Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill

On the Thursday prior to the Easter break we were debating the Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill, which, after all, should be called the “Building Act Amendment Bill”. The National Party will oppose this legislation, as much as anything because of the disastrous process the legislation is being afforded. This debate will finish sometime this afternoon, 29 March. The Government proposes then to send it to the Government Administration Committee, which meets on the morning of Thursday, 31 March. Yet the Minister has insisted that the bill be reported back to the House immediately after that one select committee hearing.

💬 Simon Power: That can’t be right.

That is right. That is the sort of devious, dodgy tactic this Government gets up to. It knows it has made a complete fiasco of the building industry over the last 5 years and is so embarrassed by this bill that it has dreamt up a name that does not even tell the public of New Zealand what it is about. It has dreamt up a process to send the bill to a select committee, at which time I have no doubt that the officials will grovel before the select committee members to apologise for the mess they made with the Building Act, which was passed only in November of last year. Immediately the bill will be rushed back before the House, without anybody from the building industry being given the opportunity to comment on it.

Parekura Horomia shakes his head in horror. He did not realise as he sat around the Cabinet table that this is the sort of dodgy process the Labour Government has come up with, after getting the building industry into such a fiasco. We have only just finished question time, where we had the disastrous situation of Nick Smith wanting to ask a question of the Minister for Building Issues, the Hon Chris Carter. As a means of avoiding further embarrassment, the Leader of the House, Dr Cullen, took the unusual step of switching the question to George Hawkins, who is the Minister of Internal Affairs. Mr Hawkins got to his feet and clearly showed the House, including Dr Cullen, that he does not have a clue about this portfolio area. The answer given by Mr Hawkins was that the question should have gone to the Minister for Building Issues in the first place, which is exactly what Nick Smith had tried to do.

With the introduction of the Building Act, the Government attempted to take the leaky homes debacle off the front page of the New Zealand Herald. That was after Helen Clark had cynically referred to the issue of leaky homes as something that only the New Zealand Herald was beating up. I say to the House, and particularly to Government members, that the unfortunate owners of leaky homes are seeing their very equity erode before their eyes. Nick Smith brought to the attention of the House today the case of a couple who are effectively bankrupt because the Government has refused to address adequately this all-important issue. Talk about shifting chairs on the deck of the Titanic! We have now had nine Ministers in charge of building and construction. With people like George Hawkins, Steve Maharey, Margaret Wilson, John Tamihere, and even dear old Jim Anderton as a former Minister, it is little wonder that this issue has not been resolved.

But the thing I take exception to the most is the way this legislation was rushed into the House. It was not even taken to the Business Committee, for the committee to learn what it was all about before it was tabled on the Thursday before the Easter break. The legislation was given the absolute guillotine to go to the select committee for no more than 3 hours, which means that nobody in the building industry will have the chance to make any submission at all before it will be rushed back into the House and passed surreptitiously, simply because the Government is totally embarrassed by the mess it made of the Building Act 5 months ago. The Government was warned at the time that the Building Act would not work. It was warned that there were mistakes peppered right throughout the legislation. The Government chose to ignore those warnings. All that the Government wanted to do was cynically remove the issue of leaky homes out of the headlines and leave the people with leaky homes to continue to suffer.

The process that the Government is embarking on is an outrage. It is as bad a process as I have seen in 10 long years in this House. The Government should send the bill to a select committee, open it up for submissions, and let it be examined correctly. But most of all, the public of New Zealand should be allowed to realise the embarrassing situation that the Government has created around the whole of the building industry, and particularly the leaky homes issue.

Two sets of crocodile tears flowed from the National Party list MP David Carter. The first related to the number of Ministers who have been responsible for building issues over the term of this Government. He did not appear to like the fact that there has been a change of responsibility across several Ministers during this time. That would be fine on its own, except for the huge irony that David Carter is the only Opposition spokesman in Parliament to have been sacked from the front bench twice. So David Carter, who has gone forwards and backwards, then forwards and backwards again, has the audacity to get up in Parliament and complain about the number of Ministers who have been responsible for this area.

We have taken building issues extraordinarily—

💬 Hon David Carter: I never got sacked for lying.

The member says that he never got sacked from his area. He used to be the MP for Banks Peninsula, but he got sacked from that job by the Hon Ruth Dyson.

So that was the first set of crocodile tears. The second set of crocodile tears from the Hon David Carter came in this form: he said that the select committee would not get enough time to consider this legislation. Mr Carter was last on his pins in the sitting week before Parliament adjourned for Easter. If he had sat down just 30 seconds before the House rose, this bill could have gone to the select committee for 10 days of submissions and consideration, which is more than it will get now. So, with two instances of crocodile tears, David Carter has shown himself to be totally opposed to the very points that he tried to make in his speech.

This is a very straightforward bill that makes three key amendments to three Acts—

💬 Hon David Carter: What’s the intent?

I will tell the member what it means, as he has not read the bill. The Building Act, the Commerce Act, and the Health Act all require those bits of information to be available free of charge on the Internet. Clearly that will not be appropriate from the point of view of intellectual property rights, so the Government wants to seek the permission of Parliament to send the bill to the select committee to consider.

I support the first reading of the bill, and I am only sad that the National Party’s crocodile tears did not allow for proper consultation with the public.

After that very brief speech from the soon-to-be-disposed Darren Hughes from Otaki, I will get to the heart of the issue. My colleague Mr Carter was very right to address the issue. Five working days ago—that is all it has been—this legislation was introduced to the House without any warning or justification, and we were told it would be reported back by 31 March. That is 12 working days—that is all—for the first reading and the select committee process.

We were asked to buy into that. Well, the Opposition parties did not buy into it, and when it became apparent that the junior Government whip had made a complete balls-up of the process, he wandered over to the Opposition benches and said: “Look guys, why don’t we lift the House so we can all go home early for Easter?”, which would have ended the debate. We did not come down in the last shower like that junior member did. We said: “Go away sunshine, you are making a noise. We are not buying into this. No way.” We would not allow that member and the Government to abuse the democratic process of this House in that way. We said: “No thanks.”, to him—actually, the response was a little more curt than that, but he got the gist of what we were saying.

When things are done in a hurry one gets an absolute mess. That is what this Government is trying to extricate itself from now, and it is asking all the Opposition parties to be complicit in trying to help it get out of this mess. We are trying to fix up the Building Act, because the Government is a slow learner. Not only is it rushing this piece of legislation through the House but it did exactly the same thing with the Building Bill, and now, here we are, 2 days before it is due to become law and Government members have egg all over their faces.

The other issue that I want to address, now that Minister Horomia has brought it to my attention, is the fact that there were nine Ministers who had this responsibility, and now two of them—and Mr Hughes, when he was on his feet, did not acknowledge this or why it happened—do not have their jobs any more.

Two of them have been fired by the Prime Minister for telling porkies. They got caught out. I tell the House that that is why he did not mention it—two of the Ministers have been fired for telling porkies, and they were caught out.

💬 Hon David Carter: Pinocchio tales.

That is too kind—she was a liar. She got caught in a lie and she has acknowledged it herself.

The other matter I want to raise is the sycophantic press release that the Minister put out thanking the United Future party for helping the Government pass this legislation. Is it not a pity that the United Future party was not just a little bit more discerning when it helped the Government pass the legislation in the first place? The great irony of the press release was that it stated that United Future wanted to ensure that builders had ready access to the standards for design and construction in a way that did not impose additional costs on the building industry—and the answer to that is that these designs cannot be put on a website any more, but the chief executive of the Department of Building and Housing says that they will be available in Wellington. Those members do not want to make it difficult for builders, and they do not want additional compliance costs—but the designs are available only in Wellington.

Builders in Whakatāne, or Leeston, or Southbridge, which is down my way, have been told that they have to drop their tools, jump in their trucks, drive to the airport, take out a $500 or $600 airfare, go to Wellington, forget about their clients, and have a look at the design systems on the noticeboard at the Wellington head office of the Department of Building and Housing, or whatever that department is called. I always thought it was a pretty strange name.

National warned the Government at the time that if the legislation was rushed through the House, compliance costs on compliance costs would be the result. This issue is now becoming so significant that compliance costs are starting to spiral out of control right across New Zealand. What do we get as a consequence? We have a 400-page piece of legislation with 380 knee-jerk clauses in reaction to what was essentially a leaky-home problem in a few houses in Auckland. It was a design problem. It was never a timber-treatment issue. But true to its colours, this Government, with the assistance of United Future in this instance, is dumping on the timber industry, and the industry is paying for it big time.

Essentially, by rushing this legislation through the House in the first instance, the Government has ignored private property rights. It is making a science of ignoring private property rights. Probably the best example I can quote—and I know Mr Carter will identify with this—is the land access issue that it is trying to bully through the House and on to every farmer across New Zealand right at the moment. This is just another example of how this Government ignores private property rights. The Government completely ignored copyright law when it drafted this legislation. What is happening is that overseas builders are able to access the designs—the intellectual property—of some of our best and brightest builders, and claim them as their own.

I wonder whether the Minister would be prepared to take a call and tell the House whether there are any legal actions pending against this Government. I would not be surprised to hear that some builders have, essentially, said: “You are responsible for our intellectual property being used or stolen overseas, and you should be held responsible.” The Government is now between a rock and a hard place. The legislation is about to become law in 2 days’ time, but the very component of publishing this material on the Government’s website means that it simply cannot do that legally, so it now has engaged in what is essentially smoke and mirrors. This industry has a turnover of $18 billion, and the Government does not have a clue. It has searched around for Minister after Minister—are we sure there are only nine? I lost count after seven.

💬 Hon David Carter: Nine was last Thursday.

There were nine at that point. Another one has probably been appointed since then. The Government is searching desperately to try to find a Minister who has some understanding of the building industry—but the trouble is that it does not have any Minister who has ever been in business, so it cannot satisfy the concerns of the building industry.

Members will remember the legislation, which was a forerunner of this legislation, that saw the end of the home handyman; the man who could build a house, or fix his own house, or build a shed in his own backyard. This Government has essentially put that icon of the New Zealand landscape behind us forever. What is more—and the United Future party can take some responsibility for this—the average cost of building a new house in New Zealand under the Building Act is approximately $7,000. That is a disgrace in anyone’s language, and it makes a real nonsense of the claim that United Future does not want to see any additional costs or compliance costs built into this type of legislation.

I conclude by repeating that if we do things in a rush, we end up in a mess. Here is a second piece of legislation, which is essentially an amendment to the principal Act, because the Government would not listen. It rushed legislation through the House in the first instance, and now here we are trying to fix it. We are doing it in such a way that we are making an abuse of the democratic process. How can we put legislation before a select committee for 3 hours only, expect to have widespread and public consultation, and have quality legislation as a consequence? It will not flow. This bill is a disgrace. It is legislation that the Government has got itself in a mess over. The National Party simply will not help it extricate itself from this mess, and, accordingly, our members do not support it.

We have just heard the member alleging concerns about the cost of building a house. The reason for this legislation is so that owners of copyright material, such as building standards, are not required to give that information free of charge. If we did not do it that way—if we were to fund it through central government or local government—then an increase in building consent fees would be required.

💬 Darren Hughes: That’s right. Yes, and they would whinge about that.

In fact, they would shout about that. Mr Connell loves shouting in this House.

This is actually very simple legislation. It is a very small bill that makes it clear that copyright information is protected—and I say to Mr Connell that copyright is a property right. Most people in the National Party understand that copyright is a property right that ought not be taken away without fair compensation by central government. As a consequence of a small technical mistake in the original bill, which was not picked up by National or by any other party in this House, those copyright rights were inadvertently taken away from the copyright holder. This legislation restores that property right to the copyright holder, yet we have the National Party ineffectually railing against it.

This is good legislation. I recommend it to the House.

on behalf of the Minister of Commerce: I move, That the Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill be referred to the Government Administration Committee for consideration, that the committee present its final report on or before 31 March 2005, and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time during a sitting of the House, except during questions for oral answer, during an evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 191 and 194(1)(b) and (c).

I notice that the Minister’s motion states that the committee can meet on a Friday. The report-back date is Thursday, 31 March and Friday is 1 April, the following month, so I would suggest that the Minister’s motion is out of order.

As the Standing Orders require, the Minister, on behalf of the Hon Pete Hodgson, has moved the referral motion exactly as Mr Hodgson foreshadowed it in the middle of March when the first reading of this bill was first considered by the House. So the Government is continuing with the motion that was originally signalled to the House at the beginning of the first reading debate. The calendar, as Mr Tisch quite rightly suggests, will change this week, but the motion must remain the same in order to comply with the Standing Orders.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member is correct, as I have been advised by the Clerk. Before I put the motion I have an amendment in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith, that all the words after the words “Government Administration Committee” be deleted.