Carter John: Building Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Carter John: Building Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:10848] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on the Building Amendment Bill. The National Party will support it going to the Social Services Committee but for this reason: to expose this hopeless incompetent failure of a Minister. I have to say that Minister Clayton Cosgrove will go down as one of the worst incompetent hopeless Ministers that one would see in a day’s march. Mind you if we look at the members opposite we could say that about any of those members. I will tell Pete Hodgson why this guy is an absolute incompetent failure. I will put this on the record of this House. 
In this country the number of houses that do not have a compliance certificate is the same as the number of houses in the city of Wellington. Over 250000 houses in this country are not compliant. Why? It is because so many rules and regulations have been made by this Minister his Department of Building and Housing and by the Labour Government. People are now saying there is too much compliance and too much cost. 
But what is even worse is that although this Minister’s department employed 31½ people in 1999—I do not know what it did with the other half; it was probably Mr Cosgrove—today the department employs over 300 people. The department has different sections. One makes the rules and regulations another vets them and another audits them and then passes them back to the first one because the rules and regulations are not quite right. They go round in circles. 
There are a couple of really bad outcomes from all of this. In the building of houses—Bob Clarkson will confirm this—at least 600 different materials are used. I ask members to listen carefully because this is really something. The Department of Building and Housing is required to certify those 600 materials that go into homes. Can anyone guess how many it has certified to date? 
R Doug Woolerton 
: 10. 
JOHN CARTER 
: No four. 
Hon Members 
: Four! 
JOHN CARTER 
: It has certified only four of the 600. Today under this hopeless Minister we think we know about the leaky home problem but believe you me we are creating a leaky home problem for the future that we have no idea about. 
Some of the materials coming into this country and being used are not certified at all. I am sure the Ministers sitting across the House will be interested to know that copper pipe imported from Australia has a certification of 50 years. Copper pipe imported from England has a certification of 60 years. But copper pipe imported from Asia has no certification. Testing done on copper pipe from Asia which is going into our homes right now—in particular spec homes—estimates that it will last about 7 years. So in 5 10 or 15 years’ time someone will flush the dunny and mum in the kitchen will get a shower! If we think we have a leaky home problem now believe you me we have a serious problem coming up. Parliament needs to understand that. 
This Minister and his department the whole 300 of them are doing nothing about the problem. It has got to the stage where local government officers are so concerned that they have decided to start up a certification regime irrespective of what the Department of Building and Housing is doing. So the Building Officials Institute of New Zealand says that because the issue is so serious and because the Department of Building and Housing is so incompetent and has managed to certify only four of the 600 materials the institute has decided to take on the certification. I say: “Good on it!”. We have to have at least some people who are competent because this Minister and this Government and the department that they employ 300 people in are not. They are causing failure. 
What is even worse is that people in the building industry in this nation are starting to despair. If compliance issues red tape the lack of support and all the other problems put before the building industry are not improved then competent builders will be exiting the industry. It is getting to the stage where it is beyond their ability to survive. The delays red tape and frustrations in the building sector are tangible. One can feel it. 
Of course the building inspectors in local government who are on the other side are feeling just as bad about it. It is unbelievable the expectations and the rules and regulations in bound volumes that these people have to try to administer. What is even worse is the whole situation where the Government is making rules and regulations—rules on rules and rules on rules on rules—that people cannot understand cannot follow cannot comply with and cannot keep up with so they are avoiding them. We are seeing the building of houses that are not legal. We are seeing the building of sheds that are not legal. We are seeing people exiting the industry. We are seeing houses that are not compliant. Those houses will become leaky homes. The whole thing is a mess. 
If there is any good thing about this bill it is that at least it will give people the opportunity to come out and start talking about the shambles that we have in the building industry. I see the Ministers across the House are hanging their heads in shame and so they should be. They know that if there is one area that is an absolute mess under this Government’s administration then it is this one. They know that the building sector is not the only area but it is typical. It will require the incoming Government to start cleaning it up. 
It seriously worries me that if it were just about someone’s house then that is bad enough. If it were just about that fact that somebody has not put in their investment and has ended up with a property that has no value because this Government has allowed the use of materials that will fail then that would be bad enough. But what is starting to happen because of the regime of compliance and red tape is that we are stifling development and opportunity in this country. We are putting in unnecessary costs and unnecessary rules and regulations and inhibiting the ability of this nation to move ahead. It is another example of nanny State deciding that it knows best that it knows how to run things that it can organise individuals’ lives and that it can organise a whole industry. 
It does not have to be like this. Seriously it does not have to be like this. There are better ways. There are ways in which we could restructure the whole thing so that we would avoid the leaky home syndrome and so that the industry itself is responsible for the work it does. After all if the car industry manufactures a car then we do not expect the Government to step in and fix up any problem if it breaks down. I do not think so. The industry takes responsibility. 
But this Government is so incompetent that it is allowing the industry to build houses that are not compliant then it says that the taxpayers and ratepayers will pick up the bill. That is not right. Unfortunately the Government has such a stupid regime in place to try to address the issue that the only ones who are getting fixed are the lawyers. It is not the houses not the individuals and not the communities. That is because this Government is going about things in entirely the wrong way. 
If there is one good thing about this bill then we knew did we not that this certification system would not to work. I certainly did. My colleagues on this side of the House have been saying so all along. We have said that unnecessary costs were being put on to local government ratepayers and taxpayers. On top of all that we end up with a frustrated building industry and a frustrated community. 
The only good thing to come out of this bill is that people will have the opportunity to make public submissions assuming that the Government allows public submissions on the bill and people will have the opportunity to tell the committee how frustrated they are what a failure the system is how complex it is how much red tape there is and why the building industry has got to the stage where quite honestly it does not want a bar of this. They will be pleased to have the opportunity to make a contribution to this bill. 
Bill read a first time.