Williamson Maurice: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading 
Williamson Maurice: Building Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading 
[Volume:678;Page:915] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction) 
: 
 I move  
That the Building Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a third time 
. I moved the original bill back in I think it was November of 2010 and I am pleased to see it having gone through its various gestations through to the Local Government and Environment Committee—which did quite a bit of work and I thank it for that—finally here on the floor of the House for its final reading. 
I want to stress that this bill is the first element in a package of reforms that the Government intends to bring through to achieve improvements overall in the building and construction sector. So I know there will be comments from the Opposition when it speaks that this bill is piecemeal but I want those members to know that this is only one piece of a very large jigsaw. I think it was Lianne Dalziel who said you could not build a house without having all the blocks. Well actually you can. You can build the foundations without having the walls you can then put the walls up without having the roof and you can put the roof on at the end. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: I didn’t say that. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Oh all right then it was not—then it was not. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: It was Annette. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Oh it was Annette King. It was Annette King—I apologise. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: She was always much more intelligent than me. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Well I was going to say the more—no I will get myself into trouble whichever way I go. 
So we have embarked on the reforms and I would have loved to do it as one whole bill. But the fact is that some things need to be done almost immediately some can be done in the medium term and there are some things like the liability stuff that we have put off to the Law Commission for some work—moving from joint and several liability to a different form of liability. It might be to do with proportion or it might be something else but it is going to happen. I say to the members of the Opposition you can use the word “piecemeal” as you like; I am happy to say that this is one building block. 
A productive building and construction sector is indeed critical to the building of this nation and in fact to the rebuild of Christchurch. I think one thing members need to know in this House is that the building and construction sector contributes just about as much to our GDP—in fact almost identical—as agriculture does so it is important. Let me state what the Government’s goal is: it is to have a more efficient and productive sector that stands behind the quality of its work. That is pretty much motherhood and apple pie but how would you do that? 
Well first of all we need a sector with the necessary skills and capability to build it right first time and one that takes pride in its work. Too often I have been to building sites and heard people say: “Oh she’ll be right. If there’s anything wrong with it we will come back and fix it.” and frankly getting it right the first time and taking a pride in your work will be a vital part of the new reforms. 
We need a sector that delivers good quality affordable homes and buildings and contributes to the prosperity of the economy not buildings that need to be rebuilt as we have had for many years now; a well-informed sector that shares information and quickly identifies and corrects problems; a sector where everyone involved in the building work knows what they are responsible for and what they can rely on others for—and those accountabilities and responsibilities being laid out are a vitally important part of this reforms package—and finally consumers in the sector making informed decisions and understanding the risks and consequences of those decisions because there is an element of consumer responsibility. 
I went to a house that some builders showed me that was leaking badly and then they showed me that the spoutings were blocked locked and stocked full of leaves. The homeowner had done nothing in terms of clearing them and the water had nowhere to go but pour back inside the house. So there is an element of homeowner responsibility as part of the overall package as well. 
The current system is not broken—I admit that—but it is badly dented and it does need some quite good fix-ups. So it is about creating the right incentives to improve productivity by making sure that the people who build it as I said build it right the first time. The Government is going to ensure that as much red tape as necessary can be removed from the sector but actually it is adding some new red tape. I hear Labour going on about: “Oh Maurice Williamson is into the free market deregulation.” but I am actually adding some new regulations and some new rules—for example the licensed building practitioner scheme where carpenters and designers will actually have to have qualifications and you will not just be able to have a cellphone a dog and a ute and go out and start building houses. 
The Government has no interest in deregulating at the cost of health and safety standards or at the cost of building shoddy buildings. Quality of building work must come first and all of the reforms that we are embarking on—including this bill; the Building Amendment Bill (No 4) which has already been introduced in this House; and another piece of legislation later on this year—are vitally important building blocks for getting this sector right. 
The Building Act of 2004 will be amended to make it clearer that the buck stops with the people doing the work. The bill will also change the current building consent process to allow for risk-based consenting. I say to members that I think this is common sense. I would hope that everybody agrees with this—that there is a range of risks from building a very simple timber-framed maybe two-bedroomed gottage up to building a multi-storeyed multiple materials unbelievable design with all sorts of weird and wacky bits. There is a different level of risk associated with it and yet under the current building regime—and it has been there for a long time—we have had a one-size-fits-all approach. The same level of consenting scrutiny goes on when the application is made and the same number of inspections are made at the site for those buildings regardless of their risk. 
 Moving to that risk-based consenting I say that it will reduce compliance costs. As for those simple little projects my hope is eventually once we have got enough of a licensed building practitioner pool of resources working there may be even quite a bit of work at the very very low end of the risk curve that will not need consenting at all. It will also provide incentives for builders and designers to ensure that they have the necessary skills because if they do not they will—actually as of 6 days ago—not be legally allowed to do it because the licensed building practitioner regime became mandatory. 
The new risk-based consenting system will allow owners to apply for different types of building consents based on the risk of the work done rather than the current one-size-fits-all approach as I have said. The risk-based consent system will not however come into force immediately. It will not actually come into force until we have some confidence about the quality of building work that can be maintained out there so a lot of this stuff will be triggered by a regulation and it will be triggered by that regulation only once there is some confidence about the industry. 
The Government has identified a number of preconditions that will tell us whether we are on the right track and we will activate the new types of risk-based building consent only once those preconditions are met. On 1 March it did become mandatory to use a licensed building practitioner to carry out restricted building work. Some of the provisions in this bill relate to the licensed building practitioner scheme. The bill will amend the Act to be explicit about the standard of behaviour expected from people working in the sector. Good standards of behaviour will help to restore confidence of the public back in the sector. A code of ethics will be developed as part of the licensed building practitioner scheme and licensed building practitioners will be able to be disciplined for breaches of that code or other behaviour that brings the scheme into disrepute to the point of actually losing their licence—to the point of actually losing their licence. 
The final key change included in this bill is an exemption from that restricted building work for the do-it-yourselfer. We have always believed on this side of the House that we should allow people who want to build their home to do so but it will be recorded against the property so that anyone buying in the future will know it. Do-it-yourselfers will be allowed to do only one every 3 years because as I said in the Committee of the whole House in South Australia it was found they would just build then sell build then sell and some were doing six to eight a year and making out it was do-it-yourself. Genuine do-it-yourselfers will have nothing to fear. Further we need to prevent unlicensed builders from flying under the radar by making out that they are do-it-yourselfers and that will happen. 
During its consideration of the bill the Local Government and Environment Committee heard a lot of submissions and I want to make a comment about that because I know that Raymond Huo has gone on about how a lot of those making submissions were opposed to the bill. Well I will tell you that people who said they made submissions with some concerns such as that the bill is piecemeal are fully supportive of this legislation. I would like Raymond Huo to tell us who it is who now opposes it. 
The Registered Master Builders Federation supports this. The Certified Builders Association supports this. The Building Industry Federation supports this. The Construction Industry Council supports this. All of the major suppliers of product and material from Fletcher’s to Carters support it. So when Raymond Huo says they came to the select committee opposing it I say that yes they came saying they had some concerns about it not all being done as one package but I want Mr Huo to name just one major operation today—one—that is opposed to this legislation. If he can do that I will be really interested to hear the name of it of one—just one Mr Huo—that is opposed to it. 
I think this is great legislation. It is a good step in the right direction. It is a building block to getting our building industry back in some public confidence. I commend the bill to the House.