Harawira Hone: Building Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Harawira Hone: Building Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:643;Page:13011] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tatou e te Whare. Tautoko ana au i nga mihi o taku whanaunga a Pita Paraone ki tera o o tatou whanaunga no roto i Ngai Takoto kua tae atu ki roto i te whare o Karaka. No reira mihi atu ki a ia a ki a koe ano hoki e Pita e mihi tuatahi atu ki a ia. 
[ 
I endorse the acknowledgments of my relative Pita Paraone to that relative of ours from Ngai Takoto who has arrived in the Clark household. So greetings to him and to you as well Pita for acknowledging him first. 
] 
I was just standing to tautoko to support congratulations from my colleague Mr Pita Paraone to our whanaunga Shane Jones and to remind everybody in the House whom Shane has not already told that on 30 November in the afternoon at Mahimaru marae all of our whanaungas and Ngai Takoto will be getting together to give him a good hiding—no to have a bit of a hakari to honour his elevation to Cabinet! 
There are many whakatauki throughout Te Ao Maori that refer to the strength of the whare as a metaphor to this topic under debate—references to the sons of Tane and references to the trees from the forests of Tane that provide a strong foundation to withstand all challenges: Ko nga tama whakatamatama Tane motu i te nganahau.] 
[ 
Sons of Tane and trees from the forests of Tane 
.] 
We would hope that this Building Amendment Bill will ensure that building design and construction will improve the general strength of New Zealand buildings. We remember that this Act came out of a decade of major building faults from 1990 to 2000 and we look to this bill to ensure that regulations are clear and workable. If we look to the 30 public submissions received on the bill we see that there is pretty strong support for the bill from all the key industry groups. We welcome the terms of the bill to ensure that buildings comply with the disability access provisions of the  
New Zealand Building Code 
. We note that the select committee processes added a few technical amendments fine-tuned the licensing scheme for buildings and introduced a new whole-of-building concept for significant building projects. 
But things are not all sweet because if we go back to the metaphor of the house and look at the main ridgepole the tahuhu we see other stories that the Social Services Committee did not say much about in its report to the House. These stories include the concerns of the Registered Master Builders Federation of New Zealand that the definitions of “restricted building” are so weak that the building licensing scheme is compromised and the concern of the New Zealand Society on Large Dams part of the Institution of Professional Engineers in New Zealand that the local definitions are out of step with internationally accepted meanings. Federated Farmers in particular are concerned because some farmers will be caught unnecessarily by the regulations. They will also be up for some rather excessive compliance costs and it seems that a recommendation they made to change the definitions was ignored with no explanation given as to why. It makes the whole select committee process a bit of a farce if well-meaning well-intentioned submissions are ignored because when a bill comes to the House from a select committee we want our debate to be full frank and well informed. 
In other areas there was the amendment to schedule 1 which deals with extending building work that is exempt from the requirement to obtain building consents. Some of the submitters such as Alan Light registered building surveyor and inspector said that this bill would impose restrictions on maintenance work and actually discourage people from undertaking prudent repairs. Rodney District Council also said that extending the definition of building work that is exempt from requiring consents would result in future owners inheriting costly problems. It seems that although both of these theories have merit neither were given any value in the select committee report which recommended changes to the amendment to schedule 1 but gave no clear commentary as to any substantive changes or the impact of those changes. 
But the bigger problem for us is that this bill will do nothing to address the shoddy state of housing in my electorate—a situation the Minister Shane Jones himself is well aware of. Nor will it do anything to address the neglect and poor state of repair and maintenance of houses in Porirua which is an issue that has been raised by my party co-leader Tariana Turia over the past few weeks. The Building Act of 2004 focuses only on houses built after that time; it does nothing to deal with the massive problems with existing housing that are having such a devastating effect on the health well-being and safety of whanau all around the country. The amendments to this bill do nothing to address the state of housing disrepair that too many homes in this country have fallen into. The housing crisis as the Salvation Army has suggested is best remedied by creating a New Zealand housing fund to finance affordable housing and affordable homeownership through an annual allocation of up to $1 billion a year for the next 10 years to address the demands for affordable housing. We know that this bill was always limited by not being able to deal properly with existing housing without retrospective provisions to the Act but we are disappointed that positive solutions from industry groups and other agencies have not been given proper consideration. 
The Maori Party will support this bill in support of all those who took the time to present the ideas to the select committee and we look forward to suggestions by the Minister as to how those solutions can best be dealt with. Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker.