Hutchison Paul: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hutchison Paul: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:643;Page:13267] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I am grateful for the opportunity to speak again on this very important but very unsubstantial Building Amendment Bill. I want to finish off the point that the Hon Dr Nick Smith was making about there being 11 building Ministers in 5 years. It is what the Labour Government calls recycling. It just recycles the Ministers. It is doing it in education in health and of course in the area of building because it has made such a disaster of the Building Act 2004 which took up 340 pages and has since been amended on a yearly basis. That is about 200 percent more than the tertiary education bill has been amended by the way. 
I wanted to talk about the fact that I flew down to the Hawke’s Bay yesterday and as I went over New Zealand’s magnificent verdant farmland I saw thousands of dams all over the country. These are the dams belonging to our farmers and which are so vital to our basic primary industry. A large section of this bill—[ 
Interruption 
] I can see a farmer who regards dams to be important to farming in New Zealand and who considers it important that we remove compliance costs and allow farmers to build the traditional dams that are so vital to feeding their stock. Federated Farmers made the point in its submission that many farmers own and operate dams as part of their farming business and as such their primary concern is with potential compliance costs. Safe farms and farmers are of real importance to the federation. It states: “We believe the safety requirements need to be balanced against the wealth-destroying effects of excessive compliance costs. The federation would like to draw attention to the impeccable safety record of farm dam owners and point out that in light of this the imposition of large compliance costs in pursuit of questionable or negligible safety gains is unnecessary and damaging.” The federation went on to say that the compliance costs for dam owners include paying engineers to certify their dam paying the council a fee to register the dam paying the cost of being accredited and paying for any remedial work required to make the dam compliant with new legislation. There are also intangible costs in having to go through the process—becoming familiar with new requirements; uncertainty; time out from the business which could be better spent farming; as well as the hassle and stress. 
Just the other day I decided that I wanted to put a small dam on my small landholding up in that excellent piece of New Zealand—Port Waikato. I did the right thing: I rang the council and asked what I had to do. The council said: “You don’t have to come to us but you have to go to the regional authority.” In going to the regional council to put in a dam that was to be 1-foot high and would probably empty out in the summer I had to go through an extremely expensive and ridiculous process. 
Hon Member 
: Wasn’t it exempt? 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: This is not exempt. The regional council insisted that for this small farm dam even though it might have been used for a few Muscovy ducks which I am quite fond of as well as to feed my cattle this was going to be the sort of process—a process that this Labour Government just cannot help itself aiding and abetting. But I must say I was quite astounded when I learnt that large dams have not been regulated ever in New Zealand. I agree totally that it is high time that they were. I was intrigued to hear my excellent colleague Bob Clarkson point out that 60 years ago he helped build the Mangakino Dam—at the age of 5. That is a remarkably fine dam. 
I want to bring up one other new point if I may.