Energy Safety Review Bill

I move, That the Energy Safety Review Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Energy Safety Review Bill be considered by the Commerce Committee.

The Government is committed to the safe delivery and use of electricity and gas. This bill is designed to ensure that the safety regime for the supply and use of electricity and gas most effectively protects members of the public, and protects property. It also provides for the occupational regulation of electrical workers, gasfitters, plumbers, and drainlayers as a particular means of delivering electricity and gas safety outcomes, recognising that health objectives are essential and that plumbing and drainlaying make a major contribution to their achievement.

I want to reassure members that the current electricity and gas safety regimes and occupational regimes for electrical workers, gasfitters, plumbers, and drainlayers generally work very well. Improvements are necessary to provide for efficient and robust regimes whereby consumers can have confidence in the work done by licensed workers, and where unsafe work can be quickly remedied and deterrent penalties taken. Consequently, this bill will amend the Electricity Act 1992, the Gas Act 1992, the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992, and the Ministry of Energy (Abolition) Act 1989, and replace the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Act 1976.

Safety is the main focus of the bill. The major change that the bill brings is to move to a competency-based licensing regime for electrical work, gasfitting, sanitary plumbing, and drainlaying. To become licensed, workers will need to meet competency standards. They will need to update their competence as a condition of licence renewal. Equipment, standards, and regulations continue to change and it is no longer sufficient to assume that qualifications gained as an apprentice are adequate for a lifetime of work in the trade.

Worker licences will continue to be issued by licensing authorities: either the Electrical Workers Licensing Board or the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board. Those boards will be able to designate classes of licence and to specify the work that may be done under those licences, as well as the minimum standards for licensing. They will also have an enforcement role, ensuring that complaints are investigated and taking disciplinary action where necessary.

The bill also allows for each board to delegate to the other the power to issue licences. For example, this will give the potential for plumbers who meet the competency requirements to gain or renew their licences for both plumbing and specified electrical work from the board. This recognises the increasing need for multiskilled people, for example, installing a hot water cylinder where both electrical and gas work may be necessary.

Along with licensing, a register of licensed tradespersons is to be established. This will enable members of the public to obtain information about licensed workers. This register will also facilitate the licensing authorities in their administrative and disciplinary functions. For large employers of energy workers, the employer licensing scheme is retained as an alternative to licences held by individual workers, with some improvements. Changes to the regime are that employer licences are to be issued by the boards; employer licence requirements are satisfied if a recognised person certifies the compliance of the system of operation; and a greater range of sanctions are available in the event that an employer licence has failed to comply with any term or condition of the licence.

In the electricity and gas supply sectors, a new requirement is introduced for owners to implement and maintain safety management systems that ensure that the supply system does not present a significant risk of serious harm to any member of the public or significant damage to any property. The precise scope and nature of the safety management systems will be specified in regulations.

Other steps to improve safety include extending the special powers of the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Economic Development to require any person to remove or minimise an electrical or gas related danger or potential danger. This includes the production of documents and the supply of information to assist the removal of that danger.

The bill will also simplify accident notification. Under present legislation, if an accident comes under both the Health and Safety in Employment Act and the Electricity Act or the Gas Act, it has to be notified to two separate agencies. The bill will simplify this so that such accidents will have to be notified only once.

Finally, there are new offences, including offences in respect of a person intentionally or negligently creating a risk of serious harm or significant property damage, and offences in respect of breaches of occupational licence conditions. Penalties for serious harm to a person or serious harm to property have been increased to reflect those in the Health and Safety in Employment Act.

This bill will give the public confidence in the work done by electrical workers, gasfitters, plumbers, and drainlayers, and will provide workers with a consistent scheme that encourages competency and safety for themselves and their customers. As a former tradesman, I am pleased that this bill is finally before the House, and I commend it to the House.

I look forward to discussing this bill in some detail. No doubt the Government would have secured the numbers for the bill to proceed to a select committee, but the National Party will not be amongst those numbers. I met in my electorate last night with a large number of master plumbers, and they are extremely concerned about this bill, and there are a number of reasons why. Whilst the plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers of New Zealand have no difficulty whatsoever with upskilling and keeping themselves ahead of trends, and with being on top of their game, as it were, they are deeply concerned about the nature of the competency-based licensing system, the relevancy of the courses that are being offered—

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: They still control that.

No, I tell Mr Duynhoven that the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board controls it, actually, not the plumbers themselves. The board is not an industry-based organisation, and it is a serious misfortune of this bill.

The tradespeople on the ground are telling me that the courses have to be relevant. They do not consider that the courses currently prescribed fall into that category. In front of me I have a copy of a letter from the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board dated January of this year, outlining some of those course credits. They are extraordinary. These are not matters that busy tradespeople should be wasting their time having to undertake in order to satisfy yet another regulatory body that is interested only in its own survival and not the welfare of its members.

Courses such as “Personal Skills Needed to Stay in Business” are offered for 10 credits each. These modules include such essential courses as “Getting Your Message Across”, “Networking and Establishing Business Relationships”, “Negotiation Skills”, and things like “Conflict Resolution”. The tradespeople at the Masonic Hotel last night told me that the biggest problem with this type of regulation is the cost that will be incurred by the tradespeople in having to attend courses that are valid only for 12 months—they have to be redone every 12 months—whereas, previously, a tradesperson who has his or her trade registered is in the trade for good.

It is exactly the same as in the legal profession. If a member of a profession or a trade establishes himself or herself as competent in a particular area, there is no good reason why he or she should be put through those sorts of hoops.

The big problem is that the people who will end up wearing the cost of this are the consumers. The consumers will end up wearing the costs of those tradespeople having to attend those courses. I am told by the New Zealand Society of Master Plumbers and Gasfitters Inc. that they were not told of the changes to its Act. They were not involved in any prior consultation about the bill.

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: That’s not true.

I tell Mr Duynhoven that the board may well have been involved, but the association itself, and those people on the ground, were not, and they told me that directly last night. But most important, and it was raised a number of times at the public meeting last night, the legislation—the administration of the plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers legislation—will be shifted from the Ministry of Health to the new Department of Building and Housing.

Now, these people have told me that the major reason that plumbers prefer to be under the Health Act, and working with the Ministry of Health, is that they see their role as being one of providing sanitary conditions for people to dwell in. They do not want to be part of a new department that was created because of the leaky building crisis. Those people told me last night that they believe that their role in providing sanitary arrangements for people dwelling in homes is of the utmost importance.

It is a problem, when it becomes clear that the new legislation is actually creating more problems than it is worth. I am told that when gasfitters were put in this position, those who had been in the profession for a long time would be of the view just simply to throw their hands up and say: “This is all too hard; all I want to do is get on with the business of practising my trade.” Instead, a whole new regulatory regime of 181 pages arrives at the doorstep of self-employed people who just want to get on with the business of running their trades. These are self-regulatory arrangements whereby it is pretty obvious if somebody in the trades is not doing the job. These industries and trades have their own ways of sorting these matters out.

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: Is that not how we got the leaky buildings syndrome?

That is exactly the point, Mr Duynhoven. These people were not involved in that, so stop treating them as if they were. Let them get on with the business of running their own trades properly and constructively. I have to say that the Government has badly misjudged this legislation, and will get it badly wrong when the plumbers and tradespeople front to the select committee—presumably the Government has stitched the numbers—and it is a major problem as far as they are concerned. I was extremely surprised, when I was asked to front at the meeting last night, to hear their concerns about this legislation. They feel completely disempowered by the process, and were completely ignored as this legislation was drafted.

So National will not be voting for this legislation to proceed. We reserve the right to watch very carefully how this Government, and 180 pages of regulation, gets its fingers into the business of good, hard-working New Zealanders who just want to get on with the business of practising their trade.

That speech was done in ignorance on behalf of the National Party. I too have met with plumbers in my electorate who are very successful business people. In fact, one of them was Business Person of the Year, and he has 50 plumbers working for him. It was very interesting to hear about his relationship with the board and its members, whom he knows and works with.

I chaired the committee that looked at weathertightness of buildings, and I must say that for too long in this country we had a system of deregulation whereby tradespeople were working in a totally deregulated industry. We had the leaky building syndrome, and I think the previous speaker has forgotten that George Chapman, whom people here know—

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: National Party president.

He was a National Party president. He chaired the Building Industry Authority and ignored all the instructions and advice he was given in regard to leaky buildings. Labour then had to clean up National’s mess—again. Deregulation created that problem, and no matter how much members opposite shout and jump up and down it was a problem we inherited. Indeed, there were multiple problems, but a lot of them were to do with deregulation.

This bill has been discussed with plumbers, and in talking with them we find they are in communication with their board. I agree that various plumbers have spoken to the board saying that some of the courses it has come up contain stuff that is not considered necessary in plumbing. The plumbers will be making submissions to the select committee. They will be talking with their own board and asking who thought that bit up. It is very good that they are in communication with their board. I look forward to hearing submissions from people who actually know what they are doing and what is required.

The previous speaker, Simon Power, referred to electricians, houses, and sanitary conditions. The arguments presented are not part of the bill. It does not say what ministry the plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers will come under. I do not know who Mr Power has been talking to. Obviously, he—

💬 Simon Power: Read George Verry’s letter. Get familiar with it.

The member has not read the bill. He has had his 10 minutes. Shouting will not cover up the fact that he has not read the bill. The argument put forward by plumbers and drainlayers about sanitary conditions was not about houses and buildings. Some of those people lay drains that are nowhere near houses and buildings, and that is what they were talking about in terms of health. When Mr Power next meets with plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers he should listen to what they are saying, listen to what their board has said, and take note of the actual job. He should not come to this House and say things that are not consistent with what the people in the industry are saying.

I thank Harry Duynhoven for the work he has done and the consultation that went on. We look forward to some very, very good submissions in that regard. I thank all those who have been involved in the process towards regulating for energy safety. The Energy Safety Review Bill is practical and workable, and will give some certainty to the people involved.

Over many years I have had quite some dealings with electricians in particular, with drainlayers, and, certainly, with plumbers, and, speaking personally, I have not had one reason to complain against any of them. They have all been willing, hard-working people who were on top of their job. When I saw this bill—and this is the view of New Zealand First—I wondered why we needed to have a bill of 181 pages—[Interruption] I listened to the Minister with interest, and I thought that there must be something here that indicates the industry is not quite as well run as perhaps it should be.

I think back to a year or so ago, when there was a programme on television. It was not Fair Go; there was—

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: Target.

The Minister has it. I watched that programme on occasions. I will say, for the benefit of those who are listening to this debate, that Target examined the activities of say, electricians one week, and plumbers another week—tradespeople in general, and motor mechanics on occasions—and put them to a test under a secret video-camera regime, usually in an empty house when the supposed client had gone out. On that programme on many occasions, as I recall it, electricians and other tradespeople—I do not want to pick just on electricians—[Interruption] I would not dare to do so now, Minister. There were tradespeople on that programme who clearly did not know what they were looking for, and who clearly were not doing the job that was expected of them. That was a consumer-type television programme, which clearly illustrated that there was a need to look at the qualifications of tradespeople in the areas outlined in this bill.

I will not take a long call. New Zealand First has read this bill, and we are concerned about aspects of it. It would be remiss of me to say that we thought it was all hunky-dory. But basically, we do believe there is a case to answer. Therefore, New Zealand First will support the referral of this bill to a select committee.

We have here a classic response from this Government to regulate and legislate. That is the only language it seems to know. Here are 181 pages of regulation for poor, hard-working plumbers, gasfitters, drainlayers, and electrical workers. That is unbelievable. I think we can actually refer to this bill as the “NCEA of Energy and Other Trades”. That is exactly what it is all about—the NCEA, from this Labour Government, applied to energy, plumbing, gasfitting, and drainlaying.

The very fact that Mr Duynhoven oversaw it should ring some alarm bells. I am told that he did. He should be ashamed of himself for bringing this bill to the House. I am not sure whether he ran it by his caucus, because there are probably even some members on that side who do not feel totally comfortable with it. I would be surprised if there were not one or two who did not feel totally comfortable with it, because this is all about more regulation from nanny State.

The last Labour member who spoke likened it to the response to the leaky building syndrome. That is the excuse that this Government throws up for everything it wants to regulate. We need more regulation because of the leaky home syndrome. We have already seen the nonsense of the Building Act, which this Government has imposed on the people of New Zealand. Now do-it-yourself Kiwi home renovators dare not even put on their leather aprons and tool kits, because, in essence, they will be breaking the law as soon as they touch anything. This Government has closed down the New Zealand homeowner’s long tradition of do-it-yourself. Many do-it-yourselfers do a splendid job but no, they will be knocked out by this Government. Now we see that extending that into all manner of other activities.

There is no established need for this legislation. We have tremendous plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers in this country. We have good sanitary standards. How many problems do we actually have? Members should talk to local governments around the country. We have an inspectorate system. People need permits for such things. What we have now is working fine. We are legislating for that 1 percent exception, who will have 181 pages of draconian regulation thrown at them.

We have already heard from National Party speakers who have consulted gasfitters, plumbers, and drainlayers in their electorates. Those tradespeople do not want this. They do not want a bar of it. They know that they are good tradespeople. They know that they can do their jobs. But oh no, nanny State under the Labour Government, supported by United Future, will bring this sort of legislation to the House.

Who pays for it? The consumer and taxpayer. The ACT party was actually formed from the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, because we represent consumers and taxpayers in this country. That is what ACT stood for when we first formed as a ginger group. We formed to fight this form of excessive imposition on New Zealanders through excessive regulation and costs. And where do the taxpayers come into it? What we will have is an army of bureaucrats and inspectors overseeing these sorts of regulations, and that will be paid for by the taxpayer. Again, the whole of New Zealand society suffers and labours under this sort of legislation, and I stress the word “labours”, because it is weighing this country down. We have far too much regulation of this nature and this ilk.

The ACT party will be opposing it. We will be standing alongside the National Party opposing this legislation. It is bad legislation. It should not even go to a select committee. There is no need for it, and no one from the Government benches has established a need for it. I challenge the next Government speaker to stand up and give us a reason for this heavy-handed regulation.

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: It’s called the EnergySafe programme.

We have just heard from the Minister. He is now telling us he has a jargon name for it. What is the name?

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: It is the EnergySafe programme, which we’ve been working on for years.

If this is about energy safety, why is it hitting all the plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers?

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: It’s about energy safety, and for years the industry has been doing the preliminary work on this.

What do plumbers and drainlayers have to do with energy?

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: What is gas, if not energy? It’s about energy safety.

He buys the jargon. That is the trouble: he sits in his big fat ministerial office and drives around in cars with padded leather seats. I see his ministerial car waiting for him at 10 o’clock every night—whoosh, he is off into the night in his chauffeur-driven car! Well, I have news for him. That is coming to an end. I say to Mr Duynhoven and all other Ministers on that side of the House that their days are numbered. They have only a few weeks left in those ministerial cars.

It is because of nonsense like this legislation that the public of New Zealand is saying overwhelmingly that it has had enough and it wants a change. There is that stench of a Government in decay. The public of New Zealand are saying they want a change. They have had enough of this nanny State, heavy-handed regulation. The ACT party will be instrumental in opposing this legislation, and it will be defeated, I am sure.

There are nights when I am quite grateful that I belong to United Future, a sensible, centre party, when I hear the rabid comments of members of the National Party and the ACT party on bills like this. It was quite amazing to hear Simon Power of the National Party rage about “180 pages of regulation”. I remind him that four professional groups are involved in this regulation—those overseen by the Electrical Workers Licensing Board and the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board. It works out to 45 pages per profession.

I would like Simon Power, who happens to be a lawyer, to contrast this bill with the bulky Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill, which his party desperately wants to get through, which is just for the legal profession and is just an addition to the existing law for that profession. In some ways he seems to show the rather smug and superior attitude of a lawyer, whose profession has a huge bulk of legislation in place—with, by the way, the total support and backing of the profession—looking down his nose at these groups and saying that they are just plumbers or just drainlayers. It is not a credible way to proceed in life.

That brings to mind something I remember very well. I have a good friend who is a radiologist and in his leisure time—his annual holidays—makes a habit of going to India and working amongst people in the slums. When he first came back he told me that when he was studying medicine a professor said to the class one day: “Just in case you guys studying medicine get too arrogant, I want to make the statement that plumbers and drainlayers have done more for the health of human beings on this planet than all the doctors put together.” My friend told me that they had all laughed the comment to scorn, but that now he had been in a part of the world with no decent drains or decent plumbing he had to conclude that it was no more than the simple truth. I ask National Party and ACT members to be a little more circumspect about sneering comments such as some of those we have heard tonight when it comes to people like plumbers and drainlayers, because on the whole—I agree with Peter Brown about this—they do a great job for us.

But I say to Peter Brown that there are some horror stories around. I have some friends who had a brand new house built. They shifted in and were very happy with it, but as the weeks went by, a terrible smell started to emerge from underneath the house. They finally got the local council inspector in to have a look, only to find that the plumber had connected their sewerage to a couple of pipes that went 2 metres and then stopped, and were open at the other end. That is the ultimate sort of disaster story.

Human nature being what it is, and so on, I think it is really ridiculous to say in 2005 that we do not need any regulation. I agree in spirit that we should minimise regulation or be light-handed. But it is quite interesting to see that the EnergySafe working party, which has been responsible for putting this bill together, represents 30 organisations and the four affected professions I have mentioned. The legislation has been drafted in extensive consultation with that group. Furthermore, as we all know, the bill will go from here to a select committee—it will do so, by the way, because United Future will support the bill—and the affected groups will all have another opportunity to come along and say their piece. That will be the right time to deal with any nitty-gritty issues that might arise.

So the bottom line for United Future is looking at the big picture. We think that this bill is a common-sense, sensible, centre measure. It is not new regulation; it simply updates and streamlines existing regulations. On that basis we are happy to lend it our support.

I rise to support the bill, which has been—[Interruption] My good friend Harry Duynhoven discussed this bill with us in the caucus, and in the caucus committee we had a thorough discussion of it. I am delighted to support this bill, and to recommend it to the House. I think I had better leave it there.

I point out that we do have some agreement on the Opposition side of the House that the select committee process is to be used to tidy up the loose ends of a bill, in order to get it perfect. But this bill is an example of the Hon Harry Duynhoven doing some very sloppy work, using the select committee to do all his homework, and thereby totally abusing the select committee process. He went in there with no consultation with the industry—none at all. There was no consultation with the tradespeople—master plumbers, gasfitters, or drainlayers. So the Minister sat around the table with his bureaucrats, drafted up this bill, which is full of compliance issues for those tradespeople, and has taken it to Parliament, where he is asking the select committee to do all the donkey work for him. I say to the “member for Amsterdam”, Harry Duynhoven, that he should do much more work as a Minister. He should consult people before he puts a bill through the select committee process, and he should do the work himself. In future I will keep a keen eye on the Minister, to make sure that other bills he introduces to the House are not as sloppy as this one is.

A number of issues have been raised with us as National MPs. It is not only middle New Zealand that has been contacting us, but plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers. They have been meeting with all the National Party MPs in their electorates, and asking us what we can do to this interim Government—with only 3 months left—to put a halt to this legislation, which will hurt their businesses irreversibly. First of all they talked about the issues around education. These are groups of tradespeople—professionals in their areas—who do not run from accountability or from professionalism. They believe in professional development. They believe in passing their skills down through the generations. They are not afraid of any of those things. Yet this Minister says that they have to go on education courses that will not help them at all in their trades or with their customers. Those courses will have viability for only a meagre 12 months, and then they will have to start the cycle again. So Harry Duynhoven would have tradespeople sit in classrooms, tick boxes, and hand in assignments, when we have a trades shortage in this country and we need those people to be out and about.

The second-largest issue that tradespeople have raised with us concerns their becoming subject to the Department of Building and Housing, rather than to the health legislation. I support what Mr Copeland said: that professional drainlaying, sewage control, and those sorts of initiatives all around the world have done more for the health of nations than anything else has done. Those trades should remain under the health legislation. I support the tradespeople on that. Why Harry Duynhoven wants to put those tradespeople under so much pressure, when there is demand for them right across New Zealand in the building industry and they are doing very, very well indeed, we have no idea. Why would Harry Duynhoven pick on tradespeople? It is quite simple: he has 9 to 12 weeks left in his ministerial chair, and he wants to make a mark. The “member for Amsterdam” wants to make a mark before he leaves his ministerial car at the door and goes back on to the back benches. I only wish that he had chosen to make his mark after he had done the homework and the legwork, instead of using the select committee to do all that for him.

We are quite concerned not just about drainlayers, gasfitters, and plumbers as individuals but also about the businesses they work in. We have an issue here. This bill—181 pages of it—will add more compliance costs to drainlaying, gasfitting, and plumbing businesses, which have already had those costs piled up on them over the last 5 or 6 years. Harry Duynhoven has laid an egg. He has given birth to 181 pages of bureaucracy, of regulation, and of compliance costs. I would have liked to see how red Harry Duynhoven became when he tried to push this legislation out, on to the Cabinet table. He would have become very red, indeed. Harry Duynhoven has given birth to 181 pages of regulation. It is no wonder that he has gone red. This legislation will hurt those businesses. It will hurt plumbers, and it will hurt all sorts of tradespeople. I can tell members that builders, electricians, fitters and turners, and motor rewinders—all sorts of tradespeople—across this country fear that Harry Duynhoven will get such a thrill out of giving birth to this legislation that he will be looking out for who is next.

💬 Simon Power: Builders are next.

Builders will be next, and then electricians. Harry Duynhoven will give birth to a thicket of regulation that will tie up engineers, electricians, and builders—good hard-working New Zealanders. That is what Harry Duynhoven wants to do. He wants to make his mark on this Parliament, and the way he feels he needs to do that is through words, and through giving the bureaucracy more jobs. He is building his own kingdom, and that is embarrassing because it reflects on us all in this Parliament. Not all of us can give good speeches like this one, but unfortunately the behaviour of Harry Duynhoven reflects on us all. He has given birth to 181 pages of regulation and compliance costs.

I would like to talk a little more about the clauses that deal with the legislation that drainlayers, gasfitters, and plumbers will come under. As I said before, I support Mr Copeland’s point. He said that drainlayers and those who deal in sewerage have done more for the world’s health than any other profession. It is quite amazing to think that that has happened over a millennium—1,000 to 2,000 years. It is quite a credit to those people that they managed to do it without Harry Duynhoven’s 181-page “how to do it” booklet. I am surprised that Minister Duynhoven, the “member for Amsterdam”, does not have pictures in this bill. We have 181 pages—a “how to do it” booklet. I bet the pharaohs and the plumbers who built the pyramids wished that they had had Harry Duynhoven’s compliance manual. I tell members that they would not have taken 1,000 years to build the pyramids. They would not have taken 100 years, or even 10 years. They would have been able to build a pyramid with this bill—there is so much paper. With this legislation, the pharaohs could have built a pyramid, and I believe that they could have done that no faster than in 3,000 years, by the time they had gone through this legislation and interpreted it.

Seriously, I do appeal to members. Over the last couple of thousand years, how is it that this secret society of tradespeople was able to survive and do a good job, without Harry Duynhoven’s legislation? I put that question on the floor. I ask members to respond to it, and I really encourage them to do so.

I am stunned by the last speech. There was such self-assurance and so little to be self-assured about. There was such incredible confidence and very little self-awareness. That was the member for Whangarei, Phil Heatley—

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: The temporary one.

He is a very temporary one because I understand that a young man called Paul Chalmers is doing extraordinary work up there as this member demonstrates why he should not be in Parliament.

The interesting thing about that speech was that for a period of time there the National Party’s spokesperson demonstrated one of the absolutely fundamental errors of the National Party at this moment on these sorts of issues. If I heard rightly, Phil Heatley argued that this bill was so badly prepared that members of the select committee will have to spend hours and hours doing the detail. Aside from that being absolute bunkum, I say to him that if he wants a really well-prepared bill—as I know this one to be—then what is required is an intelligent, dedicated, and well-resourced public service. These are the same public servants whom the National Party wants to cut. These are the same public servants, who are out there ensuring our safety by developing regulations and standards, whom that party wants to cut. This is the same public service that has put up a bill that does not need to be absolutely taken apart by the select committee, because it has been well delivered, with well-versed, well-thought-through arguments provided by the public service.

This is a bill about safety. It is a bill to protect workers. It is a bill to protect the public. It enables the public to recognise a licensed worker easily, by establishing publicly available registers. Is not that about accountability to the community? The bill provides for coordinated, fair, and transparent processes for handling complaints. Is not that about transparency, fairness, and safety for the community? The bill requires every owner of an electricity or gas supply system to implement and maintain a safety management system.

That is why I support the first reading of the Energy Safety Review Bill, and I deal with it with seriousness, not with flippancy and jokes about the Minister who put it forward. This is serious legislation about public safety. It is legislation that has been prepared, with integrity, hard work, and stamina, by public servants—the public servants that National wants to cut.

I take issue with the Minister’s claim that this board is being created for plumbers, drainlayers, and gasfitters, etc. This board is actually being created from the consumer’s viewpoint, and I would like the Minister to take a look at ElectroLink magazine, which is about safety in the electrical industry—which is, actually, the Government’s rationale for coming up with this multitude of paper in support of the whole compliance contingency around drainlayers and plumbers. In fact, the board is a consumers’ board. It is not a drainlayers’ and plumbers’ board, as the Minister likes to assert, and perhaps he would like to go back and have a look at his own paperwork to find out that fact for himself.

I want to look at the other reason for the promulgation of this bill. I say there has never been a demonstrated need for competence-based licensing requirements in this industry, because the record shows that for the year ended 2003 the board received 32 complaints. Is that a reason to go this far? I think not. After all, the industry has a perfectly good audit system in place, and it was working well. Everybody appreciated it, and most of the people involved in the industry accepted that audit process. So the board received 32 complaints and there are an estimated 9,000 tradesmen New Zealand - wide who complete 450 jobs per year, and that equates to about 4,050,000 jobs, and out of that there were 32 complaints. Where is the problem?

Another incorporated society of plumbers is advising its members that in order to meet the proposed compliance costs of the consumer board’s competence-based licensing proposal, they should add another $3.10 an hour to their charge-out rate. So let us look at the figures. What will this add to the invoice the consumer will receive? Well, $3.10 per hour, times 40 hours is $124, times 48 weeks is $5,900, times 9,000 tradesmen is about $53 million. That would be the cost to the country, but there were only 32 complaints last year. The Government thinks that is a good premise on which to put forward a bill of this magnitude.

Let us look at some of the costs that are being applied by the board. There are fees to accompany applications for registration, and it lists all the different registrations at $75 dollars each. There are fees for issue of a certificate of registration at $50, fees for issue of a licence at $75, and a fee for a provisional licence at $75. There is a fee for just about every imaginable contingency. The saving grace is that although the board requires an interim registration for an apprentice, it does not require the apprentice to pay the $75 fee. Wow! What generosity!

This bill gives the plumbers and drainlayers board a licence to print money, and who is going to be forking out that money? The drainlayers and plumbers are, and that is only the course fee. It does not anywhere near take into account the time away from work to do those courses, the travelling time involved, the cost of that travelling time, and the cost of accommodation if people have to stay overnight.

I have a letter from a plumber in my neighbourhood. He says that he has been upskilling and has had to take time off work to do that. He has completed some courses, and he thought they were pretty relevant to the work he was involved with. So he had several days off work and three nights away to complete the study and attend workshops and training courses. These included certificates of attendance for workshops on the new Building Act, the workshop agenda for the new Technical Publication No. 58, held by the Auckland Regional Council, covering on-site treatment and disposal of effluent, first aid certificate, among other things, which were New Zealand Qualifications Authority unit standards. So he has spent a lot of time, effort, and money on those sorts of things. He attended an all-day course on servicing Rinnai gas appliances. It was not until the day was over that he found out the board would not award credits, although with a few changes to the course, it now does.

So the board is pleasing itself about what it accepts. It makes the determination, and I see from the bill that, at the end of the day, one’s final recourse is to the courts. So if people really want to get some justice out of the system they have to take the board to court; and all the board members are appointed by the Minister. There is absolutely no involvement by the gasfitters, plumbers, or drainlayers. The Minister says, though, that this board is being created for them. No way is that the case. So perhaps he should be looking at the premise for actually making that claim. He says it is covered in the preamble to the bill but that certainly does not match up with the information that has been provided in a number of other forums. The drainlayers and plumbers whom I have spoken to are very clear that this board is being set up for consumers, not for plumbers and drainlayers. This bill is all about fleecing plumbers and drainlayers.

💬 Hon Pete Hodgson: No, it’s not.

It absolutely is. It will be interesting to know what the board will do with all that money and to see where it goes. As I was saying, that particular gentleman from my electorate has written to me. In previous years he has attended a number of other courses.

We have a shortage of tradesmen in this country. Their numbers have been declining over the years. I have talked to a few drainlayers and plumbers who are saying that they are not going to bother to register for a licence. They will just exit the industry. They have done their time. They have put in the hard yards, and in the face of this legislation they are saying they have had a gutsful. They are getting out of the industry. They are not going to bother any more, if they have to confront this type of hurdle in terms of compliance and costs. That is what it is. It is a huge amount of cost to these people and it is just another hurdle that they simply do not want to have to confront.

Yet they do not disagree with the need for some upskilling, but what is being proposed is going way overboard and that fact is certainly evidenced by the schedule of charges I have elucidated on. [Interruption] I have touched only on some of them. There is no limit to the amount of charges that are able to be applied by this board, and for anything that it deems necessary.

The interesting thing I discovered in relation to the establishment of the board and the appointment of board members is that the board consists of two persons who hold, or are deemed to hold, a licence issued. So does that mean they can hold a licence but not really be upskilled to the level that is required and that the board is requiring of others? Is that what is meant by “deemed to hold”? It sounds to me like the board members can have a licence but they may not have done the upskilling, and they do not have to do the upskilling but they can be “deemed to hold”, just for the purposes of being appointed by the Minister to place all these charges on to other tradesmen who are out there doing the hard yards, doing the hard graft, and being whacked in the teeth by the board, because it does not recognise courses that have New Zealand Qualifications Authority unit standards.

Those people are slapped in the face and then told to do a range of courses. I have in front of me a range of courses, many of which are set up by different types of businesses, but that is a question in itself. Certainly, there is a whole range of computer courses, a dozen or so; and a whole range of business courses. There is a heavy-traffic licence course, but where is the relevance of that? There is a range of first aid courses, a whole range from Medical Hawera Ltd, which have all been recognised, and a whole range of safety seminars, although that is not unrealistic. However, the small-business management schedule is absolutely huge. Each one of those lines equals 10 units. What does having that as part of the competency-based licensing have to do with putting in a drain or doing a bit of plumbing? It is an absolute nonsense and it is a rort. It is about fleecing people blind and taking money on any pretext without any real sense of sensibility around it whatsoever.

This Government is badly letting down the tradespeople of this country when we start getting into this sort of exercise. There were only 32 complaints in a year, yet this is what we have to deal with. The bill is disgraceful.

I hope that Max Purnell was listening to that speech, because not too much later in the year Max Purnell will be paying tribute to that member as the former MP for Coromandel, and I look forward to that day with great glee.

The member who has just resumed her seat has overlooked one of the most important aspects of any bill—that is, the regulatory impact statement that appears at the back of it. I will quote from that, because I would hate for anyone to think that she knew anything about what she was saying: “The extension of competence-based licences to plumbers and gasfitters was consulted on with all licensed plumbers and drainlayers by the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board, who have reported ‘that the majority of submissions supported a licensing regime where licences are issued on evidence of both initial and ongoing competency.’ There are however some licensed workers who have objected to the proposed ongoing competence requirements and getting broad agreement to actual training requirements may take a little time.” That is what this process is all about. It is about good process, and that is something that people get from this Government—not the nonsense that we hear from the other side. The process in this bill has been consulted on widely. It will go to a select committee, where there will be further input. When somebody decent represents the Coromandel, then I am sure that the constituents of the Coromandel will do well out of this legislation, as well.