Huo Raymond: Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Huo Raymond: Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 14 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8564. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RAYMOND HUO (Labour) 
: 
 Whenever I have to take a call after the Minister for Building and Construction the Hon Maurice Williamson I feel professionally politically and morally obliged to raise some important points of clarification. The first point of clarification is that the purpose of this bill the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill which the Minister has just introduced is to validate some actions taken unlawfully by the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board—namely the board that the Minister appointed. The action concerned referred to the moneys collected by the Minister’s board unlawfully so we are dealing with an ultra vires issue. 
The second point of clarification is that the Minister’s bill will apply retrospectively. The bill in its current form will apply retrospectively in order to address this board’s ultra vires acts. 
The third point of clarification is a bit historical. The Minister lectured the chair of the Regulations Review Committee quite nicely in relation to the committee’s unanimous disallowance motion. However his lecturing in May 2011 was rather misleading. In his speech on 12 May 2011 the Minister said: “I say to the chair of the Regulations Review Committee that … if a small group of people from whatever industry from whatever sector come to a select committee and say to that committee they are unhappy and think something is wrong then that committee has an obligation to go out and ask whether there is any industry association or any large body out there that represents that industry and to get them to find out their view.” and so on and so forth. Of course the committee has such an obligation and as far as the issues were concerned the complaints were not from a small group of stakeholders. The sector is unhappily divided and in the Minister’s own words the whole issue of the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board has been quite shambolic for a long period of time. 
The Minister seems to have criticised the Regulations Review Committee for its diligence and professionalism so the point of clarification here is that the Regulations Review Committee is a very important part of Parliament’s processes. Its decision then in relation to the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board (Fees) Notice 2010 was made unanimously with the support of both the Government and Opposition members on that committee. The committee did give the board the opportunity to reply and it did not consider the submissions in isolation. 
Also it is appropriate for me to point out that there are actually two professional associations representing the vast majority of the sector. The master plumbers association the Minister referred to in his speech the Master Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers (NZ) Inc. is one. The Minister said in 2010 that it had 733 businesses as its members. There is another association called the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Federation and using 2010 data it shows that it had 900 or so members. To be fair and scientifically truthful to the sector the Minister cannot support one and ignore the other. 
The federation alleges that the board members are made up largely of members of the master plumbers association. If it is true it may help explain why the master plumbers association was opposed to the disallowance motion of the Regulations Review Committee. It also helps to explain why the Minister has to resort to such a bill to bail out the board. 
Other allegations made so far include that firstly the reason why the Minister has to resort to introducing such a bill which has retrospective effect is to try to stop the federation from taking more legal action against the board. 
Secondly both the board and the Minister knew the money had been taken from the industry illegally and this will prevent the industry from ever claiming that money back. Therefore this bill is nothing more than a cynical exercise by the Minister Maurice Williamson to cover his mistakes of the past. 
Thirdly recent events have revealed that some of the information being supplied to the public by way of the board’s electronic gas certificates is false incomplete and misleading. The federation believes that this affects thousands of gas certificates that were integrated into the current electronic gas certificate system. This is a very serious allegation. The complainant believed that the nature of the false and misleading information places at risk the public and tradespeople alike. 
I agree that the board has a colourful history. It has been the subject of a complaint to the Office of the Auditor-General Parliament’s Regulations Review Committee the Office of the Ombudsmen the Charities Commission and the Inland Revenue Department. I wonder what the Minister might say now in light of his statement in 2011 that the board was poor in the past OK at present and “looking to get the future quite tidy.” Resorting to such a bill to validate unlawful acts does not strike me as something tidy. 
Labour supports with reservations this bill’s referral to a select committee. It is important that concerned parties have the opportunity to debate and air their concerns about the bill at the select committee stage. By supporting this bill’s referral to a select committee Labour is not uncritically sanctioning the board’s conduct in 2010 when it acted ultra vires or beyond the scope of its levy power as defined in section 143 of the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Act. Rather enabling the bill to reach the select committee stage will give all concerned parties an opportunity to be heard on these issues. It must be emphasised that validating legislation needs to be approached with considerable caution and this is such a bill. It makes actions that were previously thought lawful and that have since been found unlawful actually lawful. 
As Labour’s spokesperson for building and construction I wish to emphasise that we are supporting the board the master plumbers association and the federation. The sector namely the board the members and all tradespeople involved protect the health and safety of the public and specifically for the board it fulfils its statutory duty by regulating and ensuring the competency of the tradespeople carrying out sanitary plumbing gasfitting and drainlaying work. Although we are facing bigger issues such as the leaky buildings saga I urge the Minister to be cautious because we are talking about the quality of people’s lives. Thank you.