Mackey Moana: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Mackey Moana: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Volume:669;Page:16058] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is enormously disappointing that Government members do not feel that they should earn their $140000 salaries by making a proper speech— 
Chris Auchinvole 
: We put the bill together. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I say to Mr Auchinvole that he did not. The Minister of Education made a 10-minute speech which is very good. Although I suspect that had the Minister for Building and Construction the Hon Maurice Williamson made that speech he would have truncated it but that is a bit hard to do when it is not one’s particular area and one reads the speech that the officials have very kindly written out for the Minister. But I suggest that we might have expected a little bit more from Mr Auchinvole the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee. The point of urgency is that Parliament sits for longer than it normally would. Urgency does not absolve members of their responsibility to debate legislation in the House to show that they have taken the time to consider it and to ask the kinds of questions that the public have been asking about it. That is not what urgency is. Urgency does not mean that we do in 10 seconds a job that should take 10 minutes. It is not our fault that the House is in urgency. It is not our fault that the management of the House has been such a shambles this year that the Leader of the House is in a panic and we will be sitting until midnight on Saturday. 
Labour members will be supporting the referral of the Building Amendment Bill (No 3) to the Local Government and Environment Committee. The juxtaposition of the previous bill with this bill is very timely. I think we are all very aware that any changes made to the Building Act 2004 need to be seen in the context of the previous legislation— 
Hon Member 
: What was the previous one? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —the leaky building solution—which is repairing a lot of the damage caused by the Building Act 1991. The 1991 legislation deregulated the sector to the point where consumers found themselves with very few protections under the law. Aaron Gilmore has been a builder an architect and a developer. In fact I think he wrote the 1991 legislation so I look forward to his contribution. 
Phil Twyford 
: It’s on his CV. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: It is on his CV anyway I hear— 
Jacinda Ardern 
: He said his brother did. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Oh his brother did. His brother did it. This is a new kind of variation on a theme. Right before Christmas—what a gift! I thank Mr Gilmore. 
But the juxtaposition of these two bills should not be lost on members of the House because we need to be very careful when we amend the Building Act that we do not create the same problems that the previous National Government did in the 1990s which have seen billion-dollar legislation having to go through the House to assist homeowners whose houses are absolutely uninhabitable and who have lost their life-savings which were invested in those properties because of shonky work and shonky materials. Legislation passed by that Government allowed that to happen under the guise of the free market. It was so opposed to any kind of regulation that it thought all regulation must be bad. 
I suspect that is why when Labour fixed the situation in 2004 we made the legislation very tough. The extent of the leaky homes crisis was just becoming evident to all the people of New Zealand. The public were crying out for more controls and people who were in the process of having homes built wanted to know that they would not fall into the same trap and we responded with legislation that was very tough and provided enormous protection. We know that the Hon Shane Jones who was the Minister thought that perhaps the pendulum had swung too far. In hindsight we know that the reaction although understandable and appropriate at the time— 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Here’s the cathartic bit. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —had caused its own problems. I say to Mr Auchinvole that when Labour was in Government it acknowledged that and set in place a process to amend the Building Act again to remove unnecessary blockages in the system and to try to make the process easier and to lower the cost of building houses in New Zealand. So we will be supporting this legislation because we see it as another step in the process of trying to streamline the Building Act where we can. As my colleague Phil Twyford has said it is very modest legislation. This bill will not have a huge impact but none the less we believe that it is a positive step in the right— 
Chris Auchinvole 
: It will it will. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well I look at the issue of housing affordability. Is Mr Auchinvole saying that this bill will have an enormous impact on it? 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Yep. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: He is. OK. Well I wonder whether I should listen to Mr Auchinvole or to the Registered Master Builders Federation president Warwick Quinn who welcomed the changes—like we do—but said that he does not think building costs will fall at all as a result of this legislation. Should I believe Mr Auchinvole or should I believe the president of the Registered Master Builders Federation? 
Chris Auchinvole 
: I’d stick with Mr Auchinvole if I were you. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well Mr Auchinvole thinks I should believe Mr Auchinvole; that is one of the few things he is consistent on and I congratulate him on that. But I think I will go with the guy who actually does this for a living and knows what he is talking about with the greatest of respect. 
Hon Member 
: Aaron Gilmore. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: And I do not mean Aaron Gilmore. I hope my whanaunga Hekia Parata now that she is in a position to mentor younger members will take Mr Gilmore under her wing and teach him those great Ngati Porou qualities of humility modesty and wisdom. These great gifts can be bestowed upon Aaron Gilmore by one of our Ngati Porou whanaunga of whom we are very proud. I congratulate Hekia Parata on her promotion—it is well deserved. Now I have forgotten where I was up to. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: Housing affordability. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Housing affordability is a major issue. This bill was one part of the housing affordability plan that National campaigned on. It said that the first way that it would address housing affordability was through tax cuts. Well those tax cuts went to the wealthy. They went to people who could already afford houses so that was a big fail. 
Jacinda Ardern 
: What about what the Budget did to tenants? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: The Budget increased rent for tenants and the cost of living has gone up across the board all of which make housing affordability even further away from being addressed. The second part was the Government’s Gateway Housing Assistance scheme. Well that turned out to be a real fizzer because not only did that great bold policy deliver only 40 houses—40 houses across the entire country in its first year when Labour while in Government had identified 1500 sites in Auckland alone—but apparently it just does not work. The sector tells me that it does not work but there will be more to come on that later. 
Now we have the amendment of the Building Act. We in Labour absolutely agree that if we can put in changes that protect consumers and that mean they will not be at risk from shonky buildings then that is great and it would be great if we can address housing affordability through those measures as well. But as the Registered Master Builders Federation president Warwick Quinn has said this bill will not do that. If the aim of this bill is to reduce the cost of housing well that will not happen. So I do not think members opposite should claim as Mr Auchinvole did that this bill will be a panacea for housing affordability when clearly it will not be. 
I endorse what my colleague Phil Twyford has said about the building sector. This sector is in crisis. When we look at what is happening at the moment we see that two things are happening concurrently. There is an incredible housing shortage in New Zealand—not enough residential housing is being built—and we have a building sector that is screaming out for work. The building sector has seen the number of consents drop through the floor to unprecedented levels. The work just is not there. People are losing their jobs and building companies are going out of business. On the other hand we are facing an enormous housing crisis in New Zealand. 
One would think that a responsible Government that had a plan for the economy—a plan to keep people in work and to address the lack of residential housing being built—would take advantage of this situation. Remember Labour built 8000 State houses to replace the 13000 that the previous National Government had sold and we did that during one of the biggest housing booms in New Zealand when it was difficult to get hold of a builder so imagine what we could do in a time when builders are screaming out for work. We could really dent the shortfall in housing that New Zealand is facing at the moment. But this Government has not done that. 
In fact what has it done? It has slashed the budget for housing this year by more than 80 percent. It slashed it. It has completely taken itself out of that situation. [ 
Interruption 
] I am not sure what is noisier: Anne Tolley’s jacket or her interjections. But she can read the Budget and see that the Housing New Zealand Corporation has been told that any new houses will have to come out of savings in baseline spending. Is that what we should be doing at a time when we have a housing shortage and a building sector in crisis? We are not training building apprentices and we are not doing the skills training that we should be having at this time. Apprentices are being laid off. They could be going back to polytech to do more work on their qualifications rather than their being let go and the years of training that have already been put into them going to waste. This Government has no plan—no plan for building. That is the important other half of this legislation. 
Labour members support any moves that make it easier for the sector to work while also offering protection to consumers. This is modest legislation and it follows on from the work that Shane Jones was doing. But there has to be a plan for the building sector; otherwise all the good intentions in this kind of legislation do not mean anything.