Faafoi Kris: Construction Contracts Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Construction Contracts Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 20 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7360. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is a pleasure to speak to the third reading of the Construction Contracts Amendment Bill. I would like to pick up on one point that the Hon Judith Collins made and it is a point that I do agree with her on in that the global financial crisis did bring about a significant number of closures of building companies. The most notable of those has been mentioned numerous times during this debate—that being Mainzeal. That closure of course put everyone under a nervous setting especially subcontractors to building companies who had their incomes put at risk. This is how this piece of legislation came about.It has been mentioned by Labour’s two previous speakers Clayton Cosgrove and Phil Twyford that Labour will be supporting this bill but it has been an interesting road. If I could take members of the House back to 29 January 2013 when this piece of legislation was first introduced at a time when I think the concern around the collapse of building companies was at its height—and I would remind people of the date today 20 October 2015.In his opening address to this third reading the Minister who is in charge of this bill Nick Smith talked about the significance of the sector which is correct and how important this is going to be going forward because of the housing issues that we have in Auckland and the reconstruction of residential and commercial Christchurch. But I think the time frame that you have got there—2½ years to take forward this measure for what the Government says is a significant sector in our economy—is laughable. On 29 January 2013 I am sure the Government arrived to Parliament full of gusto saying: “This is an issue right here right now. We’re going to take care of that.” But it has taken it 2½ years to actually deal with this piece of legislation when we get to the third reading. That does not say to me that the Government has taken seriously its responsibility to make sure our subcontractors or our subbies—builders chippies and sparkies—are being taken seriously.I do take offence at a comment made by Brett Hudson earlier in this debate who said: “Which world do you live in?”. Well in the real world that we live in we are speaking to our local subbies we are speaking to our local chippies and sparkies and they live in a real world where for 2½ years after being promised protection from this Government it has taken it that long to get to this stage when actually this legislation will come into force under law. I do recall a breakfast that some local Labour MPs held with our local subcontractors some chippies—one way to get them to a meeting is to offer them breakfast so we did that. But they told us how concerned they were that it was taking so long to bring in this measure.Funnily enough also this issue died for about a year until roughly about 11 days before the election when all of a sudden out of the blue the Minister put out a press release saying: “We’re going to take action on retentions.” Absolutely and utterly cynical. If this Government were serious and was in the real world about protecting those subcontractors who feared for their incomes for them and their families and the future of their businesses then it would have dealt with this before the last election. But no it went on the back-burner down the Order Paper. It was not the significant enough sector or issue that the Minister said it was today for it to go up the Order Paper and for the Government to take swift action. It was not significant enough so we had to wait another year and a month to get to this stage when we get to a third reading. Finally this piece of legislation which has had a bit of crunching from around this side of the House to help the Government finally get to a position on retentions gets to its third reading.I would like to acknowledge Clayton Cosgrove for his work with the industry and Julie Anne Genter and I mention her work with the industry to get the Government to finally come to some kind of position on retentions. It has taken far too long. This was an issue of significance back in 2013 at the beginning of that year when the Government came and said: “We’re going to sort this out.” But I think that if they look at this seriously those in the industry—those subbies those builders those chippies those sparkies—will not be impressed with the time that it has taken this Government because they do live in the real world and in their real world it took the Government far too long to deal with this.