Guy Nathan: Standing Orders—Suspension 
Guy Nathan: Standing Orders—Suspension 
[Volume:641;Page:10951] 
NATHAN GUY (Junior Whip—National) 
: 
 The Labour Party is at it again. Here it is wanting to suspend the 402 Standing Orders in the book. We have just heard from my learned colleague John Carter about how important the document I am holding in my hand is and here we have the Labour Party trying to bend the rules and break them. It cannot win so it looks to do something to get around its own problems. 
I believe that this matter is one of the biggest blunders we have seen in the last 4 years. The Standing Orders have not been suspended since 2003. Here we have the Labour Party which because it cannot win tries to bend the rules. This matter should be opened right up to the select committee process. The public should have a right to have a say in this. It should go through the due process and have a first and second reading. It should go to a select committee where the public is allowed in to have its say because there are some contentious things in this bill and I want to talk about those tonight. 
This whole leaky homes thing is an absolute mess is it not? When we look back to 2002 when the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act came into force to provide homeowners with a speedier more flexible cost-effective alternative to courts we see that only 60 percent of cases have been solved since that time. We have to ask about what has actually happened. The Labour Government here this evening is a Government that if it cannot fix something wants to put a bolt on it. It wants to glue it together to put an Ajax bolt through it or to use araldite glue to glue something else on. Quite simply this measure should be going through the whole due process. 
I think it is a bit of a shame—a big shame actually—that the Standing Orders are having to be suspended this evening. We should look at the whole Building Act and think about the building inspectors. Local government is saying that it has had a gutsful; that it has had enough of the legislation that is being passed in this Parliament that affects ratepayers and council staff. The building inspectors get a document and they just get au fait with it running off to a seminar a conference or another course and then there is another change in Parliament and they have to go through that whole process again and attend another seminar and another conference to get up to speed on that change. Then there is another change. So now we are seeing the third attempt and it is because of this sloppy Minister. I have heard him say publicly that this is all about sorting out the shonky builders in the industry. Well we have here this evening a real shonky Minister who cannot sort out something that is fundamentally pretty basic. 
One of the big things that the Minister glossed over this evening—and I welcome his taking a call on this; I welcome his taking a call on the dams being shifted from the local councils to the regional councils— 
Darren Hughes 
: You didn’t listen. 
NATHAN GUY 
: I was listening actually. Fundamentally this is a key thing. The public should have a right to have its say whether the matter is about a dam on a farm for drinking water whether it is about an irrigation dam whether it is about a recreation dam or whether it is about a hydro dam. Labour wants to slip this through yet the public does not have its chance through the select committee process to have its say. The Minister glossed over that very significant point very very lightly. 
The big thing that is holding up this whole process is the fact that this Government will not address the Resource Management Act and give it any sort of reform. We have some very good proposals which were outlined by Nick Smith at the National Party conference in the weekend. They would allow for direct referrals to the Environment Court and not allow vexatious and frivolous objections— 
Bob Clarkson 
: All good stuff. 
NATHAN GUY 
:—all good things—while still adhering to the principles of the Act. 
The pendulum has swung far too far and that is why this whole process is cumbersome. It looks messy for the Minister when he cannot sort out a very very simple process and has to keep coming back to the House to get this sorted out by means of collapsing the Standing Orders. In summary the 85 territorial local authorities—which the Minister did not believe would be up to speed by November so has extended the period out to June—all say they are not taking any more of this stuff. They have had an absolute gutsful of this sort of legislation being passed in the House. The provincial councils out there have to pick up the pieces. In my area of Horowhenua and Kapiti about 700 homes are built a year and our building inspectors are bogged down by the whole bureaucratic process. Tonight the Minister is asking the House to suspend the Standing Orders for the first time in 4 years—all 402 of them—to fix up a shonky deal that has been done. This issue should be going through due process. That is why National has some real concerns and will be voting against the motion.