Goudie Sandra: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Goudie Sandra: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:645;Page:14679] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I am delighted to be able to speak to Part 2 of the Building Amendment Bill. I was very disappointed to not hear anything from the Minister in the chair the Hon Shane Jones on Part 2 other than the fact that he was exhorting everybody else to stick to Part 2 in his speech but then he did not provide any content as to what is in Part 2. But here I am talking all about Part 2 and the omission on the part of the Minister to say anything about it. 
If members look at Part 2 they will see that it is about validation and transitional provisions including clause 92 “Validation in respect of levies on estimated value of building work”. We can relate Part 2 to the commentary at the beginning of the bill which I will now do because these two are interactive. Hopefully the Minister might like to take a bit of instruction from this. He could have taken some time to elucidate on what his understanding of Part 2 is. One would have to question whether he understood anything about Part 2 when he did not share any of that information with us but just exhorted us to talk about Part 2. I wonder whether I could say that for another 4 minutes in different ways. But I shall now connect Part 2 to the commentary. The commentary states: “The bill makes minor adjustments to the Building Act 2004 to improve its clarity”. We would have to ask ourselves whether anything would improve the clarity of the Building Act—certainly anything that is being introduced by the current Government. If members look at clause 92 in Part 2 “Validation and transitional provisions” we see that “relevant levy means a levy …” which I find really interesting. 
Colin King 
: A heavy levy. 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: Well it is rather a heavy levy with the way in which it is written—a relevant levy means a levy and it is imposed under section 53 of the principal Act. I am at a bit of a loss to understand how that definition improves the clarity of the Act. So the Minister might like to take a call to share that with members and to give them a bit more of an outline of his understanding of it. I would have to agree with my most excellent colleague John Carter about the cost impositions and the further onus placed on ratepayers as a consequence of the impact on councils. 
Hon Shane Jones 
: Part 2? 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: If I could instruct the Minister to look at Part 2 “Validation and transitional provisions” he would see the definition of levy in clause 92 and provisions about territorial authorities. In clause 93 there is a cost imposition on a territorial authority as a consequence of the provisions of this bill and the Act itself. If the Minister cares to look at clause 93 then he would see that transitional provision for the content of project information memoranda. I have to say that the Minister did make some reference to project information memoranda so there was a very brief referral to the content of Part 2 from the Minister. He might like to recall that. 
In looking at what territorial authorities are required to do under the Act and also under this bill we can see that there is a very definite onus of added regulation and added cost. It is all transferred to the applicant and the ratepayers. I would say that there is also a component shared by the ratepayers but the burden of responsibility on local authorities to meet the provisions of both this bill and the Act is quite considerable. Local authorities face an incredible amount of stress and cost and I just wonder what this Government is thinking when it puts this stuff together. Does it even consider the process of implementation of any of this legislation? I do not think it does. I do not think it actually goes through the practical steps and it should. It should understand what these parts mean. Members should look at the transitional provision for refusal of application for a code of compliance certificate. This current Government really has no idea of the practical application of anything in my view. It does not do any proper fiscal analysis of some of its projects. It does not look at what its regulations will actually mean or at the cost the red tape will put on to the territorial authorities. Of course as members know if information is on a project information memorandum then it is deemed to be accurate information. It will be very interesting to see how that pans out in the future. 
Hon Shane Jones 
: What about the mangroves? 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: I note that the Minister is making some call on mangroves.