Power Simon: Building Bill — In Committee 
Power Simon: Building Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14772] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 In looking at Part 1 of the bill I am just astonished that we are dealing with a bill that in its first draft is 358 pages long with a raft of Supplementary Order Papers and amendments on the Table. I would have thought and maybe I am a bit optimistic that in 358 pages the Government might get it right and that the need for Supplementary Order Papers at the last minute would be very small indeed. But no it appears that despite 358 pages of definitions and clauses the Government did not get the legislation right and has been forced once this bill came out of the Government Administration Committee to table a number of Supplementary Order Papers and amendments. I can only imagine the disappointment of the officials who will be crushed by the fact that they have worked on this behemoth of a bill for months on end only to have Supplementary Order Papers thrown in at the last minute. 
Let us turn to Part 1 and have a quick look at some of the provisions. My colleague Lindsay Tisch informs me—and I checked this myself because I have to confess I did not believe him—that the definition of “dam” does not include a stopbank. 
Jill Pettis 
: In Wanganui they worked very well. 
SIMON POWER 
: Let me just explain to the members present in the Chamber how much effect—in my electorate of Rangitikei in the Manawatu and in the chief Government whip’s electorate of Whanganui—stopbanks and the way that they are built put together monitored and the like had during the February floods in our areas. 
Jill Pettis 
: In Wanganui they worked very well. 
SIMON POWER 
: That may be the case but let me just say that farmers in my electorate had no compunction in driving bulldozers through the stopbanks when they needed to ensure the waters flowed properly across the other—- 
Jill Pettis 
: In Wanganui they worked very well. 
SIMON POWER 
: I am pleased to hear that. The question for Mrs Pettis is why this legislation does not include stopbanks. If they worked so well—and I take the member at her word—why not throw them into the definition of “dam” and allow the bill to operate in a way that covers off those types of situations? 
I can tell Government members that any legislation like this operates in a practical working environment—like construction stopbank work flood protection dams and the like. This bill just relating to lifting is going to be the bane of every developer every builder and every home handyperson in New Zealand. How on earth can people who are practically inclined get on with the job at hand in respect of a building construction a lean-to on the farm or stopbanks and the like during flooding situations? The Minister should answer those questions and tell us how such individuals will deal with and work under legislation that requires two people to lift. There is no way that practical working people who want to put a lean-to up against the cowshed to protect themselves from the rain—and I am sure we will hear more on this from Shane Ardern later in the debate—are going to get by with legislation such as this. 
The tighter that the Government squeezes the industry with the bigger and more complex legislation it puts forward the more will slip through that grasp. That worries me because this bill is another indication that this Government does not trust individuals to get it right. This Government does not trust the fact that other people can make decisions about the quality of buildings dams and the like without the Goody Two-Shoes Labour Government producing 358 pages plus Supplementary Order Papers to tell them how to do that. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 This bill as many of my colleagues and indeed I guess even the Government would acknowledge has its genesis in the leaky buildings crisis. At that time I was heavily involved in that issue. It would be fair to say that I have had several different portfolio responsibilities! This particular report was comprehensive and it had a lot of recommendations. One of them the final one recommendation 63 said there ought to be a review of the Building Act so that an amendment to the Act could be completed. Prior to that it talked about the role of the Building Industry Authority and recommended that it be reviewed so that it had overall responsibility for the administration of the Act. That was where the solution lay. Everyone would acknowledge I think that the 1991 legislation did have some problems. It was perhaps part of the over— 
Lindsay Tisch 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I do not like to interrupt my colleague’s speech but a member is standing and talking to another member. It is interrupting his flow. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Would the member please be seated when he is talking to another member. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: Thank you. I would like to thank Mr Tisch for assisting me in that regard and producing order in the Chamber when order was required. 
A solution was suggested by the inquiry of the Government Administration Committee into the weathertightness of buildings. It was essentially an amendment to the Act to strengthen the role of the Building Industry Authority and to provide better prudential supervision. That would not have required and did not require the level of reform that the Government has in fact produced. In fact part of the reform is effectively to abolish the Building Industry Authority and bring control back into the ministry. The weakness is as the Minister in the chair Dover Samuels will recognise the classic statist solution that we have seen so much of from this Government. In fact the previous debate was precisely about statist solutions. Here we are presented with yet another statist solution where the idea is to have massive volumes of regulation and statute and to centralise the management of this matter into the Ministry of Economic Development. That is not the right way. National in the course of this extended Committee debate will be putting forward the way that we think this issue needs to be fixed. We will put forward a modest and reasonable amendment to strengthen the Building Industry Authority help the independent certifiers do their job more effectively and provide clearer guidance to local authorities as part and parcel of their process. 
Frankly a lot of the issues are not legislatively based in any event. Much of the solution actually rests on the quality and skills of the people in the industry. This piece of legislation will not fix that. What is required is a more proactive approach through the industry training organisation and through the polytechnics to boost the skills of the workforce. That is what the weathertightness inquiry recommended and we do not need legislation to do that. We simply have to fix the educational issues and strengthen the industry training organisation itself. If we do that we solve a whole lot of other problems simultaneously because the weathertightness issue had multiple causes but perhaps the most apparent to those on the inquiry and to those in the industry was a lack of knowledge on the part of the people in the industry. That reflects the fact that skills had declined through the 1980s and the 1990s. That can be repaired. In addition there are practical measures around design solutions—the sort of thing in fact that the Building Industry Authority was actually empowered to do.