Smith Nick: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Smith Nick: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:641;Page:11022] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 We are debating an awful legislative bungle that has occurred both within the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act and within the Building Act. The Government passes a law does it in a rush and makes a botch of it. It then passes another law to fix up the botch-up but when it goes to fix up the botch-up it realises there is a mistake so it brings another bill to the House that it wants to ram through to try to fix it. I remind the Committee that the Minister in charge of this bill has a mantra. His mantra for the building industry is “Do it once do it right.” Well it is a pity that the Minister for Building and Construction has not applied his rule of “Do it once do it right.” to his own legislation because what we have here is a bill to fix the fix that went wrong and then to fix the subsequent fix. 
We also have the Government using an extraordinary power to suspend the Standing Orders to enable it after the second reading and Committee stage to send the bill back to the Committee to include new provisions to fix another one of the Minister’s mess-ups—not a mess-up in the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act but in the Building Act. So what we have is a series of botch-ups in trying to fix the leaky homes and another set of botch-ups in terms of the Building Act. 
The Government has set a deadline of 30 November this year when every council has to be accredited as a building consent authority and some councils are quite clearly not going to meet that deadline. The difficulty I have is that the Government has known of this for months. My colleague John Carter pointed out that he was told over a year ago that councils were not going to meet this deadline. I heard as early as 6 months ago that councils were not going to meet this deadline. So the question I have for members of the Government concerns why given that we on this side of the Chamber have known about this problem for over a year in a mad rush this week Government members have had a rush of blood to their heads and suddenly rushed to the House to pass another set of amendments. 
A further question I have for the Minister of Corrections Damien O’Connor who is the Minister in the chair—the Minister who is overseeing more messes within the Department of Corrections than before in living memory— 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: Not as many as you. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I was proud to be Minister of Corrections. What I find really interesting is the number of questions the then Labour Opposition asked me during my period of 18 months as Minister of Corrections. Do members know how many questions it asked me? Zero! The only questions I got in my entire period as Minister of Corrections I say to Mr O’Connor were patsies from my own side. So I find it quite extraordinary that the Minister of Corrections who has seen one botch-up after another is now the “Minister of Correcting the Problems of the Minister for Building and Construction”. Actually he is quite appropriately named. The Minister of Corrections is correcting Clayton Cosgrove’s stuff-ups. 
What I would like Mr O’Connor to explain to the Committee is why in 2002 the Government said: “Trust us. These amendments we have got here will fix the leaky homes.” It got it wrong and in 2005 it had to come along with the amendments to fix the botch-ups of 2002. Again the Government said to the House: “Trust us. We’ve got the detail right. There’ll be no troubles.” and it rushed legislation through the House. Now this bill is to fix up the botch-ups that occurred in the 2005 legislation. I ask Government members given that they got it wrong in 2002 when they did it in a rush and they got it wrong again in 2005 when they did it in a rush why should members in this Chamber trust the Government to get it right on the third attempt when there has been no select committee process and the legislation was tabled in the House only yesterday? 
I put this to the Committee: I bet that not a single member of this Parliament has read through the more than 120 lines of changes to the law that we are making right now. I bet that no member has gone through and checked each line of that legislation. I say to this Parliament that it is a dereliction of our duty that we would pass 110 lines of legislation knowing that the Government has got it wrong three times previously. Why would we in a mad rush pass a law today that the Government tabled only yesterday? I further point out there is not a mad rush. Can the Minister in the chair explain why we need to rush this bill through today given that we have until 30 November to do it?