Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Bill

The Minister is not going to get away with many of the statements he has just made. Although the Commerce Committee may have listened to the public, I am afraid the Minister has not. Let me list some of the very strong feelings against the bill in its original form.

First of all, let me remind the public that National did not support the first reading of the Energy Safety Review Bill. But we are now supporting the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Bill, because, firstly, it has been separated out and, secondly, a lot of changes have been made to it. Let me share this submission from the Horowhenua branch of Master Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers (NZ) Inc. First of all, the reason why plumbers were against the original bill—wholesale—was that they had received a letter from the Hon Damien O’Connor on 27 May 2004. The Minister made it very clear to plumbers that the Energy Safety Review Bill—[Interruption] If members on the Labour benches would calm down, I do intend to share the detail with them.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. As a member of Parliament, I am completely offended tonight by the total lack of respect for the Committee process. Members on the Opposition side are debating this bill seriously, because a lot of submitters felt very strongly about it. But all I am getting is a barrage of people talking, on the Labour side of the Chamber. Mr Chairman, I would like you to exercise your authority and bring some respect back to this process.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you. I say to the member that I have already raised the issue once with the Committee this evening, and I appreciate what the member is saying. But the talking is coming from both sides. I remind members that it is a matter of good conduct and of being considerate of others who are trying to address the Committee. It is a longstanding convention in this place that members should not conduct conversations in the Chamber unless it is absolutely necessary to do so, and then only in a way so as not to disturb proceedings. Proceedings are being disturbed, and another member on my right has also approached me with concern about the level of noise in the Chamber. I ask members to show some courtesy to the honourable member Pansy Wong.

Thank you, Mr Chairman. In his letter the Minister the Hon Damien O’Connor reassured the Horowhenua group that the original Energy Safety Review Bill would include only requirements relating to electrical and gas workers, and include provisions similar to the ones in the Electricity Act to allow for interim suspension of electricity workers’ registration. And then, according to the group’s submission, the Minister went on to say that those provisions did not include plumbers and drainlayers, as similar provisions were expected to be included in the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill. Therefore, I ask the Minister to take note that, first of all, plumbers do not agree because they were expressly told by the previous Minister that the Energy Safety Review Bill would not include them. Secondly, their concern is with regard to cost.

The group raised that subject on Tuesday, 19 October 2004. A delegation from the Society of Master Plumbers and Gasfitters met with the Hon Damien O’Connor, who was responsible for the bill at that stage. The Minister asked the tradesmen what their current charge rate was for plumbers. They told him that it differed, but that in the Horowhenua area it was around $45 to $50 an hour, plus GST. Well, the Minister’s response was to ask why the group did not simply charge the consumer $80 an hour, because of the introduction of this new bill.

I think it is appalling, when a group of plumbers was taking the issue seriously and explaining that the bill would unnecessarily increase costs and that it would affect the charge-out fee to consumers, and all the Minister could say was to put up the costs. That is incredible, for a Labour Government that is supposed to look after ordinary New Zealanders, yet all it could say was to put up the tax, put up the cost, as everything is going up. When National members are confronted with submissions like that, we demand to know, in detail, about these increased costs. Of course we support competency, professionalism, and protection of the public, but that has to be balanced and reasonable. So we are glad that we have argued that point.

I want to register our appreciation of the Labour members on the Commerce Committee, because they listened to large groups of submitters, particularly from the plumbing sector. We listened to them, and we believed that their submissions were made in good faith. The plumbers were outraged because of the lack of consultation, and because of their concern for the unnecessary cost that might have to be passed on to consumers. More important, these plumbers are very, very proud of the fact that they are registered plumbers. This is a very emotional issue, which they debated and argued very strongly in front of the select committee. As a member of the Commerce Committee, I can say we take on their issues very seriously.

I would like to endorse some of the comments that the previous speaker has made in her speech on this Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Bill. The select committee treated this bill with a great deal of seriousness, but I want to traverse a couple of points in it that were critical to the development of this part. Clearly, a number of issues were raised in the course of our hearing the submissions on this bill that were almost beyond the scope of legislation as such, but that were issues of real concern.

We traversed some of these issues in the first reading of this bill, when Katherine Rich, as chair of the Commerce Committee, made reference to exam pass rates somewhere in the order of 11 percent. The issues to do with the relationship between the industry training organisation and the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board were behind a lot of the feeling and the impetus that resulted in this bill.

The registration and licensing components of this bill have been traversed previously in debate, but it is worth noting that the Commerce Committee did take very seriously the concerns that were raised—certainly, concerns that some of us, by our own research, discovered as we proceeded with some of the submissions to this bill. I took the opportunity to look through 10 years’ worth of annual reports of the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board in order to look at pass rates, and I discovered that there was certainly something rotten in the State of Denmark in respect of the numbers that entered into apprenticeships and the numbers who exited the other side as qualified plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers.

This issue was addressed largely by Hazel Armstrong’s report, which was commissioned by the Minister for Tertiary Education because of his interest in the provision of education for apprentices through tertiary institutions. As a result, we heard a number of things that, as I say, may not have been specifically within the scope of this bill, but they were important and did deserve a respectful hearing. I think that where we got to in terms of registration and licensing was absolutely right, and it reflected where we had got to with the electricians and their registration, as well.

So with the combination of these two pieces of legislation, we now have a uniform process for the registering—that is, the training and the acknowledgment of the completed training—of tradespeople, who in this particular case are plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers, and for the ongoing licensing of competence of these tradespeople. It was distressing to see how many young people—young men—had chosen to go into these occupations and had not been permitted, through some dysfunction between the industry training organisation and the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board, to take up a career of their choice.

I will not speak to subsequent parts of this bill at the moment, but when we come to Part 8 I may well take another call to point out the areas where we have corrected those particular issues in this legislation. Suffice it to say, right now we have a streamlined and unified registration and licensing process that not only protects the identification of tradespeople as registered tradespeople but also protects the public and workers in respect of ongoing safety issues.

I rise to speak to Part 6 of the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Bill. Before doing so, I acknowledge the officials for the hard work they put into this bill, which has been ongoing and arduous. I say well done to them; they have done an excellent job.

Part 6 gets to the heart of the bill and deals with the registration and licensing of plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers. When this part was originally considered by the Commerce Committee as part of the Energy Safety Review Bill we got comments from plumbers in the field who had not been consulted by their board or did not really understand how this licensing or continuing professional development would impact on them. That is when we had the likes of George M Todd saying in a submission that he strongly opposed ongoing professional development.

When that happened, I realised I needed to understand where this licensing was going, what it would entail, and what ongoing competency would be required of plumbers. So I went and had a talk to the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board. I found out that licensing is still required right now, and that it costs $90 per year. There is already a licensing regime with the existing registration certificate. Of the three trades we are talking about—plumbing, gasfitting, and drainlaying—there is already an ongoing competency requirement for gasfitters, which, at the time, I was not aware of. Gasfitters are audited on an annual basis, unlike plumbers, who are audited on a job-by-job basis on the major plumbing jobs they do in houses. Gasfitters are not audited this way; they are audited annually by the board, so they already have a continuing professional development requirement. But what does that actually mean?

Plumbers were coming to the select committee concerned that the requirement would take hours and days of their time and would cause ongoing costs for them by taking their employees out of the trade to go on courses. I found out that the board was proposing a 16 credit per annum continuing professional development qualification. Those 16 credits were divided into two lots of eight credits, whereby people could choose between technical courses for eight credits and non-technical courses.

The technical courses included welding and pipe sizing—the standard types of courses that one would think it would be good for a plumber to go forward with. It was the non-technical courses that the plumbers were—justifiably—concerned about. These included the likes of becoming a Microsoft Word user, for which people could get four continuing professional development points. They could get points for gaining email and Internet qualifications. These options were on the table, and this is where many of the plumbers became concerned. They thought these courses would become compulsory.

The reality is that the non-technical side of the course is non-compulsory, which made a big difference. Many plumbers, particularly those who were heading towards the end of their working life, were concerned. E G Wall, whom I talked about before and who has been plumbing for 40 years, came to see me in my electorate office and said: “Why in God’s name do I need to be doing a foundation Excel course in spreadsheeting?”. I could not argue with him. The very fact that these non-technical courses are not compulsory made a big difference.

Moving on, I approached a number of gasfitters, who are already involved in continuing professional development courses. A young gasfitter called Carl Simons said that there should be ongoing competency. He felt it was a good thing but that it needed much better consultation and course provision. I say to the Minister that we need to make very clear to the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board that the provision of these types of licensing courses should be available throughout the regions, so that plumbers and gasfitters do not have to travel around the country to attend a particular course. I think that is a very important point. Young Carl Simons believed that the ongoing licensing requirement added another level to his trade, and said he was right behind it.

I talked to Murray Rigby, who is a 52-year-old gasfitter in the Hawke’s Bay. He did not think it was a bad thing. He thought the courses were pretty straightforward. He felt there was a lot of resistance initially but that overall it was good for the profession and would take him forward. So I recommend to the Minister that these courses be made available on a regional basis and that there be plenty of them, so that plumbers, gasfitters, and drainlayers can get to them easily.

Licensing has been a key issue in this legislation. It is an area we were concerned about. Lastly, National members, Labour members, and the wider committee were concerned about the older plumbers. In the commentary to the bill the committee put in something that I think officials and the board need to take note of. We stated: “We were concerned by the introduction of licensing requirements for tradespeople in the later years of their profession, who after thirty or forty years of plying their trade will be required to pass competency tests.” We were concerned that if those tests were too onerous, guys in their twilight years would just say: “Enough! I can’t be bothered going on.”, and we would see those people leave the trade. We did see that happen initially when continuing professional development was introduced to the gasfitting side of things. That is something we need to be careful of, and that is why members from National, certainly, and I know ones from Labour, put that particular part in the commentary on the bill. Thank you, Mr Chairperson.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 78 in the name of the Hon Harry Duynhoven to Part 6 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 6 as amended agreed to.

Part 7 Discipline and offences

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 78 in the name of the Hon Harry Duynhoven to Part 7 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 7 as amended agreed to.

Part 8 Administration, appeals, and miscellaneous provisions

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): The debate on Part 8 includes debate on schedules 2 and 3.