Building (Earthquake-prone Building Deadlines and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

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

New Zealand is sometimes referred to as the Shaky Isles. Our reputation internationally and, of course, our awareness at home is that we are a nation that is subject to significant seismic risk. That is the context for the legislation that we’re considering. Of course, it is the context for our legislative and regulatory settings more generally in relation to seismic risk, in general, and the earthquake-prone building regime in particular.

I do want to acknowledge, at the start, the risk that exists. We are mindful of that risk. We understand it. We are aware of the need to legislate and regulate in a way that is responsible, given that life-safety risk and given the importance of resilient buildings of certain categories particularly, but, of course, also acknowledging the importance of the built environment. Our desire is to ensure maximum safety and maximum resilience, even as we balance considerations that would enable us to achieve a proportionate approach in relation to that risk.

I’d also like to acknowledge the loss of life in the Canterbury earthquakes of a decade or so ago. That formed the backdrop for the legislation that is now being reviewed and whose deadlines are now being extended by this bill. Again, I just acknowledge the importance of the subject matter and that, indeed, that particular loss of life is the backdrop for all of our decision making in consideration of this important subject.

Since those earthquakes and the tragedies associated therewith, legislation was put forward by the then Government that seemed to have a well-balanced approach to the question of risk. The only question remaining was the extent to which it would prove practicable, over a period of time, for those settings to be implemented such that building owners and local governments and other key players would be able to put those into effect and remediate and strengthen the buildings as was required.

In the intervening nearly decade, considerable progress has been made, and I want to start my reflections on that by congratulating and thanking all those who have acted responsibly to improve the built environment for the safety of themselves, occupants, passers-by, and so on. That said, the relatively easy wins that have been able to be achieved in that time are now behind us, so to speak. The question that we face now, looking forward, is the way in which we can continue to improve the housing stock, the commercial buildings, the infrastructure, and so on, as it relates to seismic risk and, more particularly, whether the settings that we have now are appropriate to achieve that.

It seems that for a number of key players—again, I acknowledge local government as an enforcement authority but also a significant owner of such buildings itself, in many cases, and many others affected by the need to comply with the rules and to achieve real-world life-safety and resilience aims. It seems to us that a review of the settings is now prudent. A review was promised that would otherwise have taken place in a couple of years. We’re bringing that forward. That is the lengthy background to the extension that this bill will give effect to.

As has been canvassed at previous stages of the debate, the extension is for four years, with the possibility of an additional two, should it be required. I emphasise—again, responding to the very reasonable point made by colleagues opposite—that we would prefer only to use four years as opposed to a total of six years for the extension, but we recognise that for external reasons or indeed the operation of the review itself, subsequent legislation may require that additional time. We’ll use that power sparingly if it should be required—noting, of course, essentially the “Henry VIII” nature of that clause within the legislation.

The bill also contains a few other items, probably the most significant of which relates to fire safety—no lesser risk of course—and naturally the Government and, I sense, all of Parliament is minded to take very seriously the risk to life and limb posed by fire no less than earthquakes. Of course, again, there is tragic background to our consideration, and I refer particularly to the Loafers Lodge tragedy, following which a least-regrets or no-regrets approach was taken. That is to say, in addition to the checking of boarding houses for compliance with the existing regulations, the previous Government undertook consideration of ways in which the regulations might be changed in a way that would prove helpful, notwithstanding that a broader review might then also take place.

That broader review is now taking place, but I think it’s prudent for that previous Government to have initiated a look into some of the actions that might be taken in the interim. We’re putting those into effect. They’re set out in the bill, and so I don’t intend to go through those in detail. Again, we did have that opportunity at prior stages of the debate. They included clarifying obligations, setting out offences, and so on so that independently qualified persons would have a sound legal basis or a means by which they might be held accountable in the event of failure.

In terms of other changes in the bill, again, I don’t propose to go through those all again. Legislative statements as well as the debate at previous stages have canvassed those pretty thoroughly, and they’re relatively self-explanatory and, while minor and technical, important in their own right.

I do want to acknowledge, before I conclude my remarks, that the engagement that we have enjoyed in this matter has been exemplary. I’m really grateful, particularly, to sector experts—in no particular order, by the way; I’ll start with sector experts—of an engineering and other relevant backgrounds who have shared their insights with me and the Government more generally and, I know, have been actively engaging across the House, and, again, I thank them for that. Local government were key players in this for the reasons I mentioned before—not only of large cities, including large cities such as Wellington and Christchurch, but also in regional towns in New Zealand that have a higher proportion, often, of earthquake-prone buildings and are so deeply affected by the regulatory settings and the legislative settings that we are putting in place, that we may change, and that, in the meantime, we are extending.

Building owners: of course, apartments, but also other building owners, some of which are heritage in nature—just to add an additional overlay of complication. Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—the good folk who have been kind enough to advise me on various technical and policy-related matters throughout. And other parties of this Parliament: I’ve been really pleased with the engagement that I’ve seen and been able to be part of. I do want to acknowledge that, across the House, we’ve had that very positive level of interaction. It’s highly appropriate that a subject like this is treated in such a serious way, and I do want to take a moment to thank members of this House who have engaged in that way—in a way that will be helpful to the certainty that New Zealanders need to feel in this area, notwithstanding any political comings and goings in this place.

Finally, then, I look forward to the way ahead with the passage of this legislation, today, which will provide that certainty, lock in that additional four years, and a possible extra two. In the meantime, of course, the review proceeds apace, which is to say that this legislation is not an exercise in kicking the can down the road; it’s providing certainty in the meantime, while that review is taking place, in the hope that, in the meantime, we will be able to land on some regulatory and legislative settings that will prove helpful and meaningful for those looking to do the right thing and make changes to strengthen or, as the case may be, demolish and rebuild the environment of New Zealand. So, with that, I thank all again in the House for their participation—all those outside as well for their engagement—and commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Labour wants an improved building system which results in the efficient use of the resources that we have to build more homes—warm, dry, affordable homes that people can live in, in our cities and our regions. That’s what we want and that’s why we’ve engaged in this process of a review in good faith. What we don’t want is pendulum swings between certain sets of rules under one Government and certain sets of rules under another, which destabilises the building sector and mean that, ultimately, more houses don’t get built.

Everyone in this House wants to see families with a roof over their heads and with an opportunity to get into homeownership, so we need more affordable places, and that really does affect a lot of these buildings which are affected by the earthquake-prone buildings rules. They are homes. They are people like you and me who have put all of their life savings into apartments in cities like Wellington. They are people in Christchurch who are affected by these rules and cannot live in their homes. They are Aucklanders who have buildings—the highest number of buildings, actually, on the list—that are affected by these rules and cannot develop them.

There’s a real level of gravity with which we’ve approached this debate, and we think this balance is appropriate in this context. But, boy, do we want to see the Government using this period of review wisely. Twice the Law Commission has looked into the rules underlying the system, about the liability of not only builders but also homeowners and the councils who approve their consents. Who should bear the liability of earthquakes in New Zealand is a really fundamental question, and we must—if we are taking a step back, we must—use this time well, we must resource it properly, and we must make sure that stakeholders all around the country are getting to feed into this.

I just want to make a few points. I won’t labour this, because I think we’ve had a very good parliamentary process where we have really hashed out some of these questions that have been remaining, including at the select committee stage—and may I commend the Transport and Infrastructure Committee chair, Andy Foster, for the way that he chaired that process for submitters to have their say.

The big question here is that there is a risk to life and limb in these buildings, and markets do not work well when people do not have the appropriate information that they need to gauge that risk. There’s a group of people in the building system who will be in a building that is earthquake-prone and will have no idea—say, the teenagers who might have used the Reading Cinema on the weekend might not have any idea of the earthquake risk—so it is appropriate not to let people use that kind of building. Then you have another group of people who have a reasonable amount of information. They may be casual users of a building—say, a car park in Wellington that might be earthquake-prone; say, guests of homeowners who might be in an apartment that is affected by earthquake risk. There’s people who have very limited information, and then there are also homeowners who, for whatever reason, do not have a huge amount of information available to them that they can rely on to make the risk. These are all people where it’s a very, very clear example of consumers who need Government to act in their best interest by setting the rules at a certain level that they can rely on; that they are not putting themselves at undue risk from any building that they go into.

On the other end of the spectrum, we also know that very sophisticated commercial arrangements around insurance, where information is readily available to the market, are not working well either—that insurance is very hard to get for many of the apartment owners in Wellington and for building owners around the country who are affected by the earthquake rules. We need a system designed so that the information that is being used is not too risk-averse and that adequately reflects the financial implications in the future and now, and so that we’re getting the right kind of market outcomes.

In some situations, it will be that the current owners need to sell buildings and then there needs to be redevelopment, but in some situations, it will mean that insurance should be cheaper for the owners because the real risk to buildings doesn’t reflect the current cost. We need Government to make a call to step into the market to provide the accurate information at a level that people can rely on, that everyone in the market can agree to, and then a standard going forward. There is a bit of an exercise here of drawing a line, and we must do that with some haste. We feel that this bill does that with a reasonable degree of certainty, but we think we really need to use this time and to not delay it.

The only final point I would make is that New Zealand has a history of very costly mistakes when it comes to building policy. Leaky buildings across this country—what one commentator estimated to be $47 billion in costs associated not only with the building sector, not only with participants, but to the wider economy as a whole. I would like to think that, in supporting this, the Labour Party is showing that we are willing to work through those issues and to not make the mistakes of the past.

We will continue to ask the questions that give building participants a level of surety that Government is designing a system which works for everyone; which does not tighten the level of protections at all levels of the building sector rules in such a way where the little guy is left holding the can—where, on one hand, you might make changes to the earthquake rules; on one hand, you might make changes to the consenting rules; and, on one hand, you might make changes to provisions for building products. If at all points in those changes you are leaving the little guy with the liability, then I will propose to you that we are in for a system problem.

We need to make sure that the system as a whole distributes the liability fairly—that is what I think is being done here by making an extension—but we will continue to pose the questions, we will continue to advocate for the little guy in this, and we will continue to advocate for Government not needing to be the insurer of last resort. It is really important, when you have vulnerable consumers, that the Government is not left holding the can. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to also support this bill because, as we have heard, this bill is something that is going to provide certainty for a lot of people while we conduct the review process of where we are at in terms of earthquake-prone buildings. The extra time is very much welcome. I’d also like to thank the Minister for Building and Construction for his level of engagement and contributions during the committee stage, because I think a lot of that was incredibly valuable and it also provided a lot of clarification.

There are a number of parts to this bill, so I would like to go through some of the major areas that are a part of this bill, with, as we know, earthquake-prone buildings being the most important element. I’ll start with that one, and then I’ll address some of the other areas.

One of the things with the earthquake-prone buildings extension of deadlines is that, in essence, it is a really, really good idea, as we have heard. There is a review that’s going to be happening. It’s going to provide a lot of reassurance for people in the community and for owners—particularly, in the context of apartment owners—that this is something that they’re able to have an extension on and to have some time. They can have that reassurance that they’re able to have this extension, so in that way, they don’t have to get everything all sorted at the immediate stage.

I think that the four-year extension does strike the right balance. There were a lot of conversations around the further extension of two years, particularly when it comes to the triggering of the “Henry VIII” clause in this case, but I think that upon balance and upon examination in the committee stage, the fact that the additional two years may not be triggered depending on where the review is currently at, plus the addition of the sunset clause, does allow some sort of restriction on the scope of that particular clause. The Green Party, in particular, is often quite cautious when anything like this does take place, and I think that in this case we have got some reassurances from the Minister that this is something that would be carefully managed.

In addition to this, some of the other things that we have also addressed when it comes to the earthquake-prone buildings deadlines is the retrospectivity element of this bill, which is that anything that is before 1 April 2024 will be covered by some of this, and then, after that, it will not be covered. We did question the Minister around the use of that particular term. I think that the Minister did clarify that, in general, when we were looking at the financial year, etc., 1 April seemed like an appropriate timing to use in this case, and there are always going to be people who fall on either side of that particular deadline who are not going to be entirely happy.

The other element that was addressed, and it was an element and an aspect of discussion during the committee stage, was around the risk and the potential risk to people’s lives. We are giving this extension of four years, and people who have more urgency during this period to undertake the earthquake-strengthening work that was needed may not see that as being urgent with a four-year extension, and we asked what would be the real-life cost of a lot of these. I think, again, this is something that both the regulatory impact statement but also the Minister mentioned that in terms of the life risk, it is reasonably low. For those people who are already going to make those kinds of changes and have been intending to make those kinds of changes, they are going to do it anyway, and for those people who still have that stringency of the previous deadline and who are unable to meet it, they weren’t going to meet it, regardless of whether the extension is going to happen or not. I think that that is the really salient point that has been mentioned during the committee stage.

Overall, that was the section around the earthquake-prone strengthening element, but there are a few other areas that I want to address that are also important as part of this bill and that we did have some discussions on during the committee stage. The first one is around the building consent authority (BCA) and there is a change in the liability to pay for the levy. As the current system says, when you get the BCA and they are collecting some of these levies, it goes to the local authorities as an intermediary step before they go on to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), and in this particular bill, it proposes the removal of that intermediary stage with the local authorities and for them to go from the BCA straight to MBIE.

There were some conversations around whether local authorities would potentially lose out on some of this, and particularly, when we’re looking at clause 5 of this particular bill and the amendments in clause 7 to section 61 of the Building Act, the 3 percent levy that is retained by local authorities—whether that will see local authorities losing out. Again, this is something that we did receive clarification on with regard to the administrative nature of some of this, and, again, it’s just making that process a lot more streamlined.

One of the other elements that we did discuss during this bill as well was around the increased penalties for the independently qualified persons—or IQPs—who make erroneous claims or erroneous reports around the building requirements. This is an area that is missing in the current legislation and can be perceived as a loophole, and it is a loophole that potentially has been exploited by some.

This particular bill just strengthens some of that accountability element and transparency element of the duties of the independently qualified persons, though on other things, we did ask the Minister, and we did get clarification from the Minister on them as well. It’s around where the burden of proof lies when it comes to whether an IQP did actually make a reasonable mistake, and some of the context and scenarios around what constitutes a reasonable mistake. Also, there were further conversations around the proportionality of fines, and we were looking at whether the fines for the IQPs are proportionate to some of the other fines that we see here.

On the subject of fines, there was another area where we did discuss a little bit around clause 32 of the bill, in terms of some of the balance between the fines, particularly when it comes to people making false claims around certain building permits and building warrants of fitness, and the proportionality with some other parts. We did question the Minister as to whether the fines were proportionate with some of the other fines that we see and, again, we had some clarification around the fact that this is less about reviewing the fines on the whole and more around balancing and judging the proportionality and evening out fines of a similar nature, as well as looking at fines that, potentially, are different. That was, again, something else that we received clarification on.

I think the last thing I will mention, in the context of this bill, is around the display of a warrant of fitness for, in particular, dams, which is an element of this. That was something that I think, even during the select committee stage, we were trying to see. It is something that is going to be removed, because the current system potentially doesn’t quite make sense and it does add additional challenges for dams in general.

Looking at the broader context of this bill, I think it is really, really important that we do address the fact that earthquake-strengthening is an important factor. We do need to address the future of housing in Aotearoa, particularly when we are looking at instances where some of our urban centres are having increased density, and looking at how we can build it right in the first place, rather than having what we are doing now. We have heard previous speakers mention Wellington, as well as Ōtautahi/Christchurch, but also one of my colleagues, Celia Wade-Brown, mentioned during the committee stage some of the challenges to other areas of Aotearoa as well, such as the Wairarapa.

I think that, in this case, both in terms of our building code and our requirement around strengthening when building a first build for both residential and also commercial premises, that’s something that we do need to keep a very close eye on, because it does have the potential of not only costing us financially but also costing us from a human life perspective. I think, particularly when we’re looking at an element of natural disasters such as earthquakes, we also should consider climate change - induced disasters, such as the flooding that we’ve seen on the East Coast and also in Tāmaki-makau-rau/Auckland and how some of these things, as we’re considering the building code and the Building Act on the whole, are able to contribute to this.

Lastly, in terms of the earthquake part, again, it is good to just see some reassurances that this review will take place in the appropriate time and that we are going to be able to see some changes to those earthquake-prone buildings. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Building in New Zealand is full of uncertainty. From the moment someone comes up with a concept of a plan or to develop a piece of property or to renovate an existing piece, the uncertainty begins. We’ve got economic uncertainty: “Am I going to get the lending? Have I got someone to buy this development? Are there going to be the products available, the labour, the skills needed when I need them to actually get this project off the ground?” I would like to congratulate the Minister on bringing forward such a wonderful piece of legislation, because this country’s building industry needs certainty.

Unfortunately, the situation we have now in this specific part of our building industry is around the ways in which one can achieve earthquake levels that are seen as sufficient. Now, we’ve got a lot of players in our building industry. We’ve got the builder; you’ve got the owner, the client; you’ve got the building consenting authority; you’ve got the public and the safety which they expect and this Government is required to ensure; and we’ve got councils and planning. There are a lot of people with their fingers in the pie. Joint and several liability has led to a situation where all of those people are pushing the burden on to each other.

We need to get more certainty into our industry, and I think this piece of legislation, enabling an extension for a review to take place, is exactly what the doctor ordered in this particular instance. It’s setting the groundwork for future developments in our industry, with standalone building consenting authorities and making that a situation where they can be seen more as an independent organisation, rather than just another wing of the council, along with waste and parks and other assorted activities which councils must do.

I would be remiss not to, in this case, thank the submitters. At the select committee, we had some great submissions which raised some interesting points. In the report back, with other matters that were raised that weren’t exactly relevant but were raised, I think you can see that there is a lot of interest in the future make-up of the regulatory systems of our building industry. No lesser members than the independently qualified persons and the building warrant of fitness regime which they are a core part of have something to say. I think the Minister has sufficiently addressed that he is looking into that.

I will just thank the rest of the committee. I know I did in the second reading, but I think it was a very collegial committee, ably chaired by Mr Andy Foster. With that, I would like to commend this to the House.

Look, I’m pleased to rise to speak to this third reading and I also just want to pay my thanks to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. You’ve already heard from a couple of members there. We do work collegially together and, as I’ve said before, I’d invite any member of this House to come and have a look at how a collegial committee works together; it’s a good thing to see, because that’s the way we should be operating.

I also wanted to place on record my thanks to the officials from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in particular, but also to the submitters. We did get some really good submitters. Some of those submissions, particularly around the independently qualified person (IQP) issues, were not ones which are—while the stick, in a sense, is in the legislation, they certainly made comments around saying, “Well, we need a regime which actually provides a lot better professionalism of that industry, but also the support mechanisms”, so they’re not left on their own, essentially, and other people have run for the hills. That’s really, really important. We got 23 submissions: 12 in favour, nine unclear—but that’s because they were raising these other matters—and only two opposed. It’s really great to see the bill really well supported in the House, because it makes good common sense.

I’m going to focus specifically on the earthquake-prone component. As we’ve heard already, it just simply extends the deadlines which were already there. If you’re after 1 April 2024, it extends it for four years. There is another two years, but as you’ve heard from the Minister, the desire is not to use that but to get the review through in time so it doesn’t need to be done. If that power is exercised, it can only be exercised once, and it can only be exercised for all buildings. You can’t cherry-pick; that’s the way it works.

I thought it was worth just reflecting on why we have seismic legislation, and the reason is, as we’ve heard from the Minister, that we live in some shaky isles. Look, it was interesting to reflect on and find out some information there: we get something like 14,000 earthquakes a year—14,000 earthquakes a year—of which we can feel probably around 250. We sit right on top of the Ring of Fire, of course. We sit on the place where the Australasian and Pacific faults or plates collide. If you look at a map of Zealandia, the continent we sit on, over the 70 to 80 million years since the separation from Gondwanaland, it has changed—and changed, and changed—and it will continue to change. And that, of course, brings seismic activity with it.

We heard from some of the speakers at the second reading suggesting it was inappropriate to compare the number of people who have died in earthquakes against the number of people who’ve died in road crashes, which I did, but it wasn’t to belittle by any circumstances the human stories, the human tragedy there is in earthquakes. The point that they made was that whether you lived or died in the Christchurch earthquake depended on where you were at 12.51 p.m. on 22 February 2011. Let’s be very clear that that was a tragedy; the Christchurch earthquake was a tragedy and the vast majority of the 185 people who died died because buildings or bits of buildings fell on them. A robust regime is an appropriate and fitting response to that.

For the record, since 1840, 493 people are recorded to have died in earthquakes—185 in the Canterbury earthquakes—and more than half of those deaths occurred in one earthquake, the Napier earthquake in 1931: 256 people. Just for completeness, I couldn’t easily find the road deaths before 1921, but from 1921 until now, the death toll on our roads is 41,821, which is more people than we’ve lost in every war put together. That’s something that is worth saying.

Let’s also be very clear, it’s my belief that we do need to have resilient building structures. When the whole IQP process started, over 7,000 buildings were deemed to be earthquake-prone. To date, something like 2,000 have been resolved. It’s about 27 to 28 percent of them that have been resolved, and as at 6 August, when this bill was brought to the House, 5,421 buildings were on the earthquake list. As I said, about 27 to 28 percent have been resolved.

I live in Wellington, we work in Wellington, and I’d like you to consider the likelihood of a major earthquake that might affect Wellington, because this has always been a serious issue for Wellington, right since 1855 when there was a first earthquake here which did cause some fatalities. Over the next 50 years, we’ve been advised that there’s a 75 percent chance of a magnitude 8-plus movement on the Alpine Fault, which would affect Wellington and affect, obviously, the South Island; the Wellington Fault itself, only a 5 percent chance of a magnitude 7.5; and the Hikurangi Fault, which is where those two plates collide, 25 percent for a magnitude 8 and, God help us, a 1 percent chance for a magnitude 9.1, which would be absolutely devastating. The risks to life and limb—I’ve given some numbers for the number of people who’ve died in earthquakes since 1840; if some of those happen, they may dwarf those things. This is serious business, and we need to be prepared for it.

Wellington City started an extensive programme of assessments in 2006, well before the Canterbury earthquakes, and has assessed 8,440 buildings. It found 1,100 of those to be earthquake-prone, and it’s down to about 572 now. Basically, 50 percent of those have been resolved, and it’s come at significant cost—it’s come at significant cost. Auckland: lower risk, but three times as many earthquake-prone buildings as Wellington. I might just say also that the authorities say there is a 10 percent chance in the next 50 years of major volcanic activity in Auckland. We do live on shaky and challenged isles. If we look overseas, we’ve seen that there are many countries which have suffered large numbers of deaths in earthquakes, largely because they’ve had very poor building stock, so being prepared is important.

The point that I was trying to make is that there is an immense cost to making our building stock resilient. Sometimes that cost may well not be warranted and sometimes we could do that in a different way, and that is the reason for this extension. That’s the reason that we’re doing a review. There are also problems for industry capacity, owner capacity, and affordability, and, obviously, making sure that the regime is optimal.

I just want to congratulate the Minister for undertaking the comprehensive review. I welcome that it’s being brought forward. I also welcome the comments made by my colleague across House, Arena Williams, saying that there is a desire for stability, because when you invest in a building, you invest in a building that you expect to be there for a long, long time. When the rules change—and we heard this in the submissions process, from Inner City Wellington in particular—you might have a building which is not earthquake-prone, 60-70 percent or whatever it might be, the rules change and suddenly you’ve got an earthquake-prone building. That kind of looks a bit like retrospective legislation. The point that they made is that it’s a moving feast—that it’s never done. That is not something which we should be imposing on our building owners.

We also heard from Inner City Wellington—and it puts a real human face on the challenge that there is—that many residents feel trapped. They’ve got a building; it’s suddenly earthquake-prone. It wasn’t before; it’s now earthquake-prone. Now they’ve got to work out how to afford the insurance, how to sort the finances out, how to deal with issues around unit titles legislation, because they’ve got to pull all these owners together, and the physical complexity of actually organising and strengthening a building. Those are really challenging issues. The last Government had a go at trying to put in place a regime to provide some support, but I understand that it was so complicated that nobody was actually in a position to take it up. I think one building might have got close, but they didn’t quite get there. Sometimes we’ve just got to take some risks and back people to do those things.

As you heard from Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, I’d like to also reflect on what this means, too, for our aspirations to densify the inner city, particularly here, but it’ll also be true in Christchurch and, I’m sure, in other parts of our country. If we’ve got aspirations to do that, we need to have—

James Meager: Timaru.

ANDY FOSTER: —Timaru; yeah—a regime that actually works and gives people confidence.

Just to finish off with, we need to make sure that we provide certainty for people. We also need to understand the way in which the market responds to reduced New Building Standard - equivalent ratings. We’re seeing that, by and large, people in this place want to say, “Well, look, we will not rent a place that’s not 80-plus percent. It was 80 percent; now it’s less than 80 percent, so now we’ll walk away from it.” What does that do for the market? That’s an issue.

Then there are issues around the credibility of assessments and making sure that people understand and can rely on assessments and that they don’t change over time. What about single-storey wooden buildings? Maybe I’m raising a few things here for the review to consider. What is the likelihood that they’ll collapse? What is the likelihood that they might kill somebody? We’ve got a whole heap of single-storey wooden buildings. I’ll bet you there are a fair few marae in there as well. Should they be covered by this? Because we don’t cover single-storey residential properties. There are a lot of issues which need to be dealt with through this review, and I’m looking forward very much to getting through its process.

Finally, the other thing I wanted to say is—and the Minister also did allude to this—there are often much-loved and economically valuable heritage buildings which are caught up in this as well. By no means all the buildings which are earthquake-prone are heritage buildings, but those are buildings which we need to find a solution for, because we list them not because of private good but because of public good, and we need to think about how we support those.

And finally, how do we stop ourselves building in dumb places? I’d like to reflect that the Christchurch City Council said, going back a few years, they didn’t want to have that development occurring in what is now the red zone. They fought against that. They got overruled by the court system; developers trying to develop it. That’s the red zone. That’s cost the country an enormous amount, and a lot of those homes have now, of course, disappeared. It’s a complex subject, a technical subject. That complexity is for the review, but this bill in this sense is a sensible one. It’s clearly well supported, and I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The next call is a split call.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou katoa. The marae is the focal point of Māori society and all communal activities—koinei ngā kōrero a Dr Ranginui Walker [these are the words of Dr Ranginui Walker.] Apart from many, many other marvellous things that he said, this is one of them that I want to focus on i roto i taku kōrero [in my speech.]

Again, we bring to the attention of the House the precarious state of marae throughout the motu, that may be forced to close and be demolished if they fail to meet the deadlines. Te Pāti Māori notes feedback from the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which has proposed two minor changes for inclusion into the principal Act. One of them is the deadlines for completing seismic work, and the other is to allow the Governor-General to extend on any of those deadlines. For some marae, time extensions without the necessary funds required for seismic upgrades simply delays the inevitable, and this bill does not address the fundamental inability for marae and hapū to afford seismic strengthening. Often marae and hapū are called upon to assist with civil emergency efforts. Doors open willingly to accommodate and support those in need.

Most marae do not have a business plan—I giggle because that’s so true—and yet they are functional, available, and they’re good to go. Yesterday, we received a call—and some of us, maybe many, will understand this. Marae can be called into action immediately, as they were yesterday when we received a call from one of our marae that one of our whanaunga had passed. Suddenly, the marae kicks into gear, somebody heads down there and starts making up 200 beds, and suddenly there’s three people in the kitchen doing all that work to make that available for the kaupapa, as we did for Gabrielle in Whangārei. I was part of that effort—both Hūhana and I, actually.

I’m just making the point about the importance and the significance. A marae is more than just a building; it is a place of worship and gathering. It is a place that has whakapapa to it. When we talk about marae, we don’t talk about just the building, and we don’t just talk about the bricks and mortar of it; we talk about the tūpuna that it comes from. We talk about all the work you do when you dress your marae. All of those factors are key. When we need a marae in a civil defence emergency, that’s what you get; you get all of that. You get the physical structure, you get the four aunties in the back who are going to suddenly make bread for 200 people that are coming in the door, and you get all of that Māori capability. It’s an impressive thing. When these requirements come into play, it might sound relatively simple for a building, but it’s quite something else for a marae building.

Marae must be supported as the lifeline critical infrastructure that they are, and to realise this before emergencies occur. It cannot be left unsaid that many marae do not sit on the original sites where they once stood—illegally evicted off their lands, on to reserves, which we heard about in Christchurch recently, designed to be small, scattered, and temporary. Amidst these challenges, climate change continues to threaten coastal communities nationwide and further compounds funding challenges. You see, this removal of whenua and its conservation under European doctrines of financial power and control contributes to the death of people—of Māori, and, in this case, non-Māori as well.

This means our marae, urupā, and wāhi tapu are vulnerable to flooding, coastal erosion, storm surges, and tidal issues. This is a real-life experience of how ecological control has contributed to the financial challenges we face today. A special pathway for marae must be set to meet those deadlines, inclusive of funding availability, and that must occur, otherwise marae inherit all of the national expectation with no national resources. Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou.

Talofa lava, Madam Speaker. I stand on behalf of the Greens to provide this short offering of support for this legislation and the amendments. The extension is important. As we know, there has been a pipeline and pressure on the sector, industry, local government, and homeowners to meet the previous time lines provided. The four years is important, as we’ve heard across the House, providing the space and time for us to ready ourselves.

One of the questions that comes to mind is: what is the plan? Then also: do we have the workforce, do we have the resourcing and the tools available, the capital, the contractors to line up the work? And where is our focus? Standing here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, it’s important to think about places such as Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland, āe, but for people in the regions—and we’ve heard about the Wairarapa; we might have heard about Tai Tokerau; north, south, east, west—we all need support. What does implementation look like, ultimately, across the board as we have this four-year time frame for us to do the mahi?

In considering the types of buildings, and we’ve heard about good town planning, good regional planning, and not building in dumb places—that’s a good question in terms of joining up the system—what does that look like to prevent what we have experienced in the past, while still servicing the need to remediate the buildings of now?

I thank members for their contributions around our heritage buildings—heritage buildings which reflect our community and some of our colonial experiences, public buildings that are often also administered by community groups. We’ve got a lot of not-for-profits who have administered these buildings for many years and now have the burden of trying to figure out how to fund the necessary remediation in this space—this, coupled with marae, who again, as we’ve heard from my colleague from Te Pāti Māori, lack resources to be able to do the work in their local rohe. It’s all a part of the plan, so what does the plan look like? Incentives for our homeowners as well as those who are the administrating bodies of both public and heritage buildings are really important in terms of our trajectory for the next four years as we have the space to do this work.

I acknowledge the many who contributed to the select committee process. We as the Green Party are comfortable with where we’ve landed—the amendments recommended—and further, I want to acknowledge our workforce and my colleague from the ACT Party, being the voice of builders and construction in the House.

Many of our industry partners—we have big wait-lists, right? That’s just for your average stuff. Having the four years now, and I think about the Tai Tokerau perspective, how do we work with the workforce to get the necessary tradies in place so that the contracts are all timed well and those that are most at risk are put to the top of the list, but, equally, working with local government on not building in dumb places? It would be really good to have that joined-up space.

The big question, of course, is for the community, for the community who administer these buildings with love and care, whether it be a marae, whether it be a heritage building, or those that are with our community halls; you know, you get a little bit of a grant, but you’ve got to do the sausage sizzle on the daily to keep these buildings intact and delivering for our communities. What does that look like?

I know this is implementation kōrero, but it is timely for us to think about it, right? We’ve set the scene. We’re giving the space and time for us to now plan out our future in terms of remediating the space and providing the space for community and owners to do the mahi, for the strengthening of their homes and buildings. But, again, it’s a question of funding for our un-resourced community sector, for marae, for hapū, and wider Aotearoa, and homeowners. We can’t forget them. What are our incentives? Let’s keep the waka moving. On behalf of the Green Party, we support this. Kia ora.

Madam Speaker, thank you. I rise in support of this bill, the Building (Earthquake-prone Building Deadlines and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, on the third reading. It’s been a very collegial process with the Transport and Infrastructure Committee being ably chaired by Andy Foster, and my other committee members—I’d like to thank them for their part in making some good, practical, and pragmatic changes.

I just want to focus mainly on the earthquake changes—the length of time extension. We always want to remember, as we’re doing this, that this stuff is very real and very recent, with the impacts we had recently in Christchurch of the devastating earthquakes down there. That’s always what sits in our minds as we extend this time frame out to work on what regulations we need around buildings in earthquake-prone areas, and regulations we come up with, as we review those regulations, to make them appropriate moving forward.

Speaking as the member of Parliament for Northland, we’ve got to actually take account of the risk factors in an area like Northland, which I would suggest are quite different to Wellington. Whereas Wellington sits on a fault line, Northland—gee! I think, in my entire life, I might have felt one earthquake, at about 3.2 or something like that, in the North. We just don’t tend to get them. I was on my motorbike at the time. As it happens, I can recall getting the cows in, as it was, so I was out there working.

So, look, I just think we’ve got to take all that into account, and I like to think, as we go through this process to review these regulations, that we take account of the risk factors, because different parts of the country will have different risks. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. today.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 12.58 p.m.