Calder Cam: Building Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Calder Cam: Building Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Volume:655;Page:5083] 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 It is with great pleasure that I rise to support the Building Amendment Bill (No 2). I acknowledge the sterling work that has gone on in the Local Government and Environment Committee from members on all sides of the House. I thank the honourable member Maryan Street for pointing out that the bill does have a small effect on housing affordability. 
The National-led Government made specific undertakings during the last election campaign. One of the most important was to encourage genuine growth in our economy by reducing compliance costs and red tape. In recent times the Prime Minister has observed that the New Zealand economy has flattered to deceive. Growth in our GDP such as it has been over the last 9 years up to 2008 has been driven more by people working longer and by more people joining the working population than by us producing any more products of greater value. Further influences on GDP of course have been the increase in consumption a debt-fuelled housing boom and large increases in often ill-directed Government spending. With measures such as this bill the Building Amendment Bill (No 2) the Government is aiming to build our GDP on the more solid foundations of real growth and investment in the internationally competitive sectors of the economy. 
We must increase our productivity growth—that is get better at producing goods and services that the world wants and being paid more for them. We must liberate the tradable sectors of our economy—for example agriculture fisheries manufacturing tourism and forestry. This bill will help the industries that make us money to do so. The streamlining of this bill will cut away some of the red tape and concomitant compliance costs and make it easier to do business. 
What then are the aims of this bill? We have heard some of them from the great leader the chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee Chris Auchinvole. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: The helmsman. 
Dr CAM CALDER 
: “The great helmsman” is another term that is used—at the select committee only of course. What are some of the aims of this bill? We wish to allow the Department of Building and Housing to issue national multiple-use approvals to dwellings and buildings that are to be replicated on a substantial scale. We have heard about that from the honourable member who spoke before Maryan Street. That is a very important point. The Building Amendment Bill (No 2) is part of changes needed to address the compliance costs facing homeowners developers and builders. These changes as we said are crucial to New Zealand’s economic development. 
As part of our first 100 days as members know the National Government streamlined and simplified the Resource Management Act to improve resource consent processing and cut compliance costs. The reform of the Building Act has the same intention as our work on the Resource Management Act and is part of our ongoing commitment to cutting red tape. Last year as we may have pointed out earlier in the debate the Building Act was estimated to have loaded up to $20000 on to the cost of building a new house making housing affordability a thing of the past for many New Zealanders. As the Hon Maryan Street pointed out housing affordability is a part of the allure of the bill to members on all sides of the Committee and it is wonderful to see the cooperation that has taken place to allow the bill to proceed so swiftly. 
The global recession is hurting our building industry and costing Kiwis their jobs. These changes to cutting red tape will make it easier for people to do business—for developers who are building the homes and for homeowners who want to retain the services of a private builder and his team. They will make it much easier for those jobs to be done and will boost the building industry at a time when many companies are struggling and builders are looking for work. 
Builders have complained of waiting up to a fortnight at a time to get on-site building inspections done adding to costs that have been crippling for builders and frustrating for homeowners. This should not happen and we are making changes to tackle problems like these. 
Some other purposes of this bill were alluded to by honourable members. We are reducing the statutory time frame for the processing of building consent applications from 20 working days to 10 working days particularly when the application includes a national multiple-use approval. We can differentiate between major and minor variations to consented building work so that minor changes can be made without going through a full process.