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

Thank you, sir. I present a legislative statement on the Building (Earthquake-prone Building Deadlines and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon CHRIS PENK: I move, That the Building (Earthquake-prone Building Deadlines and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Earlier this year, we came together as a Parliament to discuss a major problem in our country, and this bill will go some way, at least, but not the whole way that we need to go ultimately, to solve that problem. There are, in effect, two problems. One is, of course, the perils of inhabiting the Shaky Isles, as our land is affectionately but also fearsomely known. That’s a real-world danger. That risk is ever-present and we should not take that lightly at all; indeed, I don’t think anyone in this House would take that lightly.

A second danger exists, which is that in relation to the rules that govern earthquake-prone buildings, there is a large degree of non-compliance currently because of the operation of the rules, implemented, as they were, in good faith a decade ago, roughly speaking, but with barriers having become apparent in the meantime as to the strengthening or, variously, demolition of those buildings. The aim of this legislation is to mitigate the risk that we have a large number of buildings that are not legally compliant, even as we encourage those who are able to strengthen or demolish—again, as the case may be—those buildings which might represent a danger and a risk to life.

Before I go any further, I’d like to acknowledge the work of the select committees, plural—and I’ll explain that in a moment—but primarily the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, chaired ably by Mr Andy Foster, and I look forward to any contribution he may be about to make in the House on the subject, along with those of others across the House, of course. I do want to thank the committee for its careful deliberation. It’s obvious to me from the report that they’ve written that they’ve turned their mind carefully to a couple of very important matters within the bill, and I’d like to take a little bit of time to address those.

For the sake of completeness, I will note that with the legislative statement having been tabled, there are some technical matters that spell out a number of different elements within the bill that I don’t feel the need to rehearse, and that’s, of course, the whole purpose of us being able to table legislative statements. I don’t need to read that out carefully into the record. That exists as a matter of record, and I’d rather spend the time focusing on the earthquake-prone building aspects of the bill. That’s the main part of the legislation that was the driving force for getting it into the House, as the name suggests. As the name also suggests, there are “other matters”, and for any member of the public, or, indeed, member of the House, who wishes to familiarise themselves with those, then, of course, I would encourage them to do so.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Feel free to coach your fellow Cabinet Ministers on that point.

Hon CHRIS PENK: I couldn’t possibly comment, sir—“You might think that”, as the saying also says, and you’re never wrong, Mr Speaker, of course, even when you are. In terms of the—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The day will come.

Hon CHRIS PENK: —other matters, they’re not insignificant. For example, with the building warrant of fitness scheme, what are known as specified systems sounds very technocratic, but they are actually really important fire safety systems, and actually also to do, crucially, with the preservation of life and buildings. It’s not a small matter, and glossing over it reasonably quickly within the period of time allocated to me doesn’t indicate a lack of importance of that or a lack of attention on behalf of the Government or the Parliament, but, rather, I think it’s more helpful to ventilate some of the issues that were canvassed at select committee regarding the deadline that’s being offered.

Just to be clear, then, the deadline aspect is saying, in effect, that there will be more time available to those who own earthquake-prone buildings to get up to the standard that is currently required, technically, but having made it pretty clear that we intend to review—indeed, we are already reviewing—we intend to reach a place where the settings are likely to be different than they currently are. We are also, in addition to providing that extra breathing space of the additional four years, providing an opportunity for people not to be committed to a course of action that might not be appropriate, given the rules that will prevail following that review.

I do just want to set that scene as a prelude to discussing the fact that the extension is framed in terms of a four-year period but also with an additional possibility of the two years, and that’s an important point that we’ll get to in a moment. The point that the select committee—again, the Transport and Infrastructure Committee—made around the policy intent for the deadlines, I think, was a really helpful one. They suggested an amendment for the sake of clarity—which we accept—which is that if there should be not only a four-year period but also an additional two-year period, the extensions would apply to all those deadlines—namely, those extended originally by four years under the new section but also those issued between the commencement date of the legislation and the Order in Council being made under that new section. Just to be really clear, the idea is that the additional four years and then two years, if granted, would apply to any of the extended deadlines.

In terms of when the deadlines apply from, the date is actually 2 April. There’s a retrospective element, and, of course, usually in this House we are nervous, or at least mindful, of what we are doing in relation to retrospective elements within legislation. The general rule is that you don’t have them in the criminal law, and you don’t have them to disadvantage any party. In this case, the advantage would be that we are extending the effect of the extension back to the date that we announced that that would be available, even though, in the meantime, it’s the case that the law of the land is in accordance with the statute. It’s not something that I could change by mere Government statement or media release, as aficionados of Fitzgerald v Muldoon would know, and one of them is seated beside me—Mr James Meager is all over that. I mean, he’s all over, no doubt, the “Henry VIII” clauses, and that’s where we get to. It’s exciting—

Hon Member: Oh, Regs Review—the best committee.

Hon CHRIS PENK: —as a matter for the Regulations Review Committee, and I did foreshadow that I was grateful to select committees, plural. Not only the Transport and Infrastructure Committee but also the Regulations Review Committee have made an important point about “Henry VIII” clauses and the way that this legislation actually will make use of one. The point that they have made, quite rightly—both select committees; originally the Regulations Review Committee, and then, as acknowledged, but ultimately not acted upon by a majority of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee—is that if we have a piece of legislation that says that there shall be an extra four years available and there may also be an additional two, then that would be in the Minister’s discretion, but it should be Parliament that decides what applies in the matter of primary legislation.

If I can draw a very fine distinction, the select committee report says that the Minister would be allowed to set a date later than that expected by Parliament. It might be that Parliament expects only four years, but I think that Parliament is anticipating an additional two, should that be required—and I emphasise that it will be only if it’s required. The real-world imperative is that we would like to review the settings as quickly as possible, we’d like them to be in place, and we’d like the people to have enough time to be able to comply with those, but if four years proves too little a period of time for that, then I would be minded to grant an extension of an additional two years so that people have an opportunity to comply.

There’s an inherent lack of certainty, of course, when you review settings. We know that major decisions require technical analysis, require investment, and require cooperation of different parties, particularly when there are adjacent buildings, and require input from local government, bodies corporate in the case of unit titles, and so on. These are quite weighty matters, and we wish to resolve the matter in terms of new settings following the review as soon as possible, but if it’s not possible, then we would want people to have the additional two years, and that is why that mechanism is there. To allow that flexibility, I didn’t want to be too specific and be constrained in a way that might be subject to further uncertainty, in effect.

If the legislation were to include a clause along those lines, it might say something like “The Minister would grant an additional two years only if reasonably necessary in order to ensure sufficient time for compliance with the earthquake-prone building regime as it exists following the review of the earthquake-prone building settings.” I know that’s wordy, and it’s probably better that it didn’t go into the law, or at least not as drafted by me, but for anyone who’s paying attention carefully and for whom this is meaningful, please know that that’s the intent. We’d like to do everything—done and dusted—within four years, but if we need an extra two years, then we will do that for the benefit of those who need to comply.

Of course, we could have simply just said that it was six years from the outset, but I do want to hold my own feet to the fire, and those of the Government and of lawmakers in general, to try and get a result more quickly than that. Every day that we have uncertainty, and, of course, real-world risk associated with non-strengthening and non-demolition works of earthquake-prone buildings, represents at least a theoretical risk. So, for that reason, we’ve landed where we have in terms of the legislation. I’m grateful for the engagement of all the parties and I look forward to the contributions of others, and, of course, for myself, I do commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This has been a productive process through the select committee, and I want to thank everyone who has participated in it—it was a lively debate at the select committee—and thank the submitters who took the time to come along and really work through some of the issues that this bill raises.

Labour will be tentatively supporting the bill at this stage, and that is a change in position from the first reading. Having heard from the submitters and worked through the policy issues, we have some support for really working through the issue which the Minister has said, both publicly and in this House, is the reason for the extension of the deadline, and that is to deal with the underlying policy settings which need to be sorted out by the Government, and, look, they’ve been around for three decades.

We’ve been debating in this Parliament and through the Law Commission and through the courts the role of council, the role of central government, and the role of homeowners when it comes to who pays for the strengthening of existing buildings in our building system. It’s the Labour Party’s position that people should not be put in undue risk due to the buildings they’re in, and that homeowners—especially vulnerable homeowners—should not be in a position where they’re bearing the entire cost, which is really untenable, particularly for many of the apartment owners who are burdened by these rules at the moment and who have come forward during the select committee process and made their case very strongly.

However, I want to put it on record very clearly that Labour in Government had a solution to this which is better than the one that is being proposed by the Government now. Labour had a scheme called the Residential Earthquake-Prone Building Financial Assistance Scheme, which offered up to $250,000 for the below-market rates payable on sale to protect those homeowners who would have been at a significant financial disadvantage because of the compliance that was being put on them. That also meant that compliance was required as soon as possible, and it meant that building owners would have been required to remediate buildings which were at risk. We’re not only putting those people who live in them at risk, but casual users of those buildings—mixed-use buildings like car parks and commercial facilities, where people might not have the information about the kinds of buildings that they were going into—and neighbours of those buildings, which were also put at risk by earthquake-prone buildings being around them.

It’s in everyone’s interests that New Zealand buildings comply with earthquake standards as soon as possible, and that’s why Labour, at the first reading, was opposed to this bill. We’re now looking to the Government for leadership on some of those really big issues that submitters have come forward and said they want to address in these four years. We say, let’s go—let’s work on that together because bipartisanship and a long-term vision on this is really important, but let’s make sure it’s independent. We need to make sure that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is also working alongside independent experts on this, and Labour is still looking for the Minister to announce the membership of the independent review alongside the independent chair, which has not been announced, and we’re still looking for a broader consultation with affected homeowners, particularly, in this. But we support it, and we support it along with some of the issues that the Minister has outlined. We need to get our heads around this and make sure that New Zealanders are well served by the legal framework.

I’ll touch briefly on some of the issues around the safeguards here, and then I will speak to the independently qualified person’s rules, which are also being changed in this bill. Firstly, to the appropriate safeguards, we’ve just heard from the Minister that it’s his expectation that there will be a four-year period for this, but there is a possibility that there will be a two-year extension. We firmly believe that if it was the intention for six years to be used, it would have been set in this legislation, and our support for it is contingent on the fact that there is a four-year deadline here and there is only a two-year step-out if that is really required.

At the select committee stage, we pressed officials for a reason why they would not include a rationale for the Minister to use the extra two years that is being allowed for here in the primary legislation. That might have included, say, a reason and criteria that the Minister would have had to have satisfied himself were fulfilled if he were to use the extra two-year extension, because we don’t agree that there should be an extra two-year step out for purely administrative reasons.

The review that has been promised here by the Government into the underlying policy issues should be completed in four years. It should be properly resourced. There should be enough people in MBIE to be able to do that review in the four years, and if it is only a constraint on the Public Service which requires it to be six years, then that is not a good enough reason for the legislation to be extended—not by Parliament—and we should be very clear with the Public Service here that what we need to do is to settle these matters as quickly as possible. Four years should be the absolute maximum. The only reason, in the Labour Party’s view, that a six-year period should be used is if some event happens—either an earthquake event or some huge event like COVID—which disrupts the Public Service’s ability to be able to continue this work, and that should have been the criteria that was in the primary legislation to extend it. I’ll be asking the Minister for some further clarifications on that in the committee stage.

The next point I want to talk about is that if it is extended beyond the four-year deadline and into the six-year deadline, we then really do come back to those criticisms which were raised with the select committee in the select committee process by submitters—particularly those from Christchurch—who raised questions with us around “Isn’t this approach something which continually kicks the can down the road and that really rewards the behaviour of putting it off to the very last minute and rewards those insurers who are unable to settle with homeowners who are looking for a solution?” Look, I don’t think that that is what is happening here with a four-year period, but if it is any further than that, then I think those concerns begin to have real legitimacy in the public discourse. We have to set the Public Service very clear deadlines around wanting to resolve this as soon as possible.

On this side of the House, we are keen to continue to work with this and to continue to make it work in a bipartisan way, but that does mean resolving it as quickly as possible and getting right to the heart of the nitty-gritty up front. Who is going to pay for the strengthening, because the strengthening will cost New Zealanders, and it will cost everyone. Is it the Government’s responsibility, is it the local council’s responsibility, is it the homeowner’s responsibility, or is it all of the above, and do we need a scheme that shares responsibility within all of those? That is the question which we need answered here, and I will put it to members that, actually, there’s a series of value judgments that can be resolved within a four-year period and the information and the policy settings will not change within that four-year period. That work can be done and should be done as quickly as possible.

Now, just moving on quickly, before I run out of time, to the “independently qualified person” part of the bill, this is a good step to ensure that the standards that homeowners, that councils, and that central government have around the quality of buildings and their fitness for things like fire regulations are being upheld across the system. But it is, essentially, a fine that would be levied against people who are responsible for, say, carrying out these checks without the help that this industry requires in terms of making sure that councils are giving them the most up-to-date and accurate information, that the training and the qualifications and the certifications around this industry of practice are well supported, that there is the right kind of training available for these people, and that there is a register that independently qualified people can access and that is publicly available for the people who rely on them. Those are things that should be progressed alongside a fine.

It’s taking a punitive approach to solve the problem where there could be a supportive approach as well, and we’d like to see some work in ensuring that these fines are being levied in a way which actually achieves the result that certain people aren’t receiving more fines than others. We would like to see some reporting on that in the next year to make sure that it’s not overly punitive and is disincentivising people to even get into the professional practice in the first place, and so that we’re not creating a regime where it’s only very, very, very highly qualified and, therefore, expensive professionals who are able to undertake this work.

In closing, I just want to reflect that this has been a policy-intensive work programme for the select committee members involved. We have been extremely reliant on the submissions of the stakeholders who have been impacted by this—not only homeowners but insurers from the councils who have been involved in it—and I want to thank those experts who have been able to feed into this. It is something that many people are deeply interested in and that will affect people’s livelihoods and people’s retirement savings. It is something which has been incredibly emotive at the committee stages and for the stakeholders who have been involved with it, and so I’m just acknowledging how much of a stake people have in this. There will be many, many people who are not affected by it at all. There will be some people for whom this is their entire life savings and life plan ahead of them, and their retirement will look hugely different if we don’t get this right. We want to keep engaging with those stakeholders, we want to keep hearing from them, and we’ll continue to work with the Minister on something that will be long lasting.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. The challenge of earthquake-prone buildings is very, very real, and the difficulty in achieving all of the capacity that we need in this sector to address the many buildings is the reason why this bill was brought to the House. We didn’t hear a huge number of submitters at the select committee, but very few were opposed to the proposal of changing the deadlines by four years, although it could be another two years, as the previous speaker Arena Williams just alluded to.

I recently was looking at the numbers of earthquake-prone buildings across the country, and people may be surprised to know that there are over 1,500 in Auckland; still 930, almost, in Canterbury; and 822 in the Wellington region—so not just Wellington City, although Wellington City is the majority of those, with 572—and, actually, there are earthquake-prone buildings right across the country and in some of our smaller towns like Marton. Local councils, community groups, and building owners right across the country are facing the difficulty of remediating buildings to ensure that they are safe, and that’s really important. It is really important that we do have good standards and that buildings are safe, and yet meeting the standards that were brought in in 2016 by a previous National Government has proved extremely difficult. As things currently stand, there’s no means in the regulations or the legislation for prioritising which buildings must be remediated sooner rather than later.

One thing that the select committee did not consider, because it was out of the scope of this bill, but it might be considered in the review and what happens next, should the extension pass—which it probably will—is looking at how we can make this more achievable for people. There’s no point in having rules and regulations if it’s completely unachievable, and even if there’s all the good will in the world to remediate these buildings, there is a lack of cash, certainly for apartment owners here in Wellington who might be on a fixed income, or for buildings that are owned by councils or community groups. There’s even a lack of resource in the sector to remediate all of these buildings. They can’t all be done at once, and having blanket deadlines doesn’t take into account the fact that there is a limit on the number of expert engineers, project managers, builders, and everyone else that is needed to remediate the buildings.

Through the review, one thing the Green Party is particularly interested in is addressing those issues, because, ultimately, this bill is just a short-term band-aid on the problem. We support the bill, but it is just a band-aid, and we need a medium- and long-term solution to actually address the constraints to ensure that buildings can be remediated and that they can be safe.

One way to do that is to introduce the concept of prioritisation—so to really make a clear pathway and process by which Government and local government can work together to ensure that the buildings that are at the highest risk are the ones that are being remediated first. If you have a multi-storey apartment building that people are living in, or a commercial building that hundreds of people are working in, clearly that is a greater risk to life and wellbeing than a one-storey, hundred-year-old tennis club that doesn’t have anyone in it most of the time. That’s not to say that that building shouldn’t be remediated, but it’s a different level of risk. If we could bring some prioritisation to this process, that would certainly help those in the sector and those who are struggling.

That alone will not solve the issue of the cost, and that’s where I do think central government does need to come up with a viable solution, because it was the case that there was great investment and necessary investment in Christchurch after the Canterbury earthquakes. However, we haven’t seen that level of central government investment in Wellington or some of the other smaller communities that were affected by the Kaikōura earthquake.

The previous Government had a fund. Unfortunately, it was a little bit difficult to access. However, there were some people who had gone through all the trouble of trying to access this fund. I have a person in my electorate who contacted me. Their elderly parent lives in my electorate and they live in an earthquake-prone apartment building. They had just jumped through all the hoops to access that fund that had been set up and then the Government announced that it was being pulled, and so far, we don’t have anything in its place. That was causing enormous distress to this person, who is a pensioner who is on a limited income, and I think it’s really important that we all work together on this.

This bill has cross-party support, but we need to go further and get cross-party support on really sustainable solutions that address the fiscal issues faced, so that it’s not just left to local government or building owners but that they’re able to access the help that they need, especially in the cases where they may not even be able to pull the building down if it has heritage status. We need to ensure that the buildings are able to be brought up to standard so that they can be safe and we can protect our heritage so people can be safe living in them, and so that this enormous cost burden is not simply put on local government or local communities but is shared. I think central government has a really important role to play in that, so we look forward to the further steps to address those issues. The Green Party is supporting this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Building (Earthquake-prone Building Deadlines and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

As the title gives allusion to, it’s extending the deadlines for conducting remedial work on buildings which are deemed earthquake-prone, which, for people at home, are at under 34 percent of the building code—but that doesn’t help explain much, though, does it? Really, what we’ve got here in New Zealand is a scheme in which engineers and other professionals come in and assess a building, and if they think that due to its geographic location, its structure—the knowledge of what is held in plans, sometimes at council; sometimes in museums. If that gives an engineer or a professional the tools to develop an assessment of that building that says that it is earthquake-prone, it will need to be remediated to make it safe for the occupants and for the community.

We’ve had lots of events in these Shaky Isles, as the Minister has alluded to, and this has meant that there have been a lot of changes to the way buildings are measured in New Zealand. There are so many small towns in New Zealand, which have got challenges, in some cases. Some small parts of New Zealand are growing for their beautiful location, the amenities—

Joseph Mooney: That’s right.

CAMERON LUXTON: —the type of life—and the ACT member for Southland over there is a prime—

Joseph Mooney: National—National.

CAMERON LUXTON: Yeah, well, the National member for Southland can speak with pride about his wonderful electorate, and it is a wonderful electorate and there’s many wonderful parts of New Zealand with historic buildings. Unfortunately, with building warrants of fitness, with fires, with earthquake-prone—many parts of New Zealand that are proud of their historic buildings are left in a situation where these buildings are very expensive to remediate, and they need to come up with a plan for both how they’re going to conduct that remediation and also how they’re going to pay for it: what’s the business proposition that this building can offer? It’s admirable for members of the Opposition to spend taxpayers’ money on offering incentives to say that we could give loans to be paid back on completion on a sale of a building, but, actually, that’s taxpayer money, and we need to make sure that we’re putting the money to work in a good way that is actually sustainable.

To that end, just yesterday I visited a hostel in Tauranga—a beautiful hostel. It’s called Wanderlust. It’s 105—it’s more than 105; it was built in 1905. It’s a historic building. It’s got a great deal of importance to The Strand in Tauranga and the life and times of Tauranga, and the owners, Sarah and Matt, have done an amazing job with their remediation. They have stripped the walls and they’ve spent a lot of time on the end of a paintbrush, by all accounts, bringing this building up to a place where they can be proud, and the people of Tauranga can also be proud, of it.

That is on the main strand of Tauranga, a place that has got up and coming commercial opportunities. It’s got a lot of emphasis and money being sent towards the CBD of Tauranga to make it a sort of a place that visitors will want to come. Young people from Europe and around the world will want to come and spend their OE having a backpacker’s experience, picking our beautiful fruit in the Bay of Plenty and working at the cafes and bars, and this sort of thing is a great asset to Tauranga. But the earthquake remediation that’s been done on it is only possible because of the economic future of the CBD. We need to give a chance for these councils in these smaller areas and the building owners who form part of it to take a step back, assess, and figure out where they want to spend their funds and how they want to bring their beautiful communities to life.

There is another part of this bill—and it’s referred to in the “Other Matters”—and that is the independently qualified persons (IQPs) part. Now, what is happening in this bill is an increase in the fines, and from my perspective, that’s increasing the stick to try and get compliance. The Labour member referred to the submissions, I believe, and we heard in the submissions to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that it’s all well and good to increase the fines, but, actually, what is being done to improve the state of the IQPs, their skills, their registry, and their counterparts on the councils and in other professions?

You can’t just expect IQPs to carry the can all the way for something they’re intrinsically attached to, which is that the IQP assesses a building warrant of fitness. It’s kind of like the mechanic who has a look at your car’s warrant of fitness. An IQP comes and has a look at all the parts of a building that need to be maintained and kept safe, but they need to have access to training and a registry where competent people who are qualified can be found. They need to have people, as I say, who they interact with who know what they’re doing. They’re not just throwing out anything and hoping that the IQP with their skills will pick it up because they’re the ones that the stick is going to whack. We’ve talked about this in the commentary from the select committee, and I hope that the Government takes up some of that and looks at some of our recommendations around IQPs.

Another small part of the other matters was clarifying the exemptions for small heated pools. This is about how often an inspection for a small heated pool—otherwise known as a spa—would need to happen. Now, I think many members in this House would have had constituents come up to them and say, “Oh my God, why do I have to have my pool inspected so often? It’s very invasive. I’ve got my fence and it’s all sorted.” Well, I definitely feel the pain of those homeowners that are dealing with the pool compliance laws. I would say that they are in place for a good reason, though, and that is to keep kids safe from drowning, and that’s something that is laudable. But, when you’ve got a product which is a compliant product, such as a secure cover on your spa pool, it doesn’t seem like something that the councils need to be burdened with inspecting every three years.

Another part that is happening in these other matters referred to is the tidying up a little bit around what is a code of acceptance. A code of acceptance, for those who don’t have to deal with these, is basically where someone has gone and done some work that should have been permitted, as in with a building consent, but they didn’t go and get the paperwork filled out, and went and did the work without that, you can apply for a code of acceptance. A code of acceptance basically says that the council has had a look at this and to the best of the council’s or the building consenting authorities’ knowledge, it is deemed safe and compliant with the code, but they cannot guarantee that all the way down to every screw because it’s being covered up, perhaps. What we’re doing here is just clarifying it to say that if you’ve been issued with a code of acceptance, you don’t need to go for a building consent. It seems simple because a code of acceptance is supposed to prevent you from needing a building consent, but I guess we’re spelling it out in black and white for all to see here.

Another part of this that is quite good, I think, is the meetings that building consent authorities, or BCAs—other stand-alone BCAs that aren’t attached to a territorial authority. We’re giving them some guidance and statutory requirements on how and when they need to send information to a territorial authority, and this is a great idea. I think that we need to be looking more at stand-alone building consenting authorities, and this is a mechanism to allow it to happen. Specifically, it’s saying that that information needs to be supplied within five days, and the commentary back from the select committee is saying we should be making that five working days, which I’m sure will be seen as a sensible change by all.

New Zealand’s housing stock and our commercial and industrial stock is the place where New Zealanders live and provide for our economy, where they manufacture, and where they go and spend leisure time. It’s an important environment, and it is an environment—it’s the human environment that we live in. It’s somewhere where we need to make sure it’s safe, but we also need to make sure it’s affordable and it’s somewhere where people want to be. Taking away burdens, or at least alleviating them, even if it is for a short time, so that plans can be made, policies can be developed, and workforces can be trained is a very sensible initiative from this Minister and this Government, and I commend it to the House.

Madam Speaker, thank you. I’m just going to start with a few thanks before speaking to the Building (Earthquake-prone Building Deadlines and Other Matters) Amendment Bill—it’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?

First of all, can I say thank you, Minister Penk, for your generous comments, and it was a pleasure to shepherd this through the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. Thanks also to all the committee members. I think we work in a very collegial way and we try and find the best possible outcomes that we can, and everybody contributes in terms of asking good questions.

I also wanted to place on record my thanks to the officials and also to the submitters. I mean, we only had 23 submitters. Two of them didn’t like the bill for various different reasons and for nine of them, they were sort of a bit hard to work out whether they did or didn’t, but the majority of submitters said, “We think this is a very sensible bill.” What’s more, they brought to us quite a bit of perspective and quite a bit of expertise, and I’ll come to some of that shortly.

The bill is principally about, as I said, earthquake-prone building deadlines, and so I’ll deal with that first, and then other matters. Principally, it’s about extending the remediation deadlines for seismically prone buildings for four years, and it allows for another two years, if need be.

To me, this is a common-sense, pragmatic approach, and there are two major reasons for that. The first one of those is we have a large number of buildings with seismic deadlines which are looming, particularly in this city here. I’ll come back to that, but Wellington started the process of looking at earthquake-prone buildings early because we know it is a seismically active part of the country. The second reason for this is that the Government has launched a comprehensive—and I do say comprehensive—review of the reaction we take to seismic-prone buildings. Dealing with a seismically-prone building, particularly if it’s a complex building or particularly if it’s a heritage building—and by no means all are—is expensive, it’s complex, and there are also issues of capacity, both of the owners and also of the industry to be able to respond to dealing with these.

The reason for having an extension and why it’s so important is that what you don’t want to do, as a building owner, is be trying to respond to the existing set of rules as they are at the moment and then also know that you might be having to respond to a different set of rules that are being thought about. I’m going to quote from Inner City Wellington, who do a fantastic job in representing, particularly, the residential community in inner-city Wellington—so apartment owners—and a quote that they gave to us was this. They said, “The Government should not conduct the review of seismic risk management in existing buildings under the earthquake-prone building system”—i.e., the review—“at the same time as requiring building owners to progress towards compliance. The review could result in significant changes to the earthquake-prone building regime. It is not reasonable for owners to face potential enforcement action on current requirements if they do not comply while the review is under way.”, and that makes absolute sense, so it’s a very pragmatic and sensible response to that.

The whole issue—which is, obviously, going to be tackled in the review—is a challenging balancing one. We had a number of people who have made the observation both in submissions now but also over time that far, far fewer people have died in earthquakes as a result of buildings falling than have died on the road pretty much every year, and that’s with a reduced road toll. However, it is still a significant issue, and if you look at the potential risk in some parts of our country—and in this one more than in any other one—of a major earthquake and you look at what’s happened in major earthquakes overseas where building standards are poor, you see what the implications could be.

It is really, really important that we do have a really robust seismic building regime, because if we don’t, the consequences could be absolutely catastrophic. I mean, Christchurch was bad. Christchurch was bad, but if you had a major event in this part of the country—and we look at the likelihood of major events like the Alpine Fault going, the Hikurangi Fault going, or any of those major events—the potential could be catastrophic, so we have to be a prepared community. It’s that issue of balancing that preparation and that life safety with the cost of responding to that.

The issue has already been raised about who pays for that, and there is an element of public good and there’s an element of private good. I mean, there’ll be some people who will say, “Oh, look, it’s all public good.” Well, actually, if you live in a building, I think you’d get a private benefit out of it as well, but if you happened to be walking past, that’s a public benefit. If it happens to be a heritage building—why do we list buildings as heritage buildings? We don’t list them as heritage buildings for the good of the owner; we list them as heritage buildings because we value them, as a nation, as a district, or as whatever it might be, because we’re saying that those buildings add to the character, tell our stories, etc. There’s a balancing act that needs to be done there and some real thought needs to be given to this.

How many buildings are involved? Well, at the beginning of this process, we had something like over 7,000 buildings across the country which were designated as earthquake-prone buildings, and about 2,000 of those have been resolved. As of 6 August, when this bill was brought to the House—well, the first reading was on 8 August—5,421 buildings were still on the earthquake-prone building list. Almost 30 percent had been resolved by that stage, which is progress.

I am going to touch on Wellington because it’s particularly dear to my heart. It is a very seismically active city, but if I just remind members of something that I said during the first reading, it was that we’d just visited the crisis management centre downstairs. They said that, in the next 50 years, there was an 80 percent chance of an Alpine Fault event of 8-plus—80 percent—a 25 percent chance of a Hikurangi Fault event of 8-plus; a 1 percent chance—God help us—of a Hikurangi Fault event of 9.1; and a 5 percent chance on the Wellington Fault. If you do the maths and you do the exclusions in there, there’s about a 90 percent chance of a major earthquake affecting this part of the world in the next 50 years, so that’s a really significant thing that we need to be responding to.

Wellington took this very, very seriously. In fact, Wellington City started a programme in 2006—which you’ll note was before the Canterbury earthquakes—to assess all the buildings, and it assessed 8,440 buildings. I can remember at one stage going along to a conference and seeing that Wellington City had done more earthquake-prone building assessments than the rest of the country put together, which was pretty impressive. There were 1,100-plus of those which were designated as being earthquake-prone, and as of August, that was down to about 570-odd. Pretty close to 50 percent of those have been resolved, mostly by strengthening rather than by demolition.

What I would say is that, as I’ve said, there is a peak coming up, and in Wellington, that peak is a very large peak: by 2027, of those 570-odd buildings, 305 have to be resolved. It’s a very significant peak and the capacity is going to be challenged. Auckland, as we’ve already heard from Julie Anne Genter, might have a lower risk, but it has three times as many earthquake-prone buildings as Wellington does—at about 1,500.

We heard also from some of the provincial areas. The Manawatū District, which is often looked at here, they had 68 earthquake-prone buildings, particularly in Feilding, and they made the very, very strong point that the economics of strengthening those buildings just are not there. So there are going to have to be some really hard decisions that are made about which buildings are important to retain and how those buildings are supported.

Arena Williams spoke about the previous Government’s funding regime, but my recollection is that I don’t think anybody actually got through the hoops to actually get anything. Somebody might have got close, but they hadn’t actually made it, so I think it’s really important to bear that in mind.

I think also that in terms of the review, there are going to be real questions about people’s confidence in the assessments which are done. I mean, it’s great to say, “I’ve got a building which is 70 percent of the new building standard, and then five minutes later, it’s down to 20 percent.”, and you think, “Oh, what the heck has happened there?” That’s really challenging. Again, Inner City Wellington made the comment to us that if the new building standards change, effectively what that does is it changes the rating on the existing buildings, and they asked whether that is fair. They said—and, again, I quote from their submission—“Under the current system, there is no end point.” Building hasn’t gotten any less safe; it’s just that the goalposts have moved, so there are some issues that really need to be thought through very, very carefully.

Just to the use of the Order in Council to be able to extend the deadline—to me, it makes absolute sense. As I said, you don’t want to have the confluence of both the review going on with the legislation having maybe not been completed, because, of course, people will have to start thinking about the plans, the designs, etc., for their building. They don’t just suddenly turn that on at the end of the process, and so having that time, I think, is important.

Finally, in the last little bit, I’d just say that in terms of the other matters, such as the Independent Qualified Persons (IQPs), we’ve already heard about it clarifying the obligations, or introducing the stick, as my colleague Cameron Luxton has talked about. We did get some good submissions there about the need for better training systems, a register, and a better qualifications arrangement, because it’s really not good enough at the moment. Now, those things might have been beyond the scope of the legislation as it was, but they did make a lot of sense, and we do commend those for further thought, and—just finally to say—they also raised the issue of whether only IQPs should be held responsible if something goes wrong, because they also rely, of course, on a lot of other players, whether it’s the councils, whether it’s the engineers, the designers, or whatever.

I’m delighted to get to this point. Thanks, everybody, for getting us to this point, and I commend the bill to the House.

The next call is a split call.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou. This is a really timely discussion, given the other day, when I felt that very big thump—just yesterday, at 4 o’clock. I was like, “OK, I’m sitting here and I’m not in my safe Tai Tokerau home.”—so, anyway, here we are. I guess that I wanted to draw this discussion in relation to the probably 200-plus marae in Te Tai Tokerau and the marae around here—just over the road, actually—and the relevance of this piece of work to our marae.

Without the amendments we discuss today, many of our marae would have been at risk of closure and would be forced to be demolished if they had failed to meet the original deadlines. The extensions of time frames have saved various marae, but only for the next four years, and, for an unlikely cohort, the next two years. This is all the time these marae have left to somehow acquire the funds necessary for seismic upgrades; these extensions are, therefore, a temporary solution to a deeper systemic problem.

At the core of this problem is something that many hapū face, which is the inability to afford seismic strengthening of their marae. A marae is not a stand-alone building, but it’s comprised of wharekai, wharemoe, wharepaku—all of the places that make up a marae complex and a marae system. Keeping in mind that that is generalised, across differing hapū, marae will consist of whare outside of those that I have just listed. When we consider the cost of seismic upgrading to even just one of these whare, it is simply unachievable for many hapū.

Marae safeguard our identities, our history, our reo, our whakapapa, our tikanga, our cultural practices, and our collective memory that has passed through the generations in our magnificent whakairo that often dress many, many of our marae across the motu. They’re also a place of safety during civil defence emergencies—as they should be—as was seen during Cyclone Gabrielle. They are a haven for whānau from all walks of life in moments of crisis, to not only Māori but Māori mai, Pākehā mai. Tātou katoa, marae is your marae.

When we consider this and the reliance of Government on marae to feed and house our communities in these times, it is clear that Government must shift the burden of seismic upgrade financial stresses from hapū and into their own hands. The Government should fully fund seismic strengthening for marae. With the rising costs and limited funding, and with little to no resource available, the finance strain on hapū and their marae will leave our communities vulnerable. Hapū need targeted funding initiatives, meaning partnerships with Government agencies and actual collaboration in order to achieve that result.

All of us—Māori and non-Māori—must ask ourselves what it would mean if you lost your marae. We Māori know that there are a limited number of spaces where we can be our true, authentic selves, yet marae are some of the only spaces left in the country built off stolen whenua and Māori labour. Koia, te reo, tikanga, and whakapapa endures, but I must ask those non-Māori, tauiwi, tangata Tiriti, or however you may identify: what would it mean if your marae were lost?

This bill and its amendments foster a sense of urgency for whānau, for hapū, for marae, and for the country, actually. The preservation and safety of our marae is not only critical to the enduring legacy of our whakapapa but also to our obligations as tangata whenua in providing the necessary care for our manuhiri. Our marae deserve the support needed to thrive, and Māori need to be properly resourced to meet earthquake-proofing requirements. E tautoko mārika te pāti tēnei kōrero. Tēnā koe e te Pīka. [Our party wholeheartedly supports what has been said. Thank you, Madam Speaker.]

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to this bill on behalf of our party.

I actually want to do something very strange and very odd from this corner of the room: I actually want to acknowledge and mihi to you, Minister Penk, for reaching out to us early. Your office did a really great job at reaching out to myself and my colleague Julie Anne Genter, as the Wellington City MPs, to brief us on some of these changes, and I really appreciated having that early notice and being communicated with about what your intentions are. Living in a city where we have such a high earthquake risk and where so many of our residents, and also our city council, are so deeply impacted by these rules, it was really nice to be consulted on that. Thank you to you and your office for consulting with us on that.

I also wanted to acknowledge that this legislation doesn’t impact only Wellington. Yes, it has been the centre of the conversation and the centre of focus due to our vulnerability and due to the number of buildings that fall under this category that sit within our city, but it was really important to, I guess, our wider caucus to acknowledge the provinces and the small towns that are impacted by having an earthquake-prone building status. It’s not just a Wellington issue, but it affects our whole country and even—as my colleague Mariameno Kapa-Kingi was just saying—impacts our marae.

It impacts quite deeply when you take a broader look at it. It’s not just Wellington-centric, but I am really pleased to see the changes from a Wellington point of view, because we look around our city and we see the impact of having an earthquake-prone status on so many of our most important buildings. Our central library: you might have seen that it has been under construction for the last few years, and that’s because it was deemed to be earthquake-prone, and within the Civic Square area here in Pōneke, so many of our buildings have got that tape around them. It’s a tremendous financial burden, because there was previously this expectation that we would fix those buildings at a certain time, and our city simply cannot weather that financial burden to do that critical work.

At the same time, we acknowledge that it’s really important that buildings—especially those that have lots of people in them—are at the highest level of safety standards. We’re kind of trying to make this balance between having safe buildings that people can enter into without the fear of loss of life or of damage in the case of a major earthquake, but we’re also trying to acknowledge that the financial burden for the city, if the city council owns that building or the Government owns that building, is extremely high. There is also the financial burden on residents and people on fixed incomes who live in some of these apartment buildings and who cannot weather some of the earthquake-strengthening work that is required of them. There’s a lot of different things to juggle in this conversation, but I feel pretty happy at this point of the bill’s passage that many of those factors have been addressed.

I particularly wanted to echo those acknowledgments from my colleague Andy Foster, who talked about the really excellent work that Inner-City Wellington has done. For those who don’t know Wellington, Inner-City Wellington is like our inner-city residents’ association, and it has been doing a lot of advocacy, particularly for residents living in those buildings that are earthquake-prone who are on those fixed incomes and who can’t come up with the money to strengthen their buildings. I want to particularly acknowledge Geraldine Murphy for the work that she has been doing in this space to continue to advocate for those people.

We’re happy to support this bill at this stage of its passage, but I just want to reiterate our desire to make sure that that financial burden isn’t impossible or insurmountable, and we also want to acknowledge the really important role of human safety. From the briefings that we’ve received around this bill, it’s clear that we could look at some forms of prioritisation, and so we’d be making sure that the buildings that have the most people going through them and the highest risk are prioritised in those deadlines, above some of the more random, smaller, less consequential buildings that exist out there, like some of those heritage buildings, which I have strong views on—but I’ll park those for another day. Thank you very much, and that’s my contribution. Kia ora.

Well, I’m very privileged to rise and speak on this bill, and I’d just like to acknowledge that it’s great that common sense has broken out on the other side of the House and they’ve finally seen the light and decided to support this bill. Thank you—I acknowledge it. [Interruption] There you go, they still can’t acknowledge that maybe we’ve got a good idea over here that they can support, but it’s great. Thank you and I appreciate it, and it has been a very collegial select committee on this one, to be fair. We—

Hon Phil Twyford: Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Hon Chris Penk: You or us?

GRANT McCALLUM: Ha, ha! Well, we’ll take that—as long as we’re picking the right pieces of the legislation to be right on, that’s just fine by me.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’d just also clarify that the clock hasn’t stopped.

GRANT McCALLUM: Yes, I’m sure you will all have heard enough of me by the end of that, anyway.

Look, moving on, at the select committee—look, it’s a really tricky and delicate area, this, and it’s important that we get this right. It’s a serious issue around earthquake-safe buildings, and so forth. I think we’re doing the right thing by giving the full review time to actually progress, so that’s what this is all about. It’s just delaying and giving people time. We’ve got to make sure we don’t just keep kicking the can down the road, and I think the Minister has acknowledged that. It’s four years, with a potential of having two. We want to go and really focus on trying to solve this as quickly as possible, but we want to make the rules fair for people.

Just to acknowledge: at the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, we had 23 written submissions, and nine submitters came in and gave oral submissions. The vast majority were in support of what we’re doing. There were one or two who spoke against, but, overall, people could see that this needs to be done. It’s a really difficult area, as people have acknowledged, because you’re balancing off that risk/return trade-off in going forward about how much you spend to upgrade buildings and the potential loss of life. That’s important work that needs to be done, going forward.

As a farmer, I thought there was one part of the bill that I would just mention because I think it’s quite appropriate, actually. There is a part of the bill which removes the obligation on a dam owner—which a few of us are, here in the rural sector—to display a copy of the dam compliance certificate in a prominent place on the dam while retaining requirements for the certificate are to be supplied to the relevant regional authority to update them, and so forth. Maybe not every dam has got a maimai on it, like ours has, where we are able to go in and deal with the ducks that happen to fly in the wrong place at the right time of year—for those of us who enjoy a bit of duck hunting. I just think that that’s a very common-sense approach, because otherwise, if you did not have that sort of structure, you would not have anywhere to display it. So, on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We have a responsibility as a Government to keep people safe, and in speaking about the Building (Earthquake-prone Building Deadlines and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, that’s ultimately what it comes down to—it’s about keeping people safe.

I’m the MP for Christchurch East, which is often referred to as the mighty Christchurch East, not just by myself, but by at least everybody who lives in it. I’ve also been a resident in Christchurch since 1977, which was, coincidentally, the same year that Winston Peters entered this building—so it’s a lifetime for me—but I also lived in Christchurch in 2011, during the Christchurch earthquakes. We had a lot of earthquakes in Christchurch, but we had one particular earthquake that was incredibly strong, incredibly powerful, and, ultimately, had a devastating effect on our city and on the lives of a number of people.

The law that this amendment is pushing out was in response to the Christchurch earthquakes. It was a law from the lessons that we learnt from the Christchurch earthquakes, and I think it’s really important that we don’t lose those lessons and miss, ultimately, what we learnt from those earthquakes. Our solution when we were in Government was the Residential Earthquake-Prone Building Financial Assistance Scheme—which this Government cancelled—and, under Labour, owner-occupiers of units and apartments living in earthquake-prone buildings could apply for financial support to fix their homes.

If we’re talking about buildings and we’re talking about the impact that buildings that aren’t compliant with the building code can have, in Christchurch, that was the loss of 185 lives, and what we need to remember is that 115 of those lives—115 people—died in one building alone. The collapse of one building killed 115 people. Now, an earlier member compared road deaths, or deaths on our roads in New Zealand, to the loss of life in earthquakes, as if to say—well, entirely to say that in comparison, more people die on the road than die in earthquakes, but I think that doesn’t take seriously enough our role in this place to keep people safe. We can’t just say, “Oh, because more people die on the road, we can do less to keep people safe in buildings.”

Everyone who was in Christchurch on 22 February 2011 remembers where they were, because where you were mattered. It literally became the difference between life and death. I was in my office that day, but there were some people who weren’t at work because they worked in other businesses, because the industry that I worked in was full of people who worked freelance—who were contractors. Because they were rostered on to work in other buildings that day, they didn’t live; they died. They died because the buildings they were in weren’t compliant with regulations. They weren’t safe buildings, and what we’re talking about with amending this bill is pushing out the horizon for people to make buildings safe.

One of those people was a guy called Andrew Bishop. He was 33. He was an awesome guy. Another of those people was 21-year-old Isaac Thompson, who had so much potential and was such a hard worker, so focused and so passionate about his craft. Ordinarily, he would have worked with our team, but that day, he didn’t. On that day, he worked in the CTV Building, and on that day, as a result of that building and that building’s lack of strength and that building’s collapse, he lost his life. They’re not here any more. Andrew is not here. Isaac is not here. Hundreds of people are not here because of the building they were in—simple as that.

It’s pretty hard to stand up and suggest that we should just push the horizon out and that we should just say, “Take the time you need to make the building safe.” I think any support that we can give for this bill and for this amendment to stretch that time line out really has to be done with us being fully conscious of what that means for the people who are in those buildings. The reality is that a lot of the time, the people in those buildings have no idea—they have absolutely no idea of the risk that they’re taking or of the vulnerability of those buildings.

The tentative—and very tentative—support for this bill really comes with the plea to know what you are doing, to really understand that the difference between four years and six years is huge, to take responsibility for those implications, and to not lose the speed that should be given to this. We’ve all seen the speed that things can be done with—bad things—when this Government sets their minds to it. They can railroad things through. How come this isn’t being given the same priority? It is, instead, being slowed down, pushed out, and given a more distant horizon.

It’s disappointing to see the priorities when you look at legislation like this being used to slow things down and other legislation being rushed through to move things at pace. Based on my experience of living in Christchurch through the earthquakes and based on the really, really tragic loss of life that we saw in Christchurch—the really, really good people being lost simply because of the buildings they were in—and given, as another member has spoken of, the fact that the city that we’re standing in today moved just this week—approximately 24 hours ago—I think it’s really important that the full implications of what this legislation is proposing are understood and that it is not seen as an excuse to slow the process of making buildings safe and, ultimately, of saving lives.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Just acknowledging the prior contributor—Reuben Davidson—for his heartfelt and genuine contribution on that, and he did make some really valid points in what he’s been saying. I’m just acknowledging what he had to say there.

For us on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, we heard from 23 submitters on this piece of legislation. It was not a huge amount, but it was still really vital and important, and the majority of the submitters spoke in favour of the bill for particular reasons in one way or another.

We, as a committee, did make two recommendations back to the Minister for Building and Construction that we thought would strengthen the bill—if you’ll pardon the pun—and I really want to highlight what those two are, because I don’t feel like they’ve been canvassed a huge amount. Clause 17, inserts new section 133AMC, which is an amendment to make it clearer that a further deadline extension by Order in Council would apply both to deadlines originally extended by four years as well as to earthquake-prone building notices issued following commencement of the amendment Act. It’s quite technical, but the other one is clause 26, which is inserting a new section 238. It says that this should be amended to refer to stand-alone building consent authorities, rather than territorial authorities.

Now, these may have been small amendments made by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, but it’s been really clear across the discussion on this bill this afternoon that the support given from this side and from the other side is that they have listened to the submitters that gave those 23 submissions to the select committee. They understand the rationale behind the Minister’s obligations and why he’s bringing this bill to the House, and why it’s really vitally important that we progress this legislation further down the track to continue the progress of this legislation and why it plays such a vital role in our country. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As members have heard, there are really torn emotions on this side of the House about this bill because there is a real concern about how serious it is to delay time frames when lives are at stake. I totally accept that many of the people who are struggling the most are living in houses and apartments because, actually, apartments are affordable, and so it is a very real issue that people are vulnerable to the cost of improving these properties as well.

I’m really proud of Labour for having put its money where its mouth was. In the scheme that it put forward, it was prepared to spend money on the situation, and that, unfortunately, is no longer an option available. What we have instead is an extended time period, and we are tentatively supporting that because there is a balancing act, but I was very moved by my colleague Reuben Davidson’s speech, and it is worth remembering that very, very real cost.

It is really important to remember what Arena Williams said about her concern that the second deadline after the four years would be extended out further. I also recall the Minister for Building and Construction saying that he had made sure that that second two years was really something that was not just a blanket thing that would happen but that he was prepared to hold his own feet to the fire. Well, I pretty much could assure him that Arena Williams will do that job for him at his invitation. She has got—

Hon Rachel Brooking: With or without an invitation.

HELEN WHITE: Actually, without the invitation, she would too. That is the job of the Opposition and that will be happening, and it couldn’t be on a more important kind of issue.

I do appreciate that there is a review that’s going to take place and that there are issues around the kind of increasing standard as we improve buildings, but I also just wanted to talk for a minute about something that is related, albeit please indulge me. That was the Grenfell Tower issue, and I recently listened to a podcast about that review and how serious the issues were and how they weren’t really dealt with. It became institutionally acceptable to actually defraud about the risk of that product, and I am very mindful that it’s really easy to go to sleep about these issues because they seem a long way out.

In that case, people paid a huge price for the kind of group mentality that can sometimes happen on issues like this. That was the industry faking tests about the quality of the product, and people paid a price for that that was incredibly serious. The podcast that I was listening to was fairly compelling on the fact that some of the mentality that went into the way that people were using those products in those situations came from a real belief that people were worth less because they were renting and they were poor, and so there’s always that risk.

I appreciate that the cost of this is very real to people and we’ve got to work with them to build up these standards, but there is a balance included. This side of the House has decided to support this, but very much on the basis of the goodwill to make sure that there is a good-faith response to this and that we use the time wisely. I urge the officials who are involved to use their time wisely because time is very important in this country, which shakes. Thank you. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of the Building (Earthquake-prone Building Deadlines and Other Matters) Amendment Bill in the second reading. This is an important bill and a very practical one, and I want to take it from two perspectives.

I have a lot of lived experience in this. A previous speaker spoke about his experience in 2011. I was still in the Territorials—in the army—at that time. I was part of the earthquake response, and I led a trauma research team in the Pyne Gould building at the time. During continuous aftershocks, I stood in that building, clutching a vial of ketamine and a saw, ready to crawl through the building to assist some of the people who were stuck in that building. Me and my team stayed there until the last survivor was pulled out in the afternoon the following day, and that experience has deeply affected me on many levels. I don’t feel the same about the shaking of a truck going past as many people might do, and I know that there are thousands of people in Christchurch that are just like me who can’t bear the thought of earthquakes and what might happen.

I know that any discussion about this is deeply emotional to people in Christchurch, because it’s nearly 14 years, but it’s just like it was yesterday. It is important that we keep people safe. Those buildings that I witnessed up close did not keep people safe, and it was a huge tragedy. The fact that we’ve got thousands of buildings that are now deemed to be unsafe because of the codes is concerning. However, those buildings have stood through quite a few shakes already, and so I think that that doesn’t take away all risk, but there is some piece of mind. Most of the buildings in Christchurch that were problematic have gone, and we need to acknowledge that.

From the other side of things, I was the deputy chair of the New Zealand Medical Association. We had to wind up that organisation because we had owned a heritage building on The Terrace that was at about 15 percent of code, and when we went through the process to redevelop that building and had the business case for it, it looked like we could afford it. However, when the project started, inevitably there were foundation issues that pushed out the costs, and we didn’t achieve the business that we thought we would afterwards. As a result, the New Zealand Medical Association, which had started in the 1880s and was over 130 years old—we had to wind that up. We were able to sell off one of our other assets, which was the New Zealand Medical Journal, and thanks to the Pasifika Medical Association, which bought it for $2, that continues on.

There are real issues with heritage buildings and organisations throughout the country, and this has real-world economic implications of trying to work through a business case to redevelop things, with uncertainty in the future. I’m grateful to the Minister and for the work that the officials will be doing to progress this pragmatic thing, and I’m also mindful of the safety element of it. I know that the Minister and the officials will be keeping that in mind and taking care with this, and so I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It’s been a thoughtful afternoon, listening to the different arguments and the different opinions but also the lived experiences, and I just want to acknowledge that in terms of my colleagues from both sides of the House who have lived experiences of earthquakes and other things.

We live in the Shaky Isles. I live in Taranaki, and—even though this is slightly off-piste—it’s part of that Ring of Fire that we live under. Everyone assumes that Taranaki is this dormant cone that erupted the last time in 1690, or something like that, but, actually, a report came out two years ago that it has a 50 percent chance of erupting within the next 50 years. We’re, again, in a position where we live in the Shaky Isles and we live on the Ring of Fire, and so we have to be prepared and have to expect these things. We don’t want them. We live in the most beautiful part of the world, but with that comes just a few shakes and a few volcanic situations.

That’s why we need to thoughtfully—and I’m glad that it’s in a bipartisan way today—look at how we move this forward to ensure that we get it right. We want to argue from this side of the House that we need to, you know, hurry up and keep moving faster, because, as my colleague Reuben Davidson said, it’s a matter of life or death in many ways. We sit in this building, which is one of the safer buildings in Wellington, and I sometimes look up there—and maybe one doesn’t think so—but in the 1990s, this building was strengthened. For those who go into the basement and see the big, ginormous rubber, um—

Hon Chris Penk: Base isolators?

GLEN BENNETT: Base isolators. I was going to say “stoppers”, but base isolators—thank you very much. As a Government, I think it was about $75 million that was spent. I mean, I know it included some refurbishment work as well, but it was around the strengthening of these buildings, and if we think about the price, we can think what it would cost today. We’re happy to sit inside these buildings and feel kind of mostly safe, but if you look around the streets of Wellington, there are more than 800 buildings within a short walk or drive from here which are actually earthquake-prone and need remediation work done. How do we actually support that mahi?

I think, for us, we’ve had some concerns and we’ve looked at the select committee process and listened really carefully to the arguments that were made. We were listening to councils and the key stakeholders, and, of course, for the councils, it’s their role to ensure that the buildings and their people are protected and well looked after. It is disappointing, as has been made clear by my colleagues, that there were things and processes that we had in place when we were in Government that have been overturned and now we’re in this position. That’s why I think we need to proceed with caution, but we none the less need to proceed because not only is it the harrowing stories of people who have been through the trauma of major earthquakes but it’s around looking to the future and asking how we prevent loss of life.

Again, as my colleague Reuben Davidson has said, it can’t be compared with road safety. It can’t be compared with other things, because it’s not as simple as having a seat belt. It’s actually some major structural work, and people often who have been brought into buildings who weren’t aware of it at the time, but it’s also in terms of building owners and what that looks like for them. So we’re here and we’re looking at whether we can find a way to speed this up but also at whether we can find a way where there is—we understand there’s costs involved, and there must be. We must take responsibility to ensure not only that councils have the tools and the mechanisms but that we are the enablers who can, not necessarily get out of the way, but actually ensure that we build good legislation and good bills that actually will ensure the safety, the protection and, but also the futures for people within our country.

We live on the Shaky Isles. We live with the beautiful Pacific Ocean and, of course, the Indo-Australian tectonic plate—where they meet. Just this weekend, I had the privilege of being down on the West Coast of the South Island, and the sea—fun fact, but I’m sure we all know that the ranges are growing every year. They grow because of those tectonic plates that are connected there, but I’d better not—I did fail geography, but that’s another story. We cautiously support this, and I think getting to the committee stage is going to be a good space for us to debate and thrash some of these concepts and ideas out, and, again, come to a bipartisan agreement on which we can move forward feeling comfortable, together. We support this bill.

I’m proud to stand in support of the Building (Earthquake-prone Building Deadlines and Other Matters) Amendment Bill in this second reading. As a Christchurch-based MP, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge those that lost their lives in the Christchurch earthquakes back in 2011, and I do just want to acknowledge the work that my colleague Dr Vanessa Weenink did in the immediate aftermath to help those who were so desperately in need of assistance. Also as a Christchurch-based MP, I’m well aware of the effects that having an earthquake-damaged house can have on someone’s mental health and also their physical health as they struggle to get it repaired and remediated. It’s one of the most common issues that I have coming through my electorate office door, and I’m there to help any constituents with those matters.

I do just want to point out that the aim of earthquake-prone building legislation was to reduce the risk to life and safety by requiring that New Zealand’s most vulnerable buildings during a moderate earthquake be remedied within set time frames. I also do want to just mention that there has been talk about urgency and the need of urgency, and I totally agree with people across the House that we need to move with urgency around some of these solutions. That is why we have brought forward the review of the earthquake-prone building system that was scheduled to take place in 2027. We have brought that forward to make sure that we can do this in a timely manner, but it is one of the reasons why we do need to extend the deadlines out, because, of course, there’s no point doing a review after a deadline has already passed.

I also just want to acknowledge some of the great work that goes on at the University of Canterbury—which, of course, makes up a big part of my electorate of Ilam—and the work of the structural engineers of the university and the laboratory they have there to work out best ways of construction. It’s always very interesting to see what technology they’re coming up and the benefits.

It’s not just homes that have been affected by this legislation; it’s also shops, and we’ve also heard about maraes, churches, and schools—it’s any building, really. This bill will alleviate the stress and sleepless nights as people struggle to get their building back in shape, whether it be their house or whether it be their place of work. Some of these repairs have turned out to be far more complex than initially thought, and we’ve heard about heritage buildings. That has left people with damaged properties that remain uninhabitable and underutilised, and the lack of any clarity has perpetuated the cycles of distress, which is contributing to the slower recovery of places like Christchurch.

I do just want to acknowledge the Minister for Building and Construction for his work on this legislation, and also around other regulations he’s put in place in building to really make sure that we can build back stronger. So I therefore am glad to be able to support this bill, as the last speaker.

Before I put the question, I would like to commend the Minister for Building and Construction for listening to the speeches of other members. It is not required for Ministers to remain present for all business in their names. Often, Ministers need to leave to attend other matters, and that is accepted. On the other hand, having the Minister stay for the speeches of other members does add to the debate.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

This bill is set down for committee stage next sitting day. Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.