Building (Overseas Building Products, Standards, and Certification Schemes) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I have great pleasure to present a legislative statement on the Building (Overseas Building Products, Standards, and Certification Schemes) Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Building (Overseas Building Products, Standards, and Certification Schemes) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill.

It costs too much to build a home or other building in this country. There is a massive opportunity cost associated with the huge rise in construction costs—since 2019 alone, an increase of some 40 percent. Of course, over the years, the inexorable rise of construction costs has meant a huge opportunity cost in terms of the same number of buildings, be it residential housing or other, that could have been provided for the same investment of public or private nature. It’s crucially important that we turn our minds to the way that we can actually reduce the cost of construction in this country. Where do the costs lie? A certain amount of cost is associated, of course, with the people doing the building. The labour cost: it’s appropriate that people get paid well; it’s skilled work—that’s not the right place to try to screw down prices in construction. So what are we left with? Processes. Processes are important because cost is associated with delay, particularly in a higher interest rate environment. We’re doing a number of things in terms of processes to speed up the building consent system and make it much more certain and consistent.

Today, we’re turning our minds to the subject of products, and more particularly the way that we can actually achieve some gains in terms of affordability for that 25 percent or so of the cost of a building that is associated with the products themselves. This will have a helpful benefit for the consumer, the end user of the homes and other buildings, of course, which is every New Zealander. We all live, work, and play in the built environment. It will improve competition, which goes to fairness in terms of those who would provide products both here and overseas. I emphasise those here too, because being able to measure New Zealand products against overseas standards will be helpful from the perspective of those who have innovative products in New Zealand that they’re currently finding difficult to break through established markets, and also from the perspective of innovation. Of course, if we want to have an innovative building environment where we have the best possible products that achieve the best possible results in terms of sustainability, in terms of safety, in terms of quality, and in terms of consumer choice, then, of course, for that reason too, we want to have enough different products available to the consumer and to the builder to maximise our potential in that regard.

Just going back briefly to the subject of fairness and competition, I note that the Commerce Commission report of 2022 highlighted very particularly the fact that we have an uncompetitive sector taken as a whole. I acknowledge that, within the building supply area, we have different degrees of competitiveness associated with different product types. Nevertheless, the overall picture is very clearly that there is a lack of competition. And you don’t need to take my word for it. As I say, the finding of the Commerce Commission was very clear in that regard, but certainly that is also the anecdotal evidence of very many people that I speak to who are used to building in this country with a limited range of products at a commensurately high price. Of course, we know that a competitive market relies on a degree of competition such that those who provide the supplies need to be mindful that if they don’t do that in the best and most efficient way and at the most affordable price from the perspective of what it takes to produce and noting the value provided to the consumer, then of course all will lose out. Of course, that’s been the experience for many years now, including, as I say, most particularly since 2019.

The way that we are going to improve competition through this legislation is set out in the legislative statement—there’s some detail there. I don’t intend to take the time of the House to spell that out in a way that’s unnecessary, given that we now have access to this legislative statement. Suffice to say that there are three different mechanisms, but they all revolve around the idea that if we use standards that currently exist in overseas jurisdictions that are of equal or higher standard by way of quality and their physical properties—their ability to be strong enough and to be safe enough for use—and if we adopt those standards, as I say, that are of equal or higher level of those in New Zealand as measured by overseas jurisdictions, then we can use those with relative safety.

Now, I say “relative safety” because there are some qualifications. We do need to think about the way that the products are installed. There will still be a role for a building consent authority to play some sort of oversight role as far as they’re concerned. Of course, it’s also important that the jurisdictions whose standards and products we’re using are the appropriate ones. Roughly speaking, that means we need credible and comparable jurisdictions—credible ones being those nations and States that have good building standards. And some places in the world, frankly, have better building standards, I would say, than those in this country, but others have worse, and we need to choose carefully in that regard.

We also need to think about comparable jurisdictions whereby the physical conditions that dictate the performance of standards must be comparable in the relevant respects to those in New Zealand. Of course, we’re a coastal nation so there’ll be factors around the ability of New Zealand building products to withstand wind and sea spray. We are a somewhat sunny country—some cities more sunny than others, but certainly the UV content—

💬 Hon Rachel Brooking: Dunedin’s not feeling sunny at the moment.

Oh. I don’t wish to indulge in the metaphors that the member from down South would have us go down. Suffice to say, different conditions, including climatically, exist across the country. It’s appropriate to think about other places in the world that we can rightly compare ourselves with and sort of be safe and make good decisions in that regard.

Now, these decisions at a very particular, detailed level will be made and put forward in regulations because that won’t require the legislation to be passed in this House on each occasion that we add a particular jurisdiction or a particular standard or a particular set of products. We can actually say that that process can be an ongoing one. We can start with the lowest hanging fruit first. We can do the least risky business first. We can get those relatively easy gains in terms of cost, affordability, innovation, and so on. But, for now, we need a legislative framework that actually enables that. That’s the purpose of the bill—that’s what we’re here doing today.

I do just want to touch on the fact that this legislation intersects with a number of different other projects of reform within the building and construction space. One of those relates to the fact of the 67 different building consent authorities, mostly councils but of course also Consentium, which does bespoke work for Kāinga Ora. Each of those at the moment is tasked with understanding and assessing the risk associated with different building products, and that’s a great burden for them. It’s onerous in terms of their resources. It’s also a matter of liability that they could face up to 100 percent of the cost of defective products or materials, so of course there’s a huge resource implication and, frankly, a risk for their respective ratepayers associated with that. The other mechanism is through CodeMark, an organisation that has the ability to certify for use in a way that building consent authorities can rely on. We know that that is a process that is subject to a lot of volume in a way that we think we can cut through, again by relying on those comparable and credible overseas jurisdictions. That’s the philosophy.

As I say, the detail sits within the legislative statement, and I will just also link briefly to our work around minor variations and minor customisations. This is a mechanism that did exist previously, and I do want to acknowledge that, as the mechanism for making sense of the MultiProof scheme. The MultiProof scheme is underused—that’s where we’ve got a single design that’s been consented that can be reused over and over again, so it’s an exercise in standardisation to get the economy of scale, and so on. But that system is underutilised and also there’s a lot of additional burden, again, on the building consent authorities, and of course the builders associated with making minor changes; for example, swapping like for like products. It’s clunky and that needs to be refined. We’re doing that work and that will help unlock the gains that we’re achieving in this bill.

I’ll conclude my remarks by saying that I wish the select committee that will be considering the legislation all the best. No doubt they’ll hear a lot of detail that will be helpful. I’m certainly very happy to contemplate any suggestions that they might make for change. I expect that some members of the public and those who are professionals within the building sector might have particular examples or suggestions of products or jurisdictions that they would commend or otherwise. It’s really within the remit of this bill to set up the architecture as a whole, if you’ll excuse the expression, that will enable that detailed work to go on. That detailed work is going on already. We are walking and chewing gum, we’re getting it done, we’re trying to reform the system so that we have greater competition, better choice for the consumer, and of course more affordable homes and other buildings in this country. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Labour supports this bill because it builds on Labour’s work to make building products cheaper and the market more competitive, which started with the Commerce Commission’s report, the first report of its kind under its market study framework into building and construction products and the sector at large. It found that our building sector in New Zealand isn’t working as it should, that it’s not as competitive as it could be, and that consumers are ultimately paying too much, and that’s leading to higher costs in things like housing, which are incredibly important to this Parliament and to the people of New Zealand.

This is a good move. There will be a few things in my speech which I will outline as concerns of the Labour Party, and we’ll be watching very closely as this bill progresses. There are things that we will need to make sure, as a Parliament, we are comfortable with so that we do not create a system that provides less clarity for the various different system users within the system already, who rely on Government and local government buy-in to the building products that are used, so that things can be agreed to swiftly and that consents do not take too long.

I’ll first start with the importance of competition here. Ultimately, this bill does deal with the finding of the Commerce Commission’s report that said that there was not enough competition and that it was not easy enough for not only different building products to be recognised within the system as it is but also for those smaller players in the market who are importing new and innovative products from overseas to grow their market share. It’s the second part that I’m particularly interested in, because there’s not legislative change here that deals with that. The posture of Government and the posture of local governments to that will be important for the ability of smaller businesses to compete with the big guys and to be able to get their products out there and increase the industry knowledge about products which are equivalent and of a high standard. Some of this will help that, but it really will be bigger change that’s required of the industry.

I think breaking the monopoly on some products has been the focus of the previous Government, and that will need to be something which this Government keeps the pressure on. A thing like plasterboard, which resulted in a crisis alongside restrictions of what could be brought into New Zealand during the COVID period, was something that took up a lot of Parliament’s time and was important for the Government of the day to be able to deal with, because it created real issues in a building sector that at that time was really hot. It was building lots of houses that really needed access to good quality products at a cheap price for consumers to be able to buy. We need to keep our eye on that and make sure that the Commerce Commission is also tooled up to be able to deal with those issues.

We support the measures in this bill that remove barriers to building products entering the New Zealand market. That’s why, as it progresses, we’ll be looking forward to the advice on how it actually does this, because as the regulatory impact statement suggests, there are a number of these changes which were already afoot—they were already in the system in some way—but it’s about industry changing and the behaviour and the knowledge of industry participants to actually use those provisions which will make all the difference here.

I’ll now turn to the second part of my speech, which is about the concerns that we have, and highlight them for submitters to the committee, because we are really interested in engaging with people who are experts in the field around what our concerns are with regulatory change in this area. The first is particularly about plasterboard. We’re cautious about product substitutions for plasterboard being approved in groups, which this legislation would allow, because they’re used in structurally different ways in other jurisdictions. The way that New Zealand builders use plasterboard products is different from their counterparts in, say, the UK, so we want to make sure that the substitutions and the equivalency there recognises New Zealand’s particular context in the way that our building sector works. It may be that the rules in other countries are not appropriate to apply here, so we need some assurance about the way that those equivalencies are going to be judged.

Second, building consent authorities are going to be responsible for more under the new regime, which will add to their time and process costs for those consents. The Government will essentially be requiring consent authorities to approve the building project overall, and not only that the product is robust and of high quality but also that it’s going to be used in a way that’s appropriate. With local government carrying more of a burden in ensuring that the end product is suitable, we want to make sure that the resources are there to do this, that the councils are ready to go when this legislation is enacted, and that the Government is working really closely to provide the kind of policy advice that will require local government to change, because it is a system-wide view that we need to take here. That’s one of the advantages of New Zealand’s building system.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party is supporting this bill. I note that the work on this did begin under the last Government, and I think that what is contained in this bill has the potential to be hugely beneficial. But, like the previous speaker, Arena Williams, said, it also depends on how it is implemented, so I will be very interested during the select committee process on the implementation.

When I first moved to Aotearoa New Zealand, I suppose one of the things that motivated me to get involved in politics was seeing that we could do so much better with our buildings, and our transport system and urban planning as well, because, actually, there are many other countries in the world that are doing so much better. They get better outcomes for people, better outcomes for health, and better outcomes for the environment and the climate. And it also makes economic sense to do that. This is like an example where—you know, meeting the founder of Passive House Institute in New Zealand, who came from Germany, who was part of the passive house movement, which led to science-based standards that deliver warm, dry, comfortable, and extremely energy-efficient buildings. Of course, in many parts of Germany now, and in the UK and many other parts of Europe, that standard is the minimum; it’s required.

One aspect of that is how we approve building products. What people who worked in the industry, including my friends who are builders or who work as building physicists, were telling me is that it was more expensive and difficult to get these high-quality products that were leading to better environmental and energy-efficiency outcomes in New Zealand because of the process for approving those products. It does actually just make sense to recognise overseas standards and standard certification schemes when those countries have higher standards and better outcomes than Aotearoa New Zealand currently does. Now, the risk is that we approve products that are not of a higher standard, that are not going to get better outcomes, so it really does come down to which countries we’re looking at and whether or not they’re getting better outcomes.

We do have to recognise that New Zealand’s supply chain has been dominated by a few major companies and, essentially, that oligopoly—you know, it is an oligopoly—has allowed some companies to make excessive profits on products that, frankly, are not the best. It really makes sense to ensure that we’re allowing better products in and that we’re not duplicating a lot of work that’s already been done by places, especially when they have similar climates to us—you know, I look at British Columbia, or parts of the UK might have quite similar weather issues, weathertightness issues, wind. We have incredibly high levels of wind and dampness and rain, and that can contribute to mouldy homes and the leaky-home crisis.

Look, I’m a firm believer in having a system that gets us the best outcomes and there’s so many opportunities to do better, but one of the ways we do better is through this type of work, which, as I said, was started by the previous Government, and it looks like it will have cross-party support. I hope that at the select committee we can ensure that we’re doing our best to ensure that the products that we’re encouraging and enabling actually deliver the outcomes we need in terms of reducing building waste and taking action on climate. I’m concerned that the Government has pretty much stopped the work on the Building for Climate Change initiative, which is evidence-based and very much looking to overseas countries and how they’ve achieved it; improvements to our Building Code which are desperately, desperately needed.

The other side of how Government enables this is simply through procurement. The cancellation of the Kāinga Ora builds is going to be a major setback to improving standards and quality of builds in New Zealand. It makes sense, if Government has a large house building programme, that it lifts the standards of the supply chain by getting the best outcomes for the people living in those buildings. And it makes economic sense. It’s less money spent on hospital bills, it’s more productivity, it’s lower power bills for people. If the Government can lead by example through procurement, then, over time, we can step our Building Code up. But, of course, in order to get those more efficient buildings, we need to allow and enable the quality products that are available overseas, so that we’re not simply letting Fletcher or whoever else dominate the market and make excessive profits on products that, frankly, are not the best for New Zealand.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak on behalf of this bill and on behalf of the ACT Party. Look, we are in a situation in New Zealand where Kiwis are increasingly dissatisfied with what they’re getting out of their building industry, and I don’t actually blame them. Just this afternoon, I attended the New Zealand Chinese Building Industry Association’s report launch, hosted by my colleague Nancy Lu and attended by Minister Penk, in which we were presented with a word cloud. Now, the biggest word in this word cloud is “expensive”. I think that is an apt description of building in New Zealand.

It is not a surprise to me at all that New Zealanders have had enough. Many are deciding to go overseas. Many are struggling to start families, get on the housing market, and live where they want to live and how they would like to live. Housing costs in New Zealand are unacceptable. We have heard this from the community. During the campaign, ACT went about with a building material equivalency register policy. I’m glad to see that such a policy has been adopted into this bill, because we need to get prices down in New Zealand when it comes to building a house. Construction is 20 percent of the jobs in New Zealand. Building is challenging, it’s often difficult, it’s bespoke, and it takes a great deal of skill, but when you can put people with skills and materials together, that is how you get a successful building industry.

Now, that is what this bill is going to achieve. We will be recognising overseas standards and certification schemes from trusted jurisdictions overseas—places with seismic issues that have assessed these issues, places with weathertightness issues, places where it rains a heck of a lot more, places where it’s hotter, places where it’s colder, places that are built in environments that are similar and more extreme. We need to get competition into our building supply market, but it is not a monopoly, as a previous speaker has spoken about, because of some oligopoly; it is a situation in which councils make it so hard to achieve standards in New Zealand for new products to enter the market that it is not a surprise that our cost of building is so high. Materials are far, far too expensive.

I myself, as a licensed building practitioner, have attempted to have minor changes happen on plans between one set of cladding plaster to another set. Now, it struck me down when the council said, “Oh, we can’t recognise that.”, even though the details—and my fellow tradies out there know what I’m talking about. When the details are completely alike but the product name is different, well, we have to go through a whole rigmarole to try and get that changed. Delays, costs, shortage of material—this is why housing is so expensive in New Zealand. This bill will streamline the citing of international standards that can be used in acceptable solutions and verification methods. To the members of the House who haven’t swung a hammer in the last, well, ever—especially on the other side—I can tell you that these acceptable solutions and verification methods are how we get things approved in New Zealand, and—

💬 Hon Barbara Edmonds: These hands; a hammer—a hammer.

Oh, I see there’s some offence being taken, I am very sorry for anybody who’s done it on a DIY basis, but a DIY does not a builder make. What we have got in New Zealand is a situation where we have a scheme to get things approved to the Building Code, and we are going to make it a lot easier for overseas products to be recognised in New Zealand, to get on sites so that the skilled tradies and Kiwis who fill out our building industry can get the products that they need to lower the price of building in New Zealand.

The built environment is an important environment in New Zealand. It is a place where farmers go to milk their cows. It’s a place where industry goes to manufacture. It’s a place where New Zealanders go to learn and live and enjoy themselves. The backbone of New Zealand has got many claims to its fame. It could be the agricultural sector, it could be many different sectors, it could be climbing Mt Everest—it could be many things—but I say to you, Madam Speaker, and to this House, that the built environment is the backbone of New Zealand. It is the place where we need to have some certainty in our lives. This bill will be providing just that by giving New Zealanders a chance to build houses affordably; to build places to live and thrive affordably. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I am delighted to rise to support this bill. We all know that the cost of building in New Zealand is far, far too high, and we also know that we need far more housing, but I think we’re a little discordant about that, because sometimes we hear people say that we’re investing too much in bricks and mortar and yet we need more housing—and I don’t quite get that—and then there are policy changes that some people would propose that actually make investing in housing for homes for people even more expensive.

There was a report earlier this week which said that the gap between building new and existing housing is as big as it’s ever been, possibly bigger than it’s ever been. This is because the cost of building has gone up and up and up 30 or 40 percent over the last, what, four or five years at most, and the value of existing housing has, effectively, flatlined, and certainly come down in recent years. What that means is it becomes less and less attractive to build the homes that we need.

Look, there is no silver bullet here, but this bill is part of the answer, and there’s great work being done by the Minister in introducing it. We need regulatory changes—a little bit’s been talked about there. We need things like the granny flats initiative that’s being taken. We also need new products, and already Minister Penk has been working on that. This is about allowing new products into our market as part of the answer.

Ultimately, what we have to do, regardless of anything else we might do, is we have to get the actual cost of building new homes, of building construction, down. Building materials in this country are extraordinarily pricey, I think we all recognise. I mean, the cost of timber here is, I think, what, 30 percent more? Something like that—30 percent more than the cost across the Tasman. That is a real handbrake. We were all aware of that during COVID, of the crisis we had around being able to find Gib, and that, of course, actually stalled a lot of building projects. The cost was astronomical. It was like you had to put your name down to get a piece of Gib board, because we couldn’t find the darned stuff. The Commerce Commission, in the introduction to this bill, has said that we have a lack of competition in our building supply market, so this bill is all about bringing in more competition. It’s about the arrangements to be able to allow us to get building products that, currently, we can’t get—products produced overseas.

One of the things we have in this country is we have this terrible penchant for reinventing everywhere. We’ve got to say, “Well, it works that way in Australia or in the United Kingdom or in Europe or in the United States,”—or wherever it might be—“but we’ve got to reinvent that wheel just to check that it works properly here.” Well, this bill is about saying, actually, let’s grow up a little bit. Let’s be able to give the Minister, give the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the power to be able to say that that regime, that family of products, is a good regime, a good family of products, and we are going to allow those products into New Zealand to be able to be used.

I was shown, the other day, a Chinese building product. This is one where these were prefabricated homes. They came two per container. You bring them in, and you’re actually able to sort of extend them, put them up there. All the kitchen material was there; all the bathroom fittings were there. They could do that, and I think it was 36 square metres for $49,000—really, really inexpensive. The people who are wanting to bring these in looked at the cost of doing that in New Zealand, and it was about $90,000-something without all the fit-out. That is an example of the relative cost of being able to do this. The problem is that none of our councils will consent them. Why? Because they haven’t seen the product. We have to get ourselves a regime which asks how we can be able to bring in those products if they’re good products—and we think they’re good products—and house New Zealand families much, much cheaper than is currently the case. Like my colleague Cam Luxton, I also went to the presentation earlier today from the New Zealand - China building construction sector, and I think there were some really great messages from that.

Just to finish off with one of the other things, which I don’t think has been mentioned by any of the previous speakers—and it’s an important part of this bill. With my local authority background, I know that local authorities are very, very risk-averse, because if they end up being the last person standing when something goes wrong, the cost is astronomical. Part of this bill is about, essentially, the Crown saying to you that if you use in good faith a product which the Crown has said is a product which should be able to be used, you won’t be liable for that, and I think that’s a very, very important message. I look forward to the submissions and I look forward to the very good Transport and Infrastructure Committee considering this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s with great pleasure I rise to speak on this bill. There were some great comments by a number of speakers before this. We all understand the cost of building in New Zealand has got far too expensive. It’s really brought to sharp focus when you drive around an electorate like mine in Northland where we have real housing challenges in the North.

Being able to actually build affordable homes, which is what this Government is very much focused on—and this is part of the journey that our Government is taking us on—is so important, particularly for a place like Northland, where we have so many people living in substandard housing. Being able to go to the market and say, “Yes, we can get products cheaper.”—I mean, the fact that we’ve had a 41 percent increase in construction costs since 2019 is disgraceful. It’s just very, very frustrating. We have to bring more competition into this process. Also, when you think about it, the cost of building in New Zealand is currently close to around about 50 percent more expensive than trying to build a standalone house in Australia. You wonder why our young people are saying, “No, stuff this, we’re off to Aussie.” Well, this is a part of the puzzle to actually lead us to a more affordable housing market, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. As was noted earlier, the Labour Party supports this bill. The approach that we are taking when it comes to housing and building and construction is that we intend and genuinely hope to be able to be as constructive as possible, for two reasons. One, it is vitally important that we finally get on top of the housing shortage in this country. It cannot drag on. There have been genuine attempts to address it. There have been less than genuine attempts, and this wax and wane carry-on can’t continue, so we as a party have committed to be constructive on the issue. Where there is something that we agree on, we will say so, and where there is something that is in the right direction, there or thereabouts, could do with some improvements, we’ll approach the debate in that manner. Then when we genuinely, fundamentally disagree on something and we say so, hopefully people will see it in that vein, that it is not politicking, that we just don’t agree, because we have taken the opportunity to be constructive elsewhere.

Today is a day where we can be constructive. We have no opposition to this and it’s good—it’s good. It builds on what was started under the last Government. I think when you consider the uncertainty that surrounds the infrastructure sector and the construction sector at the moment, the pleas from local government and from those two sectors for some level of certainty and some level of bipartisan approach, it’s important that both sides of the House recognise that, as was referred to in the previous speech, this is a journey. This builds on stuff we’ve done, and when we were in Government, we built on some stuff that the previous Government had done. That’s how it should work. Part of that is actually acknowledging it, not saying, “Isn’t it great that we’ve got a bill here? But while I say that, I’m going to have just a little cheap shot at those guys because I can, and that’s what we normally do.” Just forget that. This is a good approach to this.

Let’s be honest—and, in fairness, they haven’t said this, but we must acknowledge it—it’s not a silver bullet, because there’s no such thing as a silver bullet when it comes to addressing the housing crisis. We’ve been very critical of what the Government is doing around social housing. We believe that they’re taking the wrong approach. When it comes to freeing up land for building, that’s good—that’s really good—but we also recognise that many councils don’t have the funding to be able to put the infrastructure in beforehand, and so that is one where we would like to see some tweaks. We’d like the assistance of funding to come at the start of the process so we can get some infrastructure put in at the start, and that’ll mean that land will be able to be developed, rather than at the end, because some councils can’t bridge that gap.

When it comes to this, this does make sense, and many of the points that have been raised by previous speakers across the House—let’s be honest; so far it has been across the House—are all valid. There are some concerns. Of course there will be, because we’re trying something different, but you’ve got to give it a go—you’ve got to give it a go. We’ve all heard too many stories where people who have saved up a lot of money to buy a home or build a home have been frustrated by the cost, have been frustrated by the processes of councils, and the inconsistencies across the councils. Basically, if you look at the number of local bodies that we have in this country, it has the potential to be that many different approaches when it comes to getting a consent for building a house, and that’s madness.

It would be remiss of me not to point out that I think we missed an opportunity by not taking seriously the recommendations that came from the review into the future of local government. Sure, you’re never going to agree to all the recommendations. There was some stuff in there that I didn’t agree with, but there was some stuff that would have actually dealt with that inconsistent approach across the board.

We need it easy. It shouldn’t be the case that in the lower North Island, if you were a contractor and you were operating across the lower North Island, you could potentially be looking at eight, nine, 10 different ways of doing things. I mean, that’s just madness. That should have been dealt with, and I hope the Government looks at that again, but this here will actually address that to some degree. Some councils were so prescriptive in the type of material that they were using that it was actually cutting out those options and so we were dealing with that, and this adds to that.

I think it’s a positive. I’m confident that it will make a difference. There’s a lot to do and I hope that the Government Ministers are genuine in their cause for bipartisanship, because in this area, so are we.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Competition for the supply of building products in New Zealand is not working as well as it could be. New Zealand is a small trading nation. Removing barriers to high-quality and innovative products entering the New Zealand market could increase consumer choice, increase competition, and provide greater security against supply disruptions. Amending this bill will provide for the Minister for Building and Construction, by notice, recognising overseas standards or standards certification schemes. We have a massive housing crisis in this country, and this bill is going to enable that change and for us to deliver on providing more houses in the country and bring in overseas products that we know meet our standards. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for taking my call on this Building (Overseas Building Products, Standards, and Certification Schemes) Amendment Bill. Now, I’m just going to say some similar things, actually, that we’ve heard from colleagues across the House, as the Hon Kieran McAnulty just pointed out. Of course, one of the first things is, like my colleague Arena Williams pointed out, it’s important to acknowledge the Commerce Commission report that led to some of this work. Like everybody else who has spoken, I agree that there is a problem in New Zealand with not enough building materials being available and then costing too much.

Now, I just want to talk briefly on the bill and note that the Minister, in his contribution, said—he didn’t explain which ones were which—that some countries are better than others in terms of building standards. The reference, I think, was that some buildings have higher building standards than New Zealand and excellent building products, and some are not quite so good. Why this is relevant is that a lot of this bill hinges on the word “similar”, and that is because the “overseas standards organisation”, as defined, means an overseas organisation with functions similar to the standards organisation. I have no bones to pick with the use of the word “similar”, but I hope that the select committee, when they’re looking at this, will reflect on, and ask questions about, what sort of overseas standards organisations are similar to New Zealand and, even, which ones are not similar to New Zealand, given what the Minister said about some countries having different standards from others. I don’t disagree with that at all.

Also, I would like to note that the previous Government was doing the building accord and the industry transformation plan. I would say to the Government, when they are looking at the price of buildings and how to build in more efficient ways, that they go back to these pieces of work. They’re good pieces of work and were going to improve New Zealand’s economy.

Also, like the point that our colleague the Hon Julie Anne Genter made about the building for climate work that was going on and also work that can go on in encouraging people not to have a whole lot of construction waste—we know that by scale, by the size of it, construction waste is quite large, obviously. We have an awful lot of construction waste in New Zealand, and if you have the right incentives, you really don’t need to have that much waste, and you can save a whole lot of money on disposal of the waste as well. I’d really encourage the Government to continue with that work.

Of course, looking at the Building Code, we have an interesting building code in New Zealand, and I know the New Zealand Green Building Council has been talking for some time, for many years, about how that could be improved to really prioritise products that are going to last for a long time and insulate people well, but also in health and ventilation—another important thing when building.

I also want to acknowledge the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s contribution when she was talking about the procurement of Government builds. Of course, if we’re trying to change the system, if we’re trying to enable new innovative products that are going to do better for us both economically and environmentally, Government can be leading the charge on that. I know that Minister Mark Patterson is very committed to wool and the provision of wool in Government buildings, and that that sort of attitude can be taken to other building products as well.

Going back to New Zealand - made products, I just note that we think it’s important—and it’s important that the select committee looks at this—that New Zealand companies that are being innovative aren’t cut out of the market. We know that Hamilton has the start-up saveBOARD, made from recycled waste, and that this is a recognised plasterboard substitution in our domestic market. We can see—if we go out of the back door of this building and look at that building site—that there is a whole lot of saveBOARD up there at the moment.

So, again, I encourage the Government and members of the select committee who’ll be looking at this bill to make sure that innovation isn’t stifled and to do better in that regard generally.

谢谢你，议长先生.We clearly have a problem in New Zealand. As the Rt Hon Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said a bit earlier this year, it is currently 50 percent more expensive to build a standalone home in New Zealand than in Australia. Also, our building and construction Minister, the Hon Chris Penk, has said the cost of building in New Zealand had gone up by 41 percent since 2019.

Also thanks to the New Zealand Chinese Building Industry Association, 新西兰华人建筑业协会,who not only commissioned the research into this industry and sector in New Zealand but is also working with officials, departments, and also with the Government by commissioning and highlighting the findings that they have in this report—and actually brought to our attention in Parliament today that they have done the word cloud, like many of my colleagues have attended today, which clearly showed the concerns in the sector: “expensive”, “hard”, “struggling”, “unsure”, “delays”, “slow”, “cost”.

Clearly, the problem has been identified by the Government but also by the sector, so we are working towards solving the problem, finding better solutions. I invite Kiwis to submit in the select committee process and I look forward to the cross-party collaboration and making real progress in this sector, and I commend this bill to the House. 谢谢.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Building (Overseas Building Products, Standards, and Certification Schemes) Amendment Bill be considered by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.