building and Construction and for saying what he wants rather than looking at the legislation and especially looking at the evidence that was brought to the Local Government and Environment Committee.  
Labour supported this bill to the select committee. We had hope for it. We thought there was a possibility that a useful package would be put together and that that would work for the building industry in New Zealand. Unfortunately with the evidence that came from two groups in particular—from consumers and from builders—what we heard was that this bill just does not cut the mustard. It does not cut the mustard and what it will result in is a removal from the regulatory authorities of what is frankly not enough power and not high enough standards at the moment.  
What this bill is designed to do—and the member who spoke before me got it right early: she went for cheap. Of course I do not mind if things are less expensive but what I do mind is if we have more leaky buildings and more risky buildings as a result of the shift of the responsibility away from the consenting authorities and on to individual consumers and individual builders because what—[ 
Interruption 
] Sorry? 
Nicky Wagner 
: We’ve had the leaking buildings with the consenting authorities at the moment. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Of course we have because the standards were reduced in 1992 and now you are trying to make them worse. Now the member is trying to make them worse. Maurice Williamson had one crack at making a mess of it as part of the Government and now what he wants to do is to make it worse still. The standards were reduced by National we got leaky buildings we got a whole pile of trouble and now he wants to make it worse.  
The role of the consenting authorities is being reduced and that accountability is not being pinned on anyone else. So what is going to end up happening in the end? Maybe a shift away from the local authorities? Maybe a shift of responsibility away from them? Some people will think that that is a good idea but where does it go? It will be left with the $100 shell companies that build houses in New Zealand. You try—even you Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch—to find a builder who sits behind a $100 company and try to get them to take liability 10 years later to actually take liability for the errors that they have made and the poor buildings that they have built. It is impossible. I think anyone who has been a member in this House for any period of time will have had constituents come to them who have had problems with builders who have hidden behind what are effectively shell companies and their reputations. This is not a general comment about the building profession but all of us know that there are shonky people often not properly qualified who have picked up the tools and away they have gone.  
The Labour Party will not be supporting this bill from this point on. The Building Act review which was started under the previous Government—and I think Clayton Cosgrove did quite a lot of work on it—was useful and we are in broad agreement with the direction. But what the Minister has decided to do is to cherry-pick. He has picked out the bits that he likes—the bits that will deregulate and the bits that will reduce standards—rather than doing a package that is coherent and something that we might be able to support if the whole package was there.  
Frankly many of the submitters said that—[ 
Interruption 
] Sorry? 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: The licensed building practitioner regime which comes into effect on Thursday is reregulating not deregulating. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The Minister is doing a good bit here and a bad bit there. Why does he want to follow up the little bit of good work he does with a pile of rubbish here? I just do not understand it although asking for consistency from Maurice Williamson is like asking Murray McCully to come to question time: it is pretty much impossible. It is pretty pretty pretty much impossible.  
Many of the submitters said the bill would not achieve its objective because of that piecemeal approach. It picks out only part of the reform agenda and that adhockery means that there is not a coherent arrangement that has been widely discussed and actually more or less agreed within the industry. If the Minister was more collaborative and if he worked more closely with the industry I do not have much doubt that he could get together—[ 
Interruption 
] Sorry? 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: The industry supports it. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Actually many of the submitters from the industry who came to the select committee did not support it. No what they did support was the review. They supported the review because it was a more coherent approach—and credit to Clayton Cosgrove and credit to a lot of the officials.  
I went to a damn fine meeting at the Petone Working Men’s Club where there were hundreds of tradespeople there and it is fair to say that they had a range of opinions. But they worked through the issues and they came out with broad agreement—along with obviously dozens of other meetings of hundreds of tradespeople—which was mainly reflected in a pretty coherent package that they could wear. But what it did not do—what it did not do—was take from the councils the requirement to be consenting authorities in the way that the Minister is doing in this way.  
The role of those consent authorities is very much circumscribed. We believe that we have to have something there and councils are the logical organisations. They are going to be the ones that are if you like the last—can you still say “last man standing”? That is generally the case. They would be the last organisation standing and therefore the logical people to have liability in the end if they have fouled up the process. But if you take away the responsibility from them and give it to the $100 companies then what happens—what happens—to the consumer who gets the leaky building or the building where the concrete is not properly affixed or the windows fall out or leaks occur or anything else happens in that way?  
The Minister says that you cannot have mandatory warranties and that you cannot have proper proportionate liability— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: I didn’t say that at all. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well why did his officials tell the select committee that that is what he thought? 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: No. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well why is it in the report? The Minister should get his facts sorted and get his story straight in the area. I have to agree with one of the Minister’s Cabinet papers where it said: “simply reducing or streamlining [the current Act’s requirements] without first providing other means of quality assurance … would jeopardise building quality … the timing and sequence of each part of the proposed reform package is important.” I totally agree with the officials and I totally agree with the Minister’s Cabinet paper. It is a pity that the Minister could not read his own reports and get it right.