Kedgley Sue: Building Bill — In Committee 
Kedgley Sue: Building Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14783] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I would just like to speak briefly to two amendments that the Green Party has to Part 1A. Firstly we would like to amend clause 119C to insert a subclause (1) that states that solely for reasons of resource conservation a territorial authority may require building work to achieve performance criteria in addition to that of the building code. It would empower territorial authorities to ensure that buildings built in their geographic region could be adjusted to the resource conditions of their area for example related to water shortages or heat loss in cold climates. One could imagine that in parts of the South Island a territorial authority might want higher insulation rates. In other parts for example in Marlborough one might want mandatory water tanks or something such as that but unfortunately under the provisions of this bill that is prohibited. 
The amendment will not set different standards for different parts of the country—it would only allow a variation for specific reasons of resource conservation that would enable an authority to require some additional work to achieve various performance criteria. So I think that if we do not introduce such an amendment we will live to regret it. I believe that territorial authorities will wish to have this power. We have already had some territorial authorities contacting us to support this amendment very strongly. 
The second amendment to add a subparagraph (iii) after clause 195(1)(a)(ii) is simply saying that if one is going to undertake significant alterations to existing buildings they should comply as nearly as is reasonably practical with the provisions of the building 
code related to energy efficiency and energy conservation. Basically all we are saying is that if one is going to do significant work in a building—and only significant work that requires a resource consent—the energy efficiency provisions should apply to those alterations just as much for example as they will have to apply in relation to fire safety and disability access standards. So really all this amendment is doing is saying that energy efficiency standards have to apply to significant alterations. 
Once again it seems to us that this is just basic common sense. When we are as we know at a stage where energy shortage is fast becoming a way of life where we are looking at damming rivers by building hydro stations and so forth why are we not doing basic things such as properly insulating and applying energy efficiency to our homes? Half of our houses are not even properly insulated so why would we not do something as simple and as logical as requiring simple energy efficiency principles standards to be applied when we are doing significant alterations? It simply does not make sense to build new dams at great cost before we have done simple things such as trying to introduce energy efficiency not just into new homes but also into substantial alterations to existing homes. 
As I have previously said we would have liked to see further energy efficiency requirements in new homes but at least let us apply the existing energy efficiency requirements and energy conservation requirements to significant alterations. So we will be seeking those two amendments to this part.