Street Maryan: Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9410. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): Thank you very much for the call on this Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill. On the last day when Parliament was considering this matter we had an extraordinary tirade from the Minister for Building and Construction Maurice Williamson on this legislation and why it was so necessary. He talked particularly about the issue of health and safety and the need for us all to be sure that the tradespeople we engage—in this case plumbers gasfitters and drainlayers—are properly qualified properly accredited properly monitored and regularly updating their skills in order to ensure that public health and safety is paramount and that work could be trusted to be done. In this context he said that this fee that had been extracted this disciplinary levy that had been extracted to fund enforcement action against non-registered tradespeople needed to be legalised because that was basically its intent—to rid the trades this industry of cowboys. Although I have a lot of sympathy with that I do not have sympathy with the Minister’s misinformed and inappropriate tirade and the precipitate nature of the consideration of this bill.The Minister in his speech referred to an explosion in a Pizza Hut in Nelson. Can I just say that he has now caused Pizza Hut nationwide to go into a bit of a tailspin about the safety of its eating houses. Can I just quote an email I received that included an email from David Hill who is the Regional Operations Manager of Pizza Hut. He said: “We definitely did not have any gas explosion ever in Nelson Pizza Hut or any of our other stores either. The comments made by Mr Williamson are obviously incorrect. We have fully compliant maintenance and safety programmes in all our stores. You can assure all your friends who ask that we are a safe place to eat.” That was an email dated Monday 15 April. I feel the need to raise that as a point because the Minister impugned the reputation of Pizza Hut and in the course of that I seek to correct that on the record and in the public domain. But more important he was wrong and if he is wrong about something like that he can be wrong about the detail and the purpose of the retrospective legislation that is being put before the House now.It was not a Pizza Hut. There was a gas explosion in my neighbourhood fish and chip shop. It was the Milton Street fish and chip shop a couple of years ago. So it was nothing to do with Pizza Hut. The poor owner Mr Clark at the time—it has now been sold and is under different management and is a perfectly successful and safe business once more—who had operated a fabulous fish and chip shop for a long time in that area was seriously injured. I visited him in the burns unit at Hutt Hospital when he was transferred there because of the extent of his injuries. But nobody has ever been held accountable for that malpractice if in fact there was malpractice. It certainly seems something went wrong because a gas cylinder exploded. We do not have reticulated gas in Nelson and so it works off gas cylinders. So Mr Williamson the Minister was quite wrong.There is a man who now has to work in Tākaka whose reputation has been destroyed because of the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board. There is something much more rotten in the State of Denmark in respect of the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board than there is with the poor man who was burnt in an explosion in Nelson in a fish and chip shop and the poor gasfitter and plumber who was blamed but never found culpable. I draw this to the House’s attention because a man’s reputation and business has been ruined because the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board to my information has been covering up people who are responsible for signing off safety certificates. They have been covering up members of their own board or close friends who have been operating in a way that one could only call corrupt. This is now a serious matter and instead of bringing to this House legislation that retrospectively approves an illegal fee that the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board has been extracting from plumbers for the last few years why does not the Minister if he thinks there is a fault or was a fault with the original 2006 legislation correct that fault instead of retrospectively validating a levy that was incorrectly applied?Mr Williamson interjected during the last debate when we were talking about this. He interjected “Oh members of Parliament only hear from a very few people—only hear from the same people the same plumbers and gasfitters complaining about this and we could all name them.” But they represent others. I think the Minister needs to get out more. I have had plumbers coming up to me at the Nelson market on a Saturday morning. They cannot get in to see Nick Smith because he requires them all to make an appointment. So they come down to the market and they see me and they complain. In fact one sat with a sign outside Nick Smith’s caravan last Saturday morning complaining about this bill. He was an ordinary plumber and gasfitter. He knows his trade. He has been doing it for decades. This bill instead of correcting any fault with the 2006 legislation—and that is actually disputable; whether there was a fault with that legislation. It has taken a long time for the Government to work out that there was aproblem with it if indeed there was one. But if there is a problem with it why does not the Minister fix it instead of validating an illegal levy that has been imposed by a board that has behaved with less than stellar performance and less than exemplary conduct? This is not good enough.The Minister told the House that the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board will be bankrupt if it has to pay back the money it has taken from ordinary tradesmen. If that is the case then it will have to work from the ground up again to re-establish its funding base. The board has an ongoing process of demanding legitimate levies from plumbers gasfitters and drainlayers. It will never be bankrupt. It will always have levies coming in from the tens of thousands of tradesmen who pay to be certificated adequately and approved by the board. I am all for health and safety but I am not for retrospective legislation validating an illegal levy by a dubious board governing these tradespeople. Thank you.