Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill

I, again, present a legislative statement on the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): 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 and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 19 March 2026.

Arena Williams: Do you?

Hon CHRIS PENK: I really do. Further to that, I wish to point out—as others have commented in the context of the bill that Parliament has just considered, and helpfully passed, at least by way of first reading—that this bill forms part of the same reform package to make it easier, faster, and more affordable to build by reducing the burden on building consent authorities, and moving responsibility to construction sector professionals.

This bill will make substantive changes across two Acts to improve the efficiency of the building consenting system and make better use of regulatory resources. The bill will free up building consent authorities and shift responsibility to professionals, as I have pointed out, and it’s worth starting by noting that the consenting system at the moment can be slow and inefficient, causing delays and increasing the costs to build in New Zealand. Inefficiencies are caused by risk-averse behaviour and lack of capacity for building consent authorities and a system that discourages professionals from taking responsibility for assurance.

The risk aversion is understandable but nevertheless we need to understand, from a systems point of view, the effect of these incentives and think if there’s a way that we can make it possible for greater responsibility and thereby having greater quality, as well as faster processes. To that end, this bill introduces an opt-in scheme, allowing approved plumbers and drainlayers to self-certify that their work complies with the building consent, without the need for a building consent authority inspection. This will save time and money for professionals and building consent authorities—which I’ll, from here on in, refer to as BCAs; mostly being councils and homeowners.

The scheme will be integrated into the existing consent system. Plumbing and drainlaying work will still need to be consented as usual but a declaration will be filed that the plumbing or drainlaying work will be self-certified. Inspections will not be carried out, allowing the professionals simply to get on with their work. Once the work is completed, the self-certifier will issue a certificate of compliance which confirms that their work complies with the building consent. BCAs will be required to rely on the certificate as legal assurance when issuing a code compliance certificate at the end of the building process and will be protected from liability for self-certified work. Instead, the responsibility will lie with the professionals doing the work. The scheme will likely apply to the majority of plumbing and drainlaying work in stand-alone residential buildings, meaning that there is a massive opportunity to remove inefficiencies in the consenting system and make it faster and cheaper to build homes in New Zealand. It will also free up BCAs to focus on riskier work that should be inspected.

A key tenet of the legislation is that the bill promotes efficiency without compromising safety. That’s because safeguards will ensure that efficiency gains are balanced against ensuring safety. Only plumbing and drainlaying work that meets the definition in regulations will be able to be self-certified. The bill limits this definition to work that is routine for experienced plumbers and drainlayers and presents a low risk to public safety.

Riskier work will still need to be inspected, providing protection for homeowners. To self-certify, professionals must meet robust standards, demonstrating the necessary skills and experience. These standards will be set by the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board through Gazette notices, and will be based around technical competency, experience, ability to meet their new liabilities, and their administrative practices like quality assurance—or QA.

These minimum standards will also give consumers confidence that self-certifiers have the right skills to meet their new responsibilities and will protect the public from defective work and the harm it can cause. In practice, I expect that most plumbers and drainlayers who hold the highest licensed class will be eligible to self-certify. Endorsed professionals will be able to self-certify work that they’ve done themselves and work that they have supervised. This reflects the reality that the most experienced plumbers and drainlayers often work in a supervisory role.

The bill also introduces new functions for the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board, which will provide a further level of consumer protection. Certificates of compliance will need to be lodged with the board to be held on a register, parts of which will be publicly accessible so future homeowners, insurers, or other interested parties will be able to see if a property had self-certified work. This will make the scheme more transparent and professionals more accountable.

Failure to lodge a certificate will be a disciplinary offence carrying a maximum fine of $10,000, one of a number of changes to the board’s disciplinary functions. The bill also extends existing offences to cover self-certification, and raises some existing penalties, promoting responsibility and accountability. The bill gives new monitoring powers to the board, including the power to audit certificates of compliance. This will ensure that the work complied with the consent and the building code. Tradespeople who do poor or non-compliant work will be caught and held to account.

This is our crackdown on cowboys, that we’re fond of talking about, and I say that with all due respect to real cowboys, obviously, and cowgirls. The bill will have a staged commencement, something to celebrate, indeed. Most of the bill will commence on 20 June 2026, but provisions relating to powers to make secondary legislation, the functions of the board, and other official bodies, and other transitional provisions will commence on the day after Royal assent. This is to provide time for the necessary operational requirements for the scheme to be developed. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this, the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill. This is a good one. This is an exciting one for Labour to be able to support. I’m going to raise some questions with it, but we are looking forward to getting into this with the people who it matters most to: the plumbers who want to make sure that this is sticky legislation, that we get this right, and that we don’t touch the rules again, because we need to make sure that this is something that both the professionals in the sector and the people who rely on it, the consumers, can have faith in for the long term. That’s why this needs to be cross-partisan. I hope we can work together in the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, ably chaired by Andy Foster, to make sure this works. We do have a few reservations, and I’m going to run through them. But, yeah, we’re happy to support this at first reading.

The key for the Labour Party is it will be looking for strong consumer protections and robust safeguards throughout the change that professionals will be faced with here, because we share that goal, that everyone wants more cost of safety or quality or the rights of consumers in this process, the mums and dads who are just trying to build a home affordably and cheaply in New Zealand, because cutting costs is good but cutting corners is not. Plumbers and drainlayers already carry quite heavy professional responsibilities, and if we’re shifting, here in this bill, further liability from, say, building consent authorities on to individuals, we must also ensure that these standards are very clear and that there’s access to the appropriate insurance products and proper support for those regulators who are tasked with ensuring that the system is working.

The industry, at select committee, will, rightly, ask us “Why is liability being put on these individuals and not on, say, the businesses themselves?” It’s important that we understand, here, what’s being asked of these professionals who haven’t had this sort of liability before and whether the appropriate person, legal person—in this case, natural person—is being regulated here or whether it’s appropriate for the business to regulate instead. Why is it that businesses aren’t being regulated under this? Well, simply, Madam Speaker, I would suggest to you that it’s because the programme of work that the Government has long advertised around phoenix companies and around companies in the building and construction sector going under or going out of business and, then, popping up perhaps the next day, perhaps six months later in a new corporate form is a practice that we must stamp out because it really impacts on those consumers, but that hasn’t been done yet and it does not look like the Government will progress that. That’s a problem if you then have the little guy, the new plumber, done his apprenticeship, got his qualifications, now suddenly faced with liability for his large employer that he would reasonably expect was being managed within a corporate setting and a corporate structure. That doesn’t seem right or fair, to me, to the little guy here.

We also want to think about when councils reduce oversight, consumers must still have sensible and simple and reliable pathways to get defects fixed. The natural policy response to this would be insurance—either a compulsory insurance scheme, or a State-backed insurance scheme; schemes, like the ones that Australian consumers have enjoyed for many years, they work pretty well in their markets, there is a range of them to choose from, from the big gold-plated consumer-friendly scheme in Queensland, to the slim-lined schemes in, say, New South Wales. We have none of that and yet we are building a policy response as if there is an insurance product in the market that does not exist already, and so we need to make sure that that risk spreading is going to be able to happen for also these companies—you know, when we think about the little guy, we need to make sure that he’s got access to something that will help him when things go wrong for him, as well as the consumer who he’s working for.

The only other question I’d add in my last minute is to make it clear that we should be thinking about the scope of this work. You know, when I think of, say, the corner bakeries in the electorate of Manurewa—the best bakeries in the country—I think why don’t they also—

Hon James Meager: Aww!

ARENA WILLIAMS: —the best bakeries in the country, Mr Meager—I think about making sure that they have access to a sensible and quick regime where standard plumbing in their shops can also be covered by what is a quick and efficient regime. We should be asking the questions about who is in scope here, because that would make sense to me.

Finally, just on the report-back date: what a grinch this Minister is for not letting the plumbers, the hard-working New Zealanders who want to have a say on this, not submit in the full time frame. They’re being forced to over Christmas. “We want our plumbers out plumbing. Go fix up some kitchens. Go work hard, as you are doing. Don’t have to come back to select committee.” But, unfortunately, that is what they are being faced with here.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. As I outlined in my earlier speech, the Green Party is not supporting this bill at first reading. We absolutely understand what it’s aiming to achieve, but the truth is that New Zealand is lagging so far behind other developed countries in terms of having a level of accountability and oversight over building and construction work that we need to do a whole lot of other things before we start reducing oversight and accountability of our professionals.

I mean, it’s very difficult to trust this Government when so many of the steps that they have taken are actively making things worse for consumers, for residents, and for citizens. When I think of just some of the recent changes they’ve made, they can’t seem to differentiate between good, effective Government regulation that lifts productivity and protects people—that’s the purpose of Government. It’s to protect and empower people, and when we don’t have those systems in place, people get screwed over.

I was talking to a constituent in my electorate not that long ago who had really just wanted to tell me about the experience that he had had with purchasing his first home at the top of the market. He was going to do some basic works which he’d planned on and had budgeted for, and he was finding out that there was a whole lot of very serious structural problems with the building, which was only about 20 years old, and these were due to deficiencies in our building techniques. He has no one to go to. The people who did the building work are long gone, and there’s like no record or accountability of it. He’s got a very large mortgage, and his interest rates had gone up because he happened to buy at the top of the market. He’s a young person, trying to get his first home—

Hon Member: Thanks, National.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —and not—yeah, so I wouldn’t say “Thanks, National.”, because the guy is in serious financial difficulties now because he found out that the building had serious problems with it, which now he has to send a whole lot of money to—

Dr Hamish Campbell: Did he get a building inspection done?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Yeah, he did get a building inspection done. But when it was the top of the market, he was under a lot of pressure because it’s a sellers’ market, and so the people who are trying to buy start lowering their standards and have less money to get the work done.

This is the whole problem—it’s like that’s the point. What this Government doesn’t understand is that the Government is here to protect and empower people, and we work together to do that. That’s what a democracy is for, and we do it because it works—we’re all better off when we work together to get better outcomes. But for several decades, we’ve had a race to the bottom in New Zealand of successive Governments who have cut really important rules, regulations, and investment and funding to different parts of the public system, which has led to the leaky building crisis, and that cost local councils billions of dollars. I mean, it was hugely costly to enable those changes and reduce oversight, and, at the time, Treasury was just like “Oh, they’ll sort it out in the courts.” Well, actually, that’s a very theoretical position, because when people can wind up their business, declare bankruptcy, and then pop up somewhere else and not be held to account, that’s a problem, and, ultimately, it is the public that picks up the cost, one way or the other.

Look, I’m all for better regulation. In my observation in both the building sector and urban planning, there are a whole lot of regulations that are doing the exact opposite of what we need them to do, but just getting rid of that and trying to speed up or simplify the process without actually lifting performance and accountability and without investing in oversight means that there’s a real chance of there being problems down the road that will end up costing us all.

I think there are very good and clear reasons to not support this bill at first reading. We will see what the select committee process turns up, but with the fast-track process and with the changes to the Clean Car Standards—which are going to be rushed through in urgency later this week—it’s a perfect example of the Government doing what’s good for business or for corporates when that’s actually bad for the country. It’s bad for consumers, it’s bad for households, it’s going to cost us more in the long run, and it’s bad for the environment, because they don’t care—they clearly don’t care. I mean, they’ve made it very clear that they don’t care, at all. If it’s good for the donors, if it’s good for the big lobbyists, and if it’s good for the overseas interests, they’re all for it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise once again as a licensed building practitioner (LBP) speaking on a bill that addresses real issues in the construction sector. Currently, if a sparkie or a gas fitter wants to sign off some work and say, “Hey, it’s behind a wall. I don’t want to hold up the progress of this building. It’s perfectly sound, I can certify it myself.”, that’s allowed, but a plumber running pipes or a drainlayer running drains cannot do the same thing. It makes no sense.

I’ve been on building sites where there have been massive holes in the ground waiting—waiting for someone in a high-vis from the council to turn up and tell us “Don’t worry. You can fill in that perfectly good hole. I’ve only been”—this is an inspector speaking—“in the industry two years, but you, you 30-year veteran of the drainlaying profession, you cannot be trusted to make sure that your pipes aren’t going into the sumps, into the septics, and into the soap pits that you have been doing for decades.”

This is addressing a real problem that holds up sites. It’s not a huge thing, but it’s a greatly important thing. Along with allowing a new LBP scheme to do with internal waterproofing—that’ll deal with the waterproofing issues that might come up from allowing people to assess their work. But with drains and pipes, this is not complicated stuff. These professionals know what they’re doing when they’ve been trained; they can do it, they’re licensed. Let them at it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, as I said in the previous debate, the most important thing that we want out of our building system is that we get good outcomes for the people that end up with the end product: the houses, the homes that people live in. This bill, though, is about trust. It’s about trust in the competence—the trust in the competence—of our professional drainlayers and plumbers, as you’ve just heard from our licensed building practitioner.

This allows professional plumbers and drainlayers to self-certify and to certificate their work, and it brings them in line with other building practitioners. This sets up a regime where the board—the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Board—has the power to endorse plumbers and drainlayers. It doesn’t mean it has to; has the power to, which means that they can say, “Well, look, are these people competent to do the job that they are doing to the level which is required to be done so that they can self-certify?” It doesn’t mean that they will self-certify everybody, because, obviously, when you start doing that, if people are not doing the job properly, it comes back on them as a board, saying “What are you doing certifying these people?” So they will do that, I expect, with care and attention to make sure that they are certificating and endorsing the right people to make sure they do the job properly.

Also, it is about self-certifying certain work, so set by regulation. It doesn’t mean every piece of work; doesn’t mean the really, really complicated pieces which you might have a third party have a look over. It means self-certifying certain work. This also means that the self-certification then relies on—in many areas of construction, we already have these producer statements, which, in fact, often, councils as the building consents authority farm those out—it might be to an engineer or whoever it might be—and says, “If they’re happy with it, then we’re happy with it.” Effectively, they’re already doing that in so many complicated areas of the business.

Two final points to make, because we’ve heard these in the debate already. The point’s been made about making sure that if something goes wrong, there is a process and a way in which the homeowner, the recipient of the end product, can actually get satisfaction from somebody who can put it right. In Wellington, the phrase “It’s the putting right that counts” will be familiar to many people. That is absolutely essential.

Finally, I had a lot of sympathy for the point that Arena Williams made about phoenix businesses. We don’t want the situation where people can wind up the business—the 2024 version of a business creates a 2025 version or 2026 version. We want the individual to be responsible for the work that they do, so that if they do it wrong and they don’t put it right, then there is a consequence on them so that I’m sure that they will, as professionals, do the job properly. I commend this bill to the House.

This is the second bill under the name of Chris Penk, and he’s doing a great job as building and construction Minister. It is all in the name: self-certification for plumbers and drainlayers. What a great bill, and it’s getting bipartisan support in the House.

Just to expand on my colleague, that—

Tom Rutherford: Apart from the Greens.

DAN BIDOIS: Except the Green Party.

But to expand on what “good” looks like, it’s about an efficient, effective, and low-cost system for consenting. That’s what this bill’s all about.

I look forward to hearing submitters, hearing from people in the public at the coalface in this industry, and about how this will work in practice. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand to take a call on the second building and construction bill, this being the self-certification by plumbers and drainlayers amendment bill. We do support this bill but with reservations. As speakers from this side of the House have taken the time to talk about, this bill needs to see robust safeguards and needs to see consumer protections because speed cannot compromise safety, quality, or consumer rights. Another simpler way of putting it is that fast and efficient can’t become quick and dirty, because that’s not what we want in our construction sector.

Now, we’re very proud, on this side of the House in the Labour Party, that we’ve always said that New Zealanders deserve homes that are affordable and that are built to last. When it comes to making sure we can do that affordably and to cutting the costs to do that, that’s all well and good, but it can’t be at the expense of cutting corners. We know that our plumbers and drainlayers—our good tradies—carry very heavy responsibility and liability for the work that they do, so we need to make sure that the standards and the access to the appropriate products are there for those professionals to be able to do the work that they need to do, to be able to do it quickly, but also to have the protections there for them.

Now, I have a story I want to share from an installation that I had at my home where I decided to install gas to have a gas facility in my kitchen for cooking. I brought a professional installer in, and—

Andy Foster: Didn’t you hear about the oil and gas ban?

Grant McCallum: But you cancelled the gas.

REUBEN DAVIDSON: This was some time ago. The professional installer came to my home and installed a gas hob in my kitchen, which worked beautifully. I was able to cook fantastic food and have a perfectly functioning gas hob in my kitchen. But what happened when I went to do the washing up was that I pulled the plug out of the sink, and the sink drained, and all of a sudden across my kitchen floor, there was a puddle of water coming from under the skirting board in the corner of the kitchen. This had never happened before. It was a very puzzling situation for me. Now, what had happened was that the water waste pipe from the sink ran diagonally through the wall at a surprising angle—surprising to the gas installer, who had managed to drill the gas pipe directly through the water waste pipe and safely install gas to run to my hob. What this meant was that I could safely operate my gas hub, and I had an airtight, perfect gas installation, but I had a leaky waste pipe draining the sink under my kitchen bench.

Now, luckily, I spotted it pretty quickly, and, luckily, the professional tradesperson took it very seriously and came round and remediated it immediately. But it did make me think: what if it had been the other way round? What if the water pipe had gone through the gas pipe? The result would have been quite different. Now, the point of that story is that we do need to provide very clear protections for our tradespeople but also very, very strong protections for us as consumers in our homes if we are building or carrying out renovations and people are going to be self-certifying their work. We owe it to our tradies to get this right. That is why the support that we bring for this bill does have reservations, because during the select committee process, we need to make sure that the owners or people who will live in homes that will be built under these changed and amended regulations are going to be living in homes that, if they have been self-certified, are safe. But we also need to make sure that, for our tradies—many of whom own their own businesses and are working really hard to make it all balance and make it all work—there are protections in place for them so that they don’t get caught out and get caught short and lose their businesses as a result of carrying this further administrative burden. It is with reservations that we support this bill. Thank you.

It’s very simple: if electricians and gas fitters can self-certify their work, then of course our qualified plumbers and drainlayers should be trusted to do the same, as well. This Government is here to back them up. An open self-certification scheme is a stroke of common sense. Less red tape, stronger accountability, and the same high level of safety. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill. I’m happy to tell the House that I don’t know a whole lot about—

Tom Rutherford: Anything.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —plumbing and drainlayers. Well, thank you for that interjection. I think it says more about the person making the interjection than myself. But I will say that I’m happy—happy—to say that I don’t know a huge amount about plumbing and drainlaying. This is important because I have had the opportunity to employ plumbers and drainlayers. It’s been important to me to be able to rely on their work and also the certification of their work, so that I know that the house that I live in, that I was lucky to be able to have the privilege to be able to build, is safe. It is important for me as a consumer, and for every other consumer out there who has not studied plumbing and drainlaying. We want to be able to rely on the certification by those that know more about these things.

I picked up this bill and thought, “I wonder what sorts of jobs will be able to be self-certified by plumbers and drainlayers under this bill.” It turns out it’s not that clear, and that is because of the mechanisms of the bill. I want to go through those, briefly. You’ll see at clause 4 the definitions of what are self-certifiable drainlaying and self-certifiable plumbing. This is the kind of work that is defined in reference to regulations. We don’t see those regulations here and I’m not sure if they exist yet. It’s important to note that the regulations are where those types of work that I don’t know a whole lot about will be defined.

It is important to note that there are some thresholds for what might be in those regulations. We see that at clause 45 of the bill, and that is where section 172C is amended to insert section 172C(1AAA). These are the “Requirements before making certain regulations”. The Minister may only make the recommendations about these regulations if the Minister is satisfied that the plumbing work will be “(a) … routine work for an experienced drainlayer or plumber;”—so an experienced element is relevant to that threshold. At (b), it “is not complex drainlaying or plumbing”—I presume that the people who know about these things will be able to discuss what is or what is not complex. At (c), it “poses a low risk to the health and safety of the public.” I would hope that there the health and safety of the public is also of the consumer or of the person who’s in the house where these plumbing and drainlaying works might be.

I raise that point because the regulations here are an important part of how this bill will operate. I very much hope that the select committee will spend some time looking at what those regulations may or may not include. I’m assuming that there will be submissions on this particular topic by the people who do know about plumbing and drainlaying. Of course, this bill has to be reported back within four months and one day, I think—so we’re avoiding a debate in the House on when that shortened time frame is. But I do note, like my colleague Arena Williams, that this does mean that the plumbers and drainlayers, the people who know what might be in these regulations and saying what sort of work this bill will apply to, will be making submissions over the Christmas break and that is far from perfect.

As you’ve heard, though, Labour is supporting this bill and will look, at the select committee, for strong auditing requirements, mandatory record-keeping, fair and transparent fees and levies, and clear remedies for homeowners when work fails. It is important to note that this is supposed to be part of a package that also includes insurance and liability, and we do need those settings to be right. If they are not right, then it will cost everyone a whole lot more.

I commend the bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Building and Construction Sector (Self-certification by Plumbers and Drainlayers) Amendment Bill be considered by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.