van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. Look I'm happy to take a call on the final reading of the Construction Contracts (Retention Money) Amendment Bill. We will be supporting this final reading as we have with the previous stages. There's just a couple of comments I want to note in relation to this as we pass through. Firstly I want to thank the Minister for making it clear in the committee stage that the amendments that she has proposed under section 18FB will enable either situation where parties B are working on multiple contracts within the one project or indeed working for the same party A across multiple different projects—that they all indeed can come under the one complying instrument. That was a concern that had been raised with me by industry participants. I heard clearly from Dempsey Wood a great construction company out there—focused on this legislation—that there were some challenges around the potential implementation of this. So it was encouraging to hear the Minister confirm that that is the case and that was her reason for not supporting my Supplementary Order Paper which provided clarity to that extent. On that basis I think it's really clear to put on record that that was a key concern from industry participants because the other aspect that we didn't see addressed was around some of the questioning we had on this side of the House from both National and ACT members around the potential cost versus benefit aspects of this legislation and the lack of clarity around that and the potential impact of the additional working cash-flow being locked up if we're going through the trust model as has been supported by the committee of the whole House in the previous stage of this bill.So what I think we will see in practice as this starts to roll out is that most participants will be looking more at complying instruments although it would have been nice to have had some insight into potential costs of those complying instruments. I'm sure there could have been or certainly should have been some information around what that might look like because as I say having more than twice the amount of retentions potentially held up by using the trust model—where each participant in that chain holds aside 10 percent for example in a pretty standard sort of contract scenario party A down through multiple party Bs—then you can indeed end up with more than double the amount of retentions held which is not the intent of the bill.We all agree in this House with the intent to better protect that retention money that has been held aside and to the Minister's point yes it is voluntary but actually it is standard practice. That is what happens in the construction sector. There are multiple participants within any given contract scenario. The head contractor generally only performs a portion of the work and subsequent levels of subcontracting are utilised to complete other aspects of those contracts. And so it is critical to ensure that we are not overburdening the sector because we have seen far too many instances under this Government of additional cost being added to industries for negligible benefit and it's simply impacting our economy unnecessarily and reducing our productivity as well. So we do have some reservations around those aspects and as I say I expect that will probably play out with people or construction contracts being more around the compliant instruments side than the retention money trust to try and alleviate that cash-flow pressure—of course dependent on the cost of that which we have yet to get any clarity around. And I think that is a concern that I've had and the Minister talked as well and to me it was clear there wasn't a strong understanding of what the construction sector are needing or wanting or how it operates when we saw a relatively flippant response around the potential impact of some of those scenarios that could play out in a realistic contract environment between participants on any given construction project. So look we do support it. It's a good step to help protect those subcontractors. There is further work to be done. And this is to the point particularly around those subbies who have their tools on site or any other assets—you know materials or products that they may have left on a site—which then suddenly becomes insolvency property. I accept that is outside the scope of this bill but I would like to see a strong focus from the Minister on addressing an issue that is very clearly prevalent within the construction sector because not only is it the loss of the monetary value of those assets but indeed in the case of tools the inability for those subcontractors to then go and work on other projects. So that is a real issue we need to address particularly at a time when we have seen a significant increase in the number of construction companies failing. We have over the last 12 months seen that lift to 336. That is nearly one every day. That is a worrying increase from what we saw the previous year. That was nearly a 100 percent increase from memory. There are real challenges within the broader supply chain for the construction sector around accessing workforce consenting processes getting new products registered—any raft of issues that are stymieing the productivity of our construction sector—and it would be really encouraging to see a strong focus from the Government to try and address and alleviate some of those additional pressures. But look we do support this stance that's been taken here to strengthen the retention money and make one contribution to supporting an important sector.