Carter David: Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill — First Reading 
Carter David: Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:624;Page:19374] 
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 On the Thursday prior to the Easter break we were debating the Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill which after all should be called the “Building Act Amendment Bill”. The National Party will oppose this legislation as much as anything because of the disastrous process the legislation is being afforded. This debate will finish sometime this afternoon 29 March. 
The Government proposes then to send it to the Government Administration Committee which meets on the morning of Thursday 31 March. Yet the Minister has insisted that the bill be reported back to the House immediately after that one select committee hearing. 
Simon Power 
: That can’t be right. 
Hon DAVID CARTER 
: That is right. That is the sort of devious dodgy tactic this Government gets up to. It knows it has made a complete fiasco of the building industry over the last 5 years and is so embarrassed by this bill that it has dreamt up a name that does not even tell the public of New Zealand what it is about. It has dreamt up a process to send the bill to a select committee at which time I have no doubt that the officials will grovel before the select committee members to apologise for the mess they made with the Building Act which was passed only in November of last year. Immediately the bill will be rushed back before the House without anybody from the building industry being given the opportunity to comment on it. 
Parekura Horomia shakes his head in horror. He did not realise as he sat around the Cabinet table that this is the sort of dodgy process the Labour Government has come up with after getting the building industry into such a fiasco. We have only just finished question time where we had the disastrous situation of Nick Smith wanting to ask a question of the Minister for Building Issues the Hon Chris Carter. As a means of avoiding further embarrassment the Leader of the House Dr Cullen took the unusual step of switching the question to George Hawkins who is the Minister of Internal Affairs. Mr Hawkins got to his feet and clearly showed the House including Dr Cullen that he does not have a clue about this portfolio area. The answer given by Mr Hawkins was that the question should have gone to the Minister for Building Issues in the first place which is exactly what Nick Smith had tried to do. 
With the introduction of the Building Act the Government attempted to take the leaky homes debacle off the front page of the  
New Zealand Herald. 
 That was after Helen Clark had cynically referred to the issue of leaky homes as something that only the  
New Zealand Herald  
was beating up. I say to the House and particularly to Government members that the unfortunate owners of leaky homes are seeing their very equity erode before their eyes. Nick Smith brought to the attention of the House today the case of a couple who are effectively bankrupt because the Government has refused to address adequately this all-important issue. Talk about shifting chairs on the deck of the  
Titanic 
! We have now had nine Ministers in charge of building and construction. With people like George Hawkins Steve Maharey Margaret Wilson John Tamihere and even dear old Jim Anderton as a former Minister it is little wonder that this issue has not been resolved. 
But the thing I take exception to the most is the way this legislation was rushed into the House. It was not even taken to the Business Committee for the committee to learn what it was all about before it was tabled on the Thursday before the Easter break. The legislation was given the absolute guillotine to go to the select committee for no more than 3 hours which means that nobody in the building industry will have the chance to make any submission at all before it will be rushed back into the House and passed surreptitiously simply because the Government is totally embarrassed by the mess it made of the Building Act 5 months ago. The Government was warned at the time that the Building Act would not work. It was warned that there were mistakes peppered right throughout the legislation. The Government chose to ignore those warnings. All that the Government wanted to do was cynically remove the issue of leaky homes out of the headlines and leave the people with leaky homes to continue to suffer. 
The process that the Government is embarking on is an outrage. It is as bad a process as I have seen in 10 long years in this House. The Government should send the bill to a select committee open it up for submissions and let it be examined correctly. But most of all the public of New Zealand should be allowed to realise the embarrassing situation that the Government has created around the whole of the building industry and particularly the leaky homes issue.