Smith Nick: Building (Late Consent is a Free Consent) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Smith Nick: Building (Late Consent is a Free Consent) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:634;Page:5680] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 I move  
That the Building (Late Consent is a Free Consent) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 The building and construction industry is one of New Zealand’s largest involving $13 billion a year of work. It is a sector that employs over 100000 people. This industry stops and starts on the issuing of 81000 building consents each year. The problem this bill addresses is the delays in getting these consents. The law is quite clear. Councils have 20 working days to say aye or nay to a building consent. The problem is that the law is being blatantly ignored. There is no penalty nor any incentive to comply. The Department of Building and Housing does not even require councils to report on the number of consents for which they break those time limits. 
The anecdotal stories of delays come from the far north to the deep south—families living in tents for months builders being laid off and land sitting vacant. Time is money. The cost to New Zealand of delays in getting building consents amounts to tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The part that makes me angry is that this Government does not seem to give a toss about all of this. We get all this bumf from the spin doctors in this Government about economic transformation improving productivity and reducing compliance costs yet we live in a nation in which it takes months to get a building consent for something as simple as a garage. 
Although the Government cannot be bothered collecting any statistics on this problem we can get some idea of the scale of the problem. The Tasman District Council admitted earlier this year that 61 percent of its consents went over time. Nelson City admitted to a figure of 37 percent. A survey last month by the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development found that 49 percent of consents or roughly half nationwide went over time. There are over 80000 consents each year under the Building Act so this amounts to about 40000 late consents each year. 
Let me give members a flavour of the frustration for each of those 40000 people. Dean and Rebecca Olney in my area of Nelson applied for a building consent for their standard five-bedroom home in Mahana on 19 June. It took 60 days for them to finally get assent. Their poor builder sat around doing absolutely nothing for 3 weeks while they waited for their consent. How can members opposite talk about improving productivity with that sort of waste going on? Colin Hill the immediate past-president of Architectural Designers New Zealand said that the huge backlog of consents is causing an industry slow-down. He says that one can speak to any architectural designer builder or housing company and they will tell of numerous cases of building projects that have been postponed or put off indefinitely because of delays in getting consents. In fact frustrations have become so high that a Christchurch company earlier this year took the amazing step of having a judicial review in the High Court against Selwyn District Council. That company Williams and Co. Trustees Ltd applied for a building consent for a home in Terrace Downs on 7 December last year. By 21 March this year the consent had not been processed. The court gave the council 3 days to comply which it did but this is an extreme situation. 
Citizens should not have to go to the High Court to get a council to issue a building consent in a timely way. Well tonight it is time to change that. This bill is about people’s rights. It is about saying that public bodies should obey the law just as citizens have to obey the law. I know this concept of public officials having to obey the law is pretty alien to this Government. We see the Government’s attitude towards the Prime Minister forging paintings the 180 kilometre an hour motorcades the corrupt work for immigration favours and most recently towards stealing public money for electioneering. This Government thinks it is OK for public officials and the Government but lo and behold if anybody else should not comply with it. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. That language was completely unparliamentary. The member must withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Can the member explain what word was unparliamentary? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The member will be seated. The member does not call across the House like that. I will rule on the point of order. It is not in order to accuse a member of the Government of what the member accused it and the member will withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Can the Assistant Speaker in the chair be very explicit about which words I used that were inappropriate? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: I think the member is very clear about what words he used and he will withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I simply ask Madam Assistant Speaker— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: The member will withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I do not know what I am withdrawing or apologising for. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. There is a longstanding convention in this House that you make the rules not that member. You have ruled. He cannot contest your ruling. If he contests your ruling he should go out have a lie-down and put a wet towel over his head. He should adhere to your ruling and not contest it. He is in breach of the Standing Orders and he knows it. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I withdraw and apologise. This bill is about changing a sick culture whereby this Government and its officials believe it is OK to break the law. It is based on a very simple notion: if the consent is not processed by the due date the council loses the legal right to charge for it. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: What did the judge say about that member? He can’t be trusted. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: “Shock! Horror!” some like David Benson-Pope would say. “Fancy the poor council losing its fee for not complying with the law!”. But I put it to members that if a citizen does not pay his or her rates on time the council under the law is able to charge a penalty; if a citizen fails to lodge his or her objection against a resource consent within 20 working days it simply does not count; if a citizen fails to pay his or her tax on time he or she pays a penalty; if a citizen fails to pay his or her car registration on time he or she pays a penalty. So I put it to this House that if it is good enough for the goose it is good enough for the gander. 
I must put on the record that I do have some sympathy for the position of councils’ building officials. This Government has made a complete hash of the building regulations and the Department of Building and Housing is making the job for councils a nightmare. The extra regulatory burdens placed on councils by the Department of Building and Housing are over-the-top. We have building officials who should be clearing the backlog of consents filling out all number of forms and meeting the compliance demands of the department. We also have the bizarre situation rightly exposed by the Certified Builders Association which is infuriated by the fact that the Department of Building and Housing and Standards New Zealand—two different Government bodies—tell it different things about what complies with regard to a building. 
So one might ask how this bill penalises the Government as well as the council for its role in adding to the delays faced by builders and homeowners. Well the department is funded by the building levy and this bill exempts the homeowner or builder from paying fees to both the council and the Government if the 20-day time frame is not met. This puts the incentive both on the council and on the Government to ensure consents are processed within the 20 working days. 
Let me respond to some of the criticisms of the bill. Sceptics might ask what will happen if the consent application is incomplete. The law already clearly covers this. Section 48(2) of the Building Act states that the council may require further reasonable information and the time period is suspended until it receives that information. A further criticism is that it is just not possible to do so in a timely way. I draw this House’s attention to the example in Hamilton where the council has adopted exactly this policy and has done so such that it has 100 percent compliance. In fact in Hamilton the average time for processing a building consent is just 6 days. 
I suggest that this bill be referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee. It is a small pragmatic bill that deals with a real problem for real people. It is about fairness. It is about saying that building officials and public bodies should face penalties just as citizens do when they break the law. It is about reducing compliance costs and reducing the red tape that kills off enterprise kills off innovation and kills off people’s get-up-and-go. And it is about improving productivity. If this bill improves the efficiency of our building industry by just 1 percent that amounts to $100 million a year. The challenge we face as a nation is about making the boat go faster so we might catch up with faster growing economies. There is no magic bullet to this problem; it will require a whole lot of small efficiency gains for an economy—of which this bill is one. 
Tonight we should give the people a win. It is time Parliament told the bureaucrats we mean what we say and we say what we mean. Parliament says a building consent must be processed within 20 working days and we mean just that. I make no bones about the fact that there are other Acts to which this principle should apply—like the Resource Management Act. But for now I urge Parliament to make this change in respect of the Building Act. It is time that Parliament recognised a problem faced by citizens—that time matters and time costs.