Auchinvole Chris: Building Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Auchinvole Chris: Building Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
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CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 I am pleased to stand and support the Building Amendment Bill (No 2) which was introduced to the House by the Hon Maurice Williamson. It was wonderful to hear such a robust analysis by my learned colleague. This bill will make the necessary amendments to the Building Act 2004 for achieving the purpose of increasing the flexibility and efficiency of the building consent process. 
Hon Maryan Street 
: This isn’t a school play Mr Auchinvole. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: It will facilitate an increased supply of affordable homes—something the member Maryan Street talked a lot about but did not actually produce. It will seriously ensure that homes and buildings that are built are of good quality which is a most important caveat. 
We went into the last election with a clear manifesto that the new Government would place a high priority on reducing red tape would increase efficiency and would reduce costs and that is what we are about. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Red anything actually. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Red anything yes. That is why we are pushing through with the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill in order to reduce unnecessary delays and costs and to give consent applications a smoother passage without compromising our environmental obligations. That is why we have given priority to the Unit Titles Bill—which I spoke on last week—in order to streamline development processes and provide flexibility for those who are building big developments. That is exactly why I am in favour of speaking in support of the Building Amendment Bill (No 2) being passed into law. It is part of this Government’s ongoing commitment to cutting and reducing red tape and it will reduce both direct and indirect costs to property owners and developers. 
Let us look into this a little bit closer. The big problem with the status quo is that building consent applications are assessed on a case by case basis by councils even where the proposed building work is to be replicated within the same subdivision. Developers are required to wait for each building consent to be processed before work can proceed. Labour would think that is good orderly stuff. It seems a considerably cumbersome process and one that can be streamlined to produce much greater efficiency by having a system of national multiple-use consenting for buildings that are to be replicated several times on a nationwide basis. 
Under this legislation the building design would be approved on a national level and building consents issued at the local level with reference to the individual situation of each building such as ground conditions foundations connections to water and other utility services. In other words decision making by the local building consent authority where the building is to be located would therefore be restricted to site-specific matters and any customisation or variation of a multiple-use consent. 
Common sense would suggest that such an approach will reduce delays in workloads for processing building consents result in quicker approvals overall and give builders a greater degree of certainty. In the current Building Act one cannot distinguish between minor and major amendments to building consents. Variations to consented building work following the granting of a building consent are common. Some of these may be major and likely to affect compliance with the building code. It is perfectly acceptable that those variations to the original proposals are put through the formal amendment process. However concern has been expressed by many in the industry that because all amendments are currently considered in the same way and because many minor variations to building work—and I think we heard some examples from the previous speaker—have been put through the same rigorous formal process unnecessary costs and delays are being added to the building process. 
What the Building Amendment Bill (No 2) will allow however is the ability to define a variation as a major or a minor variation and to act accordingly. Hence major variations will still go through the formal process but minor variations defined in relation to a national multiple-use approval as a minor modification or additional variation to the plans will instead undergo a far less formal process. Naturally this will result in improved efficiency reduce compliance costs cut through the red tape that minor variations are currently blighted by and result in greater streamlining and simplification—all with no discernible negative consequences. Now that is what I call good National policy. 
The Building Act 2004 Part 2 section 15(1)(c) provides “that a project information memorandum must be obtained before a building consent is issued:”. A project information memorandum is not a consent nor does it require the applicants to do anything. One of the main purposes of this requirement in the previous legislation was to save owners or developers time and money by providing an advance warning of issues that needed to be taken into account when developing plans for building work. However anecdotal evidence suggests that only in a minority of cases are project information memoranda applied for prior to a building consent application being made. Therefore the benefit of the advance warning is not realised in most cases. Instead this requirement has become just another example of extra costs being imposed on the owner or the developer. I will give two examples of such costs: first the professional fees to the adviser who applies or considers the content of the project information memorandum; and second territorial authority fees for issuing the project information memorandum. 
Different councils charge different fees for project information memoranda but to provide one specific quote the Auckland City Council charges $241 for a stand-alone project information memorandum. The Building Amendment Bill (No 2) will instead make it voluntary to obtain a project information memorandum from a building consent authority that is a territorial authority. This will lower the burden of costs. We in the National-led Government are in the business of reducing costs—indeed of eliminating unnecessary costs rather than imposing them. 
As we speak of costs other aspects of the Building Amendment Bill (No 2) will continue this Government’s determined and motivated efforts to reduce delays and costs in general particularly in the issuing of consents for various matters. Let me take a moment to dwell on the importance of the situation. The global recession is hurting our building industry and costing Kiwis their jobs. One of the most disturbing aspects is the effect on the younger builders—the apprentices coming through. We do not want to lose those future builders. The global recession is having that effect. These changes to cut red tape will make it easier for people to do business. There will be a boost for the building industry at a time when companies are struggling and builders are looking for work. Builders have complained of waiting up to a fortnight at a time to get onsite building inspections done—a fortnight at a time—adding to the cost that has been crippling for builders and frustrating for homeowners. This should not happen. 
We are making changes to tackle problems like that. Actions that we are taking include reducing the statutory time frame for processing a building consent application from 20 working days to 10 working days where the application includes a national multiple-use approval. Indeed we are halving the statutory time so that we can significantly reduce delays. Last year we also pointed out that the Building Act is estimated to have loaded up to $20000 on to the cost of building a new home making housing affordability very difficult for many many New Zealanders. The Building Amendment Bill (No 2) will ensure that home affordability becomes more of a reality for ordinary Kiwis. 
This Building Amendment Bill (No 2) is high-quality legislation that keeps up our proud work on reducing time delays and costs and on streamlining and simplifying processes that have become unnecessarily long and costly. Under this National-led Government we are embarking on a process of improved efficiency rather than continuing under a culture of needless prevarication and expense. Multiple-use consenting will help drive improvements in housing costs and affordability through removing barriers to achieving potential economies of scale distinguishing between major and minor variations to allow building consent authorities to focus on what is really important and making project information memoranda voluntary as they are of little benefit. This will drive down unseemly costs. 
In conclusion I am very happy to stand and support the Hon Maurice Williamson on this legislation as it is time we recognised the problems inherent in the Building Act 2004. National is doing something about them. Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker.