Smith Nick: Building Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Smith Nick: Building Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 13 March 2008. Volume:645;Page:14920. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 This morning’s  
Dominion Post  
contains this headline: “Building costs putting homes ‘beyond reach’ ” and the article states: “The cost of building an average-size house has sky-rocketed in the past seven years—from $232000 to $422000.” That is an increase in the cost of building an average house of $190000 and the question that National members ask about the Building Amendment Bill is whether it will address the housing affordability crisis. The answer is that it will not. The answer is that it will make the problem worse. 
There are two major changes in this bill. The first of those is around the very complex system that the Government has imposed on councils in respect of their being accredited as building consent authorities. We have a bloated Government bureaucracy called the Department of Building and Housing. It has gone from having 30 staff to having nearly 500 staff and it is now trying to impose the same sort of bureaucracy on councils. 
I was interested to note that the Government has just congratulated the Rodney District Council on its new building consent process. If anyone wants to build or even put in a drain in Rodney there is now a 110-page form to fill out and this bill reinforces the sort of mad bureaucratic imposition that this Government has put on the building industry. But it goes further. 
This bill seeks to retrospectively dump on councils and homeowners the costs of that accreditation process. That is in complete contradiction to everything that New Zealanders are saying in the area of what this bill attempts to do. We had only 12 months ago a rating inquiry into the extra costs that central government was imposing on councils and that rating inquiry said that the Government needed to stop passing these sorts of laws. They give the capacity for the Department of Building and Housing to dump its bureaucratic costs on to councils and councils have absolutely no choice but to cough up and pay. National says that that is wrong. National says that this bill is adding to the huge increase in rates that is driving New Zealanders up and down this country mad. 
There is a second set of changes in this bill that National further objects to. It is just so typical of the red tape and bureaucracy that Labour is imposing on New Zealanders. There was a time when the Labour Party celebrated the heritage of Norm Kirk who built his own house in Kaiapoi. But what does this bill do? This bill means that young aspiring New Zealanders will be prohibited by red tape from being able to build their own houses. Again National says that it was not the do-it-yourself builder who brought about the leaky home crisis; it was dodgy developers it was poor council process and it was the issues around untreated timber and building products. It was not the do-it-yourself builders. Norm Kirk would be rolling in his grave to know that the Labour Party is today reinforcing legislation that will say to New Zealanders that they cannot build their own houses. Well I say to New Zealanders that National is on the way back and we will restore the rights of New Zealanders to build their own homes. 
I will now go to the report that has been produced by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet dated March 2008 and released yesterday. This report says that building costs are skyrocketing and that homes are now further away from being affordable for families than at any time in our history. The report notes that there has been the biggest fall in homeownership rates since census data began in 1892 and this Government has the worst record of any Government in the 116 years since in respect of home affordability. The report further notes that the biggest fall in home affordability is in relation to those aged between 25 and 35. Those are the young aspiring New Zealanders and it is little wonder that 70000 of them are abandoning this country and building their futures in other parts of the world when there is this sort of escalation in housing costs. 
What is even more important is what this report says about what needs to be done to improve housing affordability. It says that lower costs of sections and construction are the most likely way of Government policy achieving a long-term reduction in housing costs and that reforms need to be made in the streamlining of the regulatory systems especially around the Resource Management Act and the building consent process. National members say: “Hear hear! That is what we have been arguing about with the Resource Management Act and the Building Act until we have almost lost our voices for 8 or 9 years.” What then has the Government done after reading that official Government report? It has moved the third reading of the Building Amendment Bill which adds even further to those very building costs that are causing the crisis. 
Let me outline for the House the sorts of things that this bill means for communities around New Zealand. The building consent fees in Nelson City have just been put up by 15 percent. In the Tasman district next door they have been put up by 37 percent. In Dunedin City building consent fees have been put up by 67 percent. In this very city the Wellington City Council has noted that 4 years ago it used to take three A4 plans and 20 pages of documentation to get a building consent for the average house. The new Act will require 12 A4 plans and 200 pages of documentation to get a building consent for that house. That is outrageous. That is paperwork gone mad and this bill furthers that problem. 
National opposes this bill because it does absolutely nothing to address the housing affordability crisis we have in New Zealand. We have the second worst home affordability in the OECD and our homeownership rates are plummeting. That great Kiwi value of the average family being able to own their own home has been ruined by this Government and by this sort of legislation. We have a building sector that is in crisis and we have builders leaving the country because they have had it with this sort of bureaucracy. 
This bill should be rejected. We need to go back and amend the Building Act 2004 to bring the red tape and the bureaucracy back under control. We need to drive building quality by putting the commercial tension on the building industry to make sure that it is financially responsible for its building products and for the design inspection and construction of homes in New Zealand. This bill does nothing of the sort and it should be rejected by this House so that we might be able to get some policies that actually improve home affordability in New Zealand.