Ardern Shane: Building Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Ardern Shane: Building Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:619;Page:14831] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 I have been seeking a call for some time and it is with pleasure that I rise to speak against Part 2. I do so for a number of reasons. I listened with some interest earlier on to the contribution made by the member of the ACT party Richard Prebble when he talked about the huge layer of cost that will be placed on people as a result of the passing of this legislation. I know that the member may not agree with this but I say to members who are listening that this legislation is what we get when we have an urban-based lawyer in a party—the United Future party—that is elected to Parliament on list votes yet gives unconditional support to the Government and that party is asked how to fix leaks in houses—358 pages of bureaucratic regulation. That somehow or other— 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I am also a member of a list party. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: That is why I thought the member may not agree with me. The bill contains 358 pages of bureaucratic nonsense which of course will sit on the ute’s seat under the dog next to the radio when a poor small-business person out there tries to go about his or her work. This legislation will not work; it will not stop a house from leaking. It will not address the problems faced by those in the building industry and it certainly will not address the problems faced by the supporters of the Labour Party who thought they had elected a practical party that would represent their best interests. 
I say to the Government members that one of their great former leaders Norman Kirk built his own house with his own hands. The question is under regulation such as this would he have been allowed to do that? 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: No. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: The member over here—I think he was probably around Parliament at the time of Norman Kirk—can say because he has a law degree that the answer is no. I invite the Minister in the chair the Hon John Tamihere to take a call and tell us how Norman Kirk would have got on under provisions such as those in Part 2 whereby a certified building practitioner would have had to tell him whether he had done his job right. I can vaguely remember some of the comments made by Mr Kirk at the time towards the kinds of professional stickybeaks who poked their noses into things he was doing. They were not complimentary and they certainly were not parliamentary—and that is exactly the response that we on the Opposition side of the Chamber have to this bill. It just will not work. 
The Government Administration Committee heard from 150 submitters and spent 29 hours and 30 minutes listening to those submitters and considering this bill—and I acknowledge the officials who gave advice when questions were asked—and this is what the committee came up with. As my colleague Lindsay Tisch said this legislation will not work and it will run small businesses out of business. 
I now come to clause 42 which refers to the special powers of the chief executive for monitoring the performance of functions under this Act. I ask the Minister in the chair the Hon John Tamihere who is also the Minister for Small Business to take a call and explain to us how the chief executive will make sure that the person with the dog in the ute next to the radio who is going about his or her work ends up with a solid building that will not leak. How will the chief executive do that? Presumably he or she will be based in Wellington although maybe not; the position could be based in Auckland given that the Minister comes from Auckland. What matters is how he or she is to achieve that goal. The only way the chief executive will achieve it is to tie that small-business person up in so much red tape—driven out of a law office in Lower Hutt or wherever it may be after the next election—that he or she goes out of business. That may stop that person from building a shonky house but will it stop the fly-by-nighters who come from Australia or somewhere further afield get involved in a major contract in Auckland where this problem originated use the wrong materials and bring about a systemic failure such as that identified in the leaky house report? Will it stop such a person from coming in doing that work and then disappearing over the horizon never to be seen again or be tracked down by the law office in Lower Hutt? The answer is no it will not. This legislation will not fix that.