Williamson Maurice: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Williamson Maurice: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:678;Page:814] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction) 
: 
 I want to take just a brief call to outline what the Building Amendment Bill (No 3) is about and to address some concerns that were raised during the second reading after the bill had been reported back from the Local Government and Environment Committee. 
I think the most valid of the concerns raised by Labour at the time was that this is only a piece of what is required and that a more comprehensive and fuller bill should have been brought to the House. Can I say in starting that I actually agree with that. I think a more extensive bill covering a lot more issues would have been preferable. However the decision finally was taken to at least get those things done that we could do now and to get those things that would take a little bit of a while longer put on to a slower track which we are going to call the Building Amendment Bill (No 4). It is waiting for its first reading—it has already been introduced into this House. Yet even more work which I think is quite problematic is going to be brought in in another piece of legislation. So yes indeed this bill is only—and I emphasise only—part of the total picture. The hardest part which I am very strongly of the belief needs to be dealt to is the liability regime which underpins the building and construction sector. I actually do not think there is sense in maintaining the joint and several liability and I would love to see us move to proportionate liability. That is way more problematic than I first thought and the Government has now passed that piece of work on to the Law Commission and asked it to report back to us how we could implement it. 
But this bill the No. 3 bill is a building block for the entire Building Act reform. What this bit is about in a nutshell is to do with risk-based consenting and a whole risk-based approach to the way we build buildings rather than one size fits all. Up until this bill we have treated every one of the buildings built in this country in the same way. They have to have the same level of inspections and they have to have the same level of scrutiny put on them. So if you are building a very simple single-storey timber-framed two-bedroom almost gottage-type building you are up for the same levels of inspections and consenting processes as you would be if you as a builder were building a multi-storey extensive building with unusual materials. So this bill is about saying let us reduce the necessary level of red tape for the buildings that are at the lower end of the risk curve but maintain that level of scrutiny for the buildings that are at the high end or at the very high end. 
But you cannot make that change unless you can do something to acknowledge the skills of the practitioners doing the work. I know I have said it as a joke a number of times but I stand by it: up until this week all that an individual needed to do to be a builder in New Zealand was to have a cellphone a dog and a ute and you could easily go out and build a house and people did it all the time. Well that changed on 1 March 5 days ago. I know that it was 1 March because today is my birthday and it was 5 days ago that the law changed. From 1 March a person needs to be a licensed building practitioner to do what we call restricted building work. That is brought into effect by this legislation. We say that restricted building work is building work that is critical to the structural integrity or the weathertightness capacity of the building. So a builder will still be able to move the kitchen cupboards around in a building without being a licensed practitioner and still be able to do some renovations to wardrobes or the bathroom or whatever. But when it comes to the restricted building work on a new building—that is the structural integrity and the weathertightness aspects of a building—the practitioner will need to be a licensed practitioner just as we ask people flying our 737s which bring us to Wellington all the time to be licensed pilots and just as we ask our brain surgeons who are operating on a brain tumour in our heads to be qualified surgeons. 
I will not take too much longer; I just want to go through what this bill is about. So we have a risk-based consenting regime and we have got a regime that brings into effect licensed building practitioners. The first concern that was raised with me as Minister was: “If you make it that only licensed building practitioners can build then you will take away the ability of the do-it-yourselfer to build their own property.” Well no. There is an exemption for a do-it-yourselfer in this legislation. So somebody who does not want to have a licensed practitioner do it or to be supervised by one can build under very unique conditions. They will be allowed to build only once every 3 years. That is because examples from other jurisdictions like South Australia showed that a do-it-yourself exemption meant that people just built and sold built and sold built and sold and of course you were not then a do-it-yourselfer; you were in the marketplace. So we put in place that exemption. It will also be recorded against the property so that any future buyer will know. Under the buyer-beware regime of this country a buyer will say: “Well I don’t mind. I know the guy who built it. He’s a fantastic carpenter”—or whatever—“and I can live with it.” or “Boy I’m a bit worried about this. For that reason alone I think it’s got to have a discount on its price.” 
I look forward to detailing any of the specifics of Part 1 of the bill but I repeat that it is only a part of the bigger Building Act review—a building block. To those members who have a criticism of it for being only that I fully accept that but there is more to come. As members know there is a No. 4 bill already on the Order Paper to be read a first time and there will be another bill later this year. It will become the No. 1 bill because we will go to the new numbering. Secondly what I want to say to members of this House is that if they have any concerns about the sector they should go out and ask people in the sector whether they are in favour of it. I have talked to just about everybody: master builders certified builders the Building Industry Federation the Construction Industry Council PlaceMakers to Mitre 10 to Bunnings—you name it. I cannot find people who are opposed to it. They think this is stuff that was started under Labour under the good auspices of Shane Jones and what he was trying to do to the Building Act—and I give him some credit for that. This bill is just taking that work and bringing it to fulfilment. I look forward to the debate.