Williams Andrew: Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 15 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:18054. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I am going to speak just a little bit on the area of the building supplies part of the Budget Measures (Miscellaneous Fiscal Matters) Bill in relation to the regulatory impact statement that was prepared in relation to residential construction materials. It is very interesting when you analyse this—the impact that it will potentially have on New Zealand manufacturers. It says in the regulatory impact statement: “One of the preferred options—to temporarily suspend the anti-dumping regime in relation to key construction materials—was not explicitly consulted on. It emerged as an option through the latest round of consultation which highlighted the potential for unforeseen effects on other sectors (beyond residential construction). The new option minimises this risk. MBIE”—the department of everything—“is comfortable that the consultation provided sufficient information to assess the risks costs and benefits of the additional option notwithstanding that it was not explicitly consulted on. Consultation on the final suite of proposed options has not occurred due to Budget sensitivity.”So here we have a Government policy that has had minimal consultation and that has a potential effect on other sectors beyond the residential construction industry. It has not been widely consulted on but the Government is hanging its hat on it saying that it is going to save $3500 per house.If you look further into the regulatory impact statement it then says: “Cost of residential construction—As indicated above our preferred options package would reduce the cost of a newly built 202m2 house by around $900.” I am seeing the figure $900 not $3500 Minister. Could the Minister please explain or is $3500 another figure that has popped out of the air? It says here “by around $900”. Then it says: “21300 new dwellings were consented throughout New Zealand in 2013. If a similar number of consents are issued in 2014 and each saved $900 the total savings would be $19170000.” Well that is interesting because today Fletcher Building has already had $75 million knocked off its capitalisation. So the Government is doing a good job here. It is saving $19 million over the industry but it has managed to knock $75 million off Fletcher’s in one day.Further in the regulatory impact statement it says: “Dumping can be remedied by the imposition of anti-dumping duties at the border to ‘level the playing field’. Since 1990 anti-dumping duties have not been applicable to imports from Australia.” which is fair enough. Under CER you would not expect so. “Anti-dumping duties are currently applied to three construction materials: reinforced steel bar from Thailand; plasterboard from Thailand; and nails from China.”It is interesting that the regulatory impact statement refers to those three particular materials. It also refers to Winstone Wallboards bringing a case in 2011 in terms of plasterboard coming out of Thailand: “The investigation found that Thai plasterboard was being dumped that this was likely to continue and this would likely cause a recurrence of material injury to Winstone.” Secondly duties on wire nails from China were put in place. Again it was found that three New Zealand companies particularly were potentially being affected by this particularly the largest one Wireplus which had the largest market share. It says that Wireplus “had suffered material injury caused by dumped imports [of nails] from China.” So there are another three companies in New Zealand that are obviously now going to be feeling the heat of cheap questionable-quality materials from China.The third one was reinforcing steel bars and coils from Thailand. That was New Zealand’s Pacific Steel Group. Again in the case of Pacific Steel there was dumped steel coming out of Thailand which caused “material injury” to Pacific Steel. PacificSteel as many of us know is the biggest recycler of New Zealand metals in New Zealand. It takes a large amount of the recycled steel and cans and all sorts of aluminium—all sorts of stuff—in New Zealand that you put out in your recycling bins. A huge amount of that ends up at Pacific Steel it is melted down and put back into steel. Some of it does end up going into reinforcing and that sort of thing to go back into our construction industry. But this Government is quite happy to basically set Pacific Steel adrift in a leaky boat and say to it and the likes of—[Bell rung] Mr Chair—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The honourable member Andrew Williams.ANDREW WILLIAMS: Thank you very much Mr Chair. Mr Goff you can have your call in a minute.It is interesting. These companies are iconic companies like Pacific Steel in New Zealand like Winstone Wallboards and like the other companies making plasterboard. It is interesting that this Government which is so close with the Chinese—well it is because it has got Ministers going up to China every second week having lovely private dinners and having all sorts of things in China. It is so close with China and obviously with some of these other places that it is very happy to sell our New Zealand companies our iconic New Zealand companies down the river leave them out in the cold for the next 3 years and watch cheap nasty nails coming in from China and perhaps wallboard coming in from Thailand which might look good on the wall for the first 6 to 12 months but a year later when it is all cracking and with no warranties and guarantees—Paul Goldsmith: Oh!ANDREW WILLIAMS: —what is it going to be like then Mr Goldsmith? And when the shoddy steel reinforcing goes into the concrete floors and in 5 to 10 years we see it all rusting and bowing and concrete floors cracking in New Zealand—a bit like the leaky homes that the National Government gave us—what are we going to say then? “Oh well we saved $900 per house and we saved $19.7 million but boy we’ve got a bit of a problem in our construction industry because we’ve got a lot of shonky unwarranted products in the market that also possibly put a lot of our good hard workers in some of these industries in New Zealand down the road because the sales of their products went downhill.”Well I am sorry but New Zealand First does not support that. We do not think it stacks up. New Zealand First stands for putting New Zealanders first and we will continue to put New Zealanders first. We will certainly not abandon the manufacturers in New Zealand.