Curran Clare: Construction Contracts Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Construction Contracts Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 20 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7362. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I am pleased to take a call in the third reading of the Construction Contracts Amendment Bill. This bill has been extensively debated in the House and Labour supports it. Its real intent was to speed up resolving disputes in construction contracts cases and it was all about greater accountability. It also extended the scope of this area to include things like design engineering and quantity surveying. On the face of it it was a pretty sensible updating of a piece of legislation.When we went into the select committee process it became apparent very quickly that there was something rather substantial missing from this piece of legislation. Many of the submitters talked about the lack of protection for subcontractors when the main construction company got into trouble. This went on and on and on and as other speakers before me have mentioned the context around this piece of legislation was really important because it was first introduced into the House on 29 January 2013 and the Mainzeal collapse happened on 5 February 2013 which was just a few days later. When the bill made it to the Commerce Committee at the beginning of June 2013 that was the issue on everybody’s mind and that was the issue that people wanted to discuss—and discuss very seriously.You would think that between 29 January and 1 June there could have been some thinking done by the then Minister Maurice Williamson on this issue. You would think that there would have been some serious thinking done around: “Let’s have another look at that bill that we have just sent off to select committee. Have we missed something? Is there something else that we could be doing? Let’s get officials working on that.” Well that did not happen. Instead when it got reported back on 11 December—another 6 months later more or less—there was nothing in it on retentions.I want to draw the House’s attention to the report that came back from the select committee just briefly which did have a section in it headed “Retentions” and that was clearly because the Opposition members—and I really do want to acknowledge my colleague Clayton Cosgrove who did most of the heavy lifting on this issue and also Julie Anne Genter from the Greens. There was concern after concern after concern brought out. This was recognised in the report which said: “We are aware of growing concern in the sector relating to retentions.” It went on about what retentions were all about and about what the actual issue was. But it said that “… this issue was outside the scope of this bill we are encouraged to hear the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is giving priority to addressing these issues. We urge the Ministry to continue to work with industry players … Labour members especially note that the Minister has changed his position from one of stating that there was no issue around security of payment and retentions to one of now actively exploring remedies around these two issues.”The fact is that in that period which was quite a considerable period of time there had been no work done. Meanwhile the Specialist Trade Contractors Federation was clamouring for these changes saying that it was now 12 months since Mainzeal had collapsed leading to $70 million in losses and at least $20 million of those losses hitting countless small businesses was due to the retentions issue. The chief executive of the New Zealand Contractors Federation also said that his group was looking at challenging legal rulings that backed the liquidator’s powers to claw back payments.I would draw your attention to the fact that one of Mainzeal’s directors was Dame Jenny Shipley. All of those directors are now more than 2 years later—nearly 3 years later—facing legal action as a result of what went on and yet this Government sat on its hands. The current Minister for Building and Housing Nick Smith did eventually see the light—Clayton Cosgrove described it as a road to Damascus experience. He did actually see the light and did finally put a Supplementary Order Paper forward at the Committee of the whole House.In the meantime what Labour had done was to put our own Supplementary Order Paper out into the public and Clayton Cosgrove went around the country meeting with subcontractors. Kris Faafoi just referred to one of the breakfast meetings he attended. I attended a breakfast meeting. There was a campaign that Labour ran around this because we knew—we could see what was happening—there was a glaring gap. So how is it that that Government did not do anything about it? Why did it sit on its hands? Why did it take it so long to actually wake up to what was right in front of its face?Now we have got another loopy piece of—well it has not turned into legislation yet. But we have now got this new Rules Reduction Taskforce which is proposing loopy rules such as builders signing off their own work. That is from this Government task force. So on the one hand the Government takes so long to work out that it has to protect the subcontractors who are actually doing the work on these construction sites and it reluctantly put forward a key part of this legislation; on the other hand it is undertaking another piece of work that actually looks as if it is loosening up all the rules. It is disjointed it is not joined up and it is madness to be honest.Labour did most of the heavy work on this piece of legislation.Hon Dr Nick Smith: Rubbish.CLARE CURRAN: Labour did most of the work in bringing forward the important issues in this piece of legislation. “Rubbish” says the apprentice of Dame Jenny Shipley who is currently facing legal action over the Mainzeal collapse. Labour pointed these things out and brought them to the attention of the Government over and over again and it was only at the Committee of the whole House when there was no ability to actually have any real scrutiny of the substantial Supplementary Order Paper that appeared before us—no ability to have proper scrutiny of it—that the Government finally woke up to what had been under its nose all the time.In the meantime $20 million was held up for these subcontractors many of whom had probably faced substantial problems in their own businesses and maybe had gone out of business as a result. In the meantime also we have had dozens—dozens—of collapses in the construction industry with no protections for the subcontractors. Finally that is going to be remedied when this piece of legislation goes through but the questions have to be asked and people listening to this at home should be asking this themselves: why did it take this Government so long why did it not listen to the select committee in the first place why did the Minister not listen to the submitters and to what was being said by the industry and what was wrong?I think that it was the work that was done by Clayton Cosgrove around the country by talking to submitters and talking to subcontractors—actually he is the real hero of this piece of legislation.