Nash Stuart: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:10071. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): It was good to hear the Minister in the chair the Hon Judith Collins clarify some of those points because they were very important issues that Mr Faafoi raised. Now we can sleep at night or in tunnels if there is going to be an earthquake.I would like to just raise a couple of issues around process and the expectations that the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill sets for local government authorities. If we look at new section 133AB “Meaning of ‘earthquake-prone building’ ” it goes through what constitutes an earthquake-prone building. We have talked enough about this. But the interesting thing is subsection (2) which says: “Whether a building or a part of a building is earthquake prone is determined by the territorial authority in whose district the building is situated:”. That makes sense on one level because there is a lot of complexity here and there is an immense amount of work to be done.Let us make an assumption which I think is probably reasonably true that a territorial authority has the greatest ability to determine whether a building in its own district is earthquake-prone or not or whether it could be. It knows its district better than anyone else so why not put the compliance back on it? I do have a slight concern about this though because I think that what this will do is load significant cost on to a council. Obviously it is not going to get compensated in any way shape or form for this. It is going to need to employ a whole lot more people and that means a rates rise. Well that is maybe the cost we have to pay for living in a civilised society and in buildings that are safe for citizens to live in but let me work through the process on how this going to work.New section 133AF is about identifying earthquake-prone buildings. This is the responsibility of the territorial authority. First and foremost the council’s time frame will depend on whether they are in a high medium or low seismic risk area. It also depends on the priority of the buildings for example. What has to happen is that until the end of the applicable time frame—and I will get to that in a minute; that is new section 133AF(2)—the territorial authority must report to the chief executive on the progress in terms of identifying buildings or parts of buildings within its district. So if the whole district is low seismic risk then the territorial authority has to report to the chief executive officer on progress every 3 years. Let us not get confused: that is not progress on completing the task; it is just progress. If it is a medium seismic risk but with no areas of high seismic risk then it is every 2 years and if the district includes an area of high seismic risk then the territorial authority must report to the chief executive officer every year.The next clause is interesting because I am not too sure why it was put there. It says in new section 133AF(3): “After the end of the applicable time frame a territorial authority may if has reason to suspect that a building or a part of a building in its district may be earthquake prone identify the building or part as potentially earthquake prone whether or not by reference to the EPB methodology.” This is a clause that has been inserted so that if a council or a territorial authority believes that a building may be earthquake-prone it can actually require an owner to undertake a seismic test without going through the proper methodology. So what this coulddo in effect is to impose a cost of—I do not know—$5000 $10000 $15000 or $20000 on a building owner without going through the methodology set out in the Act which I think is a little risky when we do this. This is because we have set down a methodology but then we are saying “But if you don’t like it or you have concerns don’t worry about the methodology.” which is a little bit of a concern to me.If I look at new section 133AF(4) of this bill and the “applicable time frame” when I talked about being within the applicable time frame this is the period commencing on the day on which obviously the Act comes into force. So for each area of low seismic risk the expiry is 15 years after the commencement date—it is a long time. For an area of medium seismic risk it is 5 years for priority buildings and 10 years for other buildings. In an area of high seismic risk it is 2 years and 6 months for priority buildings and 5 years for other buildings and we have talked about the definition of “priority buildings” and other buildings. In an area of high seismic risk—and let us take Wellington for example. It is a big city. I am assuming there are a lot of buildings here that are classed as priority and a substantial amount of buildings that are priority buildings and the council has probably started this process anyway. But it has 2 years—