Catchpole Brent: Building Bill — Second Reading 
Catchpole Brent: Building Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:619;Page:14536] 
BRENT CATCHPOLE (NZ First) 
: 
 I have pleasure in rising on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Building Bill. We consider that the Building Act of 1991 was basically sound but just a little light-handed in its approach. However it was grossly under-resourced and grossly under-administered by the regulations of the building code. The fact that it was under-regulated meant that too many of the requirements under the building code were badly administered which led to the introduction of products such as untreated timber. Untreated timber on its own is not a bad thing; however when untreated timber is combined with products that it is not designed to be administered with we have a major problem. That is what happened with the building code—it allowed products to be combined in a manner that had not been intended. The Building Act basically left the administration up to the Building Industry Authority which refused or failed to administer it properly. The authority did not recognise the deficiencies within the code or the Act and therefore we ended up with what is known as the leaky homes debacle. 
The weathertight homes inquiry which was set up at the end of 2002 made quite a large number of recommendations many of which unfortunately have been ignored in the review of the Building Act. Contrary to David Parker’s suggestion that the inquiry report advocated doing away with the Building Industry Authority and bringing it back into the ministry it actually said that the best idea was to retain the Building Industry Authority but to give it the teeth and the powers to act proactively so that when there are problems the authority does not sit on its hands and do nothing. That is what had happened and the leaky homes debacle was a result. Unfortunately the authority will now be lost within the whole ministry and there will be some problems of people duck-shoving and blaming others for problems. I guess the Government wants to take the Building Industry Authority out of the equation because it is hanging in the wind facing many potential libel suits and I think the Government wants to liquidate those—just as many developers have had to liquidate their companies. 
As a result of the review we have ended up with quite a large bill—358 pages and 386 clauses. It is a monster and it will take some time before the industry is able to come to grips with it particularly the licensing regime. But without it we would be heading towards another leaky homes crisis. That is the reason New Zealand First considers that the bill is worth supporting. We think it is a little overprescriptive but we would prefer to have it prescriptive rather than allow another crisis such as we saw with tens of thousands of people suffering from leaky homes. I believe that there are a lot of homes with the same problem that have not been reported or discovered as yet. 
New Zealand First agrees with the concept of licensed building practitioners. However we are concerned with the overprescriptiveness of the bill in this area. New Zealand First is mindful of the statistics that show that the average age of the workforce in the building and construction industry worldwide is recognised to be between 45 and 50 years. That is unbelievable. It means there are no younger people coming through to take the places of those who leave. We feel that if the licensing regime is not handled very carefully by the chief executive it may result in people who are getting towards the end of their working life—who are somewhere in the mid-50s—leaving rather than retraining. Many of them are concerned about the licensing regime and they do not want to be forced into a retraining programme or into sitting more exams. They are highly skilled and they are worthwhile retaining. Those people are nervous and we do not want to see them moving out of the industry early through either retirement or their moving to an alternative industry or even worse their moving across to Australia to help the Australian workforce—or even further afield. The building industry in New Zealand is desperately short of skilled workers not only to build but also to train and pass on that knowledge. Those people need to be considered and retained and the chief executive must be mindful of that difficulty and keep that skill base in the industry. 
 We also need to be careful of the need to support that wonderful New Zealand concept of DIY. In the bill originally there was a set figure of $10000 which if exceeded meant that the work had to be done by a licensed building practitioner. That concept has now been widened considerably to include the integrity of the outer skin of the building—the outer envelope—and any structural walls within it. Those must continue to be done by a licensed building practitioner. However the DIY’er is quite welcome to continue renovating a room—upgrading it or rebuilding it—provided that the work does not interfere with the integrity of the outer skin and the structural walls. 
Another issue that New Zealand First is concerned about is phoenix companies. We are very disappointed that this bill does not go anywhere near preventing—or even attempting to prevent—phoenix companies from forming under a specific development name or for a specific development project then liquidating at the end of the project in order to avoid any responsibilities. What is more there is a growing trend of companies being formed for a specific construction—companies that do not have any assets. The assets are owned by another company put together by the same directors which leases the equipment all the manpower and so on to the first company. Ultimately when the first company is liquidated all the assets remain hidden behind another company. That is a blatant attempt to avoid responsibilities. In many cases by using that scheme companies avoid the payment of subcontractors as the subcontractors do not have any access to the assets of the developers. So New Zealand First is very concerned that nothing was put into this bill to help that situation. We were assured by the chairman of the Government Administration Committee that that matter would be dealt with by another bill but we are disappointed that it is not dealt with in this one. We acknowledge that the  
Independent 
 which picked up on our report on the bill was also very keen to see that happen. 
New Zealand First will support this bill and its position.