Williamson Maurice: Building Amendment Bill (No 4) — Instruction to Committee In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliamson Maurice: Building Amendment Bill (No 4) — Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14964. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction): I am pleased to take a fairly brief call at the beginning of this. I hope I will cover off what I think are the key issues in this bill the Building Amendment Bill (No 4). It is indeed a piece of reform that got started well and truly before this Government came into office. I give some commendation to the Hon Shane Jones who was my predecessor. In fact there are many people out there who will say that I am the best Minister for Building and Construction since Shane Jones. Given that I am the only one since Shane Jones that is at least a compliment.The reform of that whole sector which started with the Building Act 2004 now has to have a number of other things added to it. This bill has got some elements about consumer protection and about needing written contracts if the work you are engaged in with a builder is worth over $20000. But there are some issues that I think were raised along the way. I just want to try to cover them off quickly and then I will shut up and allow the members to make their comments.First I think the almost slightly valid criticism was that this bill is a bit piecemeal in dealing with the sector because it is only a certain part of it. I make no excuse for the fact that I have had to do this in tranches. When we did the Building Amendment Bill (No 3) this bill’s predecessor it had stuff about risk-based consenting which by theway we can trigger only once this bill is through. That has enormous impacts for Christchurch. If we are going to really make some progress in the Christchurch rebuild we do want to have risk-based consenting—that is the very very low-risk stuff will have almost no relative scrutiny compared with stuff that is at the very high end of the risk. So this bill completes probably the last of the criteria needed to trigger the regulations for risk-based consenting.But I could not get it all done in one hit even though I would have loved to. I would love to have had one huge building amendment omnibus bill. So we did the No. 3 bill got that through got it in place and when the No. 4 bill tonight is finished it will allow us to trigger things like risk-based consenting. So I would hope that instead of members seeing this as being a bit piecemeal this was stuff that needed to be held over while we got through.The second thing is that I have heard people say that the bill should provide for proportionate liability in the building sector particularly in light of the Supreme Court decision on The Spencer on Byron Hotel and so on. Can I say that this is the greatest bugbear of my life about the building sector: I think that joint and several liability is wrong. I think you should be held accountable for the things that you do but you should not be held accountable for things that you did not do. But sadly under our current liability rule which is called joint and several liability you are joined with everybody else and if they did something wrong you can be caught in that web as local authorities found to their chagrin.It is a harder issue than any of the members of this House will give credit for. We have kicked it off to the Law Commission and it is doing an in-depth piece of work and will report back to us—hopefully by the end of the year maybe or early in the new year—as to whether we could go to proportionate liability. I want to say to members that other jurisdictions around the world do have proportionate liability and it works so I do not see why we could not. I will repeat it again: you should be held accountable for the things that you do; you should not be held accountable for things that someone else did wrong but then you are the last man standing. I know that a number of territorial local authorities got caught up in all the leaky home syndrome when in fact they ended up being the last man standing.I think that one of the other issues raised before the Local Government and Environment Committee was that the bill should require mandatory home warranties. That is pretty closely related to that whole liability issue and it is again a real pet hobby of mine. I would love to go to some mandatory warranties. If you buy a new car you get a warranty. If you buy a new plasma screen you get a warranty and it is guaranteed fit for purpose. But sadly under the current regime if you get a new house there are some issues about what liabilities are sheeted home to whom and whether there is a warranty. So we will have to wait for the Law Commission’s report but I give members an absolute watertight guarantee that if the Law Commission gives us some room to move then I will be pushing to move to proportionate liability.One of the other issues raised at the select committee I think was that the bill does not go far enough in protecting consumers. Although I think that that is always going to be an issue I am hopeful that this bill has got the balance right. It requires everybody involved in work over $20000 to have a written contract. I think the amendments in the bill will be supported by the consumer information that is there. Education and advice over the next few years will tell people involved in the building sector what their rights are and how to get better information. And I think an effective monitoring regime also in place to track improvements in consumer awareness is part of what we are bringing in here.There are two or three other items. All parties—that is consumer building professionals and building consent authorities—continue to be financially exposed even for defects that are not their making. Again that is under the liability aspect. I think it is fair to say that we have just got to wait for the Law Commission. Hopefully we will get a good report.The bill does not address the huge skill deficit in the sector. That is true but it is not the role of this bill. I was with my colleague Steven Joyce today out inPētone where we were launching a new construction training unit at WelTec. The new apprenticeships scheme has got 8000 more enrolled in the building apprenticeship scheme than we had anticipated. So yes there will be a skills shortage from time to time. That is just the nature of this industry—peaks and troughs. And Christchurch is coming on stream. When it does come on it will be huge. With the shortage of housing in Auckland there will be a big demand.I can forecast now—and I want to go on record now—that the big complaint that will occur in about 18 or so months from now is that there are not enough skilled practitioners in the field. But let me actually add the next complaint. In about 3 years from there maybe 4 years from there there will be a complaint that there is not enough work for all the skilled practitioners. That is just the nature of the cyclical beast of the way this industry works.There are a couple of other bits in the bill that are sort of almost add-ons but I just want to cover them quickly in the 2 minutes I have got. There was a complaint that the bill is weakening a dam safety scheme that is currently in the Building Act. I want to make it clear that we think that this is about the right level of risk management without imposing unnecessary compliance costs. A number of local authorities and regional councils have been to me and said “Please don’t make it that we have to get involved in a lot of bureaucracy on quite small pools of water that shouldn’t be called a dam. But we understand that if they are big pools of water with a lot of height and a lot of volume they can pose a risk.” I think that what we have done in dam safety in this bill will target dams that are higher risk and that should be subject to the scheme and improve the effectiveness of the dam safety scheme.Finally the last of the complaints was that a select committee change to the definition of a large dam captures even more small dams making the regulation more onerous. I would say that amendments in Supplementary Order Paper 357 will remove that unnecessary compliance cost while ensuring the select committee’s intent—that is to address potential safety concerns.I am going to sit here. I am not going to take too many more calls because I think people get sick of hearing from me but I think this is an integral part of the Building Act reforms. It is a very exciting night for me with this No. 4 bill going through because I think it completes them. I want to repeat that I give some credit to my predecessor Shane Jones and actually a number of building Ministers before him because I think Labour had about six building Ministers within 6 years. This was the path that had already been set out when I read my briefing as an incoming Minister. This reform of the sector was already in train. I am delighted that we are going to get it through the House tonight.