Bayly AndrewParts 1 and 2 Schedule and clauses 1 and 2ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Hey thank you Madam Chair. It's very good to be talking in this committee stage of this Building Amendment Bill. Of course as we've noted before this is a piece of legislation that was introduced by National initially but I do acknowledge the Minister Jenny Salesa for pursuing this and taking it through the House. Of course we're hopefully getting towards the closing stages of this bill.What this bill is about is actually dealing with seismic issues and the resulting carnage that occurs after them. Obviously unfortunately New Zealand's been in that very troubling situation where we've had the Canterbury earthquakes and the Kaikōura earthquake and of course that led to issues such as Statistics House where we had the hollow-core issue where the floor was dropping because the flooring wasn't sufficiently buttressed to the walls; but also with the Reading Cinemas car-parking building. So this is a bill about how officials—and in this case I mean Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) officials—have the opportunity to go in quickly at the completion of those earthquake events and be able to make buildings safe.There are a number of issues in this bill that deal with certain powers: the power to enter a building or a piece of land to be able to undertake investigations; also powers to require remedial work or reduce work. It should be noted that during the committee stage we dealt with this. There were three scenarios—so they have a step-down clause in terms of when works are required and the timing around those—but also directions that are required of building owners.I just note the issue around this is about protecting the rights of not only the property owners who own the building in question in many of these cases but also the tenants—and it could be people living in apartments under complicated unit title arrangements or similar such arrangements. There are also business occupants who may have rented out a building or have in fact subleased it; and of course just the underlying landowner who may still have an interest—so it might have been land that is owned particularly for instance a lot of iwi land leased to an owner who's got the building on it. The reason for highlighting that is it's very complicated in terms of the rights of those various parties and it's important to strike a balance which means all those interests are protected to the extent that people working in and around those buildings can actually continue to live and work safely—and that's what this bill is about: striking that balance. So a couple of things: I note the Minister has introduced new Supplementary Order Paper 234 which means that essentially where designated land has been specified—that is land or property that is subject to the seismic event—and it is in danger of falling over or whatever the case might be and we've got a building that is now no longer safe then the Minister can designate that land—this is under proposed new section 133BH(1)(c)—or the territorial authority. And I note Minister that you've now introduced under proposed new section 133BH(1)(c)(ii) the ability for the Minister to also have control of that territorial authority so it would be useful to hear from you about that particular event.I think one of the other things I just want to highlight and this is something that deals with this complicated issue around who owns the land and who controls the land. I'm referring to clause 12 proposed new section 133BV(3)(a)(iiia). This is the issue: what it does under this clause—Works to remove or reduce other risks"—is it requires that in relation to a building they be directed to a competent person and that at least 10 days prior to deciding they seek the views of the owner and the occupier of that building the owners and occupiers of other buildings and those that have interests in the land where the building is situated. The issue I've got—and it's one that we traversed in the committee—is about the issue of the owners of that land. So you might have an owner but it might be a vacant property or part of the site may be a vacant property that has been sublet to someone who has control of that land or there's no building structure on it. The issue here is whether the rights of those landowners—in this case it might be someone who has access to lease out a car parking slot and so there's no building as I said before—they're in a situation where they have a very legitimate right over that piece of land. I just would be interested to hear from the Minister how this particular clause actually protects those people because I'm not sure that we've actually captured all of those people; and if we have I'd be very glad to hear that we've reached that situation. I think the other thing is that there's a number of consequential changes that need to be made as a result of this bill and particularly with the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act (CDEM). I do acknowledge my good friend and colleague Stuart Smith who is our spokesperson on this important area making a fine contribution. Of course this is very relevant because in these situations we do have the CDEM involvement in these types of situations and also interesting is the Search and Surveillance Act 2012. All of these are about setting out powers to improve the system for managing buildings after the emergency as I alluded to before.But I think the biggest thing is giving the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—MBIE officials are the key group of officials required to take control after such a seismic event—the ability to be able to go into these buildings to be able to commission engineers to check it out to make a determination about whether they're safe and then as a result of that that situation to require first of all measures to make sure the area around those buildings is safe and that ultimately and as speedily as possible these buildings are remedied and brought up to the code of compliance. I think one of the issues again that we traversed in the committee—and this is the third question for the Minister—is about the timing around this because officials like to take time. Often these are in quite tumultuous situations but the requirement for officials to act as efficiently as possible is of critical concern particularly when you've got owners who own buildings that are no longer getting rent or not entitled to rent or people who have not been able to get to their property or their businesses. The classic example of this was actually in the London bombings—with the IRA in London when the bombs went off—and there was an area that was put about half a kilometre diameter around the site and business owners were not allowed back into that site for quite some months; I think from memory about eight months. As a result for the vast majority of businesses operating in that area—even though their buildings hadn't been damaged by the bomb but were curtailed by officials taking an overly cautious position—it led to most of those companies going into receivership and liquidation. That is not a situation we want to see in New Zealand. So that's the third question for the Minister: what assurance can she give to the House that this legislation puts a real binding obligation on MBIE officials to act efficiently act promptly but make sure that they're still protecting the safety of New Zealanders? We all know the tendency in situations like this to be perhaps overly cautious and I'd like to hear from the Minister about that third element. But look I've got to say in the main we obviously support this piece of legislation. It's important in the current environment and I think it's something that we shall hopefully see passing through the House very shortly."