Shirley Ken: Building Bill — In Committee 
Shirley Ken: Building Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14770] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party is opposing this bill. We believe it is thoroughly bad legislation. It is unnecessary and like so much of what this Government produces it is an overreaction and a faulty analysis of the problem. 
The Government says that this bill is to overcome the leaky homes syndrome but there is nothing in it that really addresses that issue. The pernicious provisions in the bill which virtually outlaw the traditional Kiwi do-it-yourself attitude are appalling. They reflect really restrictive trade practice which is what this bill is substantially about. 
It is little wonder that the building industry welcomes the bill because this compliant Government has dished up the industry’s wish list of constraint more regulation and restrictive trade entry so that those who are already in the trade have a natural advantage. That is not sensible. 
The issue of leaky buildings has substantially been mis-analysed because like it or not New Zealand has a cool temperate wet climate and our houses are cold and damp relative to other countries. Visitors from overseas shiver in our winter. They cannot believe we are so hardy—and we are—that we live in those cold damp wet houses. I believe New Zealand’s high incidence of asthma is actually a direct reflection of the cold damp wet housing we have in this country. 
We used to have the traditional Kiwi bungalow that served us well when we had big roaring log fires and all the rest of it. But what happened in the 1970s and 1980s? Progressively because of concerns over energy conservation we moved towards tighter insulation and vapour-proof barriers. The one salvation that our traditional housing had was that air could move pretty freely actually between the inside and the outside. That is partly why houses were so cold. But as soon as we tightened up on our insulation and enforced that with vapour-proof barriers we moved to having that damp air being heated condensing on that vapour-proof barrier and rotting inside the frame cavity of our housing—and now the problem has been totally misdiagnosed. 
The other aspect is that we thought we would ban the treatment of timber. People used to think we did copper chrome arsenate treatment of our framing. We never did. We only ever did boric treatment which is boron treatment for insects. That treatment did nothing against fungi and algae but it worked indirectly because in the boric bath treatment we also used to give the timber pentachlorophenol which is an anti-sap stain and very effective. We did that for cosmetic reasons we thought because the market did not like the blue stain in the wood. But once we banned pentachlorophenol in treating our wood we discovered that that was what had been killing the mould and the algae. 
Since about 1990 there has been no pentachlorophenol used because of the Green lobby whose members said it was bad it was terrible and it was a persistent organochlorine. It is very persistent but it is not particularly toxic. It is very persistent in the environment and it is not nice stuff but I tell members that those natural moulds and algae now in our wood frames give off a lot more natural toxins that are much more deadly and much more toxic than is the risk of pentachlorophenol—the organochlorine. That is the reality of the situation. 
We in this country now have an appalling situation. We have misdiagnosed it and now we have this other layer of bureaucracy control and regulation. Some people feel warm and fuzzy inside that this bill will solve the problem. Let me tell members that it will not. All this bill represents is restrictive trade practice and limitations on entry to the industry. 
The way that this bill pings the traditional do-it-yourself Kiwi I think is appalling. I built my first house at about age 20 and many other Kiwis have done the same thing. My house is still standing and it is very robust.