Auchinvole Chris: Building Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Auchinvole Chris: Building Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
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CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 I thank Moana Mackey. C’est toujours un plaisir à suivre Mademoiselle Mackey. 
Chris Tremain 
: You’ll find that was “Oh Grasshopper”. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Ha ha! I am not quite sure of the grasshopper. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: You’ll have to get a Maori pronunciation sheet from the Maori Party though. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: I shall do that. 
It was a pleasure to hear the Building Amendment Bill (No 2) being introduced by Minister Nathan Guy. Let us remember—and this side of the House has always acknowledged—the contribution to this bill made by the Hon Shane Jones in his drive to get it going. 
In many ways the speeches given on this bill have been quite cathartic in that they have reflected on the difficulties of the leaky home syndrome that occurred and frightened the industry. It certainly made councils risk-averse and introduced very severe inspection regimes and that sort of thing. It is good to hear members of the previous Government say that they maybe went a bit far with regulation. This bill addresses that situation. It is novel it is clever and National was very happy to proceed with it when National became the Government. As I mentioned yesterday there was even a suggestion that we should have called it the “Shane Jones Building Amendment Bill” but that would perhaps have been over-egging the cake. 
The purpose of the bill as the Hon Nathan Guy said when he introduced the third reading is to allow the Department of Building and Housing to issue national multiple-use approvals for dwellings and buildings that are to be replicated on a substantial scale. I reiterate that it was interesting and a surprise to learn during the submissions that that relates to 40-plus percent of residential housing in New Zealand—40-plus percent. Those dwellings are separately designed and attractively designed; we are not building little boxes. 
Moana Mackey 
: We’re not building shipping containers. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: That is right—we have a separate purpose for those. It does mean though that this bill affects a large proportion of residential building. It reduces the statutory time frame for processing a building consent application from 20 working days to 10 working days where the application includes a national multiple-use approval. That makes a hang of a difference. Minor variations—whether someone wants a bath on one side of the bathroom or the other or whether someone wants a little window here or a little window there— can be consented building works so that minor changes can be made without going through a full process. This will reduce costs and save time. The bill makes it voluntary for an owner to obtain a project information memorandum—a PIM—from a building consent authority that is a territorial authority. 
That is the basic cut of this bill. The background is relatively well known. It is designed to reduce both direct and indirect costs to property owners and developers while ensuring that quality homes and buildings are constructed. Multiple-use consenting will drive improvements in housing costs and affordability by removing barriers to achieving potential economies of scale. These proposals follow consultation with the industry and with local government. It was a pleasure to see this bill go through the Local Government and Environment Committee because really it attracted no partisan approach at all. It has been well received by both sides of the House. Support for this bill has been very much bipartisan. It has been one of those occasional oases in the desert of political cant. 
It was a slight disappointment and a surprise to hear the only discordant speech on the bill thus far from the Hon Maryan Street yesterday. That surprised me a little because she is normally very temperate. None the less she railed against the discussion on the bill for not giving the bill sufficient credit for being a step towards reducing the cost of housing. I feel that that has to be responded to because she really was quite strong about it. The Committee stage is usually devoid of party political statements I would think because it deals with the clauses of the bill. But to reassure the Hon Maryan Street—and she made a valid point in saying that the bill is a step towards providing affordable housing—I checked the first and second reading speeches that I gave on this bill. I can reassure her that there were 10 separate mentions of cost reduction and housing affordability in the first reading speech and 17 separate mentions in the second reading speech. I think my colleagues would say we have always had that as a priority. 
Dr Cam Calder 
: Undoubtedly. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Indeed. In a recent speech by the Prime Minister given last Wednesday I think he emphasised the whole matter of businesses needing conditions that are favourable to them and said that investors will put their money where they can get a good return for good processes. That is why this Government is focused squarely on improving New Zealand’s economic performance. There are lots of ways of doing that. 
The Government is committed to increasing New Zealand’s productivity growth and to maintaining high levels of employment. This bill will help to do that. Increasing our productivity growth basically means getting better at producing goods and services and getting them up and running. The reality is that although this bill has often been described as a small bill or a short bill it is a very valid bill because it does everything that a bill is required to do. The most fundamental problem facing the New Zealand economy is poor productivity growth. Whichever way we look at this bill it is significantly designed to increase productivity. Our productivity is already low in comparison with that of other developed countries and in recent years it has been growing more slowly than that of other countries. This bill is a small step towards acceleration. It will be followed as indicated by the Minister who introduced the third reading by far more profound bills that revise the Building Act. 
As I said it has been a pleasure to be associated with the bill it has been a pleasure to be associated with its third reading and it has been a pleasure to support the bill from beginning to end. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker Roy.