Hon MAHARA OKEROA (Minister of State) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): We are on to our 16th speaker, and a motion was put almost 3½ months ago for the question to be put. I am just explaining where we are at. I will go to Bob Clarkson.

BOB CLARKSON (National—Tauranga) : That is a very good choice. I want the members of this Labour Government to understand that they have reached new heights of bureaucratic failure with this bill and its amendments. Tradesmen carpenters, in most cases, did not cause leaky homes. The main cause of the problem was the Department of Building and Housing telling builders what to do, which turned out to be wrong. How can we blame tradesmen carpenters for using kiln-dried timber, overlaid with Harditex cladding, that had a moisture leakage of 7 percent, when the department said it was OK to do it that way? The Government is now overreacting to the leaky home problem by licensing builders. Tradesmen carpenters will be stuck with paying $2,000 for a licence, not the $300 that the Minister says. [Interruption] We are getting to that. The building of leaky homes was not their fault.

We have had many Ministers for Building and Construction over the last 8½ years. Clayton Cosgrove, the previous reject, was the public relations man and a spin doctor. As I have said before, he woke up one morning with a warm fuzzy feeling and thought that another amendment to the bill was needed. Every bill, or amendment to the bill, does not have a sound base for solving the problems in the building industry. I was looking forward to going head to head with Mr Cosgrove. However, he has been pushed sideways by our friend Helen. Helen got something right.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Full names.

BOB CLARKSON: I apologise if I offended anyone then. I suggest that the Minister—sorry, the previous Minister; it is hard to keep up, there have been so many—keep out of the building area and go back to being a public relations man. He was good at spinning a story, but not at solving building problems.

Let us move on. Shane Jones has been given this job. This is Minister No. 9. I say sorry to Shane but he has been given a hot potato. It can be easily fixed, and it will be fixed by Nick Smith and myself after the next election. We will not have warm fuzzy dreams. We will deal with the cold hard facts and bring in a bill that will fix all the problems. I say to Shane to do his best. There is not long to go until the next election.

The amendment does nothing for the problems. The cost of a house will go up. If a carpenter has to pay for a licence, this cost will go on to a house.

Hon Darren Hughes: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The member has had over half of his speech time already and we have not heard any reference to the four clauses that this entire part contains. It is just a generic speech on his views, which we have heard dozens of times in his short time in Parliament.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Thank you for raising that. Yes, we should be discussing those four clauses. There will be plenty of opportunity in the next three questions to roam all over the place and to summarise everything we have been doing for the last 4 months on this issue. If the member could confine himself please to those clauses in Part 2.

BOB CLARKSON: I thought in actual fact that I was referring to them, in the sense of the cost of levies and all that sort of stuff, and so forth.

This bill and the amendments have nothing to do with, and will not help cut, costs of council fees, building levies, and all that sort of stuff. The councils are running scared. Builders are acting like stunned mullets. Builders will go broke because they cannot get permits because it is a long-winded process. Where are we headed? I say to New Zealanders to be patient, there is an election coming; Nick Smith and “Bob the Builder” will solve their problems. They will be able to sit in the front of a bus and see where they are going, not in the back to see where they have been.

JILL PETTIS (Labour) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): There will be one debate on clauses 1, 2, and 3, with three questions.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) : In beginning the debate on clauses 1, 2, and 3, I want to draw attention to the statement made by the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr Alan Bollard, this morning. In saying that New Zealanders would not see any decline in their interest rates, he said that cost increases in the non-tradable sector are providing inflationary pressures, which means that there can be no room for relaxing the cash rate. One may ask what that has to do with this bill. It has everything to do with this bill, because we have seen that the Government’s Building Act is adding to those exact same inflationary pressures in the non-tradable sector—basically, Government charges—that are resulting in high inflation, which is impacting on ordinary New Zealanders.

How will it impact? There are 230,000 New Zealanders whose mortgages come up for renewal this year. The Reserve Bank governor’s message today means that those families will face increases in their interest rates as the banks roll those mortgages over. Those 230,000 families will be facing the second-highest interest rates in the developed world, because this incompetent Government keeps driving up the regulatory costs on areas like building. I say to the Government members opposite that it is time they did something for those mortgage-belt families. It is time that the Government recognised that its Building Act 2004 is a major problem. It has resulted in huge increases in cost. It has resulted in huge increases in bureaucracy.

Let me just go through some of the areas where the Building Act is driving up costs. Firstly, let us look at consent costs. Today in the House I have outlined all of the councils that have had to increase their building consent fees because of the provisions in this bill. The Nelson City Council has increased its fees by 50 percent, the Tasman District Council has increased them by 35 percent, and the Dunedin City Council has increased them by 67 percent. Those increases have been made in 1 year. How can a Government that is driving a strategy around housing affordability then pass a Building Act that is driving up costs to that sort of order?

That is just one area. The development levies, which were driven through on to the councils, have trebled under this Government. They have gone from an average level of $8,000 per section, to $25,000 per section. When the Government introduced them, it said that it would sock the big, rich, fat developers with a development levy. Well, only the fools on the other side of the Chamber would believe that it is actually the developer who pays the development levies. The levies are just passed on to the price of the section or the house, and that is one of the reasons why section prices have more than doubled over the last 5 years. Can members believe that it costs more to buy a section today than it did to buy a house when Labour came into Government? A section today costs more than a house cost when Labour came into Government.

National’s frustration with this Building Amendment Bill is that there is absolutely nothing in it, at all, to address the crisis in house affordability—nothing at all. When we see the crocodile tears from the Minister of Housing, Maryan Street, and when we hear the words from the Prime Minister—

Hon Darren Hughes: The next member for Nelson.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Oh, Darren Hughes, is saying that, somehow, Maryan Street will be the next member for Nelson. Well, I will tell the Minister why she will not be. A week after she came to Nelson and talked about home affordability, the council had to lift building fees by 50 percent. In the Tasman District, we have had a 35 percent increase in building fees. Then we have Maryan Street’s Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill. Do members know what the Nelson City Council says about it in today’s newspaper? It says it is the worst bill—the worst bill—to address housing affordability. My council, the Nelson City Council, is apolitical. It is apolitical. And here is my own council saying that Maryan Street’s bill is a dog—a dog! [Interruption] I say to Darren Hughes that the words of the Nelson City Council are mild compared with what the Tasman District Council is saying about that bill. That council is referring to it as a joke—a sick, cynical trick on the people of New Zealand. I am pleased Darren Hughes is waving goodbye, because we in this Chamber all know that Nathan Guy will clean him up in that electorate because of the sorts of dopey policies we see in this Building Amendment Bill.

JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) : I am pleased to take a call on the title of the Building Amendment Bill. There are two or three things I want to say. The first is: fancy putting as the Minister in the chair on something to do with housing someone who does not own a house. Fancy putting in someone who does not even know what homeownership is like. The fact is, I do not think he has even owned a doll’s house, let alone his own house. This person in the chair does not understand what it is like for the people in “Struggle Street’ who are trying to get their own house.

The second point I make is that my colleagues today—Nick Smith, Phil Heatley, and others who have spoken—have talked about the costs of building levies and other costs associated with the local authorities.

Russell Fairbrother: What would you do about it?

JOHN CARTER: I would do a lot more than that member, who is going out as well. People worry about the fact that the councils are putting their fees up. Nick Smith has explained the fees that have gone up in the various councils. Let me just clarify. Why are those councils putting the fees up? Let me tell the Committee why that happens. The councils have to match the bureaucracy that the Government has established by making rules and regulations. The Government then imposes those costs and the rules and regulations on to the councils, which have to respond to them. The building industry, the builder, the architect, and the actual suppliers have to respond to these costs. So there are extra costs loaded in, right across. It is now estimated that compliance costs in total—if we take in not just the building fees and levy contributions but all the costs associated with the bureaucracy—are probably as much as $50,000 a section for the red-tape side of it.

That is an absolute disgrace. That figure is an estimate at this stage, but up to $50,000 could be loaded into the building costs per house development because of this Government’s rules. The sad fact is that the councils are merely responding to the responsibilities that this Government has put on to them. It is known that bureaucracy in the local authorities has grown more than 25 percent since Labour came to Government, because the local authorities have had more and more costs imposed on them. The local authorities have to respond; they do not have a choice. They have to respond to what the Government imposes on them, and the consequence is more costs, more red tape, and more bureaucracy.

Even worse is that the Government members could stand here and say they have had to do all this to get over the problem with leaky homes, and if this were going to fix the problem, maybe they would have that excuse—not that it would be acceptable to the Opposition, but nevertheless. But the sad fact is that, right now, not only is the issue of the leaky homes that we know about not being addressed but actually we are building more leaky homes in this country. If people in this Chamber and people in this Committee think that we have solved the leaky home problems, they should think again.

David Bennett: Labour’s leaky homes.

JOHN CARTER: My colleagues have to believe it. The sad fact is that is there are more and more leaky homes being built. Right now there are leaky homes being built in this country. Poor, unsuspecting homeowners are buying spec homes that look good and feel good. Sadly for them, in the next 5 or 10 years and longer they will find that that new home they bought today, built under the Government regulations, is leaky. The Department of Building and Housing has grown from a staff equivalent to 31.5 people, to one of over 385. There are 385 bureaucrats in there, most of them with little experience in the building industry itself. Some of them are good people, but a lot of them have no idea about building. They know how to write rules and regulations. The sad fact is that this bill and this Minister and that department are doing nothing to address the issue this bill is supposedly all about.

That is why the Opposition will fight and rally against this, led by my good friend and colleague Nick Smith, by Phil Heatley, and by others in this Chamber. We will fight this every inch of the way, because it is doing a disservice to a whole lot of New Zealanders.

There are many people in this country who would love to have the opportunity to own their own home. There are many people in this country who would love to have confidence that the home they buy, whether it be their first, their second, or their retirement home, is secure and that the money they put into it is an asset to them. They would love to be assured that the Government has got it right. They would love to know that the council has got it right. They would love to know that the people they have relied on to ensure the house is secure can guarantee that the house is going to last. Sadly, that does not happen. There are far too many people in this country who are going to be let down because this Government has no idea what it is doing.

It was yesterday or today that my colleague Nick Smith brought in the building consent application that one has to fill in for the Rodney District Council.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: 110 pages.

JOHN CARTER: He brought in 110 pages of forms that one has to fill in just to apply for a building consent. This is just the application, folks. That is not the largest local authority in New Zealand either, so we can imagine the sizes of some of the other applications. Once that has been filled out, the plans, the architect designs, and the specifications about the materials to be used have to be attached. It just goes on and on. When I was listening to my colleague Nick Smith speak I was thinking that the sad fact is that all the building applications that are made in this country—the pile of papers and all the papers that are associated with them—would in my guess, over a year, be the equivalent of about 10 houses if we had left them as wood rather than paper. We could have given 10 houses away, made the houses secure, and given people something they owned and respected. Instead, all this Government is giving them is a whole lot of paper and form-filling. We could have given a house to Darren Hughes. Everybody would have been better off.

But sadly, we have a Government that insists on bureaucracy, control, hands-on, form filling, and a whole lot of rhetoric that does nothing at all. The Minister Shane Jones is going around listening and learning. He hears the various things that Nick Smith has talked about. He hears the very thing Phil Heatley talks about; that is, builders who are good, competent people who have got to the stage where they are saying “We are out of here. We have had enough of this form-filling. We cannot guarantee, with all the paper and all the specifications and all the materials we have to supply, that we can do a proper job for people who expect us to.”

These are good, long-serving, competent homebuilders. These people know their job. They know what it is like to build a house. They know what it is like to have an asset. They know what it is like to carry the responsibility, but, sadly, this Government will not listen to those people who actually understand. This Government will not listen to people who could actually tell them how to solve the problem. The one good piece of news is that Nick Smith, Phil Heatley, Bob Clarkson, myself, and others working in the team have an answer. We know how to fix this problem. Hang on folks, help is on its way. It is all going to be fixed in due course. The policies we are developing are going to take a lot of this right out so that people will be able to get to the stage where they can invest with security and they can own their own home.

• Progress to be reported presently.

• House resumed.

• The Chairperson reported the Limited Partnerships Bill with amendment, and that the Committee had divided it into two bills, reported the Broadcasting Amendment Bill with amendment, and progress on the Building Amendment Bill.

• Report adopted.