Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am seized by the quality and value of some of the submissions that are before us and I would like to take a moment to speak to some of those. There are a large—well not a large number but a number of significant submissions on this bill. The ones that I want to focus on in particular are the submissions that were given by Civil Contractors New Zealand the New Zealand Building Industry Federation and the Registered Master Builders Association of New Zealand and these relate particularly to clauses 138 through 144 dealing primarily with the use of retention money.We have heard previously from colleagues about the importance of getting this area right due to the structure of the construction industry in our country in which we have contractors and subcontractors taking on a potentially significant amount of risk in respect of this issue. We have made legislative progress and this is a tidying-up of the previous legislative progress we have made in this area.There are two quite important points that have been raised by submitters in respect of this section that I do not think have been satisfactorily answered so far and I would like to get some clarification on them from the Minister in the chair Jonathan Coleman. Firstly there is the question of de minimis. There is I think consensus around the House about the direction that we are taking here in respect of retention payments about having a system where we have a trust obligation apply to ensure that there is not undue risk falling on contractors and subcontractors—and actually let us not forget the workers who often work under those contractors and subcontractors whose livelihoods are at risk.But the question of de minimis has correctly been raised by the submitters and that is effectively: is there a threshold below which it starts to become a little bit silly? Obviously if we are talking about large amounts of money between contractors and subcontractors I think everyone in this House would want to make sure that there is a degree of security in place through the use of holding that retention payment in trust so that we know that it is going to go to the people to whom it is owed at the end of the job once defects liabilities and other things have been completed. But if we are talking about I do not know a $500 payment perhaps between a contractor and a subcontractor who maybe have a good and long-standing relationship are we actually potentially creating a little bit too much bureaucracy and actually to some extent defeating some of the stated purposes of this bill—if we go back to talking about the effectiveness and the efficiency of the regulatory system?Of course that is the kind of balance we are always trying to strike in these kinds of bills. We want public-good regulation to ensure that people are looked after but we do not want it to become overly onerous. So the question of de minimis goes straight to that. If it is a small amount of money are we potentially overcooking it a little bit by not having a de minimis requirement here? The feedback that has come back is: No we do not need to have that." It would just be good to hear from the Minister what sort of analysis has been done about potentially other regimes where there may be a de minimis requirement in place and whether there might be some value in looking at that to make sure that the system is as efficient as possible.The other point I want to touch on which came up in the submissions is the question—let me just find my notes here—of money effectively coming down the chain; money that is coming down the chain potentially from a contractor down to subcontractors and this chain can be several deep. The question raised in the submission was whether that retention money can potentially be counted on as money that can then be paid on down to the next subcontractor further down the train. The reason I ask this question is that the departmental advice that came back struck me as rather vague—it said: "Well no not as a general rule." That is the advice that has come back and it advised submitters to seek legal advice. Well this is a process of making the law; that is what this House does. My question to the Minister really is: is that good enough advice and should it not be the case that through the process that we are going through now we can give to the sector some greater clarity about that question?I do not necessarily have a firm view on that question. It may be that you say that actually that does not meet the requirements of money held in trust for it to be passed from one contractor down to a subcontractor and so on. But it is a question that has been asked and it seems to me that the response that has been given does not provide the clarity that we should expect. It will be good to hear from the Minister on that point."