Williams Andrew: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Williams Andrew: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:678;Page:822] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of New Zealand First as the building and construction spokesman but can I just say that I have now seen probably the best half back in this House illustrate how you flick the ball on so quickly as not to take any responsibility for the appalling situation that occurred in the 1990s. All those who can recall the 1990s will know exactly what happened and in fact we could almost refer to the Minister as the “$20 Billion Man” because he was around in the 1990s as a Minister of Housing in those times when the start of the leaky housing— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: No I wasn’t. I was never a Minister of Housing. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: Well you were a Minister of something at the time in a National Government when it was all approved—probably the Minister for Small Business. He started off as the “Minister of Large Business” but ended up as the Minister for Small Business. 
But it is an appalling situation that we are seeing the National Government basically walk away from its responsibilities. Again as the Minister just passed the ball it is trying to pass the ball on this bill as well this Building Amendment Bill (No 3). What it is trying to do is pass the responsibility and basically pass all care and no responsibility on to the building industry and the builders and on to the end consumers the homeowners and the people who will own the homes and basically take a lot of the responsibility away from the regulatory authorities—the local authorities the councils—and make sure that the builders are the ones who carry the can on everything. 
But as we know many of these builders might be a builder here today—they might be a registered company here today—but they might be worth only $100 and they could be in Queensland next month and gone or the building company might have closed down and reopened in 6 months’ time under a different name and disappeared. This is half the problem that has been going on with the leaky homes situation. So many of those builders from the 1990s and the early 2000s either simply do not exist any more as building entities or have disappeared and are no longer to be found. So as the honourable member Mr Twyford said earlier it was the councils who were the last man standing. They were the only ones who were left as entities with any money and they had to stand up and try to help solve the leaky building crisis created in the 1990s under a National Government. 
We have a situation now where under this bill we could have all sorts of jerry-builders being responsible for the end result. We could have a lowering of standards. Where do some of these builders come from? We do not know. In this country where are they actually coming from? Many of the builders of course were not necessarily brought up in our own building standards and compliance area of expertise. They may have undertaken their apprenticeships or their skills training in all sorts of environments of building. We do not know the answer to this question. The Minister is basically saying that whoever turns up and gets a licence to be a builder can just build it and take all responsibilities for these dwellings that are put up. But at the end of the day do we know where half of these builders come from? I have had alarming reports just in the last week or so from constituents in various parts of the country saying to me that they really do wonder where some of the builders that are popping up in some of our towns and cities around New Zealand today originate from in terms of their building skills. 
So are we going to see a  
Back to the Future 
 situation again? Are we going to see the repeat of the $20 billion leaky homes saga from the National Government in the 1990s? Are we going to see that all happen again in the next 5 to 10 years because this Minister said: “Oh we handled it all. We just put all the responsibility on to the builders. We put it all in their hands and into the hands of the end consumer because they were therefore going to be the ones who would sort out the whole industry and they would take responsibility.” only to find that in 5 years’ time half of those builders could well be putting their feet up on the beaches of Queensland or on the beaches of Fiji or any other place not to be found. Again who will be carrying the can? The taxpayers of New Zealand and the consumers of New Zealand. At the end of the day it will be the Government and local government in New Zealand that will again have to stump up for this situation.