Tisch Lindsay: Building Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Tisch Lindsay: Building Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:619;Page:14840] 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 I want to pick up on a point that Richard Prebble made about swimming pools. I had a similar experience with a spa pool that was outside and was required to be fenced. I never used the spa pool because it leaked. So it never had any water in it but I still had to have it fenced. Right across the paddock just 25 metres away from my gate was—guess what—a big trough that had been dug into the ground. It had been used for dairy farming but because the owners had sheep now they had dug it into the ground so that the sheep could drink out of it. So that situation was absolutely ludicrous. It was OK to have a trough in a paddock but my spa pool—which I was not using because it had a leak in it—had to be fenced. 
 I draw the Committee’s attention back to the issue of private certifiers the question of liability and the problems they have with insurance. The members of the Government Administration Committee visited Australia a month ago and it was interesting to see what the situation is in Australia in terms of private certifiers. Over there they have proportionate liability. I think that that is significant in terms of their cover and the liability they are exposed to as opposed to the joint and several liability that is the requirement in this legislation. But there are also a number of insurance companies that are prepared to work with the private certifiers in Australia. They are CGU Insurance Royal and SunAlliance and QBE Insurance. They are an established part of the building scene. In fact it was interesting to note that the state of Victoria the Northern Territory and ACT have only private certifiers so they are an established part of the building scene in those three areas. In New South Wales South Australia and Queensland the territorial local authorities also have private certifiers. It is Western Australia only that does not have private certifiers. The local authorities do the inspection work there. 
National’s issue is with the huge costs associated with the question of who carries the can at the end of the day. Under the provisions of the bill the building consent authorities—the certifiers in councils—will be the parties holding the liability. Why is some of the responsibility not devolved down to the architects the engineers the builders the developers and the other sub-trades involved? At the moment the backstop will be the territorial local authorities and the private certifiers. The Government says this bill is about consumer protection but we say that there is no consumer protection at all in it. The reality is that the consumer will have a backstop through local authority rates if the local authority has to pick up the costs of all those other areas. So that is the area we have major concern about. As I said in Australia the insurance is proportional liability but here it is joint and several liability for the entire construction process. That is the major difference. It is our area of concern and it is certainly a concern of private certifiers. 
The second area I want to draw the Committee’s attention to is clause 23 “Chief executive must consult in performing certain functions” which gives the chief executive huge powers. As the Minister said it will take some time to set up the new administration.