Williams Andrew: Building Amendment Bill (No 4) — Instruction to Committee In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Building Amendment Bill (No 4) — Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14970. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Building Amendment Bill (No 4). It was somewhat disappointing to hear the Minister for Building and Construction the Hon Maurice Williamson use most of the time in his address to talk about what was not in this bill rather than what was in this bill. To hear the Minister say that low-risk building will have next to no scrutiny—low-risk building will have next to no scrutiny—really does raise alarm bells for New Zealand First and indeed for many New Zealanders throughout New Zealand who have seen the effects on building such as with the leaky building situation that came out of the National Government in the 1990s.This bill is more about excluding things and if you read the bill it seems to exclude more things than include things. When you start looking at what is exempted you see that it exempts in the future any compliance requirements from a local authority to build the likes of carports pergolas outbuildings 10 square metres or less and interior alterations to non-residential buildings. It moves into retaining walls and all sorts of other things that become excluded. When you start excluding all these various things you open up a situation where consumers the public of New Zealand start being put at risk. People do stand on decks. People do stand under pergolas. People do walk through or park in carports. And if many of these structures start to be thrown up by any old person without any compliance requirements at all we will end up with a very very Mickey Mouse situation in building in this country. I can foresee that as we saw in this last decade with the leaky home situation when much of this is now going to be self-regulating—the likes of the Registered Master Builders Federation and other such entities will be self-regulated—there will be far less scrutiny by local authorities and councils. As a result of that we have the potential here of setting up for the next decade and the decade after that another whole leaky building situation brought about by yet another National Government.It would seem that the National Government does not learn from its past mistakes. Minister Williamson certainly appears not to having been in a National Government in the 1990s which changed the building code which allowed monolithic cladding to be applied directly to kiln-dried timber and then we ended up with that very monolithic cladding cracking and moisture getting into the untreated timber and rotting houses as a result. That same National Government some 15 or 20 years later now is saying: “Let’s take away a lot of the safeguards. Let’s remove a lot of the local authority controls in terms of oversight of building. Let’s have a much more self-regulated building industry.” on the premise that this will reduce building costs. Although it might on the face of it reduce some compliance costs of building what is the long-term cost to New Zealand? What is the long-term cost in terms of health and safety of New Zealanders if structures are put up that basically do not come up to scratch?This bill as the Minister also said does not address building skills in New Zealand. So we could be faced with a situation during this whole period through this decade as a result of this legislation that builders may not necessarily have qualifications that would be expected of them because they may for instance not have been trained in this country. They may have been trained under different circumstances in other countries where perhaps their building codes are not quite the same or their building practices are not quite the same as in New Zealand. We may well find in the future that questions are asked as to why a carport fell down or why a pergola suddenly dropped—[Bell rung] Mr Chair?The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Andrew Williams.ANDREW WILLIAMS: Thank you Mr Chair. You did not have to look around—I was the only one standing. But thank you Mr Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I always look around.ANDREW WILLIAMS: Yes. It is very fortunate this debate will be inHansard because if it is inHansard where the warning bells are given and where the Government is on notice that what it is doing is once again revisiting a potential situation of putting New Zealanders at risk then let us look at thisHansard recording perhaps in 10 years’ time and ask how this happened. And why did we change all these things bring in self-regulation and bring in this legislation that basically saw the leaky homes thing revisited all over again?It mentions in this bill that contractors who exceed $20000 worth of work will be required to provide a written contract. But what happens if the contract is for $19999.99 and that contractor does one bit of the work and his brother who is a different contractor does another bit of the work for $19999.99 and then his cousin does some more of the work for another $19999.99 and multiples of that? What happens then? Where is the written contract for that and where are the safeguards for New Zealand for multiples of that? The bill also says that these entities will be required to give written contracts and their background as to their capabilities. Again how often have we seen Mr XYZ Builder 2008 Ltd. not being around and then disappearing and starting up a new thing as Mr ABC Builder 2010 Ltd. in a totally different guise? How will that be addressed? I would ask the Minister to take a call on this and tell us how these sorts of things will be addressed.How will multiples of under $20000 be addressed? How will people going under various names or through various window companies or through various other entities that they may be operating—how will that be addressed? How will the building skills requirement be addressed? How will we know that builders who may not have been trained in New Zealand and who may have come from other jurisdictions with other practices in building are doing what is right by New Zealanders? And how will we know for instance because there is no requirement for any permit in the case ofbuildings that are less than 10 square metres—and that is a reasonably sized room—that these small structures will not be going up all over the back lawns of Auckland because of the housing shortage?For many people in Auckland who are currently squeezed into three-bedroom homes with large families how will we ensure that they are not themselves putting up substandard 10-square-metre outhouses on their back lawn for children or family or extended family to live in with next to no scrutiny by any local authority as to how that structure was built whether it is fire-code compliant whether it is structurally sound or anything? Tell us Minister how will we stop people putting up such structures of under 10 square metres across Auckland back lawns all through Manukau and all through your electorate Minister? So there are a lot of questions in this.The Minister also mentioned about the situation of joint and several versus proportionate liability. Again that is long overdue and it should have been addressed before now as it has been in other countries because the last man standing in this country always tends to be the local authority because everybody else has disappeared. They have gone west. They have closed their companies or they have shot through to Australia or wherever else and the only one remaining tends to be the local authority that perhaps was involved in signing it off. So New Zealand First would like that addressed as well. But there are many many things—you could drive a bus through half of this.But at the end of the day this bill is more about exempting things. This bill is more about National making it easier for things to be done without compliance and this basically means that New Zealanders face another risky decade or so coming up where perhaps New Zealanders will be asking how we lowered the standards once again.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 357 in the name of the Hon Maurice Williamson to Part 1 be agreed to.