Smith Murray: Building Bill — In Committee 
Smith Murray: Building Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14788] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 I think it is quite amusing to listen to some of these speakers who clearly either have not read the bill or if they have read it have misunderstood it and Mr Carter’s contribution falls directly into the latter category. If he looks at the definition of restricted building work he will see that it is building work that requires a building consent relates to an element of a building that is critical to the integrity of the building and the health and safety of its occupants and is declared by the Governor-General to be restricted building work. That means that if it does not require a building consent it is not building work; if it requires a building consent but it does not relate to an element of the building that is critical to the integrity of the building and the health and safety of the occupants it is not building work that is restricted; and if it is not those two things and is declared by Order in Council it is not restricted. That is a very restrictive definition. 
It is disingenuous for National to tell the public that restricted building work is all building work that requires a building consent. That is just totally misleading the public. Every time that members of ACT have spoken in this debate—in the second reading debate as well as in the Committee stage—they too have demonstrated that they have simply not read the bill and if they have read it they simply have not understood what it is all about. A lot of bluster has come through in terms of what ACT is saying with regard to the situation and it is quite clear that they do not understand what this legislation is trying to achieve.  
I reiterate that United Future believes this is a responsible and restrained way of going about having some criteria within our building system that provide a measure of safety for the public and the ongoing building of the housing stock in this country. For the benefit of those members who clearly have not read the bill I want to point out some of the other benefits that are contained in this bill and in particular in this part. One of the areas that I think is a really good development is this whole area of compliance documents. Up until now we have had a situation where people can apply and get approved solutions so the fact that the building work or the material is an approved thing by the Building Industry Authority means it can be used without criticism in building work but very few people have done that. Very few people have done that because of the cost of doing that. So hardly any of those approved building solutions have gone through.  
Having compliance documents in here means—we in United Future believe and think it will be proved; and clearly the Government believes it—that compliance documents will become the norm. We will get into a situation where local authorities when they are confronted with a design that is a little out of the ordinary will say: “Does this methodology in terms of building or does this product qualify in terms of being compliant as far as the chief executive is concerned?” If the answer is no I would expect that most local authorities will take a much closer look probably at some cost in terms of determining whether they believe it will meet the building code. That will slow the process down and prove more costly. If suppliers of products and suppliers of systems have got compliance through the chief executive they will already have that there upfront so when they go to the local authority they can say: “This complies the chief executive says it does and you can sign off on this without any worry.” The bill provides that if in fact there is a compliance document with regard to it then it is deemed to comply.  
I hope that that will turn this whole situation round and we will see some of these new systems—and the monolithic cladding system is the classic one—having compliance recognised by the chief executive before they go on the market so that the suppliers can more easily market their products so that there is an investigation into those systems at an early stage to see whether they will meet the requirements of the building code and so that will not get the retrospective problems where somewhere down the chain we find all of a sudden that they do not meet the requirements and we have massive problems on our hands.  
There is also a provision in the bill for mandatory requirements—and that was a bit lacking in the old bill as well—where the chief executive can in fact make compliance mandatory. It is intended that that will be used very rarely. But nevertheless it is an important tool in the chief executive’s box.