Mapp Wayne: Building Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Building Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14781] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I am most appreciative that the Chair should mention how extensive this part is with its numerous subparts—hundreds of clauses in fact—because in many ways it is the core of the bill. So we on this side of the Chamber are looking forward to a detailed and forensic examination of these provisions noting their worthwhile features and also noting their numerous and extensive deficiencies. 
I guess it would be remiss of me if I did not acknowledge the Minister’s Supplementary Order Papers. He has filed at least four and quite extraordinarily Supplementary Order Paper 241 is dated Tuesday 10 August 2004. Members should note that; it is today’s date. Yet even before we got to vote on it a further amendment was filed which is noted as the proposed amendment to Supplementary Order Paper 241. So here we have a Government that puts a bill into the House and on the day it is to be debated in the Committee stage the Government puts down a Supplementary Order Paper. That is not so unusual but what is unusual—and I guess it tells us something about the management by the Minister of the ministry—is that he has to have a Supplementary Order Paper to amend the Supplementary Order Paper filed literally within hours of the first one. I think that that speaks volumes about the whole tenor of this bill. 
Now contained within this part are two things: the role of the ministry and extensive provisions. Essentially it is the replacement of the Building Industry Authority but as we have noted previously it is very much the statist solution. Perhaps of greatest concern however to members on this side of the Chamber is the whole idea of the comprehensive and bureaucratic system of the registration of building practitioners. That is where the bill falls down. This is the part that will kill that great and fine tradition of do-it-yourself New Zealanders. They have been doing that for over a century but now will be caught by the bill. They will have to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars to have their work approved by registered building practitioners. 
Dianne Yates 
: So? 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: There was a reference—which the interjector from the other side will well know—about a saying in relation to weathertightness. We referred somewhat colloquially to “the man his dog his radio and his ute”—that being the classic start-up position of many many successful New Zealand builders. The Government has now put in place a regulatory regime that will stifle those people. That is exactly what it is doing. 
This is an industry that has been available for people to enter provided they have a trade certificate. That is one of the things that is desirable and that is typically all that is really wanted. A guy—occasionally a girl—who has a trade certificate can get into the industry and start building for consumers. Their good name will get around quite quickly. Many of those people grow their businesses from the one-person business to one of two three or five people or indeed in many cases to a business of hundreds of people. That is the epitome of the Kiwi dream—the person who builds his or her own business the person whom the Minister keeps saying he supports. 
The Minister fancies himself as the advocate for small New Zealand businesses—those hard-working entrepreneurs—yet here tonight he is presiding over legislation that will make it very difficult for those people to get ahead. This is a Minister who is killing initiative by this legislation. Maybe he does not recognise that. Maybe that is a possibility. Maybe he does not know what he is doing.