Twyford Phil: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Twyford Phil: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:678;Page:816] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 We on this side of the Chamber thought long and hard when the Local Government and Environment Committee was preparing to report back to the House about how we would vote. It is really more in sorrow than in anger that we reported back that we would not be voting for the second reading of this Building Amendment Bill (No 3) and our position remains the same. The reason I make that comment is that as the Minister for Building and Construction has acknowledged there has been a high degree of cross-party commitment to the Building Act review process going back to the mid-2000s. Like the Minister I want to acknowledge my colleague Shane Jones and the efforts he made as the Minister to build a broadly supported process of review that moved us on from the 2004 Act in the direction of a lighter and more finely tuned and targeted regulatory framework for our construction industry that would deliver the outcomes we all want: safe healthy durable buildings and particularly safe healthy and durable houses for New Zealanders to live in. 
So we listened very carefully to the submissions to the select committee. It may be true that the Minister has been to Bunnings and Mitre 10 and everywhere else around the country and has asked them what they think of the bill but the submitters one after another including all the major industry bodies came to the select committee and expressed major reservations not about the Building Act review but about this bill. One after the other said this was an ill-advised piecemeal approach that actually threatened greater risk to the industry and the consumer than needed to be the case. They said that what was required under the principles of the Building Act review was a root and branch reform that dealt with issues of not only risk-based consenting but liability and consumer protection and that to advance as this bill does with a couple of very specific aspects of the review without the accompanying measures dealing with liability and with consumer protection risked actually putting the consumer in a more vulnerable position. I do not think anybody in his or her right mind after the experience that this country has had with leaky buildings over the last 20 years wants to put the New Zealand consumer at more unnecessary risk. 
 The basic argument that we have heard tonight and I think we will tease it out in the course of this Committee stage is that one of the main things that this bill does is it sets out to more clearly define the responsibilities of the different players in a way that is basically a sort of guidance. But nevertheless it will undoubtedly be used as direction in future court cases as the law develops. This bill sets out to define the responsibilities of the builder of the consumer of the designer and of the building consent authorities. No one I think objects to that in itself. The thing is that what it does is circumscribe the current responsibilities and liabilities of the building consent authorities. Everybody knows that the defining feature of the construction industry in liability issues through the whole leaky homes saga has been that the councils which make up most of the building consent authorities are the only ones that have deep pockets and they have been left—and the ratepayer has been left—as the last man standing. In many many cases they have been the only source of any kind of redress or compensation for affected homeowners. 
The problem with scaling back the liability or responsibility of the councils as building consent authorities is who is left to step into the breach. Under the reallocation or the defining of responsibilities under new sections 14A to 14F in clause 10 of the bill there is no equivalent reapportionment of responsibility and liability to other partners. We heard a lot of considered opinion from submitters that the effect of sections 14A to 14F is to scale back the liability of the building consent authorities but there is no equivalent re-placement of responsibility and liability. Many of the industry bodies many of the practitioners and a lot of very wise heads in the industry came to us and said it was a mistake to go down this track of reducing the liability of the building consent authorities without properly embarking on consideration of a change from joint and several liability which is the legal status quo that we have in New Zealand. It means that a party can end up carrying the can for a much greater share of the liability than they would do if that liability was determined only by the share of their contribution to the actual construction project. And it is that principle that has meant that the last man standing whether it is a council or anyone else has often carried the can way in excess of their actual responsibility. A lot of people in the industry believe that and I was glad and interested to hear the Minister say that he would like to see the question of liability addressed and dealt with— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: No I wouldn’t. It is very hard. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: —and to move away from joint and several. Well I heard the Minister say that he would like to see that happen. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Yes I would; I just said it’s very hard. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: He says it is very hard. Well that may be so but is it good lawmaking? Is it sensible stewardship of the New Zealand construction industry and the rights and the well-being of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who go down the track of building their own homes or having houses built? Is it right to subject them to a reduction in their protection and liability in the way that this bill does? That is what was meant by people who came to the committee and by us when we said with the Greens in our minority report that this bill is a piecemeal approach and the real risk is that it is the New Zealand consumer who will be disadvantaged. 
Labour is broadly in support of risk-based consenting. That is something that has been the subject of a great deal of discussion through this process and we will talk some more about that later in this debate. Enhancements to the licensed building practitioner scheme are welcome. But let me say this finally about the timing issue and the criticism that this bill is piecemeal: the reason that this bill is being rushed through the House right now in piecemeal form—the reason it is being rushed through—is that it has to be there because the licensed building practitioner scheme kicks in in March this year. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Who put that through? 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: Who put that through? Who put that in place? Whose responsibility is that? This House is being asked to now pass a highly deficient piecemeal bill because of a time frame that was put in place by this Government. It would have been much much better to have a more comprehensive approach—perhaps staged with the process broken up into bigger chunks. But what we are seeing here is a really imperfect and unfortunate piece of legislation.