Nash Stuart: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:10060. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I would like to just elaborate on some of Ron Mark’s points in his Supplementary Order Paper. I actually think it is a good idea for a number of reasons and let me explain those but let me provide a very clear “but” to what he said. First and foremost as he alluded to I am from Napier. There are two places where in the last 100 years people have died as a result of building collapse due to an earthquake: Christchurch and in 1931 Napier.Napier was completely rebuilt from the ground up. A number of these buildings have not been designated heritage buildings for a number of reasons but they were built like the proverbial. They were built not to fall down if there was another earthquake. So what we see in Napier is a whole lot of buildings where if there is a massive earthquake their structural integrity might be compromised but these buildings are not going to fall down. There are a number of building owners there and one in particular has a joke. He says: “How do you make a small fortune out of renovating old buildings? You start with a big one.”—a big fortune—because the cost of doing this of getting it up to scratch is immense.We are very lucky in Napier that this one person in particular understands the heritage value and is a Napier man born and bred because the problem we have got right across provincial New Zealand is that often the cost of getting these buildings up to standard is actually more than the buildings themselves are worth. We have heard Wellington MPs speak and Christchurch MPs speak but it is a different situation in provincial New Zealand. In Christchurch and in Wellington you can actually justify the cost of getting these buildings up to scratch because you know the yield you will get off these buildings is enough to cover the costs.In fact we have the former Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage in the Chamber and I would love you to have just a 5-minute call Mr Finlayson to get your view on what should happen around heritage buildings that are maybe worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars but cost—Hon Christopher Finlayson: It’s all over for me now.STUART NASH: Oh it is never over for you—it is never over for you. In fact you are in the ascendency I would suggest. But it is a major issue in provincial New Zealand.The member for Whanganui knows exactly what I am talking about because there are examples of fantastic heritage in the main central business district but the cost of getting those buildings up to compliance is such that I would bet a number of landlords are just not even going to go there. So there are two options. As Mr Mark suggested they pull them down and they build something else but what I suspect will happen in a lot of the smaller towns—and I was in Eltham recently; there are some beautiful old buildings there—is that they will just walk away from them. They will just say “It’s not worth it to me. I’ll walk away.” so what we will end up with is these ghost towns because the buildings themselves are just not worth the price of even demolishing them. So the council at some point in time will end up having to take responsibility.Mr Mark’s Supplementary Order Paper 160 brings up a very interesting point and that is capitalisation versus expensing. But what I would really like to know before I certainly as our revenue spokesperson make any comment on this is: what would be the fiscal cost of actually doing this? Because there would be a substantial cost. Let us understand what that cost is and then once we do that I think we could have a much more educated conversation around whether we want the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) to take this further. If it is literally millions and millions of dollars that is a different question as opposed to if it is not so much. So let us see whether we can get that quantified. I would like to ask the Minister of Revenue if in fact he would instruct the IRD to do some work around this because I think it is very relevant and it is worth it.The second thing I would like to talk about is Supplementary Order Paper 152 in the name of the ACT member Mr Seymour. The reason for this is that I actually think that this is a good idea. We talk about managing risk and we can always manage risk. We can mitigate risk; we can never eliminate risk. But in this bill if we look at new section 133AC inserted by clause 23 it talks about the meaning of a “priority building”. Subsection (1)(b) talks about “a building that is likely to be needed in an emergency for use as an emergency shelter or emergency centre:”. I would suggest that that includes churches and sporting facilities like for example racing clubs that are used rather infrequently.But I come back to the previous point—and I agree with Mr Seymour on this—which is that we are talking there about buildings that are used infrequently. Hawke’s Bay Racing might have—I do not know—five or six meetings a year but its clubrooms are certainly not used on a regular basis. Yet with this legislation as it stands I would suggest that the cost of rehabilitating the Hawke’s Bay Racing clubrooms would be prohibitive as it would be with a number of churches around the place.So we are talking about high-priority buildings under the definition in the Act because they could well be used as a shelter but we are also talking about buildings that are not used that often. So we are not talking about office blocks or anything like that which are regularly tenanted. We are talking about buildings that have irregular usage but—and this is where the “but” is—might be a little bit earthquake-prone. So like Mr Twyford I approach this with a very very open mind and in fact being from provincial New Zealand and understanding the costs and the issues around this I have a tendency to support it.I know that the Minister in the chair is not the Minister responsible for this bill but I was sort of hoping that during the dinner adjournment the officials had a bit of time had an hour and a half to consider some of the points that Mr Seymour brought up and perhaps through the Minister in the chair—even though as mentioned I accept she is not the Minister in charge of this bill—could provide some answers to this. I think there are many people right across provincial New Zealand and I certainly know in my electorate who are looking at this Supplementary Order Paper and saying: “This is pragmatic.”Let me make it clear: we do not want people in buildings that are liable to collapse if a wolf blows on them. There has to be an element of safety in this but again I come back to some of the buildings. I know that before the Christchurch earthquake the University of Canterbury was doing a whole lot of work around the structural integrity of wooden buildings. What was found is that wood in fact has massive structural integrity. I know that in the Napier earthquake a whole lot of chimneys fell down. The houses moved quite a lot but they did not fall down. But under this definition here I do not see wooden buildings mentioned—I suppose you cannot.I know that Mr Twyford brought up some very interesting questions about the logistics—how we do this. I do not think that is a major issue to overcome because what we are asking councils to do is to take the bulk of responsibility for this. I think that if we said to our local councils or the territorial authorities responsible for this “Hey this is just another part of the bill. It’s another part of the legislation that you’re in charge of policing or that you have responsibility for.” then they would take that on and they would develop a type of register or database or whatever was necessary to make sure that this part of the legislation was enacted.That is all I will say for now but there are some very important questions that do need answering. I think Mr Seymour has introduced a common-sense Supplementary Order Paper but there are some questions. Thank you very much.