Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill

I rise in support of the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill. This bill is sponsored by the Hon Maurice Williamson, the Minister for Building and Construction, whom we heard from recently. He made it very clear that the purpose of the bill is to introduce a nationally consistent system for managing earthquake-prone buildings that strikes a balance between what he said was protecting people from harm in an earthquake and managing the cost of strengthening or removing buildings.

We all understand that it would be great to have perfect buildings—gold-plating and everything structurally sound so that it is 100 times more than what is required—but of course costs do come into play. So what National is ensuring is that earthquake-prone buildings are dealt with in a timely manner by way of a nationally consistent system, and not before time. This needs to strike a balance between protecting people from harm and managing the costs, as I said.

We are also ensuring that information about earthquake-prone buildings is made available to the public. That is particularly important as the public have become increasingly conscious of this due to the Christchurch earthquakes and much of the earth movement that we have seen in Wellington and other parts of the country in recent years. They do now ask the question about the earthquake resistance of buildings, and they want the information.

The amendments proposed in this bill require territorial authorities to undertake a seismic capacity assessment of existing non-residential buildings and multi-storey and multi-unit residential buildings in their district within 5 years of commencement. In some parts of the country, of course, this has happened. In many parts of the country, in fact, it is an ongoing process, because they are particularly earthquake-prone. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Wellington City Council, for example, which is well on top of its understanding of what it means to be earthquake-prone in this city and what is required to meet that challenge.

The amendments also provide for a register of information on the seismic capacity of buildings to be held by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and they clarify the current threshold for defining an earthquake-prone building, including stating that it applies to parts of buildings as well as the whole building.

On that note, I would like to state clearly, as the Minister has, what an earthquake-prone building is. In this bill, as is said in new subpart 6A, “A building is earthquake-prone … if, having regard to its condition and to the ground on which it is built, and because of its construction, (a) the building will have its ultimate capacity exceeded in a moderate earthquake (as defined in regulations); and (b) if the building were to collapse in a moderate earthquake, the collapse would be likely to cause (i) injury or death to persons in the building or to persons on any other property; or (ii) damage to any other property.” So if those two benchmarks, if you like, are breached, then that is what is considered to be an earthquake-prone building. Once that is identified, of course, the bill goes on to lead councils on how they should deal with it.

So I support this bill, because it does clarify the current threshold for defining an earthquake-prone building. It clarifies the level of work required for earthquake-prone buildings so the building, or that part of the building that is earthquake-prone, is no longer earthquake-prone. Essentially, that is what is required to be done. In some buildings it might take considerable work to reach that standard; in others it might just be minor alterations. In any case I am sure engineers will have their say and be held to account for the decisions that they make.

The bill requires work on existing earthquake-prone buildings to be undertaken within a single national time frame, which is within 20 years of the legislation taking effect, i.e., there is to be an assessment by territorial authorities within 5 years and work completed within 15 years of assessment. So once the bill takes effect, within 5 years councils will have to notify owners, make sure they are clear, and clarify what is required from owners of earthquake-prone buildings, and that the work is to be completed within 15 years.

It is going to provide for work on priority buildings, to be defined in the regulations, and for exemption from requirements to undertake work for certain buildings. So the bill is wide ranging. It deals with issues that have not been dealt with in the past. I am pleased this is happening along with the other changes in the Building Act that the Minister has brought forward in recent years. I congratulate him on it and I look forward to the debate in the House and improvements in the select committee.

Can I just acknowledge the member who has just resumed his seat, the Hon Phil Heatley, and say that I agreed with probably everything he said, which is a rare occurrence. Thank goodness it is the end of the parliamentary week; we cannot have too much of that sort of stuff going on! I also want to acknowledge the work that the Hon Phil Heatley did in this space in his previous role as Minister of Housing. I have worked with the Hon Phil Heatley on a number of issues, one of which I just want to alert him to, and that is that the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill needs improvement at the Local Government and Environment Committee. Because of issues I have worked with him on in the past, I think he will agree with me that if there is any potential for this bill to move access issues backwards—i.e. making sure that every one of our citizens can get in and out of a building and around it—we should not support it. There is a risk that it might do that, so I will come back to that in a few minutes.

I just want to say that as a Canterbury member of Parliament, I understand absolutely the need for us to have more rigour around the safety of our buildings and have more understanding of the potential for risk to other property or, even worse still, of course, to people’s health and well-being, and, indeed, to their lives. I understand the need to make sure that where we have damage, as we do substantially in Canterbury, we are able to proceed, and that our rules do not hold us back and they enable us to proceed in a timely way so that we can do repairs or we can do rebuilding. That is a big driver behind this legislation.

Of course, we all want to make sure that our standards are robust. I have been watching with interest the progress that Christchurch City Council has made on its understanding of safety in earthquake issues. When we had the new provisions that a building had to be X percent of the building code, the way that it was interpreted by the engineers working for Christchurch City Council at that time was really on a tick-box basis rather than on a sensible application to say that if part of a building is below the code, but other parts of it are up to or above the percentage of code required, what the structural nature is of the part of the building that is below the code. If it is not a structural consideration, then there are no safety issues at all.

That is the point that the Christchurch City Council has got to now, under what I think is outstanding leadership from their mayor, the Hon Lianne Dalziel, a former colleague of ours here. She has been through the regulatory process because she has been a member of Parliament for so long. I think she is using her understanding of making sure that safety is, of course, of prime consideration and also making sure that rules are not applied in a tick-box way—that they are applied in a way that ensures that safety but also allows for a pragmatic move forward. So I was delighted to hear the announcements that came out of the Christchurch City Council in the last couple of days.

I want to move on to the point that I raised at the beginning of my contribution. There is considerable concern amongst people who are experts in access issues that there is a danger in this legislation that with the balancing that is often required between public safety, costs, heritage issues, and the wider interests of our community, the requirement for buildings to be accessible will be lost. I know that the original discussion document that was put out by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment actually pretty well said that. It just said that some requirements to ensure access under the current legislation are quite expensive, so we should scrap it. For me, the cost of excluding some people from having access to a building is far too high for a civilised society to bear. We should say that every one of our citizens should be entitled to get in and out of public buildings. Of course, when you are repairing a building or replacing it, then I think that access should just be a given. It should not be a cost-cutting opportunity.

Vivian Naylor, who is one of the leaders in access issues in New Zealand, works for CCS Disability Action as an adviser. She has raised concerns in the Manukau Courier recently about the legislation. She says that the buildings are going to be with us a long time, and that it does not make sense to make them anything other than accessible. She also points out that ensuring accessibility is not necessarily a cost. If you get smart people on the job, it actually can be affordable, and, of course, that is what we would want, as well. She also says in the same article that this legislation is “frustrating in the extreme. We start to think we’re making progress and then we’re slipping back again.” I do not think for one minute that that is the intention of the legislation. I think more highly of the Minister and I certainly do not think there is anyone in Cabinet or, indeed, on the Government backbenches who would be interested in denying people access. But we have to have rigour throughout the process to ensure that the unintended consequence, which is clearly a possibility, does not come to fruition.

The president of Auckland Grey Power, Anne-Marie Coury, said that accessibility is also a major consideration for people in older generations. Again, she was raising these concerns about the potential for this bill to deny people access to buildings. The chief executive of Be. Accessible, who is Minnie Baragwanath, said: “New Zealand has the chance to be a country that actually thrives with an ageing population because we’ve designed a world that works for everyone, not an inaccessible one.” I want her words and the words of Vivian Naylor and Auckland Grey Power president Anne-Marie Coury to be carried through to the select committee. I urge every member of the select committee who receives this bill to reflect on those words—and I am sure they will be put formally in submissions—and ensure that whatever change is needed to this legislation is made after good robust debate at the select committee and that this bill comes back to the House after the select committee process with the potential of that inaccessibility totally removed. It cannot be left to chance, because it would be an indictment on this Parliament if we made that mistake.

As I said earlier, I am from Canterbury and we have been waiting a long time for repairs and rebuilds to take place in our city. It is really just starting only now. It is another tragedy, really, that the opportunity has been lost for the Government to provide some leadership to make sure that the Earthquake Commission was operating properly, that the insurance companies were operating properly, and that everyone used whatever skills, passion, and talent they had to work together for the recovery of our city and our region. Waimakariri and Selwyn were hit much harder earlier, but they got on with the job and you can see significant gains for their populations, even with the huge disruptions that they have had.

I think that a major barrier has occurred with the invention of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. I think that the authority has ridden roughshod over a number of other Government departments and agencies. It has certainly ridden roughshod over our Christchurch City Council. Instead of being the enabler and the coordinator, the authority has actually driven away a lot of people with its attitude. The recent red zoning in Christchurch has been an utter disgrace. People who have been living safely in their homes since the 22 February quake, or who have had their homes repaired or rebuilt, got a phone call just a little while before Christmas. Out of the blue, they were told that their home was red zoned. Many of them had no idea that that news was coming to them. How would any member of this House feel in that circumstance if you were just living safely in your home and you had no idea that there was a potential for your house to be rezoned? There is no risk to those houses. The people have been living safely in them since 22 February in many instances. People have spent a lot of money having them repaired or rebuilt. For them to suddenly be told that their house is red zoned and that they are going to get an offer from the Government to buy them out at the 2007 rateable value—this is 7 years on from that value being struck on their house—is just a disgrace.

I am not surprised that people in our city are turning away from supporting National in droves. They have been treated with disdain by an arrogant Government that has shown that it is out of touch with the real needs of people in our community. I look forward to the debate—

I am very pleased to support the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill. Coming from Christchurch just like the previous member, Ruth Dyson, I really understand the importance of this bill. There is no doubt at all that the earthquakes of 22 February 2011 and the death and destruction that accompanied them, followed by 11,000 other earthquakes, have really raised awareness and highlighted the number of earthquake-prone buildings right across the country. We believe that there could be somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 earthquake-prone buildings right across the country.

We have discussed how you define an earthquake-prone building. Basically, under the Building Act 2004, an earthquake-prone building is one that “will have its ultimate capacity exceeded in a moderate earthquake”. In other words, if there is a moderate earthquake, it is likely to collapse causing “injury or death to persons in the building” or around that building. But in practical reality that means that it would be about 34 percent—or we have been using the number of 34 percent—of the current building code. It should be noted that when we talk about the building code and the percentage of the building code that a building has to reach, that does vary depending on the location of that building. It depends on the geography, and it depends on the seismic activity of that geography. This bill ensures that the earthquake-prone buildings can be dealt with in a timely manner and in a nationally consistent way.

The public are now very aware of, and concerned about, dangerous buildings, and they are keen to have readily available information. This bill will establish a register of the seismic capacity of our building stock so that you will be able to know how the buildings you use day after day would react in an earthquake, and the quality of those buildings.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.