Cosgrove Clayton: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Cosgrove Clayton: Building Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:643;Page:13270] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Minister of Immigration) 
: 
 Without the puffery hot air and overexpended energy of the previous speaker Nick Smith I will address some of the issues in Part 2 of the Building Amendment Bill. 
I will start by addressing some of the points that Dr Smith raised. He talked about transitional provisions and about additional impost on local authorities. He said that this bill is basically all about leaky buildings that Dunedin has only three leaky buildings and therefore we should do nothing. It is interesting that in this debate tonight the Opposition has taken its usual stance: oppose everything propose nothing. Those members propose nothing because they have nothing and because they have no idea. 
That member Nick Smith talked about the accreditation scheme and why we are auditing and accrediting local authorities. There are a couple of basic reasons. It is because local authorities said to us and building inspectors said to other people and to me when I was the Minister that they were doing things like drive-by inspections. The Waitakere City Council was a good example of that with the famous case of the house of Colleen Dicks where the inspector signed off the house as being weathertight but there was a big yellow thing called the sun coming through the roof because a big hunk of roof was missing. To this day the builder says that he built a weathertight home because the building inspector signed it off as such and poor old Colleen Dicks wears it. The truth is that local authorities some through the best of intentions were charging for but not delivering an A1 building consent process. Dr Smith also—quite rightly fair go; I do not often give him a fair go because he does not deserve it but I will on this point—said that there are delays in building consents and a lack of efficiency. 
What we have are two alternatives. We can go to the organisations and say that they are not delivering on time. We can as Dr Smith wanted to do put a penalty on the organisations so that if they do not deliver on time we drop the hammer. Dr Smith proposed a bill to this effect. I think it was called the free consent bill or the 20-day rule. Ms Tolley will know because her chairman wrote it in a National Party newsletter that Dr Smith’s own National Party called that member and his bill “daft”. I will leave it there because I can do no better than the description Dr Smith’s own National Party colleagues called him and his bill. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Did not! 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: They did and I tabled it. He thinks he can make it up. 
What we do with an organisation is to say— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: You’re just lying like you normally do. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I take offence at that member. He used an offensive term and I would ask for him to withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I take offence. This Minister is a guy who can dish it out but who cannot take it. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: What is the point of order? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: The point of order is this. The Minister made an offensive remark about me and I would ask him to withdraw and apologise. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: No I quoted a document. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: He did not quote the document. That is simply untrue. I have taken offence. I have done the honourable thing and have withdrawn and apologised. I say that the Minister should do likewise. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I think the member has a point there. Obviously on a point of order he has taken offence. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Thank you. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I will table a document later tonight that will prove that member for what he is. In that document is the word “daft”. It refers to his bill it is from the National Party and it was penned by the member Ms Tolley’s chairman. That is a fact. 
But moving on if we have an organisation that is inefficient we go in and we try to solve the problem. We ask whether it has enough people and resources. If it has as many local authorities have a 100 percent increase in building consents but it does not put on one more inspector or maybe one more typist to type up the consent documents so that the inspectors can go out and give code compliance and those sorts of things then it has like any organisation that does not have enough resources a problem. And yes it is true that councils like the one in Palmerston North realised they had a problem. It has new technology and it has gone from 12 to 20 staff. In Manawatu the local authority has said it is getting out of providing consents; it wants to contract to the Palmerston North Council which has the resources and the efficiency. That is what we do. We do not propose a daft bill. We look at the organisation and we attempt to deal with that. 
If one does drop the axe as that member did and say that a late consent is a free consent what one fails to understand among many things is that the costs for that free consent are not visited on the person who wants the consent to build the house they do not disappear into the ether. I know that the member has a limited understanding of cost accounting and economics but those costs do not disappear into the ether. They are visited on every other ratepayer. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. The member who is speaking happens to be a Minister and I have been really enjoying the opportunity to debate my bill to deal with late consents. But my point of order is that despite the fact that I would love to debate the bill that I introduced we are debating Part 2 of this Building Amendment Bill and very sadly—although I would be happy to include it—it does not actually include my bill to deal with late consents. In fact there is no mention in clause 92 clause 93 clause 94 or clause 95 of that late consents bill yet the Minister has given members a 5-minute diatribe on a bill that was debated by Parliament some 6 months ago. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: That is correctly raised on a matter of procedure in the Chamber. I did mention when we commenced this part that its four clauses are to do with validations and transitional provisions. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: I would be happy to comply. I suppose what I was attempting to do was to talk about the same issues that Dr Smith mentioned in his own—as he puts it—diatribe. 
But the point about this is that yes there are costs in some of these measures and these transitional provisions will have a cost but no this is not just about leaky buildings. This is to ensure that this whole Act and the amendments to it—because we amend Acts to improve them of course—will secure good building standards and good local authority standards for homeowners so that they can rely on those standards when building what will usually be their biggest asset. 
I will leave Dr Smith with this question. I opened my address by saying that he as usual in his own bizarre energetic way—to put it tactfully—has simply opposed every clause in the bill. That is what he is good at. It is the sign of a man who is hollowed out. He has never once proposed an alternative to Part 1 or to all the things he criticises. He has never proposed one item to amend Part 2. He has never stood there and given members his policy or said what he would do in terms of the validation provisions. It is simply a sign of a hollowed out man from a hollowed out party. He is bereft of ideas but is a man who can stand up and in an energetic mega sort of fashion while going red in the face and with his hair standing on end have a go to oppose any legislation. I invite the Committee to really reflect on his contribution tonight—or the lack of it as we have seen time after time.