Turner Judy: Building Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Turner Judy: Building Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:10847] 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to take a brief call on the first reading of the Building Amendment Bill. United Future is happy to support this bill going to the Social Services Committee. We think it provides an interesting opportunity to hear from those involved in the building industry. I quite recently mentioned in the House an interesting conversation I had with one of the senior members of the master builders association. We were talking about home affordability which is an issue that United Future feels very passionate about. A very interesting comment was made to me that needs exploring. That was that homeowners building their first home could quite possibly and reasonably save up to $30000 on the cost of their house if we had a better regulatory system simpler building consents and compliance mechanisms. With that reduction we would still have a system that is robust and safe. 
The concern that the association expressed to me was that in the wake and in the shadow of leaky homes we had gone into a regulatory frenzy in trying to address what had gone wrong but actually what was needed in some cases was a reduction in regulation. What I notice about this bill is that the explanatory note claims there will be no new costs. That is good. I also notice under the heading “Industry” that it is believed that the consequence of this bill would be “reduced compliance costs for network utility operators and others who work across council boundaries.” We also note that there is an expectation that this will reduce compliance costs for do-it-yourself property owners doing minor and low-risk building work that does not require a building consent. 
Again that all sounds extremely positive. However the current experience of many homeowners and prospective homeowners is that there is a huge amount of inconsistency across our 85 councils in regard to building consent. The consequence of this is huge amounts of delays. I had a member of my community in my office in Whakatane recently who could not understand two things. He could not understand why the council was not liable for the delay it had created because it had acted given advice and caused foundations that had already been laid on a building to be dug up and done again on faulty information and when that was finally challenged it was proved that the owner had worked to the correct dimensions in the first place. There was a huge amount of delay and cost to the owner who could not understand why the council was not in some way liable for that cost. 
The second gripe he had was that there was an identical building—because this was a kitset building—going up just down the road that the council had sat and watched go up. That building seemed to get its consents through in a very timely way and the building was virtually finished before a spade had barely been put in the ground for an identical building. We did some writing to the council we did some advocacy and I think the outcome was reasonably acceptable to him other than the fact that he was deeply disturbed at the level of cost that he still had to bear and there was no willingness or ability by law for him to get any compensation for that. 
United Future is keen to hear what comes out of the select committee process. We certainly believe there is room for improvement and we hope this amendment bill delivers that which we believe the community is calling for.