Curran Clare: Construction Contracts Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Construction Contracts Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6842. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I thank the Minister in the chair the Minister for Building and Housing for his contribution for his substantive comments on Part 2 of the bill and for the explanations that he has given. I would like to make a few points. I preface the points by saying that in the main Labour finds itself in the position of agreeing with the Minister on many of the points that he has made tonight.But the main point I want to make and I think that my colleague Julie Anne Genter has made this point as well is that it is better late than never in coming to the party on these substantive changes to this piece of legislation. Can I say that Part 2 looks completely different from the bill that went through the Commerce Committee. Although it is better late than never these substantive changes around the retentions part of this bill which the Opposition parties argued very strongly for during the select committee hearing—they were argued for by many of the submitters. There were arguments with officials. There were pleas. There were letters written to the Minister. And there was no response—no response at all.I would like to acknowledge that it was not the Minister sitting in the chair tonight but it was Maurice Williamson who happened to be the Minister at that time. There were sensible pragmatic reasoned arguments following the collapse of Mainzeal which was the major company that collapsed and that was on everybody’s mind when this bill was before the select committee. There were compelling reasons to consider making changes to the retentions where subcontractors would end up being paid and not being left floundering with some of them ending up going out of business—but no there were none.So what we have now is a substantive part of this bill that has been added in after the select committee process with no ability for there to be discussion with those submitters or to seek more submissions from the industry and from other independent interested parties about how well this will work. We have had no ability to do that and we are having this debate in the Committee of the whole House stage tonight which is just not acceptable for how the legislative process should occur. I cannot hold the current Minister in the chair to account. He has actually done the work of bringing some substantive changes to the Committee tonight. But the problem is that it has not been tested so all we have is the Minister’s word that he has done the consultation. In fact during his contribution we did not hear what consultation there had been and where these changes came from and what lies behind them. If the Minister does address this part of the bill tonight again it would be useful for the Committee to hear what input there has been and what assurances he has that this is the best way forward and that there are not others.I would like to refer to my colleague Clayton Cosgrove’s quite comprehensive Supplementary Order Paper 439 which was put forward quite some time ago to try to address this after we came out of that select committee process without the retention process. That Supplementary Order Paper called for the retention money for commercial and industrial developments to be held in trust for the subcontractors entitled to the money which is where the Minister has gone but also it added another clause that required the head contractor who holds the retention money to pay the money into an independent trust account which was the retention money trust account established and operated in accordance with the regulations.I suppose given the fact that we are unable to have a discussion with officials as to how that money gets paid out what the assurances are that there will be adequate transparency and good process around that and accountability back to the industry and to Parliament and given that we are passing this legislation that those are the things that we want to know more about tonight. I hope that there is the opportunity for there to be some more information provided to this Committee tonight as to what process the Minister has gone through to come to the conclusions that he has to put in these quite substantive provisions in new Subpart 2A in proposed clause 8BC in Part 2 new section 18A right through to section 18I which make those changes.I do want to take us back to the reason for the main debate in this Committee tonight on this bill and it was the collapses of companies—the collapses that shocked the nation and the severity of them. Of course Mainzeal Property and Construction has been held up. In 2013 it affected 486 workers and was a severe shock to the construction industry that sent those shock waves right through all those subcontracting parts of the industry. But more than that it was preceded by Alliance Construction in Auckland in 2012Gremara in the Waikato the Pothole People in Christchurch Canbuild Construction Ltd Tectonic Construction in Christchurch Abode Design and Build in New Plymouth and in 2015 Phil Rouse Ltd in Tokoroa—so it is still happening and the need for these clauses for this legislation to be passed is critical so that there is that ability to protect that subcontracting part of the industry. There are also Williams and Co. in Christchurch Strongline Buildings Ltd and NZ Premium Construction also in Christchurch.This issue has been around for a long time. This legislation has taken such a long time to get to get this point and yet despite the calls from submitters despite the calls from the Opposition despite a strong Supplementary Order Paper from my colleague Clayton Cosgrove and another one from the Greens’ Julie Anne Genter and despite the knowledge that there were some simple solutions that could be put forward it took this Government 2 years to actually get to that point. Yes it was signalled. It was signalled just before the election actually and I wonder why—because all of a sudden the Government woke up and realised that it should really be paying attention to this. It had gone to sleep in the select committee but it woke up and decided that it needed to do something about it but it has taken this long to actually get these clauses back to the Committee stage with an explanation of how this retention scheme will work to protect those subcontractors.Unfortunately there has not been the ability for there to be independent input into that process. So I am asking for the Minister tonight to give us some indication of what process he has gone through to assure himself and this Committee that this is rigorous and that these clauses will stand up and will be able to be enacted in a way that will provide that protection to subcontractors in the building industry.