Building Amendment Bill

I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): We are on to our 16th speaker, and a motion was put almost 3½ months ago for the question to be put. I am just explaining where we are at. I will go to Bob Clarkson.

That is a very good choice. I want the members of this Labour Government to understand that they have reached new heights of bureaucratic failure with this bill and its amendments. Tradesmen carpenters, in most cases, did not cause leaky homes. The main cause of the problem was the Department of Building and Housing telling builders what to do, which turned out to be wrong. How can we blame tradesmen carpenters for using kiln-dried timber, overlaid with Harditex cladding, that had a moisture leakage of 7 percent, when the department said it was OK to do it that way? The Government is now overreacting to the leaky home problem by licensing builders. Tradesmen carpenters will be stuck with paying $2,000 for a licence, not the $300 that the Minister says. [Interruption] We are getting to that. The building of leaky homes was not their fault.

We have had many Ministers for Building and Construction over the last 8½ years. Clayton Cosgrove, the previous reject, was the public relations man and a spin doctor. As I have said before, he woke up one morning with a warm fuzzy feeling and thought that another amendment to the bill was needed. Every bill, or amendment to the bill, does not have a sound base for solving the problems in the building industry. I was looking forward to going head to head with Mr Cosgrove. However, he has been pushed sideways by our friend Helen. Helen got something right.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Full names.

I apologise if I offended anyone then. I suggest that the Minister—sorry, the previous Minister; it is hard to keep up, there have been so many—keep out of the building area and go back to being a public relations man. He was good at spinning a story, but not at solving building problems.

Let us move on. Shane Jones has been given this job. This is Minister No. 9. I say sorry to Shane but he has been given a hot potato. It can be easily fixed, and it will be fixed by Nick Smith and myself after the next election. We will not have warm fuzzy dreams. We will deal with the cold hard facts and bring in a bill that will fix all the problems. I say to Shane to do his best. There is not long to go until the next election.

The amendment does nothing for the problems. The cost of a house will go up. If a carpenter has to pay for a licence, this cost will go on to a house.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The member has had over half of his speech time already and we have not heard any reference to the four clauses that this entire part contains. It is just a generic speech on his views, which we have heard dozens of times in his short time in Parliament.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Thank you for raising that. Yes, we should be discussing those four clauses. There will be plenty of opportunity in the next three questions to roam all over the place and to summarise everything we have been doing for the last 4 months on this issue. If the member could confine himself please to those clauses in Part 2.

I thought in actual fact that I was referring to them, in the sense of the cost of levies and all that sort of stuff, and so forth.

This bill and the amendments have nothing to do with, and will not help cut, costs of council fees, building levies, and all that sort of stuff. The councils are running scared. Builders are acting like stunned mullets. Builders will go broke because they cannot get permits because it is a long-winded process. Where are we headed? I say to New Zealanders to be patient, there is an election coming; Nick Smith and “Bob the Builder” will solve their problems. They will be able to sit in the front of a bus and see where they are going, not in the back to see where they have been.

I move, That the question be now put.