Smith Murray: Building Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Smith Murray: Building Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:619;Page:14852] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 First of all I want to respond to Mr Connell. Yes he did have a good idea before but I am afraid he just lost it in that diatribe. He suggested that this bill had nothing to do with leaky homes and that is simply an unbelievable statement. His suggestion that this bill is only about inspection is also pretty ludicrous. If Mr Connell reads Part 4 “Regulation of building practitioners” he will see that the building practitioners who are to be registered are not just builders they are also designers. Right from the very beginning the design of buildings will be regulated. Designers will also have to be licensed building practitioners. He will also see that products need to have certification. 
One of the key problems and to my mind probably the primary problem in terms of the weathertightness of homes was the question of the interface between monolithic cladding systems and frameworks such as windows and doors. It was the interface between those products that was creating the problem. I took steps in the Government Administration Committee and was adamant—and I am now satisfied—that the bill provides that when the product certification is done it is not to be just a certification of products saying: “This monolithic system is OK.” but is also to be a look at the way the system interfaces with other systems such as windows and doors and with systems that are not monolithic cladding. That is where our attention needs to be. From my own personal experience as a lawyer I know of situations where builders were not using flashings. Instead they were putting silicon in the joints. 
As a lawyer I have acted for builders and for people buying houses. I have also worked with clerks of works and I picked up a lot of information about that. The registration of building practitioners is a fundamental part of the measure and it covers the whole spectrum of things. 
However I want to make some comments by way of caution. It is my concern in terms of United Future’s position that when it comes to the regulations which are still open slather here the Government needs to ensure certain things. Part of my concern about this bill is that a lot is left to regulations and to the chief executive and when it comes to licensing of building practitioners and the qualifications for that we have to keep some key things in mind. 
The first is that there is currently a shortage of tradespeople. People are finding it hard to get good quality tradespeople; in fact they are finding it hard to get any sort of tradespeople. The bill does provide—and National criticises this although I cannot understand why—that this part of the regime will come into force only on 30 November 2009. That then gives us 5 years in which to bring about a licensing regime and to try to facilitate as many people as possible into the industry of the standard that is required in order to get registration as building practitioners. It is important that that happens but it is also important that people who are senior building practitioners and who may not have the qualifications but who nevertheless produce good quality work have been in the trade for years and are very competent are not left out of this. If the Government came up with something saying that in order to be a licensed building practitioner one has to have passed a certain tertiary course it would lock out some people whom the industry cannot afford to lose. 
So when the Government looks at that it is important for it to consider whether there may need to be some grandparenting provisions for people who have done some old apprenticeship schemes or who can otherwise show their competency in terms of their building skills. That is absolutely critical. It is also critical that the Government moves with pace in terms of increasing apprenticeships and the number of people going into the trades. 
I know from talking with educational authorities and also with industry players that the whole area of trades has been lost in our schooling system. I went to look at the business of an award-winning engineer who told me that he had approached a college and asked to talk to the metalwork teacher. The woman he spoke to asked him what a metalwork teacher was. She had no idea. In fact that college had no classes in that area. It is therefore very hard to get good students coming out of college who know anything about engineering and what the tertiary institutions are producing is inadequate. So a lot of effort has to go into that. 
For this bill to be effective and if we are to meet the time line of 30 November 2009 it is absolutely imperative that we move rapidly to increase our stock of building practitioners and tradespeople who have the competency to meet the requirements under this bill. I would really encourage that.