Building Amendment Bill

Firstly, I want to point out the context of this bill, which is that homeownership has become incredibly expensive for families because of this Government’s failed building policies. I note that in my own electorate the price of housing for New Zealanders has increased by 122 percent.

💬 Hon Member: How much?

The increase in the price of housing in my Nelson electorate is 122 percent. Over the whole country it has more than doubled. At the same time, poor financial management by this Government has resulted in interest rates going from 6.3 percent, when Labour came to Government, to the latest figure of 10.4 percent. The consequence of both those high house prices and increasing interest rates is that we have seen record declines in the level of home affordability and also in homeownership rates.

National seeks a simple test for changes to the building legislation: how will this bill help home affordability? We have heard the rhetoric from the Prime Minister that she thinks home affordability is an important issue. I remind her that during 8 years of a Labour Government we have seen home affordability in New Zealand—a country that has prided itself on homeownership—becoming the lowest in the OECD.

I remind the Minister in the chair, Shane Jones, that the average mortgage as a percentage of income in 1999 was 42 percent. Today that figure is 83 percent. How many of us members of Parliament really believe that a family can afford to spend 83 percent of its average income on servicing a mortgage? It is nigh on impossible.

What are we getting in this bill from the Government? We are getting a bill that is going to increase the costs and the bureaucracy of our building laws and make home affordability even harder for New Zealand families.

I want to remind the House of the heritage of Norm Kirk. I grew up in North Canterbury, where there was great pride in the fact that former Prime Minister Norm Kirk was able to build his own house in Kaiapoi. What does this Government do? It regulates that possibility out of existence. It will now be impossible for any New Zealander who wants to aspire to build his or her own home; that person will not now be able to do it. I ask Shane Jones whether he really wants to go down in history as the Minister for Building and Construction who took away the opportunity for the average Kiwi to be able to build a roof over his or her head.

Then we come to the provisions on rates in this bill. We have just had an inquiry into the increased costs we are putting on ratepayers. Do members realise that under this Labour Government, rates have been increasing at three times the rate of inflation? Local councils all over New Zealand are pleading with us as parliamentarians to stop dumping extra costs on them.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: Why do you oppose development levies then?

And what does Darren Hughes want to do? He is imposing increased costs with this bill. I want to know from Darren Hughes why he is going to put up the costs of rates in his electorate in Levin and the surrounding communities. Why is that member so intent on dumping extra costs on them? I will tell members why. It is because that member has no idea. He has no understanding of the building industry, no understanding of the struggle of average families to be able to afford their own home, and no understanding of the increased bureaucracy involved.

I remind members what the Wellington City Council said. It said that the amount of paperwork required to get a building consent for the average home has more than trebled under this Government. Dunedin City Council has just announced that it will have to expand its building department by an extra 15 staff, at a cost of $1.3 million. Who will be paying that cost? It will be those who aspire to own their own home.

National members say that this bill should improve home affordability, yet it does the opposite; it imposes regulatory constraint. I have a submission here from the Institution of Professional Engineers, which is a very respected institution. The submission states that this bill will require people to get a building consent to re-putty the windows on their home. I know of red tape going mad, and I know that members opposite have no appreciation for the bureaucracy and red tape they are imposing, but even they must see stupidity in a bill that the Institution of Professional Engineers says will require people to go to the council for a building consent to re-putty the windows on their house.

We hear all this garbage from the Government about sustainability. Do members know that it costs an average of $1,100 to get a building consent for a solar water heater system? The Government is very generous. It will give people a grant for $500 if they meet a whole lot of bureaucratic costs, but it will be imposing a cost—through this legislation—of over $1,000 to get a consent for a solar water heater system. It is no wonder that Australia has three times as many solar water heating systems being installed than in New Zealand, as a consequence—

💬 Dianne Yates: It’s free with at least three councils.

I say to the member opposite that it is a disgrace that in Australia, three times as many solar water heating systems are being installed than in New Zealand, despite all the Government’s bull and rhetoric around sustainability. On the practical elements the Government is failing.

Does the Minister in the chair, accept the view of the Institution of Professional Engineers on this bill? I put this question to the Minister: why is it proper to charge councils for the costs of his bureaucracy in approving councils as building consent authorities? The silence is deafening. The arrogance of the Minister in the chair is such that he does not think he has to answer to anybody. He thinks he can just ram legislation through Parliament, increase the costs on councils, and increase the cost on homeowners, and there will be no come-back. Well, I say to Mr Jones that there will be a come-back. It is coming in about 11 months’ time, and it will be with a vote of no confidence by the people of New Zealand in the bureaucracy the Minister is imposing on the building industry of New Zealand.

In this bill we have provision after provision that will further increase costs for councils and builders wanting to get on with business. I met with a builder last night at a Rotary club. He told me that he has had it up to the eyeballs with the Minister’s red tape, such that he and his colleagues see no future but to move to Australia. We saw the figures today—more New Zealanders left for Australia in the last year than at any time in 10 years. I say to the Minister that stupid, bureaucratic laws like this, which he is putting through our Parliament, are part of the red tape and the control-freak element of his Government that is driving New Zealanders overseas and taking away from New Zealand talented builders and those who work within this industry. It is because of the red tape he is imposing.

Members on this side of the House say that we do not need more of this sort of legislation. We need legislation that will provide for proper business accountability by those who work in the building industry, but not more and more unnecessary bureaucracy.

The last point I want to make in this debate is in respect of the submission by the Registered Master Builders Federation of New Zealand to the select committee. The submission stated that there are unnecessary red tape costs of $30,000 for each house built in New Zealand. There is $30,000 of extra imposition as a consequence of the mad red tape that this Government is imposing on the building industry.

The organisation had something else to say, and I thought it was even more extraordinary. It said that it now takes longer in New Zealand to get consent to build a house than it takes to actually build it. When it said that to the select committee, we thought that it could not be true, and that the organisation must be pulling our leg and exaggerating a bit. So I talked to some builders in my home area, and they gave me examples of where it had taken twice as long to get the consent from the council for a building than to build it. That is nuts.

It is a great pleasure to follow my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith, who has taken a huge interest in this building issue. I am the deputy chair of the Social Services Committee, which heard the submissions on this bill.

💬 Russell Fairbrother: And a very good one, too.

I thank very much the chair of the committee, who is, of course, Russell Fairbrother. He is a very good chair. One of the points I noted is that as a homeowner I thought about how hard it was to buy our first home some years ago. What has happened in those years is that it has not got any easier to buy one’s first home. In fact, it has got significantly harder. So now we have a situation where in many parts of the United States, for instance, people can buy homes considerably more cheaply than they can here. They can get much bigger houses in much better areas, and everything else.

I think that one of the points Dr Smith made is absolutely relevant. He said that in parts of Australia it is significantly cheaper to buy or build a house than it is here. The member, Ms Yates, keeps calling out: “But not in Sydney.” That has a lot to do with the cost of land in Sydney, actually, I say to Ms Yates, which anybody who has been there would know.

I also note that one of the big concerns has been that as the amount of red tape and bureaucratic interference has increased and increased, the people who pay for it, the people whose interests are supposed to be being protected, are actually unable to afford the home they would like to be able to build. So, for instance, if people do wish to build a house, they will have to build a house that is considerably smaller or does not have the same amenities that they would otherwise have if they had not had the red tape and had not been told they have to do this and that and this.

What is really amazing is that anything that has been built in the last few years becomes absolutely suspect. So the bigger the regulation, the bigger the risk. That is actually what has happened. As we have regulated and regulated our industries, including the building industry, we have ended up with more leaky homes. We have ended up with more people who have homes that are totally unsatisfactory. We have more expensive homes, and what we do not have are more people owning their own homes.

I can recall no time in our history in New Zealand when we have had a smaller proportion of people who own their own homes. We were a home-owning country, and now we are turning into a country of flatters and renters. Why that is so important is that when people buy a home, they buy into a community. As part of that, their children buy into a community. They get some stability. They get the ability to be in the same school. They do not get the transience that often happens with rental properties.

One of the problems that I see, which is totally not addressed by this bill, is the fact that this bill will put the cost of building up. It will not increase the quality of building. It will, however, put the cost of building up. As was noted, one of the most absurd situations is the fact that people will have to seek consent to re-putty the glass around their windows. Why? Because, of course, that relates to weathertightness. The fact is that if they left it, that would be fine. It could leak all it liked. But should they go to re-putty it and fix it, they have to get consent because they might be disadvantaged without some sort of consent.

What I think is really, really stupid in this bill is the fact that the Government simply will not listen. We have on the select committee my colleague Bob Clarkson, who knows more about building than anybody in the House, and everybody in the House put together. He is the person who is the expert on building. Bob Clarkson knows building. What do the Government members do? Do they want to have a talk to Bob Clarkson? Do they listen to Bob Clarkson at the committee? No. All they do is try to score funny little points and laugh about it.

What is very, very worrying for the people of New Zealand who actually care about this issue is the fact that they cannot afford to buy their home, their children cannot afford to buy their own home, and that people who have worked all their lives and are in their 40s cannot afford to buy their own home. That is what concerns them. They do not think it is a laughing matter. They would like to hear from people like Bob Clarkson. They would like to know how they can get their homes more cheaply, and they would like to know why it is that in this Parliament, when things go wrong, there is a desperate need to regulate everything.

Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to speak on this most concerning bill, the Building Amendment Bill. It is most concerning because once again we see this Labour Government making it more difficult for ordinary New Zealanders to own their own homes and build their own homes. I note that the commentary on the bill states the most ridiculous assertion—that the 2004 Act was designed to improve building standards, including work done by unqualified and DIY builders, and that this bill will add clarity. That is just unmitigated tripe. Unfortunately, the very opposite exists.

We have heard the excellent arguments from the Hon Dr Nick Smith, who is an engineer and who certainly knows about building. We also have in our caucus, of course, Bob Clarkson, the builder from Tauranga, who has more experience than anyone put together.

💬 Judith Collins: And he beat Winston Peters.

He did, of course. He did a brilliant job in Tauranga and he will continue to do so.

💬 Pita Paraone: What did he do?

His contribution to Tauranga in building the stadium and giving it to the people of Tauranga was a monumental gift, and much more than this Labour Government or any individual in this Labour Government has ever done.

The National Party believes that the bill gives the Government much wider powers to bill councils for accreditation and audit them as a building consent authority, and this is what is of such great concern. This bill basically shifts the system from one of fixed fees by regulation, to full cost recovery. Undoubtedly it is this cost shifting by central government to local government that will inevitably drive up rates. This is what we are seeing, time and time again, by this Labour Government. First of all, it was the power of general competence, and now it is shifting every cost it can think of on to local government, and from there go the extra costs to ordinary, hard-working Kiwis who wish to build houses.

I think the Hon Dr Nick Smith was absolutely right in mentioning the cost of house prices over the last 6 to 7 years. But it is not only the cost of house prices, it is the cost of building, as well. I myself applied 3 years ago to build an extension on my house. I could not afford to build it at the time. Now, 3 years later, the quotes coming in are double what they were 3 years ago, just for an extension. As Dr Nick Smith said, the submission from the Registered Master Builders Federation said there was, on average, an extra $30,000 of unnecessary costs to build a house in New Zealand. That has to be a travesty for every hopeful homeowner in this country.

Again, the Labour Government has basically regulated Kiwis out of not only building their own homes but also building their own baches. It is one of the great historical traditions of New Zealand. It was pointed out that Norman Kirk, that great New Zealander, built his own home without all this fuss and bother. He would not have been able to build his home today; nor, for that matter, would Prime Minister Robert Muldoon have been able to build his bach at Hatfields Beach. It is an excellent structure, which still exists today, in which the family enjoyed many happy hours.

Why can Kiwis still not have the right to do that? Why does this Labour Government insist on putting every hurdle it can imagine in front of them, to prevent them from doing ordinary things that Kiwis should be able to do? I was absolutely intrigued and concerned when I heard that representatives from the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand pointed out in their oral submission that people will be required to get a building consent to re-putty the windows on their houses. This may be an extreme extension of the weathertight provisions, but that is how ridiculous it has become under this Labour Government.

Obviously the preceding three speakers have not taken the time to read the Building Amendment Bill. If they have read the bill, then they do not understand it, and that is an even sadder situation. They should admit to not having read it, rather than to not understanding it. Nowhere in this bill or the Act it amends does the legislation prevent anybody from building his or her own home.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Yes it does.

Can the member show me where?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: OK.

Nowhere does the bill prevent that; nor would it have prevented Norman Kirk from building his own home. There is the power for regulations—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Mr Fairbrother has challenged us to explain how this bill will prevent people from building their own houses. There are provisions in the Standing Orders for a member to yield. If the member would yield to me, I would be happy to point that out to him.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Can I just say to the member that he is perfectly entitled to ask for that, but the member does not have to yield.

I listened to the member’s earlier speech and it had no content whatsoever. Why should I give up my time, to allow him to further waste the time of this country with the inability to concentrate on the matter at hand?

Let me repeat that there is nothing in this bill to stop a person from building his or her own house—fair and square, full stop, end of story. So those members should stop the fearmongering, stop trying to gain votes and panic the populace, and stop rushing out there with their fear—and, I would say, ignorance, but it may well be highlighting the level of intelligence of the people opposite.

I really want to make clear that this bill puts right that which that party on that side of the Chamber allowed to drift on for 9 long years. The rains came down, and that party did nothing; houses leaked, and that party did nothing; houses rotted, and that party did nothing; balconies collapsed, and that party did nothing. Dr Hutchison had the temerity to stand up and say that we are shifting the costs on to local government. That member should tell me about section 28 of the Building Act 1991. That section of the Act was the fulcrum of the regime that was ushered in by the National Party. That section cast upon territorial local authorities the responsibility for administering this open slather Act, under the guise of free-market enterprise. It was a disaster waiting to happen, and it happened, with tragic consequences to so many decent and proper New Zealanders.

There is nothing in this amending bill that further adds to the bureaucracy. There is nothing in the Act that this bill amends that makes it more difficult for homeowners to build a home or have a home built. This legislation defines and refines the areas of responsibility, so that for homeowners who find they have been built a home that is not satisfactory the lines of responsibility are crystal clear. No more expensive inquiries need to be embarked upon; no more time of this Parliament has to be wasted on inquiries before our select committees; no more specialists need to be appointed to take 2 years to find the cause of the problem; no more territorial local authorities need to run for cover and blame everybody else; and no more builders need to pay off huge debts at $10 a week to couples who trusted their life-savings and their ambitions to builders who were unable to build to a building code that had insufficient regulation.

This is remarkably good legislation. It amends a good Act. It does nothing to complicate that Act. Let us concentrate on just one aspect of this bill. Let us talk about putty. Members opposite obviously have no idea what putty is. Putty, to them, is probably the poor electorate constituent who comes to their offices and has fear bred into him or her by having the feeling engendered that there is a nanny State out there, and that the Labour Government is responsible for it. That is the sort of putty those members know about.

The putty that this bill refers to is the putty that used to be applied to hold windows into the window frame. These days, most windows are retained by an aluminium strip. However, the bill does not prevent one from putting putty into a window. If the member does not know where to look to discover this, I will take him to clause 6 and the definition of restricted building work. [Interruption] There should be restricted MPs on that site, I say to Mr Henare. Restricted building work means building work that is critical to the integrity of a building. I ask members opposite to tell me the way puttying a window pane into a window frame becomes integral to the integrity of a building. I ask members opposite to tell me the way a pane of glass is critical to the integrity of a building. It may be very good to stop the draughts or to keep the rain out, but it is not critical to the integrity of a building. So to fearmonger on that angle alone shows the folly of the arguments opposite.

I stand to oppose this Building Amendment Bill. Why would that be? I see the Minister, Shane Jones, is sitting in the chair there with a smile on his face, because he knows that he will not be sitting there for very long. This Government has no commitment at all to the building industry. In fact, it has an absolutely appalling track record in doing the right thing by builders. I had a piece of paper here, which I am trying to shuffle around and find, that told me how many Ministers have been responsible for the building industry in the last 8 years. I cannot find that bit of paper but I am surprised, because the list is very long. How many Ministers have there been in 8 years? Eleven Ministers have sat in that chair and ripped off the building industry. The building industry deserves better; it deserves a Minister who has commitment to it. But the Minister sits there with a smile on his face, knowing that in 6 months’ time most probably he will not be sitting there. He will have moved on and there will be a new Minister again facing the building industry—an industry that has struggled and struggled to come to terms with the changes in this legislation.

It is not just this piece of legislation. If I were to put together all the pieces of building legislation that have had changes in the last 8 years, the pile would stand very high. Why is that? It is because the Government has had to go back to amend the legislation, time after time.

💬 Russell Fairbrother: And what changes did you recommend in the select committee—zilch, nothing.

The chair of the Social Services Committee, who chaired the committee on this bill, is on the other side of the Chamber. Yes, another amendment has gone through that select committee to correct a piece of legislation for the building industry—yet again.

💬 Russell Fairbrother: Very elegantly put through, too.

Very elegantly, indeed! And how much input did the building industry really have into this legislation? Did the public get to have a real say on this legislation? Or shall we go back to the weathertight homes amendment legislation. Let me think what happened there. It was the same type of legislation. Oh, no—why do I not go back a little further to 2002 when we started with the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service. Then in 2004 we had the Building Act. In 2006 we had the Weathertight Homes Tribunal—

💬 Russell Fairbrother: What’s this got to do with this bill?

It is the building industry, so it has a lot to do with it. All these people reading this part of the bill will be confused, because Labour has put through seven legislative changes for the building industry. [Interruption] That member cannot sit there and deny that, because it is a fact. There were no submissions on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill 2007 before his select committee, I do believe. In fact, the bill was rushed through his select committee and the public did not even know about it until it got into Parliament. Then what happened? Is the member proud of this? Let me guess. The Government suspended the Standing Orders for that legislation—for the first time in 10 years. I hope that the legislation in Part 1, “Amendments to principal Act”, does not face the same consequences as the legislation before your select committee that you put through, as well.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): When the member uses the word “you”, she is referring to the Chair.

My apologies, Mr Chairperson; thank you. Not only that, but I think the building industry deserves better. What does this Building Amendment Bill actually do? Does it make homes more affordable? Does it?

💬 Russell Fairbrother: Yes.

I ask the member how it will make homes more affordable. The member cannot tell me that this legislation is addressing the issues in our society today—because it is not. It is another poorly drafted bit of legislation. Does it do anything to address the bureaucratic problems of the original Building Act—does it?

💬 Russell Fairbrother: Absolutely; it does.

There are a few bits here and there. But it has created more uncertainty—

💬 Russell Fairbrother: Thank you. That’s a concession no one else has made—a few bits here and there. That’s good.

It is a teensy concession. It has created more problems than it has fixed. Does Part 1 do anything even to reduce the rate increases that are facing—

💬 Russell Fairbrother: Yes, it does.

It does not, at all, I tell Mr Fairbrother, and he knows it. Was that matter even raised in his select committee—was it? Did the committee consider that when looking at this legislation? I doubt very much that it did. And this legislation restricts DIYers. I know that the Minister—not, of course, this current Minister, because he was not the Minister then. Or was it two Ministers before? Was it Clayton Cosgrove, or was it the Minister before that?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: No, it was Margaret Wilson.

Margaret Wilson? Was that not, like, 1999? If I could find that massive list of Ministers—

I would like to mention the people on the Government side of the Chamber, who need to learn that they have two ears and one mouth. That is because God allowed them to listen twice as much as they talk, so they should shut up a bit. At any rate, that is a good start.

In talking about the Building Amendment Bill, let us start with restricted building work. Clause 16 states that such work must be carried out by a licensed building practitioner. What a lot of rubbish that is! Some of the best building work I have seen has been done by DIY builders. Basically, a DIY builder can now build only a simple building.

💬 Russell Fairbrother: That’s not right.

Hang on—in the Social Services Committee we were told what a simple building was: for example, a hayshed. We were also told the NZS 3604 standard for building a wooden-framed house was deemed to be a simple specification. “Does that mean that a house can be built by a DIY builder?”, I asked in the select committee. The Department of Building and Housing’s chief executive agreed that that was so. That puts the cat among the pigeons. This bill is a mess.

Let us move to clause 27, “Buildings with specified intended lives”, which states: “Section 113(1)”—gosh, there are a lot of numbers here; anyone would think I was a lawyer—“is amended by omitting ‘50 years or less’ ”—

💬 Hon Member: No, we don’t think that.

—I earn more than you—“and substituting ‘less than 50 years’.” What a joke that is! If people check most building materials that have a guarantee, they will see that most are guaranteed for only 15 years. In fact, builders sign a permit that says the life of the building will be 50 years, but the materials have only a 15-year guarantee. That clause needs a bit of explaining, and I may ask the Minister to explain it later. Why are we talking about 50 years? I cannot remember any construction material that is guaranteed for 50 years. If any material is guaranteed for 50 years, we could have an interesting situation. The timber frames could last 50 years—if they did not suffer from leaky home problems—but people may end up sitting in their house with no cladding on it, because the cladding is guaranteed for only 15 years. But people should not worry, because the Labour Government is going to bring in double glazing, so they will be able to sit behind double-glazed windows. It may be a bit windy, but it will be reasonably warm.

I want now to talk a little about dams, but not too much. I believe that most dams are pretty safe. I would like to mention the dams at Mangakino. They are definitely safe. My uncle was one of the bosses on those dams when they were built, and members can believe this or not, but I actually helped to pour the concrete on those dams 60 years ago. So I know they are built properly.

💬 Hon Member: Child labour!

Ha, ha! I helped my father. But I will get away from that.

Let us get into “Purposes of licensing building practitioners”, the heading of new section 282A inserted by clause 56, which are: “(a) to assess and record building practitioners as having certain skills and knowledge relevant to building work;”. Man, that is a long sentence! Why do we not just record what the tradesperson learnt when he or she trained for the trade? I thought that when people trained for a trade—

💬 Russell Fairbrother: You abolished tradespeople.

—the member should keep quiet and learn—and passed the exams, they effectively had a licence to build or construct a building. Why do we continue to blame tradesperson builders by licensing them? I can tell members right now that the licensing of tradespeople will not fix leaky homes—no ifs or buts.

I move on to clause 75, “Registrar must contact licensed building practitioners”—those are big words for me—“on annual basis”. That sounds like a bureaucratic mess. The Government will have to start another department. The Labour Government will love that—more control of people. It is as simple as that.

Let us kick this bill into touch. I say this again: let us license inspectors. They have caused a lot of the problems in the past. Let us make inspectors the best and most capable people on the site. I will make a prediction: builders will refuse to join the licensing system. I tell members that at the moment about 3 percent of our builders are DIY builders. In Australia when a form of licensing was brought in, builders refused to join it, and now 30 percent of the builders there are DIY builders. I think the Minister should rise now and deal with all these concerns.

I want to make just a few points, basically to do with the DIY industry. This nation is built—I ask members to excuse the pun—on the back of DIY work. DIY work has built some of our most famous baches and getaway homes. Our country has been built on the back of DIY—

💬 Russell Fairbrother: That doesn’t change in the bill.

Yes, it does.

💬 Russell Fairbrother: It does not.

I am sorry; it does. I know that the member is under pressure from Mr Nash. I know he has to make a few inroads here in order to make sure he gets his name before the public, because Mr Nash is biting at his tail, but the member should not allow himself to be sidelined by that. We have to make sure that in this country the tradition of No. 8 fencing wire, the tradition of the DIY man—and the DIY lady, as of late—is kept.

There is no doubt in my mind that under this bill home affordability is also under threat. The issue of affordability is that with these changes, one can guarantee that the price of a house will rise. And who will bear the brunt of that? It will be our children. It is easy for us to stand up and say they will work and get the deposit they need, but the more we load bureaucracy on top of young people, the less likely it is they will get their own home. The Minister should know that; he has had some experience in the building industry. The more bureaucracy we load on young people, the less likely it is they will be able to afford the deposit for their first home. I will give an example from the electorate of Te Atatu, where I and some other people work and reside.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: I thought I had a 12,000 vote majority.

The member does. That is going. Like all things, it will end. The average price of a property on the peninsula there is $350,000-odd, and it is going up. There has been a 40 percent increase in the rateable value of homes in Te Atatu this year. That is a shocking indictment, and this bill adds another layer of cost on to that.

Where are we going with regard to the DIY issues? Yes, Māori love to go on to the old papakāinga, to the family homestead, and maybe throw up a shack. We call it a home; some people call it a shack. But will this bill stop DIY people from being able to throw up a shack, so that maybe one day they can move into something better? You can bet your bottom dollar it will—not you, Mr Chairperson, and I apologise for using the word “you”. The public can bet their bottom dollar that this legislation will stop the DIY tradition this country was built on.

💬 Russell Fairbrother: Speak to the part.

The problem with regard to that member is that he is trying to play catch-up. He is trying to play catch-up in his own electorate, because the Deputy Prime Minister was the one who signed Mr Nash’s nomination—and boy does he feel stink about that!

But I come back to the bill. The last issue I want to touch on, very briefly, is that if we have higher compliance costs, it is natural that house prices will rise. Who bears the brunt of that? It is not the local authority or the Government; it is the homeowner, or the prospective homeowner. It is just another tax, and we know we do not like higher taxes.

I want to take a brief call in this Committee on behalf of United Future. The thing that struck me about this bill when it first came to the House was that it was progress on the Building Act that had been well consulted on by the department. A lot of work had been done, bringing the department to a place on a number of issues whereby it was able to move ahead and put forward an amendment to the Building Act to tidy up areas that needed tidying up.

It became apparent during the select committee process that a number of submitters had taken the time to highlight other issues and ongoing work that needed to be signalled and worked on for future amendments. The Building Act is the kind of Act that will more than likely be back regularly before the House for amendment in order to reflect the changing nature of the building industry because of developments in building, in building materials, and in building design. This bill never pretended to cover every change that is necessary to improve the Building Act, but it is certainly a step forward. Those of us in the Chamber who are choosing to support the bill are doing so because it has been well-considered. Yes, some submitters chose to highlight issues for further consideration—issues that fell outside the immediate scope of this bill—and they were right to do so, and those issues have been noted.

One issue that struck me was that of the PIM report and the fact that this bill includes, in the list of things to signal early to people who are building, the need for disability accessibility, particularly to public buildings. Some of the city councils that submitted referred to the fact that the information in a PIM report is often not asked for—it is not sought—and therefore can be slightly irrelevant to building projects. Often by the time a PIM report is received, plans have already been drawn up and the project is a huge way down the track. It is an issue for the future and we may need to work out a way in which the information contained, for instance, in PIM reports can be accessed by designers and builders earlier in the process so that the recommendations and requirements such reports contain are considered at the earliest possible stage. That is the kind of issue that was brought up for future consideration.

United Future is very happy to give its ongoing support to this bill, because certainly many of the submitters also referred to the many good things in it. Although they signalled the need for future changes, they were also very supportive of the bill’s provisions.

I wonder what happened to the house that Jack built. Do members remember that back in August 2004, in debates on the same topic, we had a bill that was 358 pages long?

💬 Dr Paul Hutchison: How many?

The Building Bill, as it was at that stage, was 358 pages long. Now we have some amendments to that legislation by way of this bill, which has about 30 pages. I said at that earlier stage that the regulations that would come from the legislation would be horrendous. That is what I said. I want to quote from that—

💬 Hon Chris Carter: I thought it was a good bill!

If it was such a good bill, why are we amending it today? Why are we here if we got it right the first time? You see, it was not a good bill.

We identified at that stage that the compliance costs involved in this industry—costs that Nick Smith identified in an earlier speech—were going to be absolutely horrendous, and that is exactly what has happened. An article on 16 July 2004 in the National Business Review stated “Government puts another nail into home improvement”.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Come on, “Stumpy”, you can do better than that!

At least I am standing up when I am talking.

When we consider all the extra compliance, we see that this bill will be a handicap and that it is absolute overkill. National cannot support a bill of this nature. It is a very prescriptive regime that is overkill and an overburden of bureaucracy and administration. That is what it is.

My colleague mentioned a few facts on the question of housing affordability. I know that the Minister in the chair, Shane Jones, was on the Commerce Committee that has been looking at housing affordability. I am sure he will very clearly recall the submission from the Registered Master Builders Federation, which made some significant and very timely remarks on the whole inquiry into housing affordability. The federation identified a number of problems, issues, and challenges that the building industry, especially the housing industry, is facing here in New Zealand—also offshore, but specifically here in New Zealand. The federation said that about 50 percent of the increased cost of housing could be attributed to rises in land costs—

💬 Russell Fairbrother: What’s this got to do with Part 1?

It is very much to do with building. Probably the greatest asset people will ever have is their own home. So when we are talking about building, I say to the list member from Napier, we are talking about a significant part of people’s assets. Everyone strives for homeownership. We have gone past striving for the quarter acre paradise of the 1960s, but we do want to be able to afford our own homes.

I go back to the point that the Registered Master Builders Federation made. It said that in terms of the increased cost of housing, it was quite clear that rises in land costs accounted for about 50 percent, the rises in local authority infrastructure levies and fees accounted for approximately 15 percent, and the increasing compliance costs accounted for 15 to 20 percent. The increases in labour and material costs accounted for approximately 20 percent.

I come back to the very prescriptive nature of this bill that both I and Dr Smith mentioned earlier on. This bill is making the law around building extremely difficult, when it could have been tweaked at the edges. You see, this legislation is overkill. This is bureaucracy at its worst. What are the Government members trying to do? They are bringing in more legislation to try to fix a problem that they perceive to be there. I said back in 2004 that there was no need for the Building Act 2004. If the existing Act at that time had been tweaked at the edges, and if we had been able to identify what those challenges and issues were, we would not have had to have 358 pages of bill at that stage. Now here we are, 3 years later, trying to sort out those things that we on the Government Administration Committee at that time identified as major challenges. Three years later those challenges are coming through, and here we are, having to deal with those same sorts of things.

I mentioned the compliance costs as one of the major factors. If we were to look further at what the Registered Master Builders Federation had to say, we would see that it talked about the infrastructural levies and fees. I quote from page 7 of the federation’s submission: “The largest %age increase in cost has been in the rise in local authority infrastructure levies and fees—900% over five years.” Let me say that again: “900% over five years.” How does the Government account for that? Where is the justification for local authorities having to comply with the costs that have been imposed on them by the Building Act?

💬 Dr Paul Hutchison: 900 percent.

The increase was 900 percent over 5 years.

The federation goes on to say that since the passing of the Building Act 2004 “higher levels of design detail are now required to secure building consents: 9-10 pages of plan detail sufficed to obtain a building consent in the early 2000s, whereas now some 30 pages of detail are required;”. Seven years ago it was 10 pages; now 30 pages are required. The point made at that stage was that the local authorities do not have the staff to be able to implement and to understand what this all means. They do not have quality people with the expertise or the knowledge, because people with these skills are few and far between.

When we look at the costs that are being incurred, we see that they are completely outrageous. The situation is overkill. It is far too prescriptive in terms of a homeowner or someone wanting to build his or her first home. That is the thing that people strive for—a stake in the ground—going back to those early days when everybody owned his or her own home. Homeownership is now outside the reach of so many Kiwis today. That has come about because the Building Act 2004, along with the legislation we are talking about tonight, is over-prescriptive. This legislation does not need to happen, and National is voting against it.

With considerable care Opposition members have avoided looking at any particular clause in the Building Amendment Bill presently before this Committee. I want to bring them back to clause 12, which deals with this issue of do-it-yourself builders. Clause 12 does not prohibit do-it-yourself builders. Clause 12 merely says that a building consent will be required if the Governor-General by Order in Council determines certain work to be restricted building work. There is no such Order in Council, so at the present time, and with the passing of this bill into law, there is no restriction on do-it-yourself builders. It is a simple clause in the bill. If Opposition members had cared to read it, we would have saved ourselves 20 minutes or even longer tonight and could have looked to some substance.

But what is the substance of this bill? Let us go to clause 19. Who in New Zealand can object to clause 19? Not even “Bob the Builder” from Tauranga. Clause 19 provides that a licensed building practitioner who carries out or supervises restricted building work under a building consent must, on completion, provide that the work—I am paraphrasing—meets the purpose required, and he or she must give a certificate to that effect. So the licensed building practitioner is taking upon his or her shoulders the obligation of guaranteeing the work that was promised to be built. This is not loading compliance on local body authorities. This is not adding to costs. This is a simple guarantee to homeowners and people building homes that what they get is what they asked for and what they expected they would get. It is simple accountability—it asks licensed building practitioners to stand by their work.

Then Opposition members talked about building bureaucracy adding to time delays. But the Opposition forgot to look at, or omitted to look at, clause 24. Clause 24 amends section 104 of the Building Act. It says: “A territorial authority that receives a copy under section 104 of a compliance schedule must, within 5 working days after receiving the compliance schedule, provide the owner of the building for which the compliance schedule was issued with the statement in relation to the compliance”. So this puts an obligation on the territorial authority to provide a certificate within 5 working days. How will that add to the time period?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: That’s a joke.

It is not a joke—it is in clause 24. I tell Mr Smith that he should pick up the bill and read it. He should cast his mind to the bill and read it, and he will find that clause 24 answers his every concern. What do we find in clause 41? We find that territorial authorities must keep information about buildings. A territorial authority, once it has supervised the procedure to ensure that the building is built as expected by the homeowner, must then keep records so that if something does prove to be faulty, the identification of fault and responsibility can be made quickly and economically.

So, if we look at the Building Amendment Bill before this House, we see that nowhere does it limit the right of do-it-yourself builders. We see that nowhere does it add to the cost of local authorities. We see that nowhere does it extend the time span. Not one clause in this bill fits any of those three descriptions. I listened with careful attention for the last half hour or more—40 minutes—and none of the Opposition speakers could take their argument to any clause in the bill. Instead they ran off to other sources and made broad, sweeping statements as they propagated fear among people out there who may happen to have been listening to the radio until this speech came along.

The other interesting thing about “Bob the Builder”—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Order!

—the member for Tauranga—is that he took the opportunity to speak in this Chamber using prepared notes, but he failed to accept an opportunity from the Minister’s office to come and discuss his concerns with those officials. No, he wants to avoid the nitty-gritty, to avoid getting down to the detail, and to avoid addressing the issue. He saves his carping criticism for this Chamber and speaking in generalised forms, again avoiding reading the bill.

What the debate tonight has shown is that there is an abject failure to address the simple things that this Building Amendment Bill does—or a determination not to do so. The bill simplifies the process of consents. It sets up a simplified regime for licensed building practitioners, so that those practitioners can carry responsibility for that which they certify. It dictates the simple way in which they must do it, and it sets up a register of licensed building practitioners.

A poll came out on Monday in which 67 percent of those people polled said that they had had enough of a control-freak Government that wants to try to regulate every single part of people’s lives. Yet the Labour members in the Chamber this evening do not get it. They do not get the basic fact that New Zealanders have had enough of the Government’s petty, silly laws that want to regulate every single part of people’s lives. I want to rise to the challenge posed by Russell Fairbrother and take him through the bill so that he might understand how this is another set of petty regulations. First, I refer him to restricted building work. One cannot do restricted building work unless one is a licensed building practitioner. So my question for members opposite is: would Norm Kirk, in 1936, have been a licensed building practitioner when he set out to build his home in Kaiapoi? Of course not. What this bill will do is—through establishing restricted building work and saying it can be done only by licensed building practitioners—effectively kill off those do-it-yourself Kiwis with the do-it-yourself Kiwi spirit and prevent them from building their own homes.

Then Government members ask what else in the bill will be restrictive. I draw their attention to clause 91. Clause 91, far from making things easier as Russell Fairbrother says, quite deliberately sets out to reduce the exemptions from gaining a building consent. If one is doing minor repair or maintenance work, one will now require a consent. Let us take what the Institution of Professional Engineers said. Suppose a homeowner discovers a small leak in the weatherboard of a house built many years ago. One board may be rotten and need to be replaced. At present, without this bill, the remedy would be to remove the rotten board, replace it with a new one as similar as possible to the original, and apply a suitable paint system. Job done. What does this bill do? This bill states that one would have to get plans and specifications drafted up. One would have to roll along and seek building consent and say: “Is the board I have had designed adequate? Am I able to get the right paint system? Have I got the right paperwork to do it?”.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Stop making it up.

Mr Clayton Cosgrove says that I am making it up. I have a question for Mr Cosgrove, and it is this: did he tell New Zealanders that the Building Act 2004 would result in a 900 percent increase in compliance costs in the building industry? Does Mr Cosgrove accept that Labour’s 2004 bill banned do-it-yourself building?

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What I accept is that you made it up and you won’t admit it.

Ah! Well, we know Clayton Cosgrove. The great thing about Clayton Cosgrove is that his song in the building industry was “Do it once, do it right.” That is what he said. Let us check out his record as Minister. Labour introduced the Building Act in 2004; it amended it in 2005. It said: “Oops, we’ve got a bit of a mistake. We’ll have to get it amended again.” So it was amended again in 2006. Then, hello, hello, here we are again tonight, with the man who says “Do it once, do it right.”, amending 31 pages of a bill. If we look at the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service, we see that he had five cracks—five amendment bills—at trying to get it right. Members on this side of the Chamber say “Clayton, you are a Clayton’s Minister and we have no faith in you.”

Let us try this one. Did the Prime Minister do it once and do it right? Well, she appointed George Hawkins to the portfolio of building. He did not go so good. She then gave the job to Mark Burton. He did not go so good. So then she gave the job to Lianne Dalziel. That did not go so good, either. Then she gave Margaret Wilson a try; then Annette King a try; then John Tamihere a try. Then she thought, “Oh, I’ll go back to Mark Burton and give him a go again.” Then she tried Chris Carter, who I note is in the Chamber, then Clayton Cosgrove, and now we have Shane Jones. It is little wonder our building laws are such an abortion when we have had 10 different building Ministers in a period—

💬 Katrina Shanks: You have missed one. We’ve had 11.

I am sorry. Would members opposite help me. I have missed one of the Ministers they have had in the last 8 years. This is from a Government that says: “Do it once, do it right.”

I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Dr Hutchison has had only one call.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak again on this very important but very unsubstantial Building Amendment Bill. I want to finish off the point that the Hon Dr Nick Smith was making about there being 11 building Ministers in 5 years. It is what the Labour Government calls recycling. It just recycles the Ministers. It is doing it in education, in health, and, of course, in the area of building because it has made such a disaster of the Building Act 2004, which took up 340 pages and has since been amended on a yearly basis. That is about 200 percent more than the tertiary education bill has been amended, by the way.

I wanted to talk about the fact that I flew down to the Hawke’s Bay yesterday, and as I went over New Zealand’s magnificent, verdant farmland I saw thousands of dams, all over the country. These are the dams belonging to our farmers and which are so vital to our basic primary industry. A large section of this bill—[Interruption] I can see a farmer who regards dams to be important to farming in New Zealand and who considers it important that we remove compliance costs and allow farmers to build the traditional dams that are so vital to feeding their stock. Federated Farmers made the point in its submission that many farmers own and operate dams as part of their farming business and as such their primary concern is with potential compliance costs. Safe farms and farmers are of real importance to the federation. It states: “We believe the safety requirements need to be balanced against the wealth-destroying effects of excessive compliance costs. The federation would like to draw attention to the impeccable safety record of farm dam owners and point out that in light of this, the imposition of large compliance costs in pursuit of questionable or negligible safety gains is unnecessary and damaging.” The federation went on to say that the compliance costs for dam owners include paying engineers to certify their dam, paying the council a fee to register the dam, paying the cost of being accredited, and paying for any remedial work required to make the dam compliant with new legislation. There are also intangible costs in having to go through the process—becoming familiar with new requirements; uncertainty; time out from the business, which could be better spent farming; as well as the hassle and stress.

Just the other day I decided that I wanted to put a small dam on my small landholding up in that excellent piece of New Zealand—Port Waikato. I did the right thing: I rang the council and asked what I had to do. The council said: “You don’t have to come to us, but you have to go to the regional authority.” In going to the regional council, to put in a dam that was to be 1-foot high and would probably empty out in the summer, I had to go through an extremely expensive and ridiculous process.

💬 Hon Member: Wasn’t it exempt?

This is not exempt. The regional council insisted that for this small farm dam, even though it might have been used for a few Muscovy ducks, which I am quite fond of, as well as to feed my cattle, this was going to be the sort of process—a process that this Labour Government just cannot help itself aiding and abetting. But I must say I was quite astounded when I learnt that large dams have not been regulated ever in New Zealand. I agree totally that it is high time that they were. I was intrigued to hear my excellent colleague Bob Clarkson point out that 60 years ago he helped build the Mangakino Dam—at the age of 5. That is a remarkably fine dam.

I want to bring up one other new point, if I may.

I move, That the question be now put.

I would like to add some clarity to this debate. There has been confusion about how many Ministers have managed to handle the building industry portfolio in the last 8 years—since 1999. Nick Smith said that 10 Ministers have been responsible for this industry, but he was wrong. There have been 11 Ministers in the last 8 years. I had to think back as to what Minister was not mentioned. I found my list. I knew it would be easy to find, because it was a big list. I looked back to 1999 when it was Mark Burton; in 2000, George Hawkins; in 2001, Rick Barker; in 2002, Lianne Dalziel; in 2003, John Tamihere; in 2004, Margaret Wilson; in 2005, Chris Carter; in 2006, Clayton Cosgrove; in 2007, Mark Burton; and now Shane Jones is responsible for the Building Amendment Bill. So we found the name of the missing Minister.

It seems that Ministers are given this portfolio as they move their way through Cabinet. They start by managing the building industry portfolio. Once they have managed to confuse the public, and write legislation that nobody can understand and that needs amending, they move on. They move on, as soon as they have managed to confuse the public. Once again, this amendment bill is 30-odd pages long and it amends legislation of 360-odd pages. That means 10 percent of the Building Act 2004 has been changed.

Now I would like to talk about one specific part of the bill. It would have been really good if some of the Labour members on the Social Services Committee had been sitting in the Chamber tonight and entering into the debate. They were part of this debate and were part of making this bill. Yet the only person here from Labour is Russell Fairbrother. Where are the rest? National has lined up to debate this bill, but Labour has absolutely no interest in it. There is one Labour member from the committee speaking on this bill. Where is Labour’s commitment to the bill? It has none. It does not want anything it has to say about the bill to be recorded in Hansard.

I will talk about clause 6. For those people who have just tuned in, we are talking about the Building Amendment Bill, which is an adjustment to the 2004 legislation. It is 30-odd pages long and amends an Act of 360 pages. I would like to talk about clause 6 because there was quite a lot of confusion in the select committee and amongst submitters, especially the Registered Master Builders Federation. The definition in clause 6(4) states that “restricted building work” means building work that is “critical to the integrity of a building; for example, its envelope and structure;”. That is all very good, because the Registered Master Builders Federation came to the committee—I ask Russell Fairbrother whether that is right, because he was on the committee—to say it was concerned that if one changed putty in a window, one would need some form of building consent. That was its concern on reading this bill, which was not clear to them.

The select committee had another concern about the definition of “restricted building work” in clause 6(4). It states that it is building work that is “of a kind declared by the Governor-General by Order in Council to be building work that must be carried out or supervised by a licensed building practitioner …”. The definition goes on to explain what a licensed building practitioner is.

We are creating this bit of legislation, but it is actually up to the Governor-General by Order in Council to decide what type of building work should be restricted or not restricted. This bill does not tell us what building work should be restricted, outside of a building’s envelope and structure. So how would we even know, when putting this legislation forward, whether a putty—

I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): I think that recent contributors are not really covering any new ground. There have been three closure motions and 18 speakers.