Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill

As we kick off the Committee stage on the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill, I want to focus, in my opening remarks, on the two Supplementary Order Papers in the name of David Seymour. Mr Seymour has put up a couple of amendments that pertain to Part 1 of the bill, which I think deserve some serious discussion.

The first is Supplementary Order Paper 152, which basically reflects the advice that GNS Science came to the Local Government and Environment Committee with and submitted. The amendment covers the areas that are in a low seismic risk zone—so we are talking about Auckland and Northland—that are basically deemed to have an extremely low risk of a severe earthquake, for example, one in 110,000 years. David Seymour’s amendment would let that entire part of the country off the hook completely, when it comes to the requirements of this bill. The argument is that including the buildings in this bill would have minimal benefit but would impose large costs on private property owners.

We approached this debate genuinely with an open mind, and I would like to invite the Minister in the chair, the Hon Nicky Wagner, to take a call on this and to share with us the Government’s view and the officials’ advice, so that we can have a real debate about David Seymour’s amendment. It is worth, I think, on the face of it, taking it seriously because it is based on the submission from GNS Science to the select committee. I suppose the basic question of logic that I have is that this House and the committee have created this stepped risk-based approach that is now fully reflected in the bill, based on the idea of dividing up the country into zones of seismic risk. I think everybody accepts the logic of that.

But the question is, if we are going to allow a large part of the country to be completely let off the hook when it comes to the requirements of earthquake-strengthening in this bill, is that a step too far? Is that driving a bus right through, perhaps not the middle but the side of this bill? Is that a step too far? Is the science precise enough that we can say, with any level of certainty, that the risks—given that GNS Science came along to the select committee and said: “Actually, seismic risk differs from place to place, throughout the country, and you need quite a fine-grained analysis of the areas of seismic risk.”, can we be sure enough, to support David Seymour’s amendment, that there really is insufficient risk to justify imposing the requirements of this bill on a very large part of the country? As David Seymour says, even the costs alone that will be imposed on the owners of buildings for getting the assessments done are very significant.

On the other hand, the risk-based approach that is now in the bill will mean, I think, that a non-priority building in Auckland, for example, would have a 50-year time frame, when you add up the different components, before remediation would have to be completed. If it was a heritage building, the owners could apply for a further 10 years. That is a long time, in anybody’s book. I think that is the kind of counterargument to David Seymour’s amendment. I want to just make it clear that we approach this with an open mind. We would really like to hear the Government’s point of view on this issue and, of course, hear from David Seymour.

The other amendment from David Seymour would inject into the bill, in clauses 6 and 23, an earthquake life risk rating. I think this is also an interesting idea that we think merits serious discussion. If, for example, a country church is deemed to be an earthquake-prone building, but it is used only for a very short period of time, sporadically—it might only have people in it for a couple of hours a week—does that justify what proportionately could be really significant costs?

On the other hand, you have to wonder whether or not it would be workable to create a system that could actually be implemented and managed that would allow particular buildings to be subject to a whole other rating system, as is proposed by David Seymour’s Supplementary Order Paper, and how that would be maintained over time. What if the particular building—it might be a sports club or some kind of community facility—has a very erratic usage pattern? In one week maybe it is not used at all, and then it might be used intensively for a period of weeks or months. So these are real, logistical issues that need to be debated and discussed, and I invite both the member who has put these amendments up and the Minister in the chair to share the advice and views that are available on these two amendments.

I have lots to say about Ron Mark’s amendment, but we will not waste any time on that, given that according to Mr Chairman that Supplementary Order Paper will not be debated at all.

I am happy to take this call. It is quite a meaty bill, and there are many parts of it that we will, no doubt, cover over the course of this Committee stage debate. I want to start, perhaps, with just saying that we all know that as a result of the earthquake sequence in Canterbury, work has been done to assure the public of New Zealand that we are taking full cognisance of the risk of earthquakes and the state of our buildings across the country to ensure that we have got plans in place to ensure that we do not have similar types of issues that we had in Canterbury.

Specifically, within this bill there are three main issues that really speak to some of the concerns that came out of the Canterbury earthquake sequence. My colleague talked about deciding a triage, I guess, of seismic risk and of developing a process that really looked at identifying what type of earthquake posed more risk to buildings than others. We have stratified that into three categories of low, medium, and high. I do not know whether you have the GeoNet app on your phone. I certainly do. It is a bit of a pastime to see where quakes have been happening around the country. We have been getting quite a few through Porangahau and through some areas of the country, but a lot of those lower-level earthquakes, when they occur, cause very little damage to buildings in those areas.

Stratifying the risk and identifying what is low, medium, and high, has been very useful and actually having a definition of medium seismic risk within this piece of legislation is useful as well, as is identifying some priority buildings, as well as those that we know we should be attending to first. So under the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment guidelines, they have been identified as being the hospitals and emergency services, and certain educational facilities. I want to speak of the unreinforced masonry buildings separately, but those first two—the hospitals and the educational facilities—are important, regardless of where they are across the country. They have a priority.

Not only are they centres for medical support, but in times of disaster they actually become the hub for the community. So they become the place that the community will go to, to ensure they can get information or they can be accommodated. Often, school facilities are used as places where people can stay, where they can get a meal, and where they can get information on what is happening in a disaster. So it is great that those buildings have been identified as being a priority for assessment and then going on to have the work to strengthen them, should that be required.

I come to the third point I wanted to make, which is that it is really important that this bill includes the issue of unreinforced masonry, because we know most significantly that during the February earthquake in Canterbury the parapets and verandahs that fell on people and on vehicles actually caused significant harm. In fact, I think about 40 people lost their lives when parapets fell, and so it is really important that, as part of this legislation, we take care of those buildings that have those unreinforced structures attached to them.

Just in relation to the Supplementary Order Papers by David Seymour, I notice that there has been quite an extraordinary amount of work that has gone into, particularly, Supplementary Order Paper 156, which really looks at the earthquake life-risk rating. Through a process of identifying the risk rating for a particular building and doing an assessment of that, Mr Seymour is attempting to, I guess, provide a mechanism for those owners of those properties to then find the ability to identify what is low risk and then, if they can identify that they are low risk, they are able to receive an exemption. The exemption is then noted in the register, and then any material changes to that particular building would mean that the building would no longer qualify for that exemption and a material change in circumstances would be noted. I do note, however, that it is the owner’s responsibility to notify when there is a change in circumstances to the territorial authority, and this does put the onus back on the owner to do this work.

My only argument against this proposal is that I think it would be much better if we actually build our buildings up to building code in the first place and then we do not have to have an assessment to assess which buildings are low priority to be remediated in terms of their earthquake-prone nature. It would be much more positive to have the solution being good engineering and substantial building codes to build buildings properly in the first place, because there is an issue that we have that may not be identified with this Supplementary Order Paper.

There is a set of criteria within this Supplementary Order Paper that could determine what buildings are low risk—you know, that is the seismic capacity of the building, the construction characteristics, the occupancy and when this building is occupied, the conditions that may change to affect the earthquake risk rating, the seismic risk, and its location to other buildings. If you will recall, during the Canterbury earthquakes the Hotel Grand Chancellor was one such building that posed a risk to the other buildings around it. Those buildings were not necessarily damaged to the extent that they had to be demolished; however, because of the threat of the Hotel Grand Chancellor falling on top of them they became hugely risky. Those buildings were closed as a result of the risk posed to them by another building.

So I would want Mr Seymour to consider within this Supplementary Order Paper whether the risk rating of a particular building is dependent on the building next door to it or being in proximity, which may cause it some risk. That, I think, is something that Mr Seymour may want to explore. On that note there is plenty to explore within this bill and I am happy to take a call later. Thank you.

I seek leave for the Committee to consider all questions and debate on this bill as one question.

Leave is sought for all parts, the two clauses—for all provisions to be debated as one question, but, clearly, there will be separate votes because there are separate amendments later. Is there any objection to that? So the question now is that Parts 1 and 2, the schedule, clauses 1 and 2, Mr Seymour’s amendments, and Mr Mark’s amendment—notwithstanding the fact that it is going to be ruled out—stand part. Those who are of that opinion—

💬 David Seymour: Aye.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Do you want to debate them?

💬 David Seymour: Yes, yes.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, take a call.

Parts 1 and 2, schedule, and clauses 1 and 2