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:6839. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on what seems to be the long-running debate on the Construction Contracts Amendment Bill which I think—I am just trying to refresh my memory as to when this bill first actually came before Parliament—has been through three different Ministers and a number of different iterations.Tonight we are faced with yet more amendments to the bill which will need some elaboration by the Minister.I am hoping that he will take an early call on this bill just to bring the Committee up to date with where he is up to as the Minister particularly on the part of the bill that deals with retentions—or as otherwise known to people listening to the debate tonight the part that is really around the Mainzeal collapse clause of the bill and how the industry and subcontractors within the industry can be protected and can be protected within legislation.Can I say that Labour is supporting this bill. It appears as if even though it has taken quite a long time to get to this place we are moving to a place where as we argued right from the very beginning there will be strong provisions put within this particular piece of legislation to protect subcontractors if there were collapses in the construction industry collapses of companies—that the subbies that flowed on from them who were owed money would actually be able to receive some protection.It appears finally that that advice has been listened to and this does appear to be in the bill. As to the questions that we do have around this they will be around to what extent and how sensible the provisions are.That is what I am hoping to hear from the Minister as we go through the debate tonight.But ultimately to recap because it has been some time since we debated this bill—I think it was last in March and that is when we started off the Committee stage of this bill—Labour supports the measures in this bill that speed up the resolution or the resolving of disputes in construction contract cases. We have worked pretty closely with the industry to try to come up with sensible measures that would be taken seriously by officials and by the select committee to make sure that subcontractors do not miss out on the money that they are owed when things go wrong. My colleague Clayton Cosgrove was responsible for the original Supplementary Order Paper Supplementary Order Paper 439 which is still sitting on the Table tonight and which actually ensured that that happened and it appears as if the Government has moved to make sure that that happens.I note that I have been doing just a little bit of reading around this bill tonight and around some of the debates in the select committee that led to getting where we are. It was described by a law firm actually as “the long road to fairly minor reform” which I think is quite apt although the part to do with subcontractors and protecting them certainly is not minor. It has taken a long time to get the bill to this place and it is a feature of a lot of legislation that comes through this House that it sort of gets stuck and then disappears sometimes for a year or two before it comes back to the House for proper discussion. So I think it is important that we move it on and that we actually get it through the legislative process and that this Construction Contracts Amendment Bill actually does become legislation and does see that there is—