Smith Murray: Third Readings 
Smith Murray: Third Readings 
[Volume:625;Page:19836] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to speak to the third readings of this legislation which started life as the Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill. It has now become four bills: the Building Amendment Bill (No 3) the Commerce Amendment Bill (No 4) the Copyright Amendment Bill and the Health Amendment Bill. 
I come to this speech with a particular interest in building issues that I brought to Parliament through my background of having been a lawyer for 26 years. During that time I acted for literally hundreds of home purchasers home vendors land developers owners who were contracting builders and builders—including one builder I fell out with because of substandard buildings that were being built and who actually fell foul of the leaky homes legislation. I have been involved in drawing up contracts to purchase buildings and to build buildings. I have acted for purchasers and for builders in disputes in mediations arbitrations and court proceedings and I have even acted for a tradesman in a disciplinary hearing. So I came with a particular interest in the building industry. 
For that reason I joined the Government Administration Committee in its consideration of the inquiry into weathertight homes and also joined it for consideration of the Building Bill. As part of that I was privileged to visit Australia and meet among other people the Australian Building Codes Board and I got a feel for what was happening both at an Australian-wide level and also at a state level in Australia in terms of the building industry and for furthering the way that it cooperates with New Zealand. I hope and think that through that and through the 26 years’ experience that I have had I understand a bit about New Zealand homeowners what their needs are and how they think and also understand a bit about the building industry in terms of its needs and the way that it thinks and works. My time in the House has enabled me also now to see the issues from a policy perspective from a nationwide perspective and from a perspective of the needs that we have as a nation as we move forward in terms of the building industry. 
Being privileged to be with United Future means that I have been able to be in a position of having some influence in terms of the direction of legislation—to provide support for the Government but also to provide restraint on the Government at times. That is the role we have. As a centre party we are in a position where we are able to prevent the excesses of the major parties and to promote good common-sense solutions. With only eight out of 120 MPs we are not always able to get our way and in particular where Labour has wanted to push extreme ideological issues it has been able to find the support of the Greens who specialise in extreme ideological issues in order to do things that we do not think make common sense. Our goal is with the help of the New Zealand public of course to have greater ability to be the party of restraint and to keep Labour and National on a centre course rather than their being pulled to the extremes that the Greens and ACT respectively would pull them or being reliant on the proven instability and unpredictability of the New Zealand First Party. 
In terms of the Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill in my first-reading speech I went into detail on the considerable input United Future had had in the development of that legislation and in particular the extent of the input we had had to make sure that as far as possible all information would be readily available free of charge to building practitioners. We required of the Government that the legislation be changed from the position that it had drafted which would have allowed the chief executive discretion in terms of how that information was to be made available to one that made it mandatory for the chief executive to make as much of that information available to building practitioners at a local level as was possible. So the restriction that was necessary in terms of the copyright issues that incorporation by reference documents give rise to was kept as narrowly as possible to the standards which were effectively the ones that needed to have copyright protected. Beyond that everything was readily available. 
I am delighted that we have reached that position—in particular with the amendment bill to the Building Act that has been agreed to. We are now in a position where effectively even compliance documents that are produced by the Government mandatorily have to be made available free of charge on the Internet. I am delighted that as of 2 weeks ago all compliance documents are now on the Internet available free of charge for building practitioners to access. That is making information more available than it has been in the past and indeed one of the changes that has been made by this legislation—in particular the change to the Copyright Act—removes the Crown’s hold on documents that it has copyright in so that those documents are freely available to be copied and used by the general public. So the Crown has abandoned its right to copyright and that too will further the ability of that information to be made available and put into public hands. 
So United Future members are pleased with the changes we brought about in the primary legislation in terms of incorporation by reference and the fact that we have now been able to achieve the goal we set out to achieve which was as I said before to make as much of this information as possible available free of charge at a local level for all New Zealanders in particular building practitioners to access. 
National speaks with a degree of righteous indignation about the amendments to the legislation and the way in which it has happened but it did exactly the same thing itself. It is inevitable that in legislation as comprehensive as the changes to the Building Act there will be mistakes and they will be picked up. It will not stop now. Even at the passing of the Building Act I made it clear in my speeches that I envisaged there would need to be amendments as the legislation settled down. As I said previously today it is not surprising that as the legislation starts to come into operation which it did on 31 March and the rubber hits the road suddenly issues come to light as local authorities and others have to start implementing it. Suddenly they find there is a hole that needs to be plugged or an ambiguity as in the case of section 363 that needs to be clarified. That is an inevitable result of legislation as complex as this that has changed the building regime from the laissez-faire regime we had in the 1990s to something that tries to provide a balance between the prescriptiveness that operated before 1990 and the looseness that operated after 1990. 
I remind National that at the end of the day it created the mess we had through the former Building Act and the changes made in 1990. That created a situation where there was complete free unrestrained ability of people to build what they wanted with scant inadequate policing through the Building Industry Authority and through local authorities which themselves were not held to account. Those huge problems resulted in the whole leaky homes problem that has arisen; it originated out of the National Government’s changes. The recent Building Act tightened the processes in a way that tried to provide some balance. Now we have the early teething problems and we need to make minor corrections to the direction of the Building Act in order to clear up some of those problems. 
It will not stop here. I have always said and I said previously that this will not be the last legislation amending the Building Act. It is absolutely inevitable that as it beds down other issues will arise and some clarifications and changes will need to be made. That will be simply as a matter of course. It happened with the National Government’s legislation with the Resource Management Act the Local Government Act and all those things; major changes need some bedding down. 
That shows that big parties need a centre party to second-guess them to provide some restraint and even to give an independent view so that Governments can do their job better. That is the sort of role that United Future can provide and will provide in terms of both Labour and National—both of them having said they want to work with us. That is the sort of role we can provide in Parliament. It is an absolutely vital role—to ensure that the big parties maintain a centre position and do not get pulled to their extremes. 
In terms of section 363 clearly there had to be some urgent change because of the ambiguity. That prompted the need to make these changes in a prompt manner and the Government has not surprisingly taken the opportunity to correct some of the technical and administrative problems that have arisen that are not matters of huge significance but nevertheless in being corrected bring the Building Act to what it was always intended to be. This legislation is not perfect. I am sure that faults will continue to be found in it—in both the original Building Act and even the legislation that is being passed. It is unfortunate that it has had to be done urgently. Nevertheless United Future supports the need for the changes so that we can get the Building Act under way in the best possible way now.