Catchpole Brent: Building Bill — In Committee 
Catchpole Brent: Building Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14784] 
BRENT CATCHPOLE (NZ First) 
: 
 As was pointed out this particular part is a substantial one and I flag now that I intend to take a number of calls on it. At the start of this call I would like to thank some people it was remiss of me not to thank in my first call. 
First I acknowledge the enormous amount of work that the chairperson Dianne Yates did on this bill. Without her input the whole bill would probably never have got to this stage so early. Dianne Yates and the other members of the Government Administration Committee have already been mentioned but I also acknowledge all the work carried out by the clerks and the officials. We constantly sent them away with reams and reams of questions and issues to revisit and they came back with the answers very quickly. I thank them very much for all the work they put into the bill. 
The New Zealand First minority view highlights some particular issues we had with this bill. We feel that it is a sound bill—as sound as the Building Act of 1991 which was basically adequate for the construction of the day. The only problem with the old Act was that it was very light-handed and relied too heavily on regulation in the name of the building code. It was that building code that was very poorly administered by the Building Industry Authority which failed to pick up on some major issues. 
It is sad that the original Minister who began the inquiry into the weathertightness of buildings was of the opinion that if a house was built to the building code it would never leak. But everybody in New Zealand knows that every single building develops a leak in it at some stage in its lifetime—if it is not a leak in the roof it is a leak from a water cylinder inside the walls. Every building will leak at some stage during its life so to think the building code will solve that problem is pretty far-fetched. 
Unfortunately the Building Industry Authority did not have the teeth to administer the building code to the extent expected and the building code therefore is to be rewritten. I know for a fact that large parts of it are already under the pen at this very moment because of issues that are starting to come out. Technically that rewrite is supposed to be completed within 2 years of this bill being enacted but I hope it is completed long before that because some parts of the building code really need to be rejigged to prevent the problems that came up in relation to weathertight homes. 
Compliance documents are another area that is heavily canvassed within this bill. In the past compliance documents have been found wanting. In fact during the time of submissions on the Building Bill we asked territorial authorities and local councils how many outstanding cases there were in relation to codes of compliance and we heard that there were literally tens of thousands outstanding where the building work done had not matched up to the consents given at the start of the work. It was an issue that desperately needed to be tidied up and this bill does tidy it up in a significant way. 
 There is a particular region that has a large number of substandard houses. Unfortunately this bill puts that region in the awkward position of having to identify all those homes and to progress towards getting them up to standard. Technically many of those houses need to be bulldozed and rebuilt but I would hate to see the occupants of those homes thrown out because of the strong conditions in the bill on that one issue. I believe that councils are working through it now to try to match the requirements in the bill with the requirements of their areas. I will not name that one particular area because it would not be fair to it but I say it is essential that codes of compliance documents are in place.