Shirley Ken: Building Bill — Third Reading 
Shirley Ken: Building Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:619;Page:14917] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (ACT) 
: 
 I would like to spend a couple of minutes in rebuttal of the Green Party member who has just resumed her seat. I totally agree with her that housing is unquestionably an important part of health. New Zealanders do live in cold damp houses because of our climatic conditions. We live in a cool temperate climate zone and we are right at the edge of not justifying central heating and our houses are cold. Most visitors to this country agree that our houses are cold relative to other countries but then we would be using an awful lot more energy if we had central heating. What we find in America and Europe is that they tend to overcool their houses in the hot summers and overheat them in the winter—fighting nature at every turn—whereas in New Zealand we tend to put on warm jerseys and sit around the fire. We are hardy characters and that is the Kiwi tradition. 
There have been a lot of myths and the speaker from the Green Party has just highlighted those myths. Firstly in reference to the leaky home syndrome she was calling for more insulation and energy efficiency. We have seen tremendous progress in energy efficiency in installation over the last 20 years in this country but that is one of the biggest problems of our leaky home syndrome and the toxic algae and fungi that are in the wall cavities. It was when we started tightening up on the conditions of the vapour barrier that we had the condensation in the wood structures of our timber frames and the rot. Those fungi and algae which are naturally occurring are much more toxic and damaging to health than we had realised. 
Then we come on to the issue of treated timber. Members will remember that we used to treat our frames but part of the problem has been exacerbated by the lack of treated frames. Who was it who ran a campaign against copper chrome arsenate? It was an outrageous campaign in Wellington playgrounds—spurious science. I will tell the members what they did because the Forest Research Institute has done a lot of work on this and there is quite a bit published. The person who made this claim—and a certain member of this House jumped on the bandwagon—actually took shavings from a playground that kids enjoyed where there was nice tanalised timber. The analysis was that a kid would have to ingest 5 kilograms a day of these wood shavings down at the local playground. How many little kids sit down at the playground in between swings and slides and ingest 5 kilograms of copper chrome arsenate treated wood? It is absolute rubbish. In terms of infusion into the adjacent ground there is no movement at all into the adjacent ground. 
 In fact copper chrome and arsenic are not particularly toxic. They can be toxic in certain doses but they are certainly not as harmful as not treating one’s wood and having the algae and the fungi that cause real disease in our homes. That is why we have to be very careful with issues like this. 
In fact it was not the copper chrome arsenate  which was the tanalised treatment of our wood frames and it was not the boric. We used to boric treat our frames but that was only for insect attack not for algae and fungi. The algae and fungi were held at bay indirectly. To prevent the anti-sap stain we used to put wood through the boric bath to which pentachlorophenol and organochlorine were added for cosmetic reasons. It stopped the blue stain as the market did not like blue-stained wood. But it was that substance that actually prevented the mould and the algae on our timber-framed housing. Now that we have very staunch tight vapour-proof insulation we are finding that air is condensing in the wood cavity with nowhere to go. 
Our homes are also more weathertight. We have sealed our windows tighter. In the old houses that Shane Ardern and I grew up in we used to have to stand on the carpet when the wind blew to hold it down. That was the nature of New Zealand housing. However insulation is now very tight. We have this monolithic cladding some of which is not very good and I think we will see a move away from that. The market is already rejecting it. New house buyers look very askance when they see monolithic cladding and so they should. There are also design problems like internal balconies that become water traps and baths and that water soaks down through the cavities. 
But the answer is not more regulation and control. The ACT party fiercely opposes this bill. It is all about more compliance costs more barriers to new entry and greater costs and difficulty for young homeowners trying to get into their first home. It is not a good bill. We heard from the New Zealand First speaker in this debate a claim that this would not impinge on the home do-it-yourselfer—the Kiwi tradition of doing one’s own work. I have to tell that member that it certainly does as we now have this term “restricted building work”. I refer the member to clause 6 where it is very clear. It states: “restricted building work—(a) means building work that— (i) requires a building consent;” and it goes on to state that it “includes without limitation work on—(i) the building envelope; and (ii) the structural support of a building”. 
But it is actually worse than that. I have just picked up another point when reading this provision. Traditional Kiwis will not be able to paint their houses any more particularly if it is a two-storey house because most scaffolding is attached to the frame of the house. There are screw bolts that go in with a scaffolding frame which many people will be familiar with but the bill refers to “any plank coupling fastening fitting or device used in connection with the construction erection or use of scaffolding”. If people use scaffolding to paint their houses they will have to have one of these registered licensed people on station and charging an inordinate amount. This is an affront to the traditional Kiwi ethos and spirit and I am deeply alarmed that so many parties in this House have been duped and seduced by what I regard as very draconian legislation. 
The big construction companies welcome the bill. They say that it is good but then they would. Who will benefit if entry is to be restricted? Those who are already in the tree hut always want to pull up the ladder so that no one else gets into the tree hut. That is exactly the situation we have with the big construction companies. They are rubbing their hands with glee. Fletcher Challenge has just announced a record profit—and good luck to that company—largely because of the home-building activity. This bill means that healthy competition will be further restricted and monopolies will be enshrined and that comes at a cost to the economy and to the individual. 
There are all sorts of other provisions in this bill—fences actually become a building and a swimming pool fence becomes a building. We will have bureaucrats and more bureaucrats. Let us think about it. We have always had local bodies with responsibility for inspecting buildings; some of them have done good jobs and some of them not so good. Surely that is enough control and regulation. When we start to have certifiers over inspectors over administrators—and then who checks the inspector and who certifies the certifier—it sounds good on paper and it might make people feel all warm and fuzzy inside and think they have done a good job in sorting it out but in practice invariably all it means is more control more restriction and a less satisfactory outcome where the rubber meets the road. This is bad legislation we will not support it and we are very disappointed that other parties have chosen to support it.