Street Maryan: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Street Maryan: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:649. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on the Building Amendment Bill (No 3). Some of the history of this legislation and the circumstances around it have been traversed some in particular by the member Andrew Williams but it does behove us to look back a little bit and see just what happened the first time round when the National Government was in charge of regulating the building industry. 
In fact what happened was that the regulations surrounding building requirements were so diluted and so reduced to the lowest common denominator under the current Minister for Building and Construction who was the Minister at that time also that we saw a burgeoning of cowboy-type operations in the construction industry. In fact I wish we had seen them but we did not see them. They often operated under the radar and covered things up with sufficient coats of paint for people not to be able to discern the inadequate nature of the materials they were working with. So over a number of years the problem emerged. 
After the 1990s and the National Party’s term in Government when one of its tasks was in fact to dilute the regulations around the construction industry we saw people beginning to suffer hugely from this shoddy and corner-cutting practice. So the Labour Government then sought to tighten up regulations. By the time I came into Parliament in 2005 Clayton Cosgrove was in charge of this portfolio and was taking meetings all around the country of people involved in the construction industry. I remember attending two of them on the North Shore. I was working in the Labour North team at that time so the North Shore was an area of particular interest to me and an area that I knew well. I remember going to a breakfast meeting with Clayton Cosgrove and there were 200 builders there who were concerned about liability. They wanted to see a tightening of the regulations because they were sick of being undermined and maligned by the practices of less professional members of the building and construction industry than themselves. Having had this whole episode where they were getting the blame—some of the good and very competent trustworthy and capable builders were getting the blame for shoddy workmanship—there was concern that in our tightening up of the regulations they might be subjected to too much liability for products that they were not in fact responsible for. 
That was a legitimate concern because the blame needed to lie with the perpetrators of the shortcuts—those people who manufactured inadequate products; those people who built in a rapid and careless fashion. Those people needed to take responsibility. So with a room at the North Shore Events Centre packed with 200 or so builders Clayton Cosgrove got a very good idea about what the concerns of the industry were: “Don’t tighten up so much that we can’t do our job or we get tagged with liability that is not our fault but on the other hand tighten it up enough to get rid of the cowboys out of the industry and to protect the homes that New Zealanders are having built.” So we proceeded down that path. 
What this bill represents is a return to shoddy practices. It does not provide enough of a bulwark against shoddy building practices. It is a return to National’s favourite home which is the “no regulation” territory: “Let’s regulate as little as possible because all our friends in business complain about red tape and regulation.” Well sometimes regulations are there for a reason. In fact they are always there for a reason. Every now and then they need to be updated because the reasons change but they do not in the case of this legislation warrant being wound back in the way that this legislation proposes. We supported this bill going to the Local Government and Environment Committee and we are kind of there with the Building Act review but this bill does not deserve to proceed any further. It represents a short-sightedness an attitude that has not learnt from history. Even in the same person—the same Minister—there is not the learning from history that New Zealanders deserve if the building of their homes is to be protected adequately from a repeat of the problems of the 1990s. 
So we think it is unwise. There are risks pertaining to legislating such a piecemeal piece of legislation—a piecemeal set of measures—at a time when the industry ought to be gearing up to meet the building requirements not only of Christchurch but of future years when we finally have back a Government that is committed to building houses that people can afford to get into instead of cutting off people’s opportunities to own their own home. So our position is that we agree with those submitters who wanted the bill to be withdrawn and brought back in a more comprehensive form. Again do not do half the job; do the whole job and do it properly. There is no harm there is no shame in saying “OK we haven’t got everything quite right here. We’ll just hold it off. We’ll make some changes and we’ll bring it back in an improved way that the House can pass without any difficulty.” This is not that bill. This is not that bill and it contains dangers within it that will see us going back to the 1990s completely unnecessarily. 
People deserve to live in houses that are built by workmanship they can trust. We have very capable workmen and craftspeople out there who can build houses adequately to proper specifications. Do not dilute the regulations now. Do not put aside all of the experience of the 1990s and the things we learnt. Go back and get another 200 North Shore builders into the events centre and talk to them again over breakfast. Talk to them twice. I went to two of those meetings on the North Shore with Clayton Cosgrove and the builders were very clear about the need to tighten regulations and to stipulate where liability should lie but also to make sure they could have some confidence that their professional integrity could be maintained. We do not agree with the bill proceeding. Thank you.