Collins Judith: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:643;Page:13255] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 It is a great pleasure to follow my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith who has taken a huge interest in this building issue. I am the deputy chair of the Social Services Committee which heard the submissions on this bill. 
Russell Fairbrother 
: And a very good one too. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I thank very much the chair of the committee who is of course Russell Fairbrother. He is a very good chair. One of the points I noted is that as a homeowner I thought about how hard it was to buy our first home some years ago. What has happened in those years is that it has not got any easier to buy one’s first home. In fact it has got significantly harder. So now we have a situation where in many parts of the United States for instance people can buy homes considerably more cheaply than they can here. They can get much bigger houses in much better areas and everything else. 
I think that one of the points Dr Smith made is absolutely relevant. He said that in parts of Australia it is significantly cheaper to buy or build a house than it is here. The member Ms Yates keeps calling out: “But not in Sydney.” That has a lot to do with the cost of land in Sydney actually I say to Ms Yates which anybody who has been there would know. 
I also note that one of the big concerns has been that as the amount of red tape and bureaucratic interference has increased and increased the people who pay for it the people whose interests are supposed to be being protected are actually unable to afford the home they would like to be able to build. So for instance if people do wish to build a house they will have to build a house that is considerably smaller or does not have the same amenities that they would otherwise have if they had not had the red tape and had not been told they have to do this and that and this. 
What is really amazing is that anything that has been built in the last few years becomes absolutely suspect. So the bigger the regulation the bigger the risk. That is actually what has happened. As we have regulated and regulated our industries including the building industry we have ended up with more leaky homes. We have ended up with more people who have homes that are totally unsatisfactory. We have more expensive homes and what we do not have are more people owning their own homes. 
I can recall no time in our history in New Zealand when we have had a smaller proportion of people who own their own homes. We were a home-owning country and now we are turning into a country of flatters and renters. Why that is so important is that when people buy a home they buy into a community. As part of that their children buy into a community. They get some stability. They get the ability to be in the same school. They do not get the transience that often happens with rental properties. 
One of the problems that I see which is totally not addressed by this bill is the fact that this bill will put the cost of building up. It will not increase the quality of building. It will however put the cost of building up. As was noted one of the most absurd situations is the fact that people will have to seek consent to re-putty the glass around their windows. Why? Because of course that relates to weathertightness. The fact is that if they left it that would be fine. It could leak all it liked. But should they go to re-putty it and fix it they have to get consent because they might be disadvantaged without some sort of consent. 
What I think is really really stupid in this bill is the fact that the Government simply will not listen. We have on the select committee my colleague Bob Clarkson who knows more about building than anybody in the House and everybody in the House put together. He is the person who is the expert on building. Bob Clarkson knows building. What do the Government members do? Do they want to have a talk to Bob Clarkson? Do they listen to Bob Clarkson at the committee? No. All they do is try to score funny little points and laugh about it. 
What is very very worrying for the people of New Zealand who actually care about this issue is the fact that they cannot afford to buy their home their children cannot afford to buy their own home and that people who have worked all their lives and are in their 40s cannot afford to buy their own home. That is what concerns them. They do not think it is a laughing matter. They would like to hear from people like Bob Clarkson. They would like to know how they can get their homes more cheaply and they would like to know why it is that in this Parliament when things go wrong there is a desperate need to regulate everything.