Mark Ron: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMark Ron: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:10058. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): In rising I have to say that having listened to David Seymour’s speech earlier one cannot help but empathise with some of the comments and observations he has made. In fact the comment that there are risks in life in general which we face daily was I think very pertinent. It is something that we have often dwelt on in regard to how far we go with legislation to try to curb risks and what the economic consequences of that are to our ratepayers and to our taxpayers.I often wonder if we were trying to build roads today for the very first time how we would under our current occupational safety and health laws view the notion that we would separate two vehicles careering towards each other at 120 kilometres an hour by a piece of white paint. But we do—we have a piece of white paint on the road that supposedly is going to stop these two vehicles careering into each other at a combined speed of up to 240 kilometres an hour. But we do—we rely on that piece of white paint and we deem it acceptable that that piece of white paint is going to keep our road toll down.I would just say that we probably would not allow that to happen in this day and age would we under our current laws. So I think Mr Seymour does bring a degree of rationality to the debate with his views although clearly not everyone is going to agree with his Supplementary Order Paper.But my job is to speak to the Supplementary Order Paper that I have brought forward on behalf of New Zealand First—Supplementary Order Paper 160. I just want to restate that the Supplementary Order Paper does insert new clause 41C “to redress significant tax disadvantages faced by commercial industrial retail and heritage property owners when looking to bring buildings above the earthquake-prone building threshold required by this Bill”. It does strike me as quite interesting that the Government would not support this Supplementary Order Paper which—as chartered accountant firms like KPMG and others Local Government New Zealand and property owners have said—brings some sense and consistency to the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) when it comes to dealing with the tax deductibility of business costs.We struggle a little bit here in New Zealand First with hearing daily how this Government wants productivity wants to encourage business wants to minimise red tape wants to minimise compliance costs on businesses and wants to ensure that earthquake-prone buildings are brought up to the new specifications as quickly as possible and that landlords—who have a lot invested in these buildings—are incentivised to do that.The only incentive I can see in the legislation without Supplementary Order Paper 160 is a big stick closing down buildings and forcing some landlords in places like the Wairarapa to boot their tenants out on the street if they do not have the money or the wherewithal to strengthen their buildings within the time frames laid down.What is interesting is that we have gotten to this point in the legislation where cross-party we are all in agreement. There have been some massive changes to this legislation to what was produced when it was first brought into the House. There have been some wonderful concessions made by the Government by the Government members on the Local Government and Environment Committee; the Opposition has also moved into that middle ground to a place where we have unanimity. Yet on this simple issue of providing New Zealanders who have invested their money in purchasing buildings and have now had the misfortune of finding that those buildings are not going to be compliant with this piece of legislation that we are going to pass—they are being told by the IRD that when they so move to be compliant they will have added to the value of their building.They will not have added one shred—not one cent—to the value of their building. They will simply have repaired it to the standard required by this Parliament—repaired it not improved it not expanded its capacity or its capability. They will simply have repaired it to the standard that we are now saying in this legislation here tonightthey must do. Why would we allow the IRD in a rather narrow view to not allow these people to treat those improvements as repairs and maintenance and thereby accrue the tax deductibility concessions that we in New Zealand First believe in?We are grateful for the support of the Green Party and the Labour Party and of Mr Seymour from the ACT Party that our view is the right view. I would like to seriously hope that before the end of tonight some Cabinet Ministers might have a quick chit-chat upstairs and have a think about it. Why would we need to wait for another piece of legislation to come through the House? Why would we need to put this off vote this down in the hope that in the never-never somewhere along the line in some tax review we readjust?In the meantime we have a whole bunch of people out there and I can pick a few examples. We are very keen to preserve the fabric culture and the aesthetic appeal of many of our rural towns by making sure heritage buildings are looked after. We have made these concessions here but not all of the buildings we are talking about that have high character value are considered heritage buildings. So what are we going to see? For many of these landlords it might well just be easier to run a bulldozer straight through the damn building—and there goes a cinema in Masterton that actually has typical rural appeal and high aesthetic value to that community. But if it turns out that the costs and the lack of any tax concessions make it easier for this owner to simply say “Well I’ll tell you we’ll knock it down and we’ll build a single storey building—you know get a Skyline garage in and run our business out of that.” that will add nothing to the cultural and aesthetic appeal of Masterton’s Queen Street. Or for example I can think of cinemas—what was the other one I thought of? We have got old pubs. All over New Zealand in rural provincial New Zealand you have some old pubs. They are not considered heritage buildings.I would just hope that the Government would reconsider its earlier statement. This bill deals with an issue where quite frankly we think the IRD is out of control. Quite frankly we think that this concession is an easy one to make for the Government. It does incentivise property owners to actually get on with the task of rebuilding. If it saves them a few dollars and encourages them to get stuck into the task earlier if it actually saves them enough money to make it worth their while doing that building up and not knocking it over then why would we not do it?We know that we need some sanity injected into the way in which the IRD is interpreting the Act. We know that we need to give the IRD some guidance. We think that the Income Tax Act of 2007 does need adjustment and we would ask that the Minister seriously consider and support this Supplementary Order Paper. I know for one that Local Government New Zealand property owners throughout New Zealand and accountants throughout New Zealand would think that this Government has made this evening a very wise choice and a wise decision. Failing that we do not want to hear anything more about the Government and about how it wants to see tax cuts for businesses and how it wants to see concessions made to businesses and to property owners so that they can do the right thing because without Government members voting for this Supplementary Order Paper which is a very simple one all of those words are quite hollow.