Dean Jacqui: Building (Late Consent is a Free Consent) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Dean Jacqui: Building (Late Consent is a Free Consent) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:640;Page:10751] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) 
: 
 The Building (Late Consent is a Free Consent) Amendment Bill is a very very good bill. This bill brought by my colleague Nick Smith is an excellent bill and I will tell members why. It is an excellent bill because it seeks to make councils accountable. It seeks to make councils accountable for providing building consents in a timely manner. 
You know I often reflect and have often reflected in the past that there is a difference between those who work for a local authority or indeed any bureaucracy and those who work out in the business community. On the one hand the person who works in the bureaucracy gets paid every fortnight. They get their annual leave their other entitlements and whatever else accrues to them. It does not really matter how they perform; they still get paid. On the other hand the builder the architect or whoever is working in that sphere gets paid only if he or she does the work—and there is a bit of a difference there. That is why this bill the Building (Late Consent is a Free Consent) Amendment Bill is so excellent. 
Today and this evening we have been debating in this House the conflict and the friction between those bureaucrats who get paid regularly every fortnight whether or not they provide the consents and those who do not get paid if they do not do the work. Under the Building Act 2004 all building consent applications must be dealt with within 20 working days—and we know that. If a consent authority requires further information from the applicant—and that is fair enough—it can suspend the 20-day period until it gets the information. In other words it can stop the clock and that is fair enough. There is a contract here between the local authority and the person seeking consent. The person seeking consent should provide robust information and the local authority should deal with that information in a good and timely manner. 
It is interesting is it not that the Department of Building and Housing estimated—and I am reading from the notes here—that in November 2006 approximately 20 percent of consents were not issued within the right time frames. Twenty percent is actually quite a bit when one is talking about those builders who get paid or not depending on whether they get their building consent and can proceed with their building project. Maybe that 20 percent does not really mean much for those people who have dined on the public purse for the amount of time that a lot of the Labour members opposite have. But I can tell members that that 20 percent actually represents a lot of building consents that have been lodged with local authorities. The Government may not think it is a problem but I do. 
In fact the Registered Master Builders Federation reckoned that the situation was even worse than that: “While [building consent authorities] might contend that on average they are processing consents within 20 days (as required by the Building Act) the truth for the building industry practitioners”—and these are the guys that stand or fall on whether they get their building consents which means whether they can get on with their building project—“is that the consents are taking much much longer.” Who cares about that? Does the bureaucrat who gets paid every 2 weeks care about that? Or does the builder who lives or falls on whether he gets his building consent and can proceed with his client’s building project care about that? 
As the building consent authorities have noted publicly with some building consent applications it takes longer to sort out consent issues than it actually takes to build the house. Those are words that one can gloss over and say: “Oh well never mind it is just a problem. It’s only 20 percent.” But I can tell members that for a builder in a small town like I live in any delay in a building project costs money. Any delay in a building project means that the subbies do not know when they will be coming to work. Any delay in the building consent issued means that the solicitor will not get paid that the architect will not get paid and that the family who is hoping to move into the house will have to pay rent a little bit longer in its rented accommodation. 
This excellent bill that my colleague Nick Smith has brought to this House is raising some absolutely critical issues for the building industry in New Zealand. I have noted that as the Registered Master Builders Federation told the committee it now takes longer to get a building consent in many parts of New Zealand than it actually takes to build a house. Where is the onus on the local authority to provide a timely building consent? Where are the penalties for the local authority if it fails to provide a building consent in a timely manner? Interestingly when we were hearing submissions—I was part of that Local Government and Environment Committee that heard those submissions and I was there on the day—we heard that there are no practical consequences of non-compliance for local authorities. I think it was Nick Smith who asked the chief executive how often he invoked the powers of section 203 of the Building Act in any of those cases and the answer was—“What was it?” I ask Dr Smith—not once. 
So there are no consequences for the local authority that fails to issue a building consent in a timely manner. What does that tell our local builders our local architects and our local architectural draftsmen? It says that actually it does not really matter. They will not be paying their bills they will not get paid at the end of the month but oh well never mind that is OK. The local authorities are only doing their job and shucks we heard through the submission process that actually it is not the local authorities’ fault because they cannot find enough planners. I have some sympathy for that position but I note also that we heard submissions on this excellent bill in May and I have not seen a Government bill come into the House to address the issue of the lack of planners in New Zealand. Where is the sense of urgency on behalf of this Labour Government to fix this problem so loudly identified by the local authorities? Well the silence has been absolutely deafening. 
There are a few basic truths in the discussion of this bill: councils should be accountable—they should be accountable to the elected members and they should be accountable to the people who come to them to get consents. Interestingly I was at a local government planning conference in Hamilton back in 2003 where the Hamilton City Council planners outlined their plan to become 100 percent compliant in dealing with Building Act requirements. That was back in 2002 or 2003 in Hamilton with the Hamilton City Council. The local authorities want to be able to provide good service but they cannot because they are absolutely tied up with the red tape associated with the new Building Act. In the small councils which I am particularly familiar with the engineers and the building officers—who all work in the same room because the authorities are small—are tied up in red tape as handed down by this Labour Government. I will quickly go through those requirements. There is the long-term council community plan process and the annual plan. The engineers are also trying to comply with the new drinking water standards and trying to comply with new sewerage scheme standards—in fact they are busy. 
I want to refute the argument that a local authority providing a free consent will provide a cost to the ratepayer. That is not true because that will not be covered under the general rate. Building Act activities are rated on a cost recovery basis so it would be quite proper to recover the building cost. [ 
Interruption 
] If the members would care to listen—which they are not very good at doing for the building community—I will tell them that the building industry agreed at the submission process that it would be happy to pay a premium to get good timely service from building consent applications. What we are looking for here is accountability. We can provide a timely consent and it can be cost effective.