Smith Nick: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — Recommittal In Committee 
Smith Nick: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — Recommittal In Committee 
[Volume:641;Page:10962] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 We have experienced in Parliament tonight an incredible abuse of parliamentary process. [ 
Interruption 
] Let me explain to Mr Maharey exactly what that abuse is. The slimy members—as Bob Clarkson rightly describes them—from the Government do not seem to understand that we have rules in Parliament about how legislation is changed. 
I want just to summarise for the Committee the extent of the mess that we have. In 2002 Labour passed under urgency using a late Supplementary Order Paper the legislation that established the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service. That was in 2002. In 2005 the Government said that it was a botch-up and we had to fix it. By truncating parliamentary process in 2005 it passed a new set of laws around leaky homes. Then the Government found out that the original fix that was botched up was botched up in the fix-up so another bill was introduced at the beginning of this year to fix up the fix-up on the fix-up. The bill that was to do the fix-up on the fix-up was introduced to the House went through its first reading was referred to a select committee had its second reading had its Committee stage and was on to its third reading when the Minister in the chair said: “Oops! I’ve got another botch-up and I’m going to override the rules of Parliament and make Parliament do the Committee stage again.” In this Committee stage he is introducing the amendments in this new Part 3. These amendments are bad process on top of bad process. 
Supplementary Order Paper 133 will become law on the same day that it has been introduced and the Minister did not even see fit to explain to the Committee what he is doing. So I will do it for him. His original law had a stupid provision in it. The stupid provision said that if a council was not accredited by 30 November this year as a building consent authority it would not be able to issue any building consents. 
Hon Bill English 
: What a stupid Minister! 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Exactly! What a dumb provision. 
Hon Bill English 
: This is the rising star. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: This is the so-called rising star of the Labour Party. A really basic law of raising kids is that one should not make threats that one cannot carry out. The Government threatened councils by saying to them that if they did not get accredited by 30 November then the Government would stop them from being able to become accredited and they would not be able to issue building consents. 
The consequence of not issuing building consents would be horrific. It is not the council that would be punished; it would be the thousands of New Zealanders in that area who would not be able to process building consents. The real problem here is that the Government has been way behind in giving the support that councils have needed to become accredited so the Government wants to extend the date from 30 November. 
The Minister has completely failed to explain to Parliament why this bill could not have been referred to a select committee and gone through the normal process. Why go round the Standing Orders and do what Geoffrey Palmer would have called an absolute abuse of process? He refers to New Zealand as the fastest lawmaker in the West. We do not have a second Chamber. The amendments that the Minister has introduced today will be law by tonight. I have a number of questions for the Minister. Why did he not have this Supplementary Order Paper go through the normal process? The issue addressed by the Supplementary Order Paper is not a problem until 30 November. Why is it necessary to override our Standing Orders and not go through proper process? 
The second question for the Minister is this: does he not accept that this is dumb policy? There is no other area in Government policy in which we approve councils to do stuff. For instance under the Resource Management Act if councils do not get their act together by a particular date do we take away from them the right to issue resource consents? No. What about the Health Act and the approval of restaurants and health authorities? Does the Health Act say that if the council is not accredited by a particular date it loses authority to issue permits and consents under that Act? Of course not. Well why should this be the case under the Building Act? The Minister is absolutely silent. He cannot answer that basic question. His Building Act was a flop. 
Hon Marian Hobbs 
: You can be silent and answer. It’s a non sequitur. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Oh good. Maybe Marian Hobbs might explain. We know that the Government wants to pass law to override the Electoral Act so that it might be able to cheat and win the next election. Why is it also trying to cheat on the normal parliamentary process— 
Hon Marian Hobbs 
: Lack of logic on your part. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The member might explain why we are suspending the Standing Orders of Parliament and introducing— 
Russell Fairbrother 
: We’ve done that. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The interesting thing is that Mr Fairbrother says we have done it. The extraordinary part is that not one Government speaker has risen to his or her feet to justify overruling the Standing Orders. I would expect Mr Fairbrother a respected constitutional lawyer to think that if we are going to throw out Parliament’s rule book the onus is on the Government to justify why it is doing so. But this arrogant tired Government has not seen fit to do even that. 
We have a Government that botched its original law botched the leaky home fix-it botched the fix-up botched the fix-up of the fix-up and now expects Parliament to roll over on the latest error. Members on this side of the Chamber simply say that is not good enough. It is not good enough from Minister Clayton Cosgrove and it is not good enough from his departmental officials. What we have—[ 
Interruption 
] Has the member got the job yet as vice-chancellor of Massey University? 
Hon Steve Maharey 
: Not good enough as deputy leader. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The member wants to distract. He cannot answer the question so he wants to get personal. I tell Mr Cosgrove to answer the question. Why do we have to suspend the rules of the House? This issue will not be a problem until 30 November. Why do we not send the Supplementary Order Paper through the proper process and not have the extraordinary abuse of parliamentary process of introducing law one day and passing it the same day—particularly given the Minister’s track record? Not once not twice not three times but five times in respect of building law we have rushed the process and subsequently had to introduce amendments to fix up those botch-ups. 
Quite simply members on this side of the Chamber have completely lost confidence in the Minister’s assurances that he has got it right. He cannot make over three pages of legal changes to the Building Act without having a proper process to refer them to the select committee. We actually ask the broader question as to whether the policy is right. We think it is nuts. It does not apply to the Health Act. It does not apply to the Resource Management Act. We think the very notion that councils will be unable to issue building consents is wrong. Rather than simply extending the period to 30 June we should ask the question as to whether the policy itself is sound. 
We further challenge the Minister to take some responsibility for the extraordinary costs that he has put on ratepayers through the accreditation process and through the extraordinary delays that it has caused. Councils have had to spend more time dealing with the demands of the Department of Building and Housing and dealing with the process of accreditation rather than processing building consents. This has meant that tens of thousands of New Zealanders have had delays in the processing of their building consents. It is little wonder that building costs are going through the roof. It is little wonder that homeownership is falling through the floorboards. It is these sorts of botch-ups in the area of building regulation that the Minister should have got right so that New Zealanders did not need to put up with the problems in the building law that are driving up the cost of housing making homes unaffordable driving our builders off to Australia—where they might have a sensible regime—and causing all of the problems that we see within the law. I say again to the Minister that in my 17 years as a member I have not seen these sorts of repeat botch-ups. He owes the Committee an explanation.