Shanks Katrina: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Shanks Katrina: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:643;Page:13267] 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 I would like to add some clarity to this debate. There has been confusion about how many Ministers have managed to handle the building industry portfolio in the last 8 years—since 1999. Nick Smith said that 10 Ministers have been responsible for this industry but he was wrong. There have been 11 Ministers in the last 8 years. I had to think back as to what Minister was not mentioned. I found my list. I knew it would be easy to find because it was a big list. I looked back to 1999 when it was Mark Burton; in 2000 George Hawkins; in 2001 Rick Barker; in 2002 Lianne Dalziel; in 2003 John Tamihere; in 2004 Margaret Wilson; in 2005 Chris Carter; in 2006 Clayton Cosgrove; in 2007 Mark Burton; and now Shane Jones is responsible for the Building Amendment Bill. So we found the name of the missing Minister. 
It seems that Ministers are given this portfolio as they move their way through Cabinet. They start by managing the building industry portfolio. Once they have managed to confuse the public and write legislation that nobody can understand and that needs amending they move on. They move on as soon as they have managed to confuse the public. Once again this amendment bill is 30-odd pages long and it amends legislation of 360-odd pages. That means 10 percent of the Building Act 2004 has been changed. 
Now I would like to talk about one specific part of the bill. It would have been really good if some of the Labour members on the Social Services Committee had been sitting in the Chamber tonight and entering into the debate. They were part of this debate and were part of making this bill. Yet the only person here from Labour is Russell Fairbrother. Where are the rest? National has lined up to debate this bill but Labour has absolutely no interest in it. There is one Labour member from the committee speaking on this bill. Where is Labour’s commitment to the bill? It has none. It does not want anything it has to say about the bill to be recorded in  
Hansard 
. 
I will talk about clause 6. For those people who have just tuned in we are talking about the Building Amendment Bill which is an adjustment to the 2004 legislation. It is 30-odd pages long and amends an Act of 360 pages. I would like to talk about clause 6 because there was quite a lot of confusion in the select committee and amongst submitters especially the Registered Master Builders Federation. The definition in clause 6(4) states that “restricted building work” means building work that is “critical to the integrity of a building; for example its envelope and structure;”. That is all very good because the Registered Master Builders Federation came to the committee—I ask Russell Fairbrother whether that is right because he was on the committee—to say it was concerned that if one changed putty in a window one would need some form of building consent. That was its concern on reading this bill which was not clear to them. 
The select committee had another concern about the definition of “restricted building work” in clause 6(4). It states that it is building work that is “of a kind declared by the Governor-General by Order in Council to be building work that must be carried out or supervised by a licensed building practitioner …”. The definition goes on to explain what a licensed building practitioner is. 
We are creating this bit of legislation but it is actually up to the Governor-General by Order in Council to decide what type of building work should be restricted or not restricted. This bill does not tell us what building work should be restricted outside of a building’s envelope and structure. So how would we even know when putting this legislation forward whether a putty—