Franks Stephen: Registered Architects Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Franks Stephen: Registered Architects Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:19930] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I am grateful to have been referred to clause 67 by Mr Smith which does indeed provide the board with an instruction to make rules. I think he is correct that the reference to rules in clause 7 probably contemplates those rules—although I think it would have been better drafting practice if that had been defined either in clause 4 or in clause 7 itself. But I certainly do not think that clause 67 puts the board into a position whereby it can write rules that exclude overseas agencies without the possibility of a very good fight in court. 
I am not trying to debate Part 3 but I am saying that in the context we have clause 67 expressly preserves forms of words that are outside the forms that are approved by the rules to represent a person. It states: “(without limiting any others that may be used consistently with this Act)”. I have no doubt that because of the term “overseas agency” someone will at least argue that his or her overseas qualification is one that he or she may use because it is consistent with the intent of clause 7 which is not to prevent people from accurately describing their qualifications. 
This is the problem that happens when the Government ignores the work of a select committee that has gone through and seen that the most rational framework would be one that accepts the same limitations that other professions have accepted and decided that the word “registered” should go ahead. I do not think the Green argument that people who are software architects will put “software architect” or landscape architects will put “landscape architect” helps very much because I am not confident that that does not still constitute a breach. The protection clause simply states that it is “words initials or abbreviations … that are intended to cause or that may reasonably cause any person to believe that the person using those words initials or abbreviations is a registered architect.” If one calls oneself a landscape architect one is still claiming to be an architect and of course it will be in connection with buildings. Just about any big project now has a landscape component. 
I am looking at this as I suspect lay people will look at it because ACT members were not represented on the committee and we did not go through the reasoning that the committee members reached. They came out saying that they were comfortable for example that the Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Arrangement would work because a registered architect in New Zealand would equate to similar requirements of the equivalent profession in Australia. Now of course they will not. By succumbing to Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s eloquent lobbying the Government United Future and the Greens are now saying that it will not be equivalent to the requirements in Australia. So there is nothing to tell us that the Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Arrangement will still be as neat a fit. 
It may be that the Minister in the chair Rick Barker can rebut that. There may be facts that are not obvious but the problem is that the Supplementary Order Paper does not have the same kind of explanation that the select committee made to explain what it was doing. At the very least it would help the courts in future if the Minister would make a statement to rebut any inference that the rules in clause 67(2) will not be comprehensive. If they are comprehensive then that may assist the court. The statement should also explain exactly what it is the Minister thinks an architecture graduate from a New Zealand university can do about his or her qualification when he or she is engaged in something connected with building. Does the Minister think graduates can use the term “BArch”? Does the Minister think their letterhead can state “Graduate Architect” or words to that effect? That is what the bill does not tell us. 
After all this time I think the public architects and the customers of architects are entitled to expect that they could look at the bill and know the answers to those questions. I do not know those answers.