Street Maryan: Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11737. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour):I rise to take a call on this bill the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill yet again. It is a shame that this situation has been allowed to get to the point of needing validating legislation. When it was first introduced to the House it was clear that nobody was particularly happy about it but the Minister for Building and Construction had decided that this was the way to correct the inappropriate purpose for which the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board extracted a levy from its members.This does go back a long way and it is entirely true that the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board has been problematic for a long time. I would suggest that in fact instead of passing this legislation it would be good for the Government to go back as we did when we were in Government and look at the whole membership and performance of that board again. We did that once because the board was behaving in ways that were particularly disreputable and it was denying perfectly competent young tradespeople the chance to get a ticket. In a sense it was gaming the labour market by making certified tradespeople rare. That was inappropriate and besides that there was all kinds of behaviour from the board at that time which I have never seen in an industry association before or since.The Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board is not out of the woods yet. There is another alternative. I am talking about Part 1 of the bill “Extension of purposes for which Board may impose levy” because this is one possibility. It imposed a levy that it was not entitled to impose for reasons that are defensible—it wanted to clean the industry out of cowboys. Unfortunately it has now had the reverse effect. We have plumbers drainlayers and gasfitters who now have their licences and are able to practise but who will not pay the registration because this board has increased it substantially and has treated them with disdain.In legalising the purpose for extracting this disciplinary levy which the law did not give the board the right to do funds have been amassed that in my view ought to be repaid. So another possibility other than Part 1 is to arrive at an accommodation with the disgruntled plumbers gasfitters and drainlayers and say: “All right we’ll come to some arrangement where some of the levy that you have paid which we extracted from you illegally will be refunded.”That is why we have submitted Supplementary Order Paper 204 which seeks to enact the recommendation of the Office of the Ombudsmen that a proportion—not even the whole lot—of those levies and fees but the levies in particular that were extracted unlawfully should be repaid to the members of the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Federation. Our Supplementary Order Paper provides that the retrospective validation component of the bill which is this Part 1 will be effective only after a percentage of those levies and fees is repaid in accordance with terms specified in an Order in Council made under section 172 of the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Act.That would address some of the concerns that plumbers gasfitters and drainlayers have over this issue. But the effect on the industry because of the board’s behaviour is really profound and we are now seeing perfectly well-qualified tradespeople relegating themselves to the category of cowboy—by virtue of being unregistered—because they do not wish to pay fees to a board that misappropriates them or that extracts those fees unlawfully.The only remedy the board has ever entertained has been retrospective validating legislation and that is what is in front of us in Part 1. That is not the only alternative and I would ask the Minister to consider Labour’s Supplementary Order Paper and consider supporting that in order for this industry to be mended somewhat. I personally think that there probably needs to be another clean-out entirely of the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board. I would rather that the Minister acted in that way and had a close look at the actions of the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board instead of simply going with its request to make legal what it did illegally.I understand the disgruntlement of these men. George Clarkson comes up to me on a regular basis at the Nelson market on Saturdays. He is so wound up about this—and he is not alone—that I find it difficult to say anything to him other than: “I agree George. It needs to be started over. It needs to be done again.” but this legislation is not going to be the answer.The legislation as it stood was I think perfectly OK. I do not think there was anything wrong with the legislation. The Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board has in fact stepped out of line with the legislation and done something that everybody who has been asked to pass judgment on its action has found to be illegal from the Ombudsman to the Regulations Review Committee and onwards and this piece of legislation is not going to appease the plumbers gasfitters and drainlayers who feel not only hard-done-by but led inappropriately in their industries.The numbers the Hon Annette King was quoting a moment ago are seriously scary. In the space of 10 years where there used to be one drainlayer per 939 people we have now one drainlayer per 2471 people and the population has not increased that much. I use the example of drainlayers in particular in this instance because they were under the administration of the Ministry of Health because of their impact on the health of communities. They lay the sewers. They put down the waste-water pipes. These are the people who connect up all the services that are required for us to not all be dying of E. coli the plague and anything else that might be carried by waste water and through sewers. So they were always under health previously. They are important and we will need them—Christchurch will need them. Christchurch needs them now and yet somehow overall we now have 761 fewer certified drainlayers than we did in 2012.This behaviour of the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board is causing the industry to diminish for two reasons. One is that it behaved badly towards those in the industry and will not apologise for doing things that are illegal and secondly it whacks up the charges on them so that it costs far more to register as a qualified and licensed tradesperson in New Zealand than it does in Australia. So is it any wonder that our young tradespeople are being driven offshore being driven to Australia where the prospects—