Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I wish to firstly acknowledge all of those that have been party to preparing this legislation. This legislation is very, very important and is built upon some of the most significant challenges that we as a nation have faced as a result of the earthquakes in the Canterbury region and the remediation works subsequently. I would also like to acknowledge my good friend and colleague the Hon Chris Penk for his significant contribution as the Minister who led this reform under this Government and has put it in the position in which we are able to pass and will be passing it today.

This bill is about taking unnecessary costs and red tape off building owners and communities while keeping the earthquake-prone building system focused on protecting life safely. The savings from this bill are significant. The refocused system is expected to save New Zealanders more than $8.2 billion in remediation and demolition costs. That is a significant saving for the New Zealand economy and communities, but importantly, the bill and legislation ensures that the system remains focused on the buildings that pose the greatest risk to life.

The current system has not worked as well as it should have, and for many buildings, the price of strengthening runs from hundreds of thousands to several million dollars. As a result, these buildings are often left empty and become derelict, making them even more dangerous to bystanders in a potential earthquake. This bill takes a more pragmatic and practical approach. It focuses the strongest requirements on the higher-risk buildings in higher-risk areas. It removes low-risk buildings from unnecessary requirements, and it gives owners and councils the certainty, the clarity, and the tools to get on with the job.

The bill makes the system more proportionate to risk. It narrows the system to higher-risk buildings in medium and high seismic zones. It introduces more cost-effective remediation requirements. It ensures that risk mitigation is targeted, including in the areas of retrofit. It removes the new building standard from the statutory system. It provides more flexibility for owners through exemptions and extensions, again, to ensure certainty, including extensions for up to 15 years where progress is being made. It improves transition, implementation, and council decision-making tools, including through a digital map with drill-down capability. That is the right balance. We are not walking away from life safety. We are focusing the system where it will make the most significant difference.

The bill regulates higher-risk buildings in medium and high seismic zones only. That means that the buildings that are more likely to present real life-safety risks remain within the system. Buildings in low seismic zones will come out of the system. That is a common-sense change. It means owners are not forced to spend time and money on requirements that are not justified by the risk.

The bill also makes the required work more sensible. Buildings where there is key risk, particularly in areas of unreinforced masonry falling on to people outside, will need to mitigate that risk only. Other buildings, where the risk is full or partial in the areas of building collapse, will need a targeted retrofit that protects people inside and outside the building. Some buildings will stay on the register, but their owners will not be forced to carry out seismic work. That applies to one- and two-storey unreinforced masonry buildings outside urban centres. They will have warning signs, however, and their owners must mitigate the risk of facade collapse to get the building earthquake-prone status removed.

The bill also gives owners more flexibility. Councils will be able to grant extensions for up to 15 years with conditions where needed. That recognises the reality that seismic work can be complex, expensive, and difficult to plan.

At the committee of the whole House stage—and I wish to recognise the committee who worked on this bill—there was further improvement through the addition of an Amendment Paper, with amendments made to ensure the bill works as intended. These amendments allow owners to seek a seismic work exemption where prescribed risk mitigation measures sufficiently reduce the building’s risk profile, provide owners with a further five years to complete seismic work if the exemption is revoked after the deadline has expired, enable certain tall buildings using heavy materials and some unreinforced masonry buildings to be identified after the usual identification time frame, clarify which unreinforced masonry buildings are in scope of the earthquake-prone building system, and clarify the scope and the role of the earthquake-prone buildings methodology so that it can support the practical identification, evaluation, remediation, and other operational decisions councils and owners need to make.

The Amendment Paper also made other technical changes to improve the bill’s clarity and operation. These changes do not alter the purpose of the bill. They make it easier for councils to administer the scheme and easier for owners to understand.

This bill reflects practical reform by this Government. It protects people, it reduces unnecessary cost, and it makes the system easier to use. That is exactly what good regulation should do, and it’s for that reason that I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Labour support sensible rules to remediate buildings that pose the greatest risk of life and safety, and maintain affordability, particularly for regional communities. This is an issue that we have engaged with both the Minister in the chair earlier—and I thank him for his work—and the former Minister, Chris Penk, in his engagement with us at all stages of the development of this policy and bill.

It is not ordinary Labour politics to welcome the relaxation that will provide developers with some relief when they’re in the middle of remediation that is expensive and is for public benefit but paid for by private people who own these buildings. Yet we continue to support it because we recognise the significant impact that it is having, particularly on regional communities and regional towns, where these remediations are unaffordable and cannot happen and will not happen if the current regime is not amended. This is critical, and that is why we continue to support the bill.

But on this occasion of the third reading, it is also appropriate to remember why the regime exists and that on 22 February 2011, when 185 people died in the Christchurch earthquakes, 39 of those people were killed by the failure of unreinforced masonry and buildings. The findings of the royal commission were tabulated in Volume 4 of their report about the unreinforced masonry buildings and the tall buildings that we have been talking about today. Not only that, not only were people killed within those buildings when they should have been protected by the people who built them and who owned them, but there were also people killed outside of the buildings: they were walking past them, they were driving past them, they were on buses alongside them when the masonry fell. The royal commission concluded that there was “a demonstrated need in the interests of public safety” to strengthen hazardous elements of unreinforced masonry buildings throughout New Zealand because of that. That is because people cannot know and should not need to know the risk of buildings.

This isn’t a problem of a lack of information. This is a problem where private buildings impact on public places and on the public living of life within our communities, which people cannot go without and they cannot choose to do without just because of the impact on them by private buildings. That is why the Government will always have an interest in ensuring that there is not only a public register of that information and that information is provided in a timely way but also that these remediations occur at the expense of the private building owners. But that’s where the rubber hits the road on these politics—that the Government is requiring private building owners to maintain their private property in a way which is expensive.

The Labour Party does stand on the side of those people who cannot know and should not know, who require the Government to step in in these situations, so there are some pieces of this legislation which we continue to raise our opposition to. One is the exclusion of Auckland from the rules for remediation of risky buildings. I want to be clear on this point about what we do and do not support. It is fair to exclude many of the buildings that are being left out of the new regime in Auckland because it is a low seismic risk zone. It is sensible for a Government to recognise that these are far from faults, that there is low risk in some parts of Auckland, and that the science is relevant and that we should reflect that in our legislation.

What’s not sensible is that there are some buildings which have features like unreinforced masonry that are tall and that front on to public spaces, public squares, and streets that are being excluded by the Government’s blanket exclusion of Auckland. They are higher risk than other buildings which are included. But for the exclusion, they would still be on the register. But for the exclusion, they would be higher priority than some of those businesses in Feilding town centre. Because of the Government’s decision to leave Auckland out of the map, this is the effect.

We have to be clear-eyed about that: the majority of earthquake prone buildings, the majority of the figure that the Government likes to champion—I think the Minister said it was $8.2 billion as savings for New Zealanders—is being made in Auckland. These are not changes in updates to the science. There are some savings associated with the science being understood in a different way, but the majority of the savings are being made because every building in Auckland is being left out of the regulatory net. It’s not a minor issue and it is one we will continue to watch closely and engage with the industry on.

I also want to raise the point that the Greens have consistently been arguing for in committee and we have been at odds with them. We now agree with them. The regime in the Minister’s Amendment Paper 702 has gone too far in allowing developers who are undertaking some building works to pass over their obligations that they would otherwise be required to comply with for fire safety and disability access. Developers who have an earthquake building are now better off than developers without an earthquake building—who need to comply, when they are doing any building works, with the modern standards for disability access and for fire. What does that mean? It means that, for many of those apartment buildings in Wellington right now where 20 to 50 people live, where there is someone who accesses those buildings with a wheelchair, when there are remediations in their buildings currently, the owner of the building as a whole, or the body corporate, as it may be, would need to make remediations that take into account the requirements that they have not only in an earthquake but also in a fire. They will need to be able to get out of the building safely according to the modern regulations, not the regulations under which that building was built—say, in the 1970s, when those regulations wouldn’t have applied.

It’s fair for the Government to make a decision that, if the remediation is only to the unreinforced masonry and is only to the underlying parts, or the structural parts, of the building which are important for earthquake safety, there would not be the additional requirement to update the fire safety exits, say, from the 1970s regulations to the now 2026 regulations. It is certainly too far to allow a special pathway for developers to circumvent those requirements. That does affect people now. It does affect wheelchair users. It does affect elderly people. It does affect the new demographic of people who are choosing to live in one-bedroom apartments because they are elderly or sick and in need of support and because those apartments are all that they can afford. There is a changing demographic, in a city like Wellington, of those people accessing apartments. They currently think that it is a requirement for the body corporate or the building owner to update when they remediate or when they make alterations, which they will now not be entitled to expect.

That is a change in the way the legislation works. It is a change for those people who have bought apartments a year ago or two years ago with the understanding that they would be improved. It is a shame that we now have a situation where people with significant disabilities cannot rely on the Government to ensure that private building owners will spend the money—that they need and are already obligated to spend, but will now no longer be obligated to spend—on their needs of access to the places which they live. That is a shame. Yet we continue to support this bill, because we recognise that the affordability considerations are such that these things won’t get done if we don’t change the rules. The practical considerations for the Labour Party are that, if we make these changes, more remediations will be done. More remediations will take place because they are better able to prioritise those buildings which need to be remediated now, not later.

There are some liberalisations in these provisions, but the overall practical impact is that the buildings which need to be done now, which are hard to be done now, which councils are at odds with private developers about now, will need to continue. That is a good thing. It is a good thing to be able to prioritise these works. We do not have endless capacity of engineers in New Zealand, especially not after 20,000 construction workers are gone, and 1,500 engineers every year is what the Engineering Association says we are in deficit of, because some are leaving and some are not graduating in the first place. That is a critical workforce, and it is critical that we prioritise those resources where they are needed most. This bill does that. That is a good effect of this bill.

But the Labour Party does continue to have these significant concerns, which we will monitor very closely, because there are some things in this bill we cannot live with, and this must be a regime which is sticky, which survives future Parliaments as well, and which continues to deliver for people who cannot advocate for themselves. Teenagers going to a Wellington cinema shouldn’t need to check a sign about whether it is safe or not; they should be sure that the Government will step in on their behalf and make sure that that is a building which is safe to be in, in the kind of earthquake which we can legitimately predict will happen in an area like that.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to support this bill at the third reading. I’d like to start by saying this country has a real earthquake risk, but it is only one of the risks that we face. I’d like to pay tribute to the people who died in the Christchurch earthquakes and the people who actually continued to suffer for a very long time when they weren’t sure what insurance would cover, how long it would take, or when their building would be inspected. It’s not only the impact in the immediate tragedy; it is an ongoing issue for many people.

I would also like to thank, actually, both the Hon Chris Penk and the Hon Simon Watts for taking this very seriously, for getting into the detail, and also for answering our questions—about a 90 percent pass rate on that; so there’s still a couple of things that we could, I think, improve. Also, it was a collegial process. I was on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee at the time, and it was helped by having Chair Andy Foster, who, of course, also brought his local government background to play.

There is no zero-risk strategy. I think we need to be clear about this. It is a balance between the renaissance particularly of some of our provincial and rural centres—it is quite depressing to go to some towns and just see buildings that are stickered and empty. And that doesn’t mean there’s zero risk if you walk past them. About more than half of the buildings currently on registers will be removed, and hopefully that, together with some better economic policies—but that would be going outside the scope of this bill—will rejuvenate and revitalise those centres.

There are some very strange outcomes. It’s quite easy for people without necessarily the background in this to say, “Oh, well, these old buildings, they survived that quake, and yet they had to knock down the BNZ building on the waterfront.” What people don’t understand is that each earthquake, because of the waves through the Earth, might affect two identical buildings quite differently. It’s too easy to say, “It has stood here and nothing’s fallen off for the last 100 years.”

I think the engineering and building assessments have been really good. We had a lot of submissions that were quite technical, that actually talked about materials, and, in Wellington, both before and after my time as mayor—we accelerated it under my time, and it continued to work—there was a lot of money spent not just on earthquake-proofing council buildings but also for grants to heritage buildings to keep the character of the city. Now, you can’t save every one, but it would have been tragic if some of the most interesting examples—I think of some of the buildings along Ghuznee Street or Cuba Street—had not been strengthened. It would not be the same city. It’s so good that people can go to the St James Theatre or the state Opera House, which I think are pretty important, even if they might not be listed in the local government requirements these days.

I would like to say a few more things. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment advice was good; GNS, which, of course, has changed names. The depth of knowledge in this country about earthquakes and about resilience is really fantastic. Once upon a time, we were going to have a centre of excellence for earthquake and other resilience, I think, based in this city, together with Massey, Victoria, Government institutions, and so on. I mean, it’s a bit like turning lemons into lemonade, but I think our experience of what risks we are prone to and what we can do about them—that includes technical items, it includes building, but it also includes community resilience. For example, Neighbours Day, in some ways, is just about as important as fixing the facade on an individual building. We need to make sure that we can continue to fund those too.

There is a slightly strange item that we didn’t get to in question time questions, about when councils can amend the strategic transport routes. Now, it makes perfect sense that whether it’s a road for an ambulance to get through or it’s a pedestrian mall that’s got thousands of people going down it should be a real consideration—that those buildings have to be strengthened—but I do think, for a Government that’s rather over-excited about new roads, it does seem strange that local authorities are not able to add any new strategic transport routes. Maybe this is quietly signalling a change in policy.

A bigger issue for me—and I really appreciate the words of my colleague Arena Williams, who really knows her stuff about Auckland and risk and buildings, and that she’s come round to seeing that we could be stronger on the disabled access and fire safety egress. It is not usually hugely more expensive to fix those things when you’re doing other building changes, and it is difficult for a building owner to commit to doing them just afterwards when you’ve fixed all the carpets, you’ve put the tiles back, and you’ve painted the walls. Is that really the time you want to be putting in a ramp access or better fire egress? Nevertheless, to give credit, it still says, “as far as reasonably practical”, and hopefully people won’t use that as an escape clause and they will take it seriously, because there are more and more people who have some form of visible or invisible physical disability, and buildings should be for all of us.

I think it’s important for some of the MPs down South to really come to grips with the fact that Oamaru, Dunedin, and so on are now included in the way that they were not before. Now, many of those buildings, you know, the solid stone blocks of Oamaru stone will be fine, but there are considerations for that council and for the building owners and for the residents and visitors that—of course, we haven’t actually changed the risk, but we recognise the risk, and I think it’s quite important to say that all of the parties, as far as I know, are supporting those changes. We do have similar reservations about taking Auckland out, partly for the numbers of people, partly because the real scientists are continuing to identify new faults and note the risks, whether it’s the Hikurangi fault, whether it’s the Alpine fault, or whether it’s something we haven’t found yet, because we actually do have relatively limited human knowledge beyond a couple of millennium. It’s not like Italy where we know so much more about the history of what has happened. I think that’s covered all the points I wanted to make. I would like to commend this bill to the House and pass on. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

It’s a pleasure to stand long overdue on this Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill and speak on behalf of the ACT Party. It puts me in mind a line of a poem: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.” The reason that comes to mind is that, 10 years ago, ACT stood against costly and kneejerk reactions that established this scheme. We called for a risk-based earthquake-strengthening regime, and that has finally been delivered today.

The costs and pain that individuals and towns have gone through for the last 10 years can’t be repaired, but sense has been restored and ACT is proud that we have now got parties around the House standing and seeing the light. I can promise you, ACT will continue to light that path to unlock New Zealand’s potential. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First, and also as chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, to speak on this third reading. I just want to start off just by thanking submitters, thanking the officials, thanking the always excellent members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee; but I did want to say thank you also to the Ministers, particularly to Chris Penk for the work that you did not only on this but on many other pieces of legislation we work with. I really appreciated that.

As we’ve heard, we live in a seismically-challenged country. We have, apparently, about 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which about 400 are over magnitude 4, and every four years we get one at 7 or more, so we are an active place. We have had some which have killed significant numbers of people, and, obviously, we’ve heard about the tragedy in Christchurch and earlier in the 20th century with the Napier ones, which, between them, killed 441 people if you take all the Christchurch earthquakes, and we want to try and avoid that sort of situation. But as Celia Wade-Brown before me said, risk is an inherent part of life and there is no zero risk. This bill is about being proportionate about risk. In fact, it was really interesting to read just a quick quote from Russell McVeagh. They said that “After eight years of New Zealand’s current earthquake-prone building system, the Government has announced a significant and welcome reset, aimed at delivering a fairer, risk-based approach to seismic safety.”, and I thought that was quite a measured thing to say.

We’ve already heard about the savings there will be, from $12 billion costs down to an estimated $4 billion. But a couple of things I did want to pick up. Arena Williams talked about the 39 people tragically killed in Christchurch from unreinforced masonry buildings. This bill would still require those buildings to be strengthened, obviously, at some point in whatever time they got to that point; they clearly weren’t at that point. We also did, as a select committee, insist that we did need to make sure that information was provided on those buildings to say that they are earthquake-prone.

In terms of the removal of Auckland, we did explore that at some length, and the very clear advice was it wasn’t justified, and that the benefit cost ratio of doing so was about 0.3, and so that is why we have taken it out because it was genuinely low-risk. The bill also removes low-risk buildings like single-storey wooden buildings—I can never understand why they were in there in the first place—and the level of strengthening required for many of them, so many buildings are facade only, but some will still need to do the whole full strengthening.

I did want to just touch on one area though in particular, and that’s coastal Otago, particularly recognising my colleague the Hon Mark Patterson next to me. We did engage significantly with Otago. They were really concerned about being moved from low-risk to medium-risk, and feeling that that would mean that there will be more impost on those communities and they would struggle to strengthen those buildings. But, in fact, when we explored that in greater depth, there are no new buildings that require strengthening—no new buildings require strengthening. Some will come out, some will require less strengthening, so it’s actually less onerous, but I did take the time to go and visit Dunedin at Mark Patterson’s request in direct response to and meet with some of those submitters, and hear some of their stories.

They’ve still got thousands of buildings to assess, which is an issue. Those places have fabulous heritage and we don’t want to lose that heritage—Dunedin and Oamaru in particular—and we in New Zealand First are a strong supporter of heritage. We think it really matters, and a lot of people have lost sight of that. It really matters to this country to protect our heritage buildings, and New Zealand First strongly believes that. I heard about the economic challenge, particularly in those areas, of strengthening some of those buildings, and seeing vacant building sites where, literally, buildings have fallen down, not because of an earthquake but because of that neglect we’ve been talking about. The economics of strengthening are really, really important. In our view, what we should be doing is allowing that strengthening to be written off much faster so that it’s not something that you put onto capital and take 50 years, or maybe 100 years, to write it off; but you’re able to do it over one, two, three years, sounds a whatever it might be. That bit like Investment Boost to me, and that will be something which we, I think, would be a good move to make.

Finally, this bill sees the end of the New Building Standard system, which was challenging. Most people didn’t really understand it. It moved around all over the place. It was seen as an uncertain and arbitrary, and also, often, as retrospective, because if building standards rose, then you could have had a building which was fine that suddenly become not fine. This is a proportionate response. I think it’s a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this bill. Firstly, I do want to acknowledge the former Minister in charge of this bill, the Hon Chris Penk, and also Minister Watts for the work he’s done. This is obviously an important piece of work that had to be done sensibly as well. I’d like to acknowledge the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, chaired by Andy Foster, for the work they did also on this bill as it passed through the House.

I think it’s really important, as I start my call, obviously, what started this regime for earthquake-prone buildings and the Christchurch earthquake that happened over 15 years ago now where 185 people lost their lives and 2,200 people were seriously injured, and so it’s really important that we do have a regime in place that looks to protect life. Obviously, with the changes that we’re seeing, there’s going to be significant benefits in the costs of the work that would have had to have been done, not done, and that was mentioned at around $8.2 billion. However, of course, at the same time, this also creates a risk to life. There’s a 30 percent increase compared to status quo, and we shouldn’t avoid that, because that is a reality when we reduce the amount of buildings that we are going to require to be fixed: it means it does increase risk to life.

It’s quite interesting when you look at Christchurch, around the Port Hills there are lots of tracks and there are some very clear signs where it says, “Do not stay still. Keep walking.” for, like, the next 200 metres because of the risk of rock fall. Obviously, the impact of that, which we know from the earthquakes—there was a lot of rock fall at the time that did kill people. When you see the signs, you’re aware of that risk yourself, and you take on that risk and you’d normally make the decision to keep walking through and not stop, or you may make the decision to stop and have a bit of a look round.

I think it’s really important that when people do have that choice, it’s very clear. But often, and we saw that in Christchurch, people aren’t aware of the risk. That’s why the warning signs on buildings need to be very plain and very clear so people understand the risk. But then again, if you looked at Christchurch, when you’re in a bus and some unreinforced masonry falls down, you are not aware and you’re put in a position that ultimately costs you your life.

I think it is very concerning, the political decision to carve out Auckland from the earthquake-prone building requirements. We just obviously heard the fact that they discovered this new fault line near Auckland. I think we just always remember that before the Christchurch earthquake, those were unknown fault lines. No one knew they existed. It wasn’t until the earthquake hit. I think we just need to be a little bit cautious when we say that there’s low risk, because there are things happening underneath this land of ours that we don’t quite know about until they actually happen. We just need to be very careful, because the impact of unreinforced masonry can be devastating. It’s probably one of the first things that does collapse when the earth starts shaking. So it was disappointing, to say the least, that Auckland was carved out, obviously to try and save money. I do agree we need to make sure that we assess the balance between life and cost, but I think this one went too far.

I also want to acknowledge my colleague Tamatha Paul, who put forward some amendments to try and get an outcome for multi-owner resident buildings that are actually stuck in a difficult situation where they want to repair their buildings but just don’t have the means, and actually how we could make that work, which—it was a bit of a shame that didn’t pass. I think we need to really assess how we can work better together to ensure that people that want to do the work can actually have the means to do that.

Finally, in my last 15 seconds, I do want to acknowledge local government in the work that they’re going to have to do in this space in the very near future. Once again, this is another cost to local government that’s being pushed down on to them, which is hard with all the costs they get. Kia ora.

Thank you, sir. I’ve said a number of times in this House over the years that I believe human life is infinitely valuable. I still believe that to be true, morally and philosophically. But, of course, from a public policy point of view, it’s important that we focus our resources, both public and private, where they can make the most difference. For that reason, I’m pleased that we are, together, amending our earthquake-prone building laws to refocus them. I thank everyone who has contributed to this work and supported it. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on this, particularly following the member who has just resumed has his seat. I want to acknowledge the work that the Hon Chris Penk has done in this space. I know that he is retiring from Parliament, and I know from my previous engagement with him when we were both chief whips that he is a fine parliamentarian, and I want to acknowledge the work that he has done and wish him well for what comes next.

I am speaking in support of this bill, and Labour has indicated that we will be supporting it. We do have a couple of issues that I’ll elaborate on in a moment, but what is very clear is that here in New Zealand we do need an earthquake-prone building system or approach that is practical, that works, that is proportionate, that can acknowledge the risk that exists, but fundamentally is also focused on the protection of human life and of safety. The sad reality here in Aotearoa New Zealand is that compared with some other parts of the world, our experience is very direct and dire when it comes to earthquakes and the resultant impact that they have, not just on buildings and structures but on communities all around the motu, and there are members in this House who have direct experience of that over the years.

What has become clear is that the current regime that we have in place has created some challenges—some challenges for local government and for councils, some challenges for building owners, for tenants, for community groups, for heritage organisations that think about the ongoing need for heritage, and fundamentally, for communities. So we approach this bill, and we have approached this bill, in a constructive way to indicate that reform, yes, is needed. It is necessary. We must reduce some of those unnecessary burdens. I’m not just talking about cost, but we also need to fundamentally ensure that we do not lose sight of public safety. That is why some of the concerns that we do have around this bill are not going to prevent us from supporting it, but we very clearly want to place on the record those concerns so that the Government of the day is very clear as to where we stand.

The resources in any respect can be finite, yes, but they should be directed at what can make the greatest difference. What we do know is that when it concerns a single property in this country, whether it’s in Feilding in the Manawatū or elsewhere in New Zealand, the fact of work that needs to happen in that space can have a far greater impact than just the person who owns the building. It has an impact on those that potentially use the building; it potentially has an impact on those that might be travelling to and from, and we’ve talked about that previously as well. It can mean that community organisations, effectively, are impacted because they lose use of a particular location or premise, and the funding implications around heritage, which is always a tightly constrained environment, can potentially be impacted. As I asked the Minister for Building and Construction just last night, it can also lead to some delays in revitalisation of town and community networks when there are particular gaps along the way in terms of buildings and what that might look like for the short term, but indeed into the future as well.

When I think about the community that we represent, there are some really strong transport opportunities there. Our community has a focus on heritage. But nonetheless, there are still resilient buildings that are in any community, and ensuring that they are fit for purpose is fundamentally really, really important. Those safety obligations do need to be achievable and they need to be credible. But I guess what we’re hearing through the Parliament is the need to balance that with what is fair, reasonable, perhaps economic, but also is not going to cause huge concern to public safety and public services.

Now, like Mr Foster, I want to acknowledge the fact that this bill has gone through a select committee process. I want to acknowledge colleagues who sit on that committee; it’s going to be still meeting and working into next week as well.

💬 Glen Bennett: Busy!

Very busy.

I also want to acknowledge the officials who were here until late last night and here again this morning who have helped the committee work through a number of aspects. What the committee sought to do was to balance, I think—and did quite well—the practical considerations alongside the experience and the policy that was absolutely needed. I think the fact that it’s going to, at this stage, have cross-Parliament support is a good indication of that.

One of the issues that we have been concerned about is the lack of inclusion, so I guess by definition the exclusion of Auckland from this particular process. We know that Auckland is our largest city in this country. We know that there is a huge form of density and concentration of people. We know that there are a number of buildings. We know that there are transport systems in place there—the City Rail Link. My two colleagues immediately to my left were on the first train out of Ōtāhuhu in the early hours of Sunday—

💬 Hon Member: 4.50!

Thank you. That’s a fantastic opportunity. It will be even greater when Labour’s fare cap policy of $20 a week comes in. What we need to actually understand here is that this is our biggest city, and low risk and no risk are issues that need to be really considered here. The Parliament and the Government must accept that low risk is not no risk. It is a concern that there is this carve-out for Tāmaki-makau-rau, where, if things go wrong, they will go drastically wrong. We need to be ensuring that the Parliament is aware of that, because the Labour Party have real concerns about the exclusion of Auckland.

Now, there is a middle ground there—we could look at options around a lower level of implication, perhaps—but having no implication, we don’t believe is the right way to go. It may be that Governments of the future might actually realise that this is an issue and may wish to change that. The Minister himself has given the Parliament a little bit of a history lesson as to when the last form of volcanic activity was in Auckland. Well, what we’ve heard in this House today is that the experience of New Zealand is not always reliant on when the most recent volcanic activity was. We do need to place on record our real concern around this. We do believe that there were options available to the Government to ensure that there was some consideration of how Auckland might play out in terms of this regime and this plan, and we are disappointed that that is not going to happen.

I also want to acknowledge the role that local government as a sector has played. I’ve talked about the challenges and the pressures that exist—they are ever increasing under this current Government—but what is really important here is that this will provide the sector with a little bit of breathing space and a little bit of bandwidth to be able to still focus on the task and the job at hand, and also to adopt an approach that is reasonable in the circumstances.

We’ve talked previously in this House about some of the changes in the transport space. This bill will roll back some of that applicability, where we have in this country a number of strategic transport routes that have been identified as such. That means that there are limitations on it. This provides a one-off opportunity for that to be reviewed, not to add in additional routes but to review the existing transport routes to see if they are still suitable. It is important that we do have legislation that does identify those strategic transport routes. When we think about the role of first responders—of civil defence emergency responders, as well—it is important that they are able to get where they need to go in an earthquake or following an earthquake in an unimpeded form or fashion. This will provide an opportunity, I think, to take a balanced approach to transport routes in this country.

We do support this bill, with the caveat of some issues that have already been traversed today. Fundamentally, we want a regime that focuses on the paramount nature of safety and also provides some flexibility that is appropriate in the circumstances. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a very practical, good, balanced bill. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We do live in an amazing place at the bottom of the world, often referred to as the “Shaky Isles”. Our beauty is forged through volcanoes and earthquakes and winds and storms, through that volcanic and geothermal activity. It is what has helped create its beauty, but also, obviously, within the beauty, there is the pain that comes with that. That’s why we need to be thoughtful and considered when it comes to human life, when it comes to nature, when it comes to being prepared for what is to come and to protect human life.

Cameron Luxton, from the ACT Party, did use some theatre and poetry, so I thought I’d do the same. This is a very old one I found—actually, on the Parliament website: “They say, and it is quite believed by everyone in town, The Lords are shaking in their shoes, The House is tumbling down!” That was written in 1872 about the Parliament buildings on this site. It was a bit of a dodgy building back in the day, evidently. It was a bit of rot and a bit of timber that was sort of hacked together. There were conversations around the town about the fear, and the Lords in the House concerned about the shaking of the old building and it coming down.

💬 Cameron Luxton: Was it New Zealand Parliament House?

It was the New Zealand Parliament House, back in 1872. I jump forward to 2026, and, funnily enough, there are still some issues and shakiness about this place.

For some of my colleagues—I’m looking around the room, at the Hon Jo Luxton, Arena Williams; I’m looking at Tangi Utikere and myself—when we came in, in 2020, we got to move into these beautiful, wonderful renovated offices in the basement of the old Parliamentary Library. It was less than a year later that we had to move and they had to find spaces for us because of the earthquake risk and because of the regulations. It meant that the basement that had been beautifully fitted out for us, which was a wonderful space, suddenly realised it fitted into the current law in terms of the issues and the fact that it was going to potentially fall on to the car park below, and the Speaker’s lawn above could have collapsed.

💬 Arena Williams: Kept us in the basement.

They kept us in the basement. The good news: I went from the basement to the attic. I ended up in the attic of the old library. Anyway, there are still concerns, and, obviously, because of current legislation, we were moved, and I think partly rightly so, because, again, as has been said by my colleagues, human life is so important and protecting people.

We do need to reflect on legislation. In 2011, there was something massive and painful that happened, but we need to really consider, “Was it knee-jerk?” Potentially it was, but it was decisions that were made by this House to ensure that we strengthened safety. As Arena Williams said, there were 39 people killed in Christchurch from falling masonry. I look around the streets of Wellington, I look around the streets of our towns and cities around the country, and you see those challenges of those private properties, those private buildings, that impede or can impact when it comes to public spaces.

The reality that was brought up earlier, as well, is around Auckland and its carve-out from this, and whether it should be included. I think about my own home in Taranaki. For many years, the discussion was that Taranaki was an extinct volcano—that it had long since blown its top—but then more reports came out, and the most recent talked about the fact that there’s a 50 percent chance in the next 50 years that Taranaki will erupt yet again, and the mitigations that we have to put in place for that.

That’s why we challenge the decision on Auckland, because even though, as people like the Green Party member said, Christchurch wasn’t on the map in terms of earthquakes, we need to ensure that we protect the people and the places but also, obviously, we want to be fair when it comes to people’s property and what they do in those spaces.

We will support this bill. We would like more work to be done, but we want to ensure that life safety should always be the overriding objective to making good legislation. I commend it to the House.

The Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill is a common-sense, risk-based approach to earthquake-prone buildings. National’s changes are expected to save $1.2 billion across provincial and regional New Zealand in the years to come, including Whanganui, which is set to benefit by $24 million alone. For Whanganui, Ruapehu, South Taranaki, and Stratford, this means more money staying locally for jobs, for investment, and for growth. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I was in this Parliament in 2010-11, when the Canterbury earthquakes happened, and they were a momentous series of events. I think it was good when Arena Williams spoke earlier to really just make the point that this entire reform process started as a result of the Canterbury earthquakes and the unnecessary loss of life—34 people died. Many of them were hit by falling masonry; others were inside buildings, like the CTV Building. There was a very good royal commission into those events, and their subsequent recommendations were that there needed to be an overhaul of New Zealand’s approach in this area, particularly in relation to the fact that we have so many buildings in our cities that have unreinforced masonry and the hazard that that poses for people.

It’s fair to say—I think, from this point in time, looking back—that this Parliament and successive Governments have really struggled with this issue. There’s no dissent, I think, on the point that we must have a system that prioritises human safety and that there’s a huge hazard throughout our towns and cities that has to be dealt with, but we’ve really struggled to find a system that is rational, evidence based, has protection of human life at its heart, but is implementable and that is practical and viable and economic. What no one wants to see is a system that is impractical and has the effect of leaving buildings empty and derelict around the country because it’s simply uneconomic to do the seismic strengthening.

I just want to touch base with the key principles of Labour’s approach and position on this bill. Like everybody else in this House, we support a stronger, fairer, and more risk-based approach to earthquake-prone buildings. We support focusing regulation on the buildings and the regions that actually present genuine risks to life. The current system has created unnecessary costs for some owners and councils, and we support the approach which takes steps to reduce those burdens while still addressing the risks posed by the highest-risk structures—proportionate remediation rules and removing unnecessary regulatory add-ons that have made strengthening unaffordable for some owners—but it is important to say, as others have said in this debate, that the risk doesn’t disappear when you change the policy settings. It merely transfers to others—to future owners, tenants, councils, potentially insurers and taxpayers, but also to the people either in those buildings or walking beside unreinforced masonry buildings when earthquakes occur. The bottom line, in our view, is that these safety principles should apply everywhere, even if the level of obligation varies by risk. That is the key principle, and that is the basis on which we have been very critical of one of the key features of this amendment bill, and that is to carve Auckland out of the new system.

Government members have been very keen to celebrate an estimated $8.2 billion in savings as a result of the scaling back of reach of the system. We think that most, if not all, of those savings are a result of the Auckland carve-out. There’s been some good commentary, I think, in this debate about the extent to which the carve-out is based on science or politics. We don’t contest the advice from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to the committee that Auckland is a low seismic-risk zone—there’s no disagreement with that—but low seismic-risk does not mean no seismic risk, and as Arena Williams argued in her contribution earlier in the debate, undoubtedly there are buildings in Auckland, individual buildings, that will be just as risky or more risky than buildings that are in other parts of the country, which, under this new system, will be required to undertake remediation.

In our biggest urban centre, with 1.5 million people, with the biggest concentration of buildings, with entire suburbs where there are buildings from the Edwardian era and before that have unreinforced masonry on their exterior, and with large buildings in high-volume pedestrian precincts where there may be a very considerable risk to pedestrians and passersby on busy streets from these high-rise buildings, from these high-rise buildings—that’s the point: there is significant risk in Auckland and the carve-out, the geographic carve-out of our biggest city, of 1.5 million people, is an incredibly blunt instrument. The point has, I think, been well made that this is a political carve-out. The science is uncontestable that Auckland is a low-risk zone, but it’s not no risk. To just, with the stroke of a pen, eliminate the Auckland region from the system, because there is political advocacy and political pressure from the mayor and from others and the dangling prospect of reducing the total overall bill for the nation by $8 billion or more, doesn’t make for good policy.

It actually brings to mind a very similar calculation that was made in the recent passage of the health and safety amendment bill under the stewardship of Minister Brooke van Velden, when, in the desire to reduce the compliance burden and the cost for small and medium enterprises in New Zealand, their health and safety obligations were significantly reduced for 97 percent of the country’s employees—sorry, 97 percent of the firms in New Zealand were given, by that bill, a much lighter compliance burden for health and safety. Again, it was a blunt instrument for political reasons, carving out a huge part of the population from protection. In the case of the bill we’re talking about, seismic strengthening to protect human life—the analogous bill was health and safety protections to keep people safe at work—it’s the same approach. It’s politically convenient, but it’s not actually based on science and evidence, and the effect of it is to put a very significant section of the population at risk. We think that’s unfortunate. We think it’s the wrong policy choice.

The other objection we have is that we think that—by virtue of the Amendment Paper, the large Amendment Paper that the Minister put on the Table in the committee stage—the regime has gone too far in letting developers off the hook for what would have been an obligation to upgrade disability access and fire protection provisions at the same time as seismic strengthening. It will disadvantage and hang out to dry a significant group of people who bought, invested, and committed to dwellings in buildings that were due for seismic strengthening that will now not get the benefit of those important upgrades.

My final point is that there’s unfinished business here. There’s a group of apartment dwellers who face not only the very significant costs of seismic strengthening but the administrative and logistical difficulties of doing it as a body corporate. There’s nothing in here for them, and that’s outstanding.

My final point is that there is unfinished business here. There is a group of apartment dwellers who face not only the very significant costs of seismic strengthening but the administrative and logistical difficulties of doing it as a body corporate. There is nothing here for these things outstanding.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a great pleasure to rise in support of the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill in its third reading. The purpose of this bill is to establish a more proportionate and risk-based regulatory system for managing earthquake-prone buildings. It’s just common sense.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to also support the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill.

💬 SPEAKER: That’ll be enough; perfect!

I note that, during the committee stage, we did have a robust discussion, particularly around the Minister for Building and Construction’s Amendment Paper 702, which didn’t go through the select committee. It was released post select committee, so it was important for us to be able to unpack some of the new elements.

Overall, in terms of the earthquake-prone buildings, we support the bill’s intent. We support the idea of clarity. Also—and I think I said this in the second reading debate as well—I want to acknowledge you, Mr Speaker, in your role in some of the management post the Christchurch earthquake, in terms of providing certainty for the people of Christchurch. I think that, in this case, there is a fine balance between giving certainty and creating additional risks.

One of the things we were trying to tease out in the committee stage was the narrowing of some of the requirements, and in terms of unreinforced masonry buildings, we are concerned that it opens the ability for some of the buildings that are currently considered risky or earthquake prone to be exempted as a result of this narrowing of some requirements.

I am specifically referring to new section 133AB(6)(c), in clause 7, and it was something that we did discuss at length, and, as members from different parts of Aotearoa, we were trying to engage with the Minister on different scenarios both here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and in Tāmaki-makau-rau on what some of those exemptions could mean. We are worried that, while there is a certain carve-out and the criteria for what is considered high risk, medium risk, and low risk has shifted, the goal posts have shifted and it actually doesn’t provide the kind of certainty for people in those areas. I am referring particularly to Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland, around what that safety requirement potentially could mean.

While there is certainty, we are, I guess, a little bit concerned over some of the carve-outs and some of the exemptionswe’re seeing, particularly when the areas that are considered out of the scope of this bill now mean that it actually then would alleviate or reduce in some ways the liability for the Government and the council in terms of council buildings or Government buildings or public buildings that need to be earthquake strengthened or need to have remedial work done and are not going to be done now, at this stage, because it is no longer there. That means that, even from a fiscal perspective, that potentially would reduce that allocation and potentially some of the contingencies, and would in some ways make the books look better than they really are. That is something that we wanted to tease out during the committee stage.

Finally, I think there is an opportunity as part of this bill—I guess, there are two opportunities as part of this bill—and I really want to thank my colleagues Celia Wade-Brown, the Hon Julie Anne Genter, and Tamatha Paul, particularly the Hon Julie Anne Genter and Tamatha Paul as local MPs based in Wellington, the MP for Rongotai and the MP for Wellington Central, soon to be Wellington Bays and Wellington North, for their proposal in an amendment, which, unfortunately, wasn’t taken up, about ensuring that those who do need to have remedial work done—their buildings are considered earthquake prone—do have some sort of, I guess, subsidy or some sort of allowance or some sort of interest-free loan to undertake that work, as they know about the burden. I think Arena Williams spoke about the fact that we have this kind of carve-out now where everywhere else other than Waikato North needs to comply with these new rules but certain areas get a particular carve-out.

Finally, we had an amendment, which unfortunately, wasn’t accepted, that was specifically requested by disabled communities to ensure sufficient fire evacuation. So, while we support this bill, we still have a few concerns.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

References to Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi (Repeals) Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement