Smith Murray: Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill — Instruction to Committee Second Reading Instruction to Committee Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Smith Murray: Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill — Instruction to Committee Second Reading Instruction to Committee Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:19800] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 United Future is continuing to support the second reading of the Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill. I must say that the Greens need to be somewhat enlightened on this legislation because Sue Kedgley’s speech in terms of what this bill does and does not do is so far away from reality that it makes no sense at all. 
United Future totally agrees that information has to be available free of charge to builders. That is why United Future succeeded in making major changes to this legislation—in particular to clause 5—in order to ensure that as much information as possible is available to builders and building practitioners around the country. It is simply incorrect to say that the building code and regulations are not available free of charge. They are available free of charge and anybody reading clause 5 will see that there are extensive provisions requiring the chief executive to make available for inspection free of charge all the material that building practitioners will need not only at the Ministry’s office in Wellington but also at all the Ministry’s offices around the country—and also to make material available on the Internet. 
Part of the concession I obtained from the Government in return for United Future’s support of this legislation was to ensure that all compliance documents would be made available free of charge on the Internet. The Government indicated that it was unable to do that under this bill because it was outside the terms of reference and would have required a change to the Building Act but I am delighted to see that that is also going to happen. In practical terms as from about a week ago all compliance documents were made available free of charge on the Internet. What this bill is about is only one small segment of the information that is necessary and that is material incorporated by reference; that is standards that are produced by external agencies that have copyright attracted to them. 
In particular standards associations including Standards New Zealand but perhaps more significantly the Australasian standards bodies—the ones we work in with with Australia—and international bodies produce these standards and the income they get in order to be able to produce these standards comes from the fees they receive by being able to sell them. If they had been made free of charge not only would we breach copyright but these standards associations would then not have the income from the sale of their standards that they need in order to produce and to continue to produce standards and to meet those criteria. 
Those standards associations do a valuable service to the building industry in providing standards that are well researched and take a lot of time and effort in order to ensure that our buildings are safe. I would have thought that the Greens would be totally supportive of the work that standards associations do because of the valuable role they play in ensuring that our buildings are built to adequate standard and that the Greens would not be trying to undermine the work of standards associations nationally and internationally by taking away from them a valuable source of their income to do the job and thereby effectively prohibiting them from doing the work they do. 
So the Greens could not be further wrong in terms of their allegation that this bill is going to restrain the building code and regulations from being available free of charge. The idea that one has to fly to Wellington to get information is quite false. The only restriction in terms of the information that will not be available at regional offices is information relating to products and product safety standards. That is information that manufacturers need in order to manufacture their products. It seems reasonable to me that they should be able to get that from a Wellington source. It is not something they have to run down to the local branch at a day’s notice to get; it is something they require when they are doing planning for the production of their products. 
I am pleased to see that this bill has come back unaltered from the select committee. We were very concerned as was both the select committee and particularly the Regulations Review Committee to ensure that the bill was kept to a minimum in terms of what it protected from free access to the public and I entirely agree with the statements in the report of the Regulations Review Committee which states: “We consider the copyright issues provide appropriate reasons for the change proposed in the bill. We wish to make it clear that in the absence of these issues we would be opposed to the bill. By removing the requirements to place incorporated material on the Internet the bill in effect creates a barrier to accessing legislation. However we accept that difficulties with copyright justify not using the standard clause in this case and that this is an appropriate exception to the principles identified in our report.” 
 That has been United Future’s approach all the way along—that if there is a need to prohibit free access it is kept to the minimum necessary. That is why we successfully approached the Government and got the changes to clause 5 that would ensure that rather than the chief executive having discretion as to how the information would be available there would be a mandatory provision for the chief executive to continue to make all the material possible free of charge. 
That is what the Government has done. As I indicated before one of the concessions we obtained from the Government was an undertaking to consider an inclusion in the first amendment to the Building Act that effectively all compliance documents would be made free of charge. The sort of provision that that would require would be that the chief executive would ensure that new compliance documents when issued would be digitally published; that even when a new compliance document was published any prior versions would also be available because it is essential that there is a historical record so that people who are operating legitimately under a previous code can still get access to that code; and that amendments to compliance documents are clearly shown so that people who were legitimately operating under the compliance document prior to the amendment can still get exactly what they need. 
There is a need to show the progressive change in compliance documents and I am delighted that that is recorded in Supplementary Order Paper 361 in new clause 3D which inserts new section 25A. That means that the undertaking that the Government provided to United Future in return for our support has come to fruition far faster than I had expected it would. 
United Future expected that there would need to be changes to the Building Act. It was inevitable as I said in my speeches on the Building Bill that a document as complex as this Act in terms of the changing of the whole building regime that New Zealand operates on would require some fine-tuning over the next few years as it bedded down. As the Act comes into force some errors have been picked up that need to be incorporated. That will always happen whatever the administration—whether it is Labour National or whoever leading the Government. Inevitably when legislation is as complex as this it will need some settling down some fine-tuning and some amendments to it. 
It is the case that some requirements—in particular the provisions of section 363—have required this to be done as a matter of urgency so we have been put in the situation of having to rush through the amendments which is usually not desirable. But we are faced with the situation which I can talk about when we get to the Committee stage that a reading of section 363—which is ambiguous—could say that as we are in part of a building that is being worked on the whole building is inaccessible. That clearly was not the intention and I note that Supplementary Order Paper 361 will correct that. 
Supplementary Order Paper 356 on copyright again ensures that there is a minimisation of material kept away from the public. In fact the Supplementary Order Paper ensures that the Copyright Act will provide that there will be no Crown copyright on material owned by the Crown. So it will be freely available and able to be reproduced and I think the Government has gone to extensive lengths by that provision and the provisions in the Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill to ensure that as much information is available free of charge on the Internet and in hard copy to the public as is conceivably possible.