McKelvie Ian: Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcKelvie Ian: Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11738. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei):Given what we have listened to in the last half-hour I think it necessary to refute a number of issues that I think have been raised slightly erroneously. We should remember that this issue arose from legislation put in place in 2006 so it goes back quite some time. That is the first point I want to raise. I want to briefly talk about Supplementary Order Paper 204 introduced by Raymond Huo. In my view it is clearly impractical. It does not achieve anything other than to give some money back to an organisation or a group of people in an organisation who will then have to pay it back to the organisation in order for the organisation to continue to function. We heard the Greens earlier thinking that it would be a great idea for the Government to just pay the difference. Well we could just pay the difference in a whole lot of issues in this country but we would run out of money. That clearly is not going to work. The Plumbers—Andrew Williams: You could sell more assets.IAN McKELVIE: We will use the asset money productively. The Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill is being put in place to allow plumbers gasfitters and drainlayers to act in the same manner as any other good industry-good body would act. It is being put in place to protect those members from the activities I guess of what we might call cowboys. I think it is logical that any industry-based organisation should be able to operate in that manner and operate with the protection of legislation put in place by this House. That is what this bill does. It cleans up a messy situation created in 2006. Sure there have been complaints to the Regulations Review Committee. Those complaints have been dealt with one way or another.There has surely been a complaint to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman made a call on this and in the process of making that call he suggested there was a fine line between what was right and wrong and what was the best way to deal with this. He thought that the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board was doing the best it could with a slightly I guess poor piece of legislation. It is not an opportunity for us to attack an industry body. The course of this bill certainly should not provide that opportunity. I think that the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board is doing the best it can as the Ombudsman indeed said with a piece of legislation that certainly is not perfect. We have got to understand that this board collects about $600000 a year so for it to be putting in place levies of the magnitude that were mentioned earlier in this Chamber—$11000 to $14000 a year per member—is quite ridiculous.The next issue I think we need to refute is the claim that the numbers of these people are dropping as a result of the poor management of this board. That clearly is not the case. We have to look only at the record of our building industry over the past 7 or 8 years and we will see why the numbers are dropping. Quite clearly the numbers of all sorts of professionals in this area have dropped in that time. They have dropped for a very good reason—they have dropped because there is no work. The other thing that happens in an industry like this which happens frequently in all sorts of industries is that a significant amount of efficiency comes in. New methods arise and obviously that has played a large part in the changes in this industry.So the opportunity that this bill puts in place is firstly to give the plumbers gasfitters and drainlayers legislation that supports their industry-good body which allows them to contest and I guess investigate unlicensed people practising in the industry. As one of the Opposition members mentioned earlier this organisation used to come under the Ministry of Health for very good reason. That is why we need to have legislation and strict management of the opportunity for registered people to be operating in this industry. [Interruption ] As my compatriot Mr Sabin says gas is not the safest thing to be operating within our houses and it certainly needs to be regulated very well there.I do not want to dwell on this much longer but I think there is a very good reason for this piece of legislation to be put in place. I do not think there was a suitable alternative to it and I think that the Minister for Building and Construction has done a good job of bringing this to the fore.I just want to say one last thing. All organisations are going to have internal disputes. All organisations are going to have disagreements as to how they should be run. This legislation will give this organisation the opportunity to put its house in order and to manage the process that it needs to manage around the licensing and the control of those licences in a proper manner. So I think that aside from not supporting the Supplementary Order Paper which I think clearly will not work I am all in favour of this bill proceeding. Thanks.