Dalziel Lianne: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Dalziel Lianne: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:678;Page:833] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I want to respond to something the Minister for Building and Construction said because I think he may have misunderstood my concern about the legislation. As I have said I am not an expert on this particular bill because as he has pointed out this bill went to the Local Government and Environment Committee which I was not a part of. So I have not had the opportunity like Phil Twyford has to hear all the submissions. I think he has given quite a good enunciation of the concerns that have been raised at the select committee. 
But nobody believes for one minute that the fact that the council has been overseeing the work that has been undertaken under a permit guarantees a particular outcome. In fact I started my contribution by quoting from an email that I had received. This guy previously was in the building control section of one of the district councils. I am not going to mention which one it is because I think it would be unfair to do so without obviously exciting some sort of response. What he reported is training sessions where they were taken out to see worksites that were in progress so that they could learn how to be control inspectors and their not pointing out to the person in charge of the building site that they were not complying with the code. This guy has obviously had a lot of experience—he has got a background in carpentry—and the people who were working with him in this particular district council had no previous experience in the building industry. They had no formal qualifications in the building industry. 
This is going back a wee way and things may have changed obviously since then. But the point that he was making was that he had no background in inspection but he did at least have a carpentry background and what he was finding out was that nobody was pointing out to people on the site obvious—obvious—breaches of the code and he realised it was because these people did not know they were breaching the code. It was rotten to the core just like our leaky buildings. He was making the point that basically he was seeing non-compliance being left unrectified by building inspectors on a day-by-day basis and he said that this was a disaster waiting to happen in somebody’s life no matter how small a disaster. That was that point that I was making. 
It is not that the supervision is in itself a guarantee of a particular outcome. I too have read the Department of Building and Housing’s report into the CTV Building collapse and I think that the inquiry when it comes up—I think it starts in June the CTV Building at the royal commission—is going to expose a lot of things that were wrong and perhaps may even go further than the Department of Building and Housing report given some of the stuff that I have seen. 
I should mention that I was the Minister of Commerce who received the original open letter from John Scarry when he expressed to all of Parliament the concern that he had about the industry: around the structural engineering profession and about the construction industry in New Zealand. I heard the Minister’s comments on television the other night saying that nobody agrees with John Scarry. Can I just say that I have got a copy of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand report in response to John Scarry’s concerns and also I have a copy of the additional report that was done for the Department of Building and Housing at the time and there were genuine concerns that he raised. It was believed that the Building Act itself in 2004 would actually address the problems that he raised and what I am telling this Committee now is that it has not. The Building Act 2004 has not addressed the concerns that he raised in 2002 and there are some buildings in this city I would not walk into because of the concerns that I believe he is justifiably raising in terms of earthquake risk and what would happen in those buildings. 
I just want to make the point around the responsibilities of a designer and that is in section 14D in clause 10. It talks about a designer meaning “a person who prepares plans and specifications” and they have to be “responsible for ensuring that the plans and specifications or the advice in question are sufficient to result in the building work complying with the building code”. This was one of the issues that came up in the 2002 report—that is often in the circumstances there is no continuing oversight given. I think if we look at the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand report in response to the John Scarry concerns what it identifies is that there is a pushing down of the pricing to the extent that the real estate agent who sells the commercial building is likely to get after it is sold paid 20 times what the structural engineer will be paid. They are not paid to supervise. So the definition of the responsibilities of a designer is just to prepare the plans and specification to code and then ensure “that the plans and specifications … are sufficient to result in the building work complying with the building code if the building work were properly completed in accordance with those plans and specifications or that advice.” 
I think you will find that with the CTV Building and others the issue is actually the lack of capacity to go back and keep an eye on what they are actually doing because you can write the plans and then you will find that what they will do is actually order a different product than the one that was specified in the design and who is responsible for that? Actually it is nobody here as long as it is within the code. But it may well be that there are certain features that are not being complied with and as a result you end up with extremely dangerous buildings. These issues were raised with the standard 500E wire which I do not have the full details of but it is just an example. There are plenty of other examples of situations where you can write the plans and specifications for building work you can give advice on compliance of the building work with the building code you can be responsible for ensuring that this plan is sufficient to result in building work complying with the building code but you cannot actually know in fact what they do on the site and what they do off the site—because offsite inspections for some of the precast concrete solutions are not subject to the same supervision that an onsite arrangement would entail. 
There are so many issues in here that I am just very fearful that we may pass legislation without taking into account the need to make sure that we get this right. So many people are going to be relying on us and it is actually too late when the building collapses and people’s lives are lost. And then there are people essentially who have to front up to an inquiry to admit their culpability in that regard. I think the engineer who spoke at the building inquiry the other day and who broke down did much more for giving people confidence in the engineering profession than just about anyone else because I think the public reacted to the humanity of his response. What I am saying is that we are responsible as politicians to get the legislative framework right and we have all accepted that the 1991 framework was wrong. We have been told that there were problems before the 2004 Act came in we have now most recently been told by the same person who warned us in 2002 that the 2004 Act was not delivering—we are warned by him again that this legislation is part of a piecemeal package that will not deliver. I am worried that we are not listening to the right people. 
I want to end with this comment. There are lots of people out there who agree with John Scarry but not all of them have got the ability to speak out because some of their work is entirely dependent on their not speaking out. But I have spoken to engineers around this country who support what he says and we treat him lightly I believe to the great detriment of ourselves not only as representatives of the people but also as people with some responsibility for the quality of our buildings and the health and safety of those who use them. So I want to reiterate my plea to the Minister to hold back from this bill.