Catchpole Brent: Building Bill — In Committee 
Catchpole Brent: Building Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14775] 
BRENT CATCHPOLE (NZ First) 
: 
 I will expand upon the issue of stopbanks which Lindsay Tisch mentioned. Stopbanks are quite different from dams as many people will realise. A dam controls the continuous flow of water in a river whereas stopbanks may well be alongside a river that has no water in it at all. They are there for flood control. There are occasions when floods as we have seen recently exceed the abilities of those stopbanks. The same can happen with a dam but stopbanks are there for flood control and can be along a river that has no water in it at all for most of the year. Occasionally the river will fill up and then those banks come into effect. 
Another issue that I will pick up on and one that we laboured long and hard over is the description of cable cars. There is some confusion as to whether a private cable car falls into the same category as those in public buildings because the description in the bill at the moment does not clarify that. I hope something will be put in before the end of this whole—[ 
Interruption 
] There is no point in voting against it over one small point as a National member was suggesting; there are a number of issues that this bill really does solve and we would not vote against it for the sake of one small issue. I would ask the officials to clarify the description of a private cable car and whether it falls into the same category as a cable car in a public building. 
Another point that I will pick up on quickly is to do with the private building certifiers. Opinion was divided as to whether they should be included. We were of the opinion that private building certifiers do play a very valid part in the whole process and therefore they have been retained in this bill. That I believe was a sound move. The only problem that private building certifiers have is to do with the insurance that is required and there lies an issue. At the time of the discussions I wanted us to look into the possibilities of changing the liability status from joint and several to proportional but that was quickly thrown out unfortunately. I would have liked to see it explored a lot further but sadly it was not. Therefore private building certifiers have an issue with getting insurance. In the past the Building Industry Authority was charged with finding run-off insurance. Well that never happened as the authority was never able to do it. To chop private building certifiers at this very point would leave exposed the very large volume of work that they have done in the past because it would cut off the only possible recourse they have at this point of time. To do that immediately on the instigation of this legislation would be a tragedy because they have certified a huge volume—in the billions of dollars—of buildings. 
I must add that out of all the complaints we could not find anybody who could show that the private building certifiers were the cause of the problems. The Building Industry Authority said that it monitored only the private building certifiers and that it did not monitor complaints about the territorial authorities so there was absolutely no comparative opportunity there. I think the authority did itself a disservice by not monitoring both sides to get a fairer deal.