Hughes Gareth: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:641. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call on the Building Amendment Bill (No 3). I am filling in tonight and will be taking only a quick call for my colleague and Green Party housing spokesperson Holly Walker.  
I wanted to touch on this bill because I have recently in the last couple of weeks become a homeowner. I am one of the few people in my generation who are in a privileged position and can afford a house. We have to be frank: for my generation—people in their late 20s and early 30s—homeownership is just a distant dream. They are resigned to a life of renting because we have some of the most unaffordable housing stock in the country.  
But the flip side is that when you look at our rental housing stock we have some of the worst standards of rental housing in the world. I have been touring the country checking out some of our coldest dampest flats and it is a crime what some of our New Zealanders including refugees superannuitants and students have to put up with. We are talking about holes in walls we are talking about mould on the ceiling and the walls and we are talking about kids growing up and getting asthma and other respiratory diseases because of the poor standard of our housing in New Zealand.  
It is a key issue and that is why the Greens approached this bill in a constructive manner. That is why we will be voting unlike the Labour Party to support this bill to select committee. It is a key issue.  
We have got so many housing issues facing us. We have got a homelessness problem with potentially tens of thousands of Kiwis classed as homeless. We have got the rebuild in Christchurch which the member Nicky Wagner touched on talking about 10000 houses. But 70000 houses have been identified in Auckland as part of a housing shortage there. We have got the substandard housing stock that I have touched on though I guess on the upside we do have 150000 Kiwi homes warmer and drier because of the memorandum of understanding between the Greens and the National Party with the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart project which we are very proud of.  
But we also have this terrible legacy of the leaky buildings. What the lesson of the leaky buildings saga must be is that when you remove all the regulation like we did in 1991 which Trevor Mallard and other speakers touched on you run into problems. Now Kiwis councils the Government builders and companies are all facing huge costs literally billions of dollars in liability and costs. It is a huge part of our economy—5 percent—as the Building Act review points out. More than 20000 buildings get built a year.  
The Greens supported the Building Amendment Bill (No 3) to the select committee but like Labour we felt that there were some concerns. I read from our minority report that with the Building Amendment Bill (No 3) we agreed with the Labour Party that we could not see it achieving its objective “because it is a piecemeal approach which includes only some parts of the reform agenda that has been widely discussed with the industry over the last few years.” Our objection is that the Government was doing it piecemeal leaving so much up to regulations.  
It is welcome to the Green Party to see the Building Amendment Bill (No 4) because we can finally see the rest of the puzzle put together. So we will be supporting it to select committee. We are going to constructively engage with the submitters and welcome those submissions.  
We support the No. 4 bill because it introduces enhanced and more comprehensive consumer protection measures for building work including the mandatory disclosure of certain information. We think it is perhaps appropriate and we will be looking in the select committee at increasing the maximum penalties for doing building work without a building consent. But again like the Labour Party we lament the fact that it did not address the consumer protection recommendations though in the Building Amendment Bill (No 4) new sections 362A and 362S which are proposed to be inserted into the Act will hopefully remedy this.  
An area that I have just picked up on from reading the Kensington Swan analysis of the bill and which I would be interested in getting further comment on down the line from the Minister for Building and Construction is around warranties. Kensington Swan’s analysis of the bill identified that if someone builds their own home or has major renovation works that person is still liable even if the house is sold subsequently down the line. The analysis points to the fact that potentially you could have a house and the home builder who could be a family—because the bill excludes developers or registered builders—maybe did it in that great Kiwi tradition of DIY and built a home for their family maybe with some builder support and six sales down the line the home builder will still be faced with liability issues from this house.  
What is the outcome of this? We are going to see fewer Kiwis building their homes. We are going to see fewer Kiwis using perhaps what are described as novel alternative or sustainable building techniques methods or products. What we are going to see is a boon for professional builders as people shy away worried about the liability issues.  
The key question is where does it end? Kensington Swan analysed up to six homeowners. Is it a dozen? Is it 10? Could you have 20 families go through a house yet that original builder—that family—still be liable? The outcome is going to be that we are going to see fewer family homes built. We are going to see more McMansions built from the same stock.  
There are going to be some adverse outcomes potentially to this bill. That is why the Green Party goes into it with an open mind. That is why we are going in from a constructive viewpoint and will be voting to send it to select committee and we look forward to the public’s input there. We have a saying in New Zealand “safe as houses” and what the Green Party wants to see in New Zealand is those homes safe as houses.