Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It's a pleasure to be talking on the Building Amendment Bill at the second reading. I think it's just useful to remind ourselves that we the National Party will be supporting this bill because of course it is our bill. We introduced it we did all the hard work but I do take a moment just to congratulate the Minister for actually steering this bill through which is the first that she's steered through Parliament since she became the Minister for Building and Construction.This is a very important bill because what it is seeking to do is deal with the issue of when there is a big seismic event or some issue where there is substantial building failure—and we've seen some of the examples of that; we've seen the issue with Statistics House following the Kaikōura earthquake where we saw floors collapse. This was quite a significant issue where the footings were not wide enough—normally they're required to be 50 millimetres. With the movement of the building in an earthquake and also with some of the variations in how buildings are constructed which are not actually perfectly square that 50 millimetres which is meant to be a tolerance level in the event of a seismic activity often is reduced down to maybe 30 millimetres and when you have a big seismic event like we had in Kaikōura which rocked that building that's when we see the examples of those floors coming off. Interestingly when that happened some of the floors had been fixed up but there were a couple that hadn't and those were the ones which failed.Also we've seen it in some other situations as well and I think what this is doing is allowing for the learnings to come out of those occasions. So the key powers—and they're set out in new section 207D of the Building Act which states that first of all what we want to do is to learn from these failures. The second is about informing decisions about the performance of functions and duties of what's undertaken under these powers and the third thing is about helping basically with new designs and the way we should deal with it. That has been an issue and the issue actually to be very specific is that in many cases when we've had these events officials—and when I say officials I'm talking about not only building officials but emergency people and this Act actually changes both the Building Act as well as the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act. What it does is allow relevant authorised officials to be able to go in and inspect the building.Now often this is during a period of absolute mayhem if I can use that word immediately following a disaster where you have some of the significant earthquakes we've had in New Zealand unfortunately. So these are the powers to allow people to go in look at the issues and do it. And of course there's a contradiction and sometimes conflict with the rights of the building owner and also the tenants of those commercial buildings. So you've got officials wanting to close them down perhaps and you've got owners wanting to keep them open and people who own businesses are torn between making sure that their businesses survive but also keeping their staff safe. So this bill deals with this and actually what the amendment bill does is it actually introduces three categories. We have an urgent works to remove or reduce risk". So this is where we've had catastrophic failure and Statistics House is a classic example. No one should have been allowed to go back in there and we needed to make some changes that area needed to be made safe and that is what's covered under "urgent works to remove or reduce risk"—section 133BU in clause 12 Madam Deputy Speaker—I know you watch these bills very keenly. There's a second category which is "important but not urgent" and again there's a sort of a cascade as we work our way through. So these are works that are required and it might be protecting pedestrian ways related to a building or they could be made safe but the building itself may not be. And then there's a third category which is "works necessary in the long term for the long-term use and occupation of the building". And where we ended up with those categories is I think a reasonable sort of bounds around what the rights of officials are to be able to go and do things but also it is sort of monitoring and protecting the rights of tenants and owners. I think one of the issues that we did discuss in the Transport and Infrastructure Committee during our select committees process—and again like the Minister I want to acknowledge those who submitted—is the issue of getting rights to the information that's gleaned or obtained during this process. There's two issues related to that. The first one is: who should that information be shared with? The bill actually covers that. It gives quite a lot of power to the CE to be able to give out that information to parties that he or she thinks are relevant—when I say CE I mean the chief executive being able to pass on that information to the extent that it's necessary. But there's an issue around protecting rights and of course any of these sorts of things—once you get out in the public domain—can have a serious impact on the value of buildings. Therefore that's again sort of an area of conflict that we had to try and steer our way through and I think where we've ended up—again I hope we've got to the right spot on that in terms of making sure that information around a building is only shared with those people who have an absolute need for it and that should be shared with and not shared in the open domain of public good because that's not always relevant to people.The other aspect is the ability for people particularly in relation to people where death may have occurred or even where injury in a building has occurred—what are the rights of the individual family in most cases to be able to access some of the information that is obtained or even the reports that are produced by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment component? And that again is a little tension point because at one stage we're trying to learn from those failures but on the other side you're now crossing into the bounds of civil prosecutions that type of stuff. There is an issue in this and it was quite a thorny issue for the committee which was around those people who had family members or whatever directly affected—should they be entitled to such information? I think where we've got to is a situation that works; namely that information can be obtained under the Official Information Act and there is the right of families to seek judicial review on information but the grounds as most of the lawyers in Parliament will know around a judicial review are reasonably limited. I'm just trying to find it here. The grounds are that it was unlawfully or unreasonably or procedurally defective in the way that the information was gleaned. That is a high test for a family who may have been in a situation where they've seen family members injured or they have died. I think that's a bit of a tension point for this bill. We tested the bounds of whether they should be entitled to more information on a confidential basis but that's something the committee worked through. I think we've ended up in a reasonable space in it but it's one that we will continue to test and consider as we work our way through the next stage the committee of the whole House.But I think this is a good bill in terms of trying to deal with those problem buildings that have been damaged and as the Minister said also other infrastructure assets such as dams etc. I think we're making progress. It's good to see this bill coming through the House and progressing over time."