Williamson Maurice: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliamson Maurice: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 12 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15912. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction): I moveThat the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider the bill. The issue of managing earthquake-prone buildings has been considered by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Building Failure Caused by the Canterbury Earthquakes and a comprehensive review has also been undertaken by the Government. This is a significant issue with what I think is a very high level of public interest. About 15000 to 25000 buildings—and I guess that one of the first problems we have is that no one knows exactly how many—across New Zealand could be earthquake-prone. I stress that this does not include residential buildings. It does not even include apartments if they are less than two storeys. They have to be multiple-storey apartment blocks to be included.Five hundred and thirty-five submissions were received on the Government’s consultation document which we released in 2012 outlining the proposals to improve a system for managing earthquake-prone buildings. More than 1000 people attended the public meetings and the stakeholder meetings held all around New Zealand on the issue last year. I attended a number of those meetings to hear very firsthand the public’s concern about the issue. Although rare major earthquakes stand out from other hazards in terms of the very large impact they have as a single event both in terms of fatalities and injuries as well as economic losses. The Christchurch earthquake of 22 February 2011 provides a very dramatic example of that. Both the Canterbury earthquake royal commission and the review undertaken by the Government identified problems with the current system for managing earthquake-prone buildings including significant information gaps and issues with consistency of practice. A clear view has emergedfrom society’s perspective that the current system for managing earthquake-prone buildings is not achieving an acceptable level of risk.Many earthquake-prone buildings are not being dealt with in a timely and cost-effective manner. This bill introduces a revised system for managing earthquake-prone buildings that in my view strikes a balance between protecting people from harm in an earthquake and managing the cost of strengthening or removing buildings. In a nutshell we do not want to make every building in the country meet the gold-plated standard and actually make nearly every building unable to be economically used; on the other hand we do not want people exposed to higher risks of fatalities and injuries because the building owners are not required to do anything. So it is about striking a balance. The bill is very broadly in line with the recommendations in volume 4 of the Canterbury earthquakes royal commission’s final report while also taking into account views of submitters on the public consultation document and feedback from the public and stakeholder meetings.The bill moves to a system that has a significantly greater role for central government particularly in providing leadership and direction to make better use of the capability and resources of both central government and local government. I now want to outline some of the key changes contained in this bill that I think are really quite useful. The bill is to provide better information and disclosure and so it will require territorial authorities to undertake a seismic capacity assessment of existing non-residential and multi-storeyed multi-unit residential buildings in their district within 5 years from the commencement of this legislation. That was what the royal commission recommended and we thought that 5 years was a realistic time. If you take 25000 buildings and you divide that by five you get 5000 a year and if you divide that by 52 weeks it is 100 buildings a week that will need to be assessed. That is a lot of work to be done and while a lot of engineering capacity is being soaked up in Christchurch with the rebuild any time frame shorter than that would have put a huge demand on supply in the engineering fraternity.Councils will follow a methodology to be specified and published by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment when undertaking those assessments so the first concern we had was that it would be a different regime all around the country. Well no. The guidelines and the methodology will be very very set for how you do the evaluation. The bill also provides for a public register containing information on the seismic capacity of buildings to be held by the ministry and I would actually like to go further. After we have got that public registry I would like to get it on to Google Maps and handheld devices and actually have people even walking into a building to have a cup of coffee being able to tell what the seismic rating of that building is. Boy would you see some market changes then when people were not prepared to use a building because it was not at a realistic level.Setting the threshold for defining an earthquake-prone building and the level of strengthening required involves as I have said already balancing risk versus cost. In this respect the bill does it. It clarifies the current threshold for defining an earthquake-prone building including that it applies to parts of the building as well as the whole. That has never been the case in the past. So it might be just the parapets or the verandahs or you know a lion or a gargoyle or something on the front of the building that could be the earthquake-prone bit; the rest of the building may actually be OK. So this is the actual part of the building or the whole and in practice the threshold that is often referred to will be that of 34 percent of NBS—the new building standard.I want to first get a response in to Business New Zealand. When Mr O’Reilly first saw this policy he said: “Oh I don’t like it because it’s one-size-fits-all.” Well let me give it to you again: it is 34 percent of the new building standard and the new buildingstandard is different in every town across the country. Kaitāia has almost no earthquake-prone building issue at all. The new building standard is almost zero and 34 percent of it is almost nothing. Wellington on the other hand has a higher standard than Christchurch even after the February earthquake. So to Mr O’Reilly I say that no it is not one-size-fits-all. This policy is about 34 percent of the risk faced by the specific location and the seismic risk that is identified.The bill also clarifies that the level of work required to fix an earthquake-prone building is only such that the building or the affected part is no longer earthquake-prone. There will be no requirement to go beyond the 34 percent. I would hope building owners do that where they think it is economically viable or where their customer base wants it. I know that for example the banks have been demanding that every building their staff is in is 67 percent but that is their call. It is a market call. They are individual private companies that can do what they—I do not know for Mr Shane Jones’ edification what the supermarkets are demanding as their seismic standard. They may actually have one. After tonight I think they will need one.To help ensure that earthquake-prone buildings are dealt with in a timely manner the bill sets a national time frame of 20 years for buildings to be strengthened or demolished. That is slightly different from what the royal commission said. The royal commission said 15 years. We felt that was just too tight on building owners from the time they were given it and we have moved it out by 5 years to 20 years. The territorial authorities have 5 years for the assessment and then 15 years after the assessment giving them 20 years. The bill provides for work on certain buildings defined in regulations to be prioritised. Things that are found to be quite life-threatening right now are to be given the first priority.It provides for exemptions for certain buildings from requirements to undertake work. It provides that owners of buildings that are category I historic places under the Historic Places Act may apply to the territorial authority for an extension of another 10 years. So we are trying to keep the historic places a little bit protected and not force them to meet the same time frame as normal commercial builders but owners must manage the risk if any extension is granted.The bill will also enable territorial authorities that are building consent authorities to issue building consents for required work on buildings that are earthquake-prone without requiring any upgrades to other circumstances. I know that the disability community was quite keen on making it mandatory that if you had to bring your building up to standard you should have to bring all of the disabled access elements into it as well. We think that is just too hard an ask on a building owner. Where it is possible I hope they do and where it is economically viable I hope they do but in the end we are not going to mandate it. The royal commission said we should not mandate it and we have agreed with the royal commission.So in a nutshell I think this bill is good. I think it helps give some protection to our heritage buildings but it makes sure that commercial building owners get out and get their buildings assessed. It makes sure the public can go to a register look for their building and find out. The bill will in my view ensure that earthquake-prone buildings are dealt with in a timely manner by way of a nationally consistent system. It will strike a balance between protecting the public from harm in an earthquake and managing the cost of strengthening or removing buildings and it will ensure that information about earthquake-prone buildings is made available to the public. I commend this bill to the House.