Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Talofa lava. I rise to speak on behalf of the National Party and as the member of Parliament for Southland on the Building (Building Products and Methods Modular Components and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. The National Party supports this bill. It is a bill that is a good first step. It makes a small step in the right direction in terms of solving the housing dilemma that this Government and this country is faced with.It is a small step—though I should say however it is one that we've supported throughout. We supported it at the first reading the select committee the second reading and now at the third reading.The legislation attributes to improving building outcomes by establishing a registration and certification system for modular construction methods. It will provide faster more consistent building consent approaches for manufacturers that are able to meet quality and performance standards and have a demonstrated ability to produce buildings with components that comply with the New Zealand Building Code. An efficient regulatory and a high-performing building sector is one that we all support and stand behind.I just want to take the opportunity here to note that we shouldn't stop here and the Government should not stop here. We also have a skills shortage in the tradie sector. We have workforce issues and the recent immigration reset announced by the Government does not solve the issue of a lack of tradie staff. It's great that the Government is making some steps in training new staff. However I would note that it takes five years to train a tradie so they can get out there and actually contribute in a big way to building new houses to putting more roofs on to putting more electricity networks throughout our country.One of the other issues is electricity. It seems a funny thing to say here but it has a direct impact on the building of new houses in our country. In 2018 spot electricity prices were $80 a megawatt hour. At the moment they're peaking at over $300 per megawatt hour. Now obviously I've heard from a business directly that it is not cutting wood in the afternoons—it's not dressing wood in the afternoons—because of the price of electricity. So this is having a direct impact on the provision of wood to our building sector in New Zealand and it's something that I suggest the Government should pay attention to as there are some quite complex inputs into our building sector and we need some solutions to them.And in a time of wood shortage a time when Carter Holt Harvey has indicated this is going to stop the supply of wood products to major retailers being Mitre 10 and ITM—it's not supplying them with structural timber for the foreseeable future—we need every bit of wood being cut and produced for our country that we can. If we have electricity spot prices getting to over $300 per megawatt hour and we have a timber mill not cutting wood in the afternoons because electricity spot prices are too much the Government needs to do something about it.So I should just note that we're also very interested in the trading environment for our country. We have a skills shortage not only in New Zealand; we have a skills shortage with our cousins across the ditch in Australia who are having a building boom. They also have trade shortages and traditionally in Australia they pay more than New Zealand. So we need to make sure that we can actually get the people into New Zealand. We need to support the people we have in New Zealand but we also need to make sure we can get more in because it's going to take time to train these new tradies—five years. In the meantime we need to let in skilled immigrants who can help us build the houses that we need in this country.So I would suggest this Government should take a broader approach—look at actually what needs to be done and actually look at solutions and don't just use ideology to decide how to approach these problems because we need real solutions. We need houses built.I'll just finish by saying though that I will give credit where credit is due and this is a step in the right direction. I commend this bill to the House.