Hide Rodney: Building (Late Consent is a Free Consent) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Hide Rodney: Building (Late Consent is a Free Consent) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:640;Page:10745] 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party rises to support the Building (Late Consent is a Free Consent) Amendment Bill and to congratulate Dr Nick Smith and the National Party on taking a serious issue and dealing with it. I will go through some of the arguments we have heard being made against this bill in order to show that they clearly cannot stand up. 
I have an interesting thing to share with members. Web cameras are a fantastic thing and I just got an email from someone on the other side of the world who is following this debate. It is quite something when one thinks about it because most people in this complex cannot be bothered but there we go. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Most New Zealanders can’t. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Most New Zealanders cannot be bothered to but if people in Europe want to then they can log in. 
Mark Blumsky 
: Why would they? 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I tell the member why they are logging in. They are figuring out whether this good bill will succeed because it will be part of the measure of whether they will bother to come back to New Zealand and build houses. 
I will go through what this bill does. It puts a financial penalty on a council if it fails to meet a deadline for handling a building consent. Do members seriously believe that when we pass a law requiring every person to get a building consent councils can just take as long as they want? Members surely cannot believe that surely not. There has to be a time limit. If we ask ourselves what we will do to enforce that time limit it is actually quite simple: we put a financial penalty on the council. 
Members opposite are bleating on about the costs to the ratepayers. Councils get whacked for costs regularly when they screw up. That is how it works. But this situation gets worse because with this Government in power we have seen the costs put on local government rise dramatically and I did not hear the poor ratepayers being consulted then. 
If we are serious about this I would not mind moving an amendment even at this late stage I say to Dr Smith. If we want to save ratepayers dosh then let us put the penalty on the councillors and the staff because they are the ones who are screwing up. Let us get the incentives right. I tell members that if 20 percent of deadlines are being missed now once we put the financial penalty on the councillors and their staff not one would be missed. So let us get that canard we heard against this bill out of the way. Of course there should be a penalty. My goodness what sort of penalties do taxpayers and ratepayers have to put up with when they get it wrong? And they are the ones who are paying for these councils! 
The second thing is that we cannot have a situation where a council can just take forever. We heard the complaint that if councils rush it through then they might screw it up. Actually my experience of life is that when people do things properly they do them briskly and well. It is when they have forever to do things that they actually go wrong. We see with the leaky homes issue that this Government was ticking boxes left right and centre. It was taking forever and not doing any proper checking. But we all know ourselves in our own lives that when we have a time line we work towards it and that is what we should have with our councils. If they cannot do it properly in 20 days then there is something seriously wrong with the councils. I am astonished to hear that 20 percent are not meeting their deadlines. It is disgusting. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Master builders say it is 50 percent. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Dr Nick Smith has said that it is up to 50 percent. Members can just imagine the cost and the heartache that is going on with householders and in the building industry as a consequence. 
I would ask Mr Donnelly along with the Green Party the Maori Party and the Labour Party whether we do not care seriously about that and whether we are interested in having a Government that works. Are we interested in putting some stakes in the ground and saying that this should be done in 20 days and just to show we are serious saying we have a penalty if it is not done? Or do we operate in a country that says that any old thing will do when it comes to Government and to local government—but woe betide the homeowners who do not tick all the boxes fill out all the forms and jump through all the hoops that councils and the Government put on them? 
I say that if it is good enough for ratepayers to be penalised when they are late and for ratepayers to have to have time lines then the same discipline should apply to local government in every instance. I commend Dr Nick Smith for this bill. I have to say that I am very disappointed in the parties that have backed up lazy and incompetent bureaucracy at a cost to all of us in defeating this bill.