van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. Certainly an interesting way to commence this relatively—Hon Member: Is it?TIM VAN DE MOLEN: —straightforward bill. It is absolutely an interesting way to commence it. It's not the way we would normally commence a new piece of legislation in this House.Now the Construction Contracts (Retention Money) Amendment Bill does have a number of beneficial aspects to it and despite the rather late notice there of the desire to move a special instruction I think the content of the bill if we're focusing on that has some really good aspects to it and on that basis we are supporting it through to the select committee stage. It actually builds nicely on a piece of work started by the Hon Dr Nick Smith back in 2015 when he was Minister for Building and Construction which looked to address this issue around the retention funds and having certainty or increasing certainty for subcontractors that they will be able to source those funds assuming their work is considered or found to be acceptable. At the end of the retention period they would then duly receive their funds.Of course what we had seen as in a number of instances where the head contractor or a large company fell over those funds were unfortunately no longer available and had been used for some other purpose—working capital for example. Even with the legislative changes that Mr Smith brought in there were at that point still unfortunately not enough safeguards to prevent some of the issues that we have seen. So this bill takes that to the next level and actually makes it a requirement that that retention money be held in trust for the particular subcontractor via a separate bank account which is especially named as such for that subcontractor or it may be for several contractors depending on the nature of the contracts in place. Or alternatively they can have some other compliance assurance such as an insurance policy or a bank guarantee for example that would provide confidence that whilst they don't have to have their physical cash sitting in a bank account they have the ability to meet the obligations required of those retentions when they fall due. So that's all good stuff. What I hear from a number of building and construction companies as I travel the country in that role for the National Party is a lot of concern around this area. It's about certainty and confidence. Those are two of the key things that we can really add to any industry but the building and construction sector in particular if we can provide them with greater certainty with greater confidence then that will be a massive boost for the sector. Any time a business has those aspects then you can see they will be more likely to invest more likely to take on another opportunity to grow to expand and all those positive spin-offs around employment around economic growth that come from that are absolutely worthwhile. So it's encouraging to see that will be improved under this proposed bill.One of the other concerns though that I do hear on those visits is also around the level of retentions in terms of the percentage held back. We see that varies anywhere between sort of 2 percent at the lower end up to 10 percent of the contract value which is quite significant. So there's a bit of concern around whether that's appropriate. And also the time frame for which retentions are held—there's been discussion around whether that is appropriate based on the varying types of contracts that may be entered into. I guess I'd just say it's perhaps a bit of a missed opportunity that this piece of legislation doesn't actually address either of those concerns that I do hear raised from a number of construction businesses around the country. So that is a bit of a shame that we're only dealing with part of the challenge around retentions here. But also more broadly there is the other issue as well around companies not just with retention money that has previously been lost through insolvencies but also access to assets that subcontractors may have on site even their own tools. In instances where they haven't been able to get back on to the property due to the collapse of the head contractor particularly around the tools aspect that has meant in some instances these subcontractors not only have been out of pocket from the work they were doing but they have simply been unable to then go on and do other work because their tools are all locked up on this construction site. So again that's an area that I really would have liked to have seen addressed by the Government in terms of trying to provide more certainty for subcontractors in the building and construction sector especially at the moment when we're seeing such a strong reliance on this industry to be a key part of our economic recovery. When we are seeing a strong economic opportunity in the building and construction sector those adjustments might have helped to improve confidence even more and allow for some additional investment decisions by some of those businesses.So those aspects were a little disappointing to see that they had been missed out. But overall what has been proposed here makes sense and we do support it and I look forward to following a process through select committee. I'm sure we will hear more about those particular concerns that I'd raised through the select committee process as well. It'll be interesting just to hear actually what the instruction is that the Minister is looking to move in terms of report-back time. But on that basis we do support the bill and look forward to following it through the course of its journey. Thank you.