Smith Murray: Building Bill — Third Reading 
Smith Murray: Building Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:619;Page:14919] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 I rise to shed some light rather than heat on the Building Bill. During the Committee stage we heard a lot of people speaking who obviously had not read the bill or if they had had not understood it and the ACT party has continued that today. 
Let me outline what this bill actually does and what the structure of the building industry will look like once this bill has passed. The first item is that there is a chief executive who will be responsible for the Department of Building and Housing that has just been created and over whom the Government will have much clearer oversight than it does over the Building Industry Authority. The current regime of the Building Industry Authority has lacked oversight; it has been too detached from Government oversight and that has been the thing that has caused us considerable problems. Part of the value of this bill is that it sets out clear principles that the chief executive is to follow and that provide a holistic approach to the building regime in New Zealand. It provides quite a wide range of measures that are to be taken into account when the building code and the way in which our building system is to operate are being formulated. Those measures have been expanded particularly by the Government Administration Committee to contain things like heritage recognition and the need for energy efficiency as well as to require innovation and cost factors to be taken into account. So there is far greater clarity outlined in the bill in terms of the role of the chief executive and a better picture for everyone to look at in terms of the sort of building industry we are seeking to establish in New Zealand over the next 5 to 10 years and beyond. 
The chief executive also has to undertake consultation and there are very clear provisions in the bill requiring him or her to consult the building industry. They include the provision of an advisory group made up of people from various aspects of the industry who will provide ongoing advice to the chief executive in the role that he or she fulfils. That is in contrast to the Building Industry Authority which was a little bit of a law unto itself. It was quite a small body that clearly did not consult or to the extent that it did consult did not adequately consult or take sufficient notice of what it was being told. That was no more transparent than in the leaky homes scenario where we found that the chief executive had been sitting on documents for 2 years that would have alterted him earlier to the problems that the leaky homes inquiry subsequently found out about. The problems we have had in that whole area could have been discovered a lot earlier. 
Another thing that the bill sets up having provided that framework in terms of chief executive oversight is provision for materials and labour and the methodology in terms of building to be clearly examined and controlled. The certification of products and methods is a new idea that is contained in the bill. Hopefully it will provide a better solution than the one we currently have whereby the only remedy is approved solutions. The way that that has worked is that very few people have applied for approved solutions and that regime really has not been successful. Hopefully the certification of products and methods although a voluntary scheme will be far more successful. Part of the important role of the chief executive in conjunction with the Government is to ensure that people—manufacturers in particular—are attracted towards getting certification of their products. They will receive approvals from territorial authorities more quickly if the products and the methods they are pushing forward or selling have already been examined and shown to be compliant with the building code. 
One of the things that United Future was particularly keen to see in relation to the certification of products and methods was that the authorities look not just purely at the method or the product but at the way it interfaced with other products and other parts of the building. That was the principal weakness that was found in the homes that were not weathertight; it was not so much the cladding system but where the cladding system interfaced with other areas. United Future succeeded in having clause 103(2) put into the bill. It provides: “A product certificate must state whether there are any matters that should be taken into account in the use or application of the building method or product and if so what those matters are.” That is intended to provide a broader basis of looking at the way that those methods are used and when it is appropriate to use them—something that was lacking up till now. 
The powers of the chief executive are substantially increased over those that the Building Industry Authority has particularly in the ability of the chief executive to move urgently where it is ascertained that there is an obvious default or problem. With the homes that were not weathertight the powers were simply not there for the Building Industry Authority. The chief executive can issue warnings and bans; he or she can use those in extreme situations where they are needed. 
The next thing that the bill provides that is a substantial improvement and is part of this whole new regime is the licensed building practitioner system. It provides for minimum standards of training and competence where at the moment we have none. We have a laissez-faire system where any person can build houses as we have described in this House as we have debated this bill. But the bill does provide minimum standards. 
There is an important factor that has already been alluded to by New Zealand First and that is the concern that there is pressure in terms of our having sufficient tradespeople to fulfil that role. It is something I also alluded to in the Committee stage. It will be very important for the Government to ensure that we are able in fact to deliver the tradespeople that we need in society to do the work and meet the demand. That is why of course the licensed building practitioner regime is being delayed for 5 years—to give time for people to be upskilled and to meet the requirements. It is up to the Government now actually to put in place the mechanisms to enable us to reach that situation but I think as I said during the Committee stage we will need to have some measure of grandparenting whereby senior practitioners who have proved their competence in terms of their experience are not left out of the loop and are not lost to the industry. 
That is in contrast to Mr Prebble’s speech yesterday where he was talking about how he valued the fact that he had had a builder come to him and say: “Well if you tell me you’ve got a permit I can build you a house more cheaply than if you’ve actually got a permit.” He thought that was a really good idea—that people should be able to undermine the system to provide services and get round the regulations. Well I do not think it is a good idea. I think it is how the market works and obviously it is the way that ACT would like to see it work but it is not good for New Zealanders. Mr Prebble may be able to assess the difference between a high-standard builder and one that is not competent for the job; most New Zealanders cannot. 
The licensed building practitioner regime will also cover both design and building and give a number of classifications of people within those categories to meet different standards of building and different levels of complexity. I think that is really welcome as well. 
We have talked at length about owner-builders and the restrictions on them. Contrary to what ACT has said the restricted building work is confined to what is really essential. A lot of areas are not covered: decks; internal rearrangement of rooms that have non-bearing walls; and interior design matters. There are also the exemptions contained in schedule 1 which ACT seems to have overlooked; a number of areas of building work are exempt including verandas patios and things of that nature and other building work that a local authority believes is not likely to breach the provisions of the building code. So there are provisions that try to limit what a licensed building practitioner has to sign off because we were very conscious in the Government Administration Committee of the need to provide for that. 
The last things are the regulatory bodies the public audit and accountability. Increased powers are given to territorial authorities whether they are working directly or through council-controlled organisations. There is a need for plans to be consistent with the building code but also with the Resource Management Act. And there will be inspections and code compliance certificates. That is a particular improvement in the bill because we found during our examination that tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of code of compliance certificates are outstanding. This bill provides that all building work will be assessed 2 years after a building consent has been issued and either a code of compliance certificate will be issued or a notice to fix will be issued and enforcement proceedings undertaken. 
Those are major improvements. National’s promises to do nothing or to make changes without legislation or to make some changes to the current procedure in a patch-up type of method would be totally unsatisfactory. This bill provides a holistic approach. It covers the whole territory and provides us with a new framework that will stand us in good stead for the future.