Parliamentary debates: Saturday, 19 September 2026

09:01

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. A very good morning, everyone. I just wanted to provide a few answers for questions at just the closing hours of last evening, and I’m sure many of you would have slept on those, as did I.

There were questions in regard to the Auckland priority buildings as we ended. Those have not been identified at this point. There were also questions in regard to the ability to change the map. I want to be clear that only Parliament will be able to change the maps. However, on the digital maps, you will be able to zoom in and be able to see the boundaries, which was the question asked last night.

There was also a question in regard to urban centres and what is in and what is out, in effect. That is defined by Stats New Zealand.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s useful for the Minister to have provided those answers, and I thank him. The follow-up question to his answer in relation to new section 133AF is: can there be an Auckland priority building if they haven’t been identified, as his new definition excludes all buildings that would otherwise be a priority building but for the fact that they have been excluded by the decision to exclude Auckland?

I also asked the Minister a question in relation to new section 133AF(3). He was taking advice at the time last night, so he may not have heard me. The current law’s definition of priority buildings in broader. It includes certain hospitals, shelters, emergency response buildings, and specified education buildings. Has he excluded those simply because they have already been remediated, or is it the case that this is a policy decision in which those buildings that will be needed in an emergency response to an earthquake have been left out of the meaning of “priority buildings” under this bill?

Now I turn to new section 133AG. This is the interaction between the councils’ new power to identify any road or footpath which is at risk of having a building or a facade falling on to it. This is a good part of the bill. This is something that we support because in the exercise of identifying the most at-risk buildings, obviously, it’s not just about the foundations or the construction of a particular building; it’s also about the risk to people who are interacting with it. And arguably the most at risk and the most at need of protection are those people who could not have any idea of the risk to the building that is near them because they are outside of it. They’re not owners, they’re not renters; they’re people who are on the street.

So I want to ask him about this provision. Firstly, it seems that he has changed the way that the council will be required to identify the building with the special consultative process to one where they don’t necessarily need to undertake this if there is a reasonable expectation—the word is “no reasonable prospect”—of the kind of risk that is being envisioned here to people who are walking past or using the street frontage.

I asked last night about a situation where, under new section 133AF(1)(b), a territorial authority had the wrong sort of motivation and there was moral hazard here because they might be identifying their own buildings that affected an important transport route of strategic importance to the country. But this is a different question, and it is more concerning here, where, if you have a territorial authority with its own council buildings that might impede or fall on people who are walking past, it is also up to the council to make a decision that they don’t need a consultative process now.

We’re moving from a system which would have required the council to remediate that building, and now it’s up to the council whether they remediate that building. In some situations, you have territorial authorities which are being led by mayors like the Auckland Mayor, Wayne Brown, who has been a vociferous advocate for fewer regulations around earthquake-prone buildings. He has put that case very strongly, but the fact is that he will not have the motivation that is envisioned in this change to lead from the top and to remediate those council buildings which may pose a risk. And it is up to him in the new system.

So my first question is: what is the check and balance at the start to make a council authority begin the consultative process? Surely there should be a positive obligation on councils to at least begin to identify those streets which may be affected very early on.

And in the transitional phase—this is a question about how the transition now works, because all of the transition for Auckland is very different from what it was at the Transport and Infrastructure Committee—we’ve gone from a system where there was a positive obligation to remediate to one where the council will now need to take some time before considering what streets are high risk. Minister, are we talking months? Are we talking years? Are we talking decades before people around the country would see their streets registered as streets which will be high risk and anything overhanging them will need to be remediated under this format?

And then my next question is: why will an earthquake-prone unreinforced masonry building that could collapse on to a public footpath also be included in this when the footpath—

The member’s time has expired.

09:07

Just in regards to the member’s questions related to Auckland, the answer is no because it is a low zone. Priority buildings are defined. The member should reference new section 133AF.

In regards to the questions in regards to transition, it is fair to acknowledge that, while some buildings have already been assessed, there still will be others to do so. There will be a period that’s outlined in the legislation in terms of duration of that. The reality is that, again, in the case of Auckland, this is a low-risk zone. The whole purpose of this legislation is to ensure that those buildings that have a higher risk, in the context of risk to life, are prioritised in the area in which a remediation occurs. Auckland is a low zone.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just actually have a very quick question, and it’s a follow-up from Arena Williams around the priority buildings. As was noted, a number of the buildings that have come—for example, hospitals—are Crown-owned. I’m just wondering: what are the cost savings to the Crown from the removal of all Crown buildings that would have been on the priority list previously?

09:08

Look, it is acknowledged that there will be Crown assets, including local government assets, that sit across the country that will be impacted by the legislation that we’re passing this evening. In some instances, as a result of that, the requirement to remediate will be different to what it was previously, before the Act. That may result in a change in cost of works that are under way. However, it will be on a case by case basis.

The prior member also asked a question in regards to new section 133AG(3)(a), around the consultative process. I’d refer the member—that process is outlined in the legislation, which will provide substantive overview in regards to the questions she was asking.

09:09

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning. I thank the Minister for Building and Construction for his answers there. I just wanted to pick up on one response that he gave, which was a slight change to the answer that he’d originally given me last night—and then we suspended last night with an answer and he’s clarified that this morning. It’s about the Schedule 2A map, because originally it wasn’t known that Parliament had the only authority to change the map. So I do thank the Minister for that and understand that.

That does raise a question though. I assume that’s because the likelihood of changing the seismic situation is often so rare that that’s why Parliament needs to do it, and the legislation allows for that. But the follow-up question is whether or not the Minister thinks that there was an opportunity, perhaps through this bill, to have a subsequent amendment around the ability of Parliament or, in certain circumstances, for that responsibility to not sit with Parliament but what was the former GNS Science—I think the Minister said last night.

That’s the first part of the question. I’ve got another one, but I think it looks like he wants to answer.

09:10

Just in response to that question, the assessment the member has outlined is correct in the context of the map. The purpose here is that the movement, potentially, of that boundary does have very significant implications, and so it was deemed that that scale of potential change needs to be through a change in the law to ensure that all parties—including in this House but outside—have the mechanism to be able to be involved with that consultation process. That is a conservative position, and I think it’s a reasonable position.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask the Minister for Building and Construction about new section 133AH, inserted by clause 7 of Amendment Paper 702. I’m at the bottom of page 16. My question there is around the council’s powers now that they have a narrower scope of buildings to consider. Really, the thrust of the question is: if they include buildings which were previously included within the definition wrongly, arguably—according to the building owner reporting to the developer who is in charge of, say, the street frontage or the precinct that the building is within—is that now open to legal challenge?

I ask because the formulation of this one is pretty different from the old situation, where that couldn’t have arisen. You couldn’t have had a legal challenge to council for identifying what was in and out wrongly, but of course there is a real motivation, and it is financial, for developers to have their buildings excluded from the list of buildings that a territorial authority considers to be potentially earthquake-prone.

That’s the first question, and whether there are challenges, then, that also arise from the special consultative process. That’s a process which, as the Minister knows, is for gathering the public’s views and is a pretty prescribed set of public input requirements. It’s not designed, necessarily, for what would be a reasonably litigious and evidence-based inquiry into whether or not a building did meet a certain engineering threshold via the earthquake-prone buildings methodology to be included by the council.

That relates to the previous point around new section 133AG. What I’m really asking is: now that the council has a new discretion to begin the consultative process or not under section 133AG, how many people is few enough for the Minister to consider it appropriate for the council to not begin that consultative process? Under the old system, that wasn’t really what was at issue—you wouldn’t have had the beginning of a consultative process in this way. But what we might see here—and I gave the example of the Mayor of Auckland, because he is the highest-profile mayor with views that called for liberalisation of these rules, but there are others: high-profile councillors in Dunedin come to mind, who ran a very outspoken public campaign on these issues. There will be councils around the country—territorial authorities around the country here—that do not want to engage in a consultative process where the outcome might be the protection of more streets and more roads, and yet that seems to be a carefully designed mechanism within this Act for the Government to assure itself that there is a reasonable amount of protection where we have liberalised the rules around which buildings are in.

A key protection for ensuring that the risk is spread sensibly is that, if you’re going to have higher-risk buildings which do not require remediation, we must catch the ones in that category that might be falling on a large number of people—or, indeed, one or two people—because the risk in that situation is different for a church on the West Coast, where people are walking past outside and might be affected, to one building that is far from anywhere, where only the landowner or only the building owner is affected by the risk. Yes, in both situations there is a risk to life and limb, but one represents a situation where people cannot know, and could not even find out, if they proactively wanted to, about the risk. This is why I’m asking the Minister what sort of risk he anticipates he is introducing into a system with those territorial authorities that we already know will not begin a consultative process unless there is something in the system which motivates them to do so beyond their electoral mandate.

09:15

Just in regards to the question around key protections, particularly around section 133A—anyway, the answer to the question around what the challenge or review process is: if the member goes forward to page 29, the answer to her question is in new section 133AZB. Again, I know the member has read the bill, but for the question she’s asking, the answer is further ahead of where we’re talking at the moment.

In regards to the question on new section 133AG, it’s always been the case and up to territorial authorities to decide on using that special process.

Also the question in regards to—oh, no; I’ve answered that. Thank you.

09:16

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask the Minister for Building and Construction some questions on proposed new section 133AI—this starts at the bottom of page 17 of his Amendment Paper. This is around the territorial authority potentially identifying buildings after the applicable time frame has expired. Now, this is, I think, very relevant to a number of areas. I know my colleague the MP for Rangitīkei over there, Suze Redmayne, knows that the Manawatū District Council are very active, actually, in this space, and they have been very active through the select committee process as well. This is about the steps that need to be taken by authorities like them who actually have a number of buildings that fall within this particular remit.

One of the changes, Minister, that you are making is you are, effectively, striking out and replacing subsection (1), which is around identifying what that section applies to. Now, what the select committee did have was a component there that related to the design of buildings on or after 1 January 1976. Now, your Amendment Paper has, effectively, removed that requirement, which is a new change. What has been replaced there is just simply around the buildings and construction completed before 1 July 2027. The construction component still exists, but the design one doesn’t, so it would be very interesting to understand why it is that the design component is no longer part and parcel of that particular section, given we’re looking at this section by section.

What you’ve also done is you have introduced a new subsection (1A) that was not there previously, and this is actually where the section doesn’t apply. Originally, as it stands at the moment, the select committee sent this back saying, “Well, let’s actually look at the circumstances within which this applicability outside of the expired time frame would apply”, and that was it. You’ve modified that slightly around the construction—sorry, the Minister has modified. You yourself, Madam Chair, will be very familiar with this sort of stuff as well. I should have acknowledged that. The Minister has also included where the section will not apply. He has been very specific around that. That’s not something—

I’ve got questions about that.

OK, my colleague has questions around that. I am just very interested in—the first part is amending the design brief; the second part is introducing a whole new section where it is quite specific as to where the section would not apply.

09:19

In short, it goes back to the additional protections, which I know we in this House are all concerned about, and we want to make sure that the protections are in place. Some buildings inadvertently could be overlooked, and that’s why the definition is being widened slightly to preserve the safety in that regard.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My question on new section 133AI is a bit broader than that. I can see what the Minister for Building and Construction is doing here. I think this is a sensible change in some respects—to give us a provision which is “We missed one and we want to include it”—because there will always be a risk, when you’re talking about the built environment, that you cannot know every single building. Even though we have been going through a period of identification publicly and raising awareness about these issues since the Christchurch earthquakes, there is still a chance you will need to identify a building which does pose risk to life and limb. The problem—the problem—is: why did he limit this power to those buildings?

Effectively, he’s prevented a council from reconsidering a building under this pathway if it has had previous consideration. The problem with that is that he’s completely missed a group of buildings; not only those that could have been genuinely missed since the Christchurch earthquakes—that’s one—but there’s a second category in there, which is that the understanding does change. We are changing this bill on the premise that the science and the understanding of the engineering has also moved forward and that we have a better way of identifying, through science advice not only to the Government but to building owners—and the availability and the cost and affordability of that engineering assessment has also come down. Why wouldn’t it be the case that not only would this extra information allow building owners and councils to downgrade the remediation that’s required but, in some cases, there would be upgrades to the remediation that is required? Why is it that, in a case where even the building owners are going to the council and saying, “Look, we’ve had another look. With the better information that is available to us, we think there is a higher need for remediation, and we would like to update the information that the council holds about this building”, they cannot then do that? They seem to be prevented from that.

That is a very real concern, because it’s not just up to the building owners; the point of having a public register is that, if that building owner who has taken a long-term view of the risk to the people who are in the building—and this is happening all around the country, by the way. This is not just the most publicly minded building owners. There are plenty of, say, employers who want to make sure that the people who come to work every day in their buildings leave safely. What if they then sell the building? The whole point of the Government’s interest in their building’s remediation is that the next owner is also held to the same standards and is required to observe the same information that they have gathered, at their expense, about the building—for the preservation of life and limb, not only for those people who come to work every day but for the people who use the building and do not know and cannot know the information about that. Is there a pathway for those buildings where the information changes and they go up in risk?

09:22

Hopefully, this works, in terms of back and forth. In regards to the question on transition, it’s the period of time it takes to do the transition. Just to be clear, everything will be in force on 1 July 2027—so, from Royal assent until that point. In regards to the question around the design date, it has been removed to open up slightly—to identify at any time what that pathway will be, and so that was the purpose in regards to the design date change.

09:23

I move, That debate on this question now close.

I think there’s a little bit more that we could explore.

I wanted to ask a question around—[Interruption] Goodness me!—section 133AH, just because this wasn’t addressed when we were speaking about this section. It’s about the applicable time frame and the territorial authority identifying that applicable time frame.

I’m specifically looking at subsection (4), paragraphs (aa), (a), and (b), and I have just a couple of questions for the Minister for Building and Construction around the advice that he received around these time frames. Why is it “3 years”, “2 years”, and “every year” for the different levels of seismic zone that were applied in subsection (4)—those three paragraphs (aa), (a), and (b)?

Then, a second question, just around the change the Minister has made to paragraph (aa), from “new medium seismic zone” to “medium seismic zone that was previously an area of low seismic risk”: could he please explain why that change was made, and why it will now only apply to medium seismic zones that were previously an area of low seismic risk, as opposed to others, and whether he looked at what other areas could be taken into account to have the three-year applicable time frame in that space. Thanks.

09:25

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question for the Minister for Building and Construction on section 133AJ. He’s getting the vibe that I am very nervous about unreinforced masonry (URM), not so much the tall buildings. My question about this one is: why doesn’t it apply to the URM buildings?

In this section, the council identifies a pre-1976 tall heavy material building as potentially earthquake-prone under the previous section, and then it must require the owner to provide an engineering evaluation. The corresponding requirement for the URM buildings is “evidence of the information”—so you don’t have to give it over to the council if you’re that kind of building owner. I want to ask him whether he considered making both requirements the same. I think this is an exclusion for smaller-building owners, but then that’s what it should say. In the situation with the tall buildings, they will be large office blocks, civic buildings, and hotels, all things that have an owner who should be large and sophisticated enough to provide that kind of reporting in a fast way for council if they are identified—and probably to already have it, to be honest. Pretty much every building that’s a tall building that we’re talking about here will be able to provide that to council, but is the exclusion because the URM buildings are a bit different, where they might not be able to provide that to council?

Then we get into a situation where not only is there no motivation for the public disclosure to the council, which is not to everyone, but this is meant to now be a system where the information disclosure and information transparency does some of the heavy lifting of the risk management. We don’t even require the URM building owners who are caught by the council’s new regulatory net to make that information public to the council, so it does seem to be either an oversight or an exclusion for certain types of building owners, who don’t necessarily fall into a risk management sense, in that their buildings are any lower, but they will be smaller and less commercial operators. Is that the case? Shouldn’t we be making an amendment to make section 133AJ also apply to URM buildings?

09:27

In regards to the question on section 133AI, on page 18, the question was in regards to whether there is a process to challenge an assessment. Yes, owners can challenge whether a territorial authority has correctly identified buildings in scope. Again, if the member Arena Williams goes further into the Act, the answer is there in new section 133AZB(1)(a).

09:28

I’m going to move along to new section 133AK—this is on page 20—and I’m going to touch on new section 133AM, on page 21, as well.

In terms of new section 133AK, on the obligation of owners on receiving requests for engineering evaluation, I’ve got two questions for the Minister for Building and Construction. It says over here: “If a territorial authority asks the owner of a building …”. What happens if the buildings are apartments? Are they treating each individual owner of their apartment unit as individuals, or is there someone who owns the entirety of the building? And, if the owner may apply for an extension in those kinds of circumstances, again, how would apartments work in this case?

My second question is: if the building itself is owned by the Government, who then is the owner of that building, and who will be responsible for responding? Is that the chief executive or is that the Minister responsible for that particular building? I think my colleague Arena Williams yesterday mentioned Stats NZ being one example.

My final question for the time being is on new section 133AM, and I’ll start by this: must request information—the request must be in writing. Can I just double check that writing can be electronic as well as physical. What happens if the owner of a building is overseas or is an overseas owner of a building? I want to check those three questions with the Minister.

09:30

In regards to the question on section 133AK, on page 21, the assessment of the risk is on the building, not on the owners of the building—in regards to the question around apartments by the member. And, yes, as consistent with other aspects of legislation, the means in which digital is available, in the context, in addition to written form.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My question really applies to several of the new sections, 133AH, 133AI, and so on. I’ll be very interested in the Minister’s understanding of the relationship between the requirement for territorial authorities—there’s a lot of “territorial authority must identify”, which I don’t have any disagreement with, I think it’s important—but what I want to know is: how is this Government going to either help or ensure that it’s done? Do you see there being a process of audit? Supposing they just picked the obvious buildings and miss out several others because of financial constraints, or maybe they have other priorities, how do we actually make sure that all of the buildings are identified by local government? I mean, back in the day, after 2010, we made a big push to identify all the buildings in Wellington and it’s not cheap to inspect buildings and to arrange inspections and so on. Some of it’s going to be pretty quick, you know, for those high seismic zones—the two years and six months. I’m just trying to think about how that ties in with the term of local government. Is this something that you would expect to be reported on or is it going to be legal change that local government must report on these things? Because some are great, some are not so great at these things.

09:32

Just again, the question previously, from the member of the Greens, in regards to the apartments and “do persons with an interest in a building” and that process, the answer to that is in new section 133AU(3). So it’s, again, ahead in this section, but the answers to the questions are in the legislation. So I’m not sure I’m adding value by reading out the legislation that is in this part that we just haven’t got to in the sequence of this committee of the Whole House stage. But again, I’ll just say that for the last time, that’s where the answer to that question is at.

I understand that it is late in the urgency, but this is one of the most significant pieces of reform which has achieved cross-partisan support because of the way that we have been able to access officials to understand the impact that this will have on people. There are a number of members in this House who have given speeches representing their local communities—Christchurch and Canterbury, for instance—who represent families of hundreds of people who have been affected by serious earthquakes. And so it is important that we move through clause 7, in a reasonably careful way, to understand the impact on people’s lives, and that is what we are attempting to do by moving forward methodically.

I’ll bring the Minister’s attention to new section 133AL and 133AM. My first question is about how two councils could conceivably treat identical circumstances differently with regard to an application for an extension of time for the information being required by councils. I pitched the Minister before a question around whether this is in here simply because we actually think that all of the tall buildings that he is trying to identify, in this case, have already got that information, but he’s allowed for a pathway, here, where there’s a 12-month requirement to provide the information and then councils get to extend for another 12 months.

So essentially, what we’re talking about here is once the information comes into effect, then the council goes through the consultative process—that’s a special consultative procedure and they have to nominate to do that; so that might add another six months and then another 12 months—then notifies a building owner that they have to provide the information. Even if they already have that, they can have up to 12 months, and then the council can give them another 12 months. So we’re talking about sort of 2030 as the ballpark time frame for an owner of a tall building in a public place to need to provide their engineering evidence to council.

My question isn’t whether that’s the appropriate policy decision—that is the Minister’s prerogative to make the decision—what I’m testing here is whether, across the country, those time frames will be very different. Two councils might decide, under his provision, that, say there is qualified engineer shortage, which was the case in the example that the former mayor of Wellington outlined in her term as mayor; if an owner might need that extension because of a delay in the availability of engineers, why is it that one council might take an approach which takes us out to 2030 or 2032 and another council, in the same seismic sone, might demand that information be provided in 2027. I’m asking him about what his message to councils is, in the sort of relativity here, because that’s not a part of the old law; it wasn’t the case that councils would have been able to extend time frames of that sort of provision of information to such an extent as he is proposing in his amendments today.

09:36

I mean, the simple answer to that is because we want to ensure that there is appropriate protections for the specific buildings that are being assessed—there may be circumstances where additional time is required to get a further assurance to get comfort that the decision is accurate. So you’re not going to have a situation where two councils are necessarily dealing with the same building, because the building sits in either one boundary or the other. So that’s not a scenario that is going to be the reality, but the timing allows flexibility.

In regards to the question around new section 133AJ, it was around the notice around tall buildings: territorial authorities can issue a notice that a tall building might be an earthquake-prone building—this was around how that assessment process works—and then the owner evaluates that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your response, Minister. I wasn’t sure that if a new section 133AU was applicable 133AK, because 133AU was talking about territory authorities giving earthquake-prone building (EPB) notice to a owner, whereas 133AK was around the request for engineering evaluation. But it’s good to know that regardless of what kind of document is being given, that the relationship between the territorial authority and the owner—and if it’s an apartment, multiple owners—or anyone with an interest in that, that is applied consistently. That’s helpful to know. Thank you, Minister.

I want to move on to 133AO—this is 133AO, new subsection (3). This is something that, I know, seems pedantic, but it’s not something we often see being drafted in legislation in this way, which says the “territorial authority must promptly”—normally we see the phrase “must immediately”, and I just want to check if, in this case, and I think it’s also for the clarity of territorial authorities when they are determining EPBs, that “promptly” has the same meaning and as “immediately”. So that would be helpful just to clarify.

Now, Minister, my final question for this contribution is around the deletions that we see in your Amendment Paper 702. I just want some clarifications on why clauses 133AP, 133AQ, 133AR, 133AS, and 133ASA have been deleted in the Amendment Paper. I’m just checking to see and I can’t, at least at this stage, see that it’s being moved to other locations, unless I’m wrong. So if the Minister wouldn’t mind just clarifying the deletion of those four new sections.

09:39

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just in regards to new section 133AO(3)—the member asked around the word “promptly”—“promptly” is defined as “as soon as reasonably practical.”

In regards to the question on 133AX, which is probably page 31, maybe further—32, 33; I’ll keep going higher—owners can request an extension if reasonable progress has been made—up to 15 years. And so it’s just acknowledging that there may be circumstances where the complexity of the building assessment requires more time to do that work.

Just a quick question about the new section 133AM rules, inserted by clause 7 of the bill. Why is the engineering evaluation mandatory but this evidence only requires the information, and why is it six months, when those two things seem to be relatively similar?

And a question for the Minister; I’m genuinely wondering what happens when both requirements are put on to a building owner? If they have a tall building and a suspected unreinforced masonry building, are they required to give an indication that the information does exist about the unreinforced masonry? Why wouldn’t they also be required to provide the information, in the same way that they are required to provide the information about the tall building?

I want to ask him about new section 133AM. This is also another discretion for unreinforced masonry buildings to spin out the timing for councils. And where you have a situation of unreinforced masonry buildings, this is even more acute, because councils that are in the same seismic zone—like, say, your main street in Feilding versus Cuba St—are going to get very different treatment from the councils around the provision of information, because the sorts of building owners in one situation are highly commercial, and are able to provision themselves with expensive and timely engineering advice, and in the other situation they’re not.

So you will definitely get a difference in timing and a difference in approach between those two, but the risks are the same. What is the justification in terms of the unreinforced masonry buildings for that delay in small towns, where you have business owners who will not be able to comply in that timely way, in an affordable way, but there is still the same sort of risk to loss of life?

Then my question about new section 133AO: this is a provision which punishes owners of buildings for not providing information. It was always going to be a necessary part of the regime, but, really, the thrust of my question to the Minister is: can he confirm that an owner cannot avoid having their building determined earthquake-prone, simply by failing to provide the engineering evaluation or the other information that’s required by council?

It seems that there is no end point to the information-gathering powers that council has. So if you have a building owner who is obstinate in that way, it is worth having a power where the council can also provision their own information. It’s one thing where the council is not going to implement those kind of consultation rules, and that we’ve discussed with the Minister first. Be it on them. They will face the ballot box because of that. But it’s a completely different thing where there is no recourse for the public, if a building owner who poses risk to the public will not provide information to the council. It’s a different question. I’m not saying they’re avoiding that, or they’re avoiding their legal obligations here, but the Minister has created a pathway, it seems to me, that can go on indefinitely, and that will be in a grey area of legality. That’s a question which is reasonable for this committee to ask: can things go on and on but there be no punishments associated with that?

09:43

Thanks, members. I just want to provide some feedback in regards to a number of amendments that are on the Table in the name of Celia Wade-Brown, particularly Amendment Paper (AP) 656. The Government will not be proceeding with these amendments; I’ll give you a brief explanation on why.

In particular, I will provide feedback on AP 656, which relates to fire access. In effect, what is being proposed here is to revert back to old obligations relating to fire and access. The new information available, based on events that have occurred subsequently, indicate that those changes of reverting back to the old obligations would be significantly too costly, and would not deal with or address the underlying risks which are available in the context of what is being proposed here in the bill.

Before I take another call, can I just say we can have scenarios about consultation provision of information, but we can explore those ad infinitim, so I’m encouraging members to move on from that phase of the bill.

09:44

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for that guidance, and I think, certainly, the approach—I’ve been here from when we started this last night—has been to work through the provisions section by section, given the alphabetical approach. I’m up to new section 133AO, inserted by clause 7, in the Minister’s Amendment Paper 702. This is about the nature of the information and the broad brush of information—not just the evaluation of evidence but, basically, any information.

My question is around subsections (2) and (3), which identify the time frame or the expectations around which the territorial authority must notify the building owner. I’m just reflecting on the earlier question to the Minister about it not spanning more than one authority. There are circumstances where provision through regional councils will—well, they do—overlay into other areas as well, so there is that context. But the word used here is “promptly”.

So I’m interested to understand from the Minister what his expectation is. It’s very clear, and I think it’s correct, that what we have in this provision is: once information, evidence, or the evaluation is received, that then leads to a council determining that they must act. There is a duty to act on behalf of the local territorial authority. The question therein lies: what is the expectation from the Minister around “promptly”? What is going to guide that decision? This is a process of considering the information that’s placed before the decision makers—

Can I interrupt the member and say that question has just been answered.

Well, I think the answer was around the assessment, rather than actually the requirement—we have not touched on this element of the word “promptly” in terms of the council’s response.

We just did it. It was a question from Lawrence Xu-Nan.

In terms of 133AO?

It was the first one of the day.

Yes.

The issue here is around the Minister’s expectations around response, but I’ll leave it there.

09:47

Just closing off the Amendment Paper (AP) tabled by the member Tamatha Paul in regards to new section 133ASB, inserted by clause 7. That AP, particularly, is looking at and considering financial assistance. As noted last night, financial assistance is outside of the scope, and therefore we will not be proceeding with that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My questions are around clause 7, inserting new section 133ASB, “Territorial authorities must determine and update earthquake status of buildings in medium and high seismic zones”. I just wanted to ask, again, around the timing of this. There’s a requirement under subsection 1—133ASB(1): “As soon as is reasonably practical after, and within three months of, 1 July 2027,”. However, over the page at subsection (7), it details what happens if a territorial authority runs out of time, and says that they “must finish doing those things as soon as possible after 1 October 2027.”

So my question is, really, around “as soon as possible.” That seems to give an infinite amount of time in order to conclude that. I wanted to know from the Minister why that decision was made. There was quite a specific one as to when the question needs to be asked initially about determining the earthquake status of buildings in medium and high seismic zones, but if they run out of time, “as soon as possible” seems like a very loose term as far as timing and getting that done. My concern would be that that could be interpreted as: any length of time that it might take to fulfil that obligation.

09:49

As I noted in a prior question in regards to this, there is a process for extensions which is outlined in the legislation.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am going to move ahead, just on new sections 133ASB and then 133ATA. The only question I have for 133ASB is—again, for a lot of this I’m mainly looking at the Minister’s Amendment Paper 702—on the new insertion, subsection (8A), in Amendment Paper 702. This is at the top of page 27. “It states, “While a building’s status as an earthquake-prone building is continued under subsection (8), the building’s existing deadline for completion …[would] continue to apply.” I want to check with the Minister if that means that if the seismic work continues to apply and the work is completed—does that mean that the building now will meet the requirement, and what happens then when there is a notice of an EPB but then it exceeds the requirement for the current seismic work that is still ongoing? In that case, would that also be notified to the person asking how the seismic work is going? I just want to check how one should interpret new section 133ASB(8A) in clause 7.

On to new section 133ATA, and, actually, also new section 133ATB. Noting that both of these are new insertions, as well, I want to check this with the Minister. This comes down to some of the conversations we have had previously around areas that are designated low-seismic zones, which is Auckland—let’s use that as an example. In those kinds of cases, if there is any other seismic-zoned building that is not considered an EPB, would there be any notice that has been given with what’s in new sections 133ATA and 133ATB? Would that notice potentially be changed, and, if it is changed, how would the territorial authority then notify it? If a building is not a priority building, you would have that as a notice, but would that notice itself include things like a caveat that just because it’s not an EPB now, that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to come back and check it in a couple of years’ time or a couple of months’ time? I just wanted to check from a building owner’s perspective what reassurance it has for the duration of a notice if it’s not a priority building, or if it’s deemed not to be in scope.

09:52

Just in regard to a prior question on new section 133AO, in clause 7, this was a question in regard to where the person or the individual does not provide information, and whether that provides them with a mechanism not to be able to comply. The answer is no; the building owner could, technically, not provide the information. However, if that was the circumstance, then by default it would be considered to be an earthquake-prone building and, therefore, it would be within the requirements.

09:53

That’s helpful. I’m just wanting to clarify with the Minister for Building and Construction that his answer applies to the unreinforced masonry buildings and not the tall buildings, because I think that that is the only one that requires the council to, basically, have a guess. It has to guess whether there’s unreinforced masonry and then ask them within six months, and so I just wanted to clarify that.

At new section 133AT in clause 7, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan has identified that that section is interacting with the previous section new section 133AO(8A) and (4). Basically, you’ve got the substantive decision already in new section 133ASB in clause 7, and new section 133AT is meant to operationalise it. The question in simple terms for the Minister is: where a building ceases to be an earthquake-prone building (EPB) solely because it no longer is within the new statutory scope, will the public register contain any record that the building was previously assessed as being earthquake-prone and it hasn’t been strengthened, in this case?

I also want to ask him specifically: what happens if a council like Auckland Council wants to retain a degree of public information about those buildings which were deemed to be earthquake-prone by an engineer? I’m not talking about the statutory scope; I’m talking about those buildings where there is an engineering report from professionals where they found and identified a risk to life, not within the EPB rating, but within their commentary or their professional findings which recommended remediation for specific parts—like, say, bridges between two tower buildings, or malls where one parapet might pose a specific risk of falling on to a civic space.

Those will now be excluded from the statutory regime, but the question is: if a council wants to maintain a public register of those buildings which have a specific risk that the council has been at odds with the building owner over, will they be able to retain that or will they run foul of the Act? Is it open to, say, judicial review for the council to publish the information with regard to the building owners that they are specifically pursuing right now for remediation because it affects a civic space, and, if they disclose that, is it defamation? Is it defamation if the council says that a developer has been at odds with the council for the last six years over the remediation which it has required from them, and, but for the Minister’s decision to exclude Auckland, it would still be going after them?

09:55

In regard to the question on new section 133ATA in clause 7, once a building is deemed not to be within the scope, it cannot re-enter the earthquake-prone building system. The purpose of that, at the end of the day, is to ensure certainty in the context of the classification.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

I’m very tempted to take a closure motion. We’re not making a lot of progress here, but I will take another question from Lawrence Xu-Nan.

09:56

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just noting that my colleague Celia Wade-Brown has an amendment for much later in this section that she would like to speak on, but I am going to move on and—

Pay attention, Tangi.

Sorry?

Don’t debate across the Chamber.

OK. I am going to move on and just check this. The Minister for Building and Construction has just mentioned the certainty, and, thank you, Minister for that clarification around the certainly. I think that is really important.

I just wanted to check in terms of the relationship between something that is deemed, under new sections 133ATA and 133ATB in clause 7, no longer a priority building, or it’s not within scope. But I wanted to check that in terms of how that interacts with, for example, a building that has been exempted. We do see that there are exemptions for a requirement to carry out seismic activities, but in new section 133AWA and also new section 133AZ, can I just check this with the Minister? For example, when you have the exemption for carrying out a seismic work and the exemption is revoked, unlike what we saw before in terms of the priority buildings and out-of-scope buildings, which have the certainty—I’m assuming that the owner of, let’s just say, a particular building will be notified in the initial notice that there is the likelihood or the possibility of an exemption being revoked. Would that also be on the notice as part of the exemption in—I just want to double-check—in new section 133AWA? I can’t see it there, and so if the Minister wouldn’t mind elaborating on new section 133AWA.

I’m also noting that we—Madam Chair, I’m just checking, because we’ve also got the schedules, as well, but I’m happy to kind of wrap up a few other things. I know that my colleague has a few remaining things on clause 7, but I think I’m happy to move on. So I’ll wait until others finish with clause 7, and then I’ll move on to the schedules.

09:58

Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is also about new section 133AW in clause 7, though, just drawing on what the Minister for Building and Construction said in response to my question in the last part, I want to ask him this in relation to new section 133AW. Will an earthquake-prone building notice tell the public what type of a seismic risk is being disclosed there: either an unreinforced masonry or a tall building risk?

On new section 133AW, the revocations regime wasn’t a big part of the old rules because it didn’t need to be, but under his new regime it probably will be a more operative part, and there seem to be two very different outcomes, depending on when the revocation happens. In the first situation, if the original seismic work deadline has not expired and the owner falls back on the ordinary regime, they can then apply under new section 133AX in clause 7 for the extension, but I want to ask him about the situation where it has already expired, and that’s covered by the new section 133AZ in clause 7, which we’ve talked about a little bit.

It will ordinarily give the owner a fresh five years to complete the seismic work. That’s the five-year period that can’t be extended, but the exception seems to be that if it was revoked because of an act or omission of the owner—the Amendment Paper gives failure to maintain the risk mitigation measures as an example—then they don’t get the extra five years. In the other situation, where the owner is not at fault, is the revocation going to then give you a pathway to the full five years? Is that because we’re allowing for situations where the council is at fault, or are we also allowing for situations where the information has changed—in which case, it seems to be better to let your exemption run out its time and then apply, which doesn’t seem to be the right way round for that to be formulated?

10:00

In effect, that’s providing flexibility to allow certainty for both sides of the equation to know where they stand and to be able to make assessments and plans in regards to that.

10:01

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d also like to thank the Minister for addressing my amendment about disability access and fire escape. I understand that the Minister’s amendment, as also came from the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, did add, at least, “as nearly as reasonably practicable”, but I wondered if the Minister would give his interpretation of “as nearly as reasonably practical”. Is that if the cost is 1 percent more or 10 percent more or what?

The evidence that I’ve heard is that the disruption to adding those things later—I mean, you’ve just done the earthquake strengthening, you’ve painted the building, you’ve added whatever embellishments you want to that suit the purpose of that building, but you have chosen not to do the accessibility. Then it won’t happen until the whole building needs some more refurbishment 20 years down the line or something like that.

We heard that usually the extra cost is around about 5 percent, and sometimes it’s not very much at all. I think we had one of the Wellington developers, Eyal Aharoni, stating that, well, of course he’s going to do it anyway, because he wants his buildings to be for all people, and I thought that was a really excellent response.

If the Minister could address that matter. We will still be putting forward the amendment that says it should comply, because I think there is already an exception in the existing legislation which says something along the lines of “unless it’s unduly onerous”.

10:03

I move, That debate on this question now close.

I just want to say that we are so far in the weeds on this. This has had a full select committee process, and the detail—I would imagine, because I have faith in the select committee process—has been explored. I’m looking for substantive questions for the Minister.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was a member of the select committee that explored this, but what we have in front of us is an Amendment Paper with changes that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee did not explore and did not have any information for.

I want to look at one of the issues which hasn’t been touched on yet, and that is around the warning signs—the actual physical placement of signs that will be placed on the buildings. This is not something that has been touched on. It’s on page 39 of the Minister’s Amendment Paper 702. There are really only two reasons as to why an earthquake-prone building sign would be affixed to a property. One is it doesn’t have one and so it needs to have one. The other is that, actually, the circumstances have changed, and there is a sign, but it needs to be updated.

My question for the Minister is—the first one of that, OK, that seems to me to be very clear. It didn’t have a sign; now it does. The alternative option is where there is a change in circumstances. Does the Minister believe that the nature of that signage, though, for the second part needs to incorporate the fact that there has been a change in circumstances? That’s actually not clear in the Amendment Paper. It just says that if circumstances have changed that now lead to a change in, effectively, the rating, then there needs to be a sign affixed.

But the purpose of the sign—and this was discussed at select committee, Madam Chair—was a very clear signal to anyone who is using that building as to the status of the building. Now, someone who might be visiting from a different part of the country may not know that there’s a change in the criteria there. My question, very directly, to the Minister is: does he believe that the notice itself should, for the second part, indicate that there is a change of circumstances?

10:05

In regards to the questions around the notices in section 133AU, the notice includes all details set out—again, the member will refer to subsection (2), which has all the details about everything that the owner will need to know in regards to that.

In regards to section 133AZ, and this was in relation to the five-year period, in effect, you can imagine a circumstance in which a building owner has a seismic work exemption, that exemption is therefore revoked, they haven’t done any work to remediate because they’ve got an exemption, and then technically they are in breach. The five-year period then comes into play to practically give them time to do that work because their circumstances have changed.

10:06

Madam Chair, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to ask the Minister about his changes. This is a bill where the Opposition have worked closely with the Minister and his officials on the detail of this, and it’s something we support. But the reason for going through the changes is that we have not had a chance to ask officials what they mean. Some of these changes are big policy decisions.

At section 133AX, for example, at the bottom of page 3, the change here is to the longest period an earthquake-prone building could legally remain unremediated once the extensions available under section 133AX are taken into account. This was a matter which the Regulations Review Committee wrote a letter and an opinion to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on—about the number of extensions that were available in the legislation and in the regulations. There are “Henry VIII” powers that arise here because of the way that the extensions work in regulation. This is another extension period, and when we’re talking about the timing, that materially impacts the costs and the risks to the building owners themselves and to councils.

When we’re talking about the timing here, I want the Minister to answer, under section 133AX, is it the case that it’s the 7.5 years plus the 7.5 years plus six months for the consultative period plus 12 months for the extension, then an unidentified time period of the extensions, which might be five years? His answer to me was that this is proportional to the risk—as I understand it, and I hope I’m not paraphrasing him incorrectly—and that his policy rationale is for flexibility. But, Minister, what you’ve allowed here is, in some cases, a 15-year remediation period for buildings which, under the current regime, needed to be remediated two years ago.

The problem here is that the timing is everything. We have a Government that has already kicked the can down the road and an Opposition that has supported that because of the need for flexibility and affordability in the system, but another 15-year extension is not something we would have supported. So I’m asking the Minister: does section 133AX, under his new formulation, first, include those buildings which are being remediated now and are the ones we all know about and are the ones we know that need to be remediated, and then what is the longest period that those buildings could legally remain unremediated under the new formulation under section 133AX?

10:08

In regards to the question that’s just been asked around section 133AX, as noted, the owners can request that extension, and the test here is that if reasonable progress has been made in regards to that remediation. One has to envisage a complex building which has, potentially, a large degree of heritage—you know, just look outside around this building; you’ll see a number. The time it takes to remediate does take a long period, so the time period is up to 15 years.

10:09

Thank you, Madam Chair. As I said before, I am moving to the two schedules, so this is clauses 12 and 13. I want to start with a question on clause 13, which inserts Schedule 2A. This is the map of the zones. I thank the Minister for Building and Construction for his response on how those seismic zones are determined and who determines them, but I just want to check something. In here everything above Waikato is considered to be a low-seismic zone, but I know there have been changes. But since the reporting back from the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, there has been new data and new evidence to say that Auckland is on a fault line that has the potential for seismic activity. So with that information emerging, is this seismic zone map still current? That is my first question.

I am going to move on to Schedule 1AA, inserted by clause 12, and this is about transitional arrangements. I think a lot of the things from the bulk of the bill, in clause 7, have now been moved to here. My understanding is that everything we see between is looking at the transitional period between when this bill comes into force, the day after Royal assent, and 1 July 2027. So we’re looking at potentially an eight-month period.

Can I just check with the Minister that in relation to 20A to 20—actually, not even 20A to 20D; 20A. So I want to check that in relation to 20A those transitional provisions would be able to be met by territorial authorities before 1 July; and for 20B would be able to be met within three months of the start of the transitional period, which I presume is three months from the day of Royal assent, if that is the correct interpretation. So I just have those few questions on Schedules 1 and 2.

10:12

In terms of the question in regards to the impact on Auckland, Earth Sciences New Zealand, which is the new name for GNS Science, has prepared that information. It doesn’t change the overall zone, which remains low.

The member asked a question around new sections 133AZA and 133AZB, in clause 7. It was around signage. Signs applying to all earthquake-prone buildings are required to be in plain language and therefore easily read. There was also a question in regard to Schedule 1 as well—clause 25. This lets the owners complete existing seismic improvements so that they can carry on whatever relevant work has started before the bill, and the member can see that within the legislation.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m going to new section 133AZF, in clause 7. Just in relation to the Minister for Building and Construction’s answer, though, about Schedule 2 and the way the transitional provisions work for Auckland, it would be really helpful if the Minister would just explain what the main difference is between having those provisions come into effect on day one under the Act versus the new transitional provisions which weren’t examined by the select committee. That would be really helpful.

Section 133AZ is about—the select committee examined this carefully—the provision that earthquake remediation work itself shouldn’t trigger the usual requirement to upgrade the building in terms of fire and disability provisions. The Greens disagree with that. I’m asking the Minister, because Labour supports that—that is a sensible change but it is a controversial change, and what he seems to have done between us having some tolerance for this approach, which doesn’t put a developer who’s trying to do all the right things for seismic remediation on the backfoot because they then have to comply with other parts of the code, is that at subsection (3) since the select committee considered it, he has made an alteration to the effect that instead of alterations that are only necessary for seismic work, he has gone to alterations that include building work.

I think that the Minister here has gone from a relatively narrow category of buildings where the developer through no fault of their own has a building where they need to remediate, say, masonry, and so they are diligently spending perhaps $100,000 on masonry changes and at the same time would be hit with, say, the upgrades to the lift, ensuring that there is a second fire escape that complies with the rules, and new source of smoke and fire prevention would perhaps add on more coasts, and we didn’t want that. But what he now seems to have changed in one simple word is that anyone who had an earthquake-prone building and is also doing any other sorts of alterations will not need to comply with fire and disability changes. That is not the point of this bill. The change shouldn’t be that if you have an earthquake-prone building and you’re doing any alterations, you get a special pass not to comply with the disability requirements and the fire requirements. The intention was not to speed up alterations to buildings.

Many of them we would think favourably upon, like conversions from commercial buildings to apartment buildings, because the requirements to upgrade fire systems and disability systems are onerous, but that is not the point of this bill. The bill that we have debated and considered carefully he considerations around how and when those applications should be made, were about the remediations to earthquake features. Why has he extended it out like this? You can hear me being nervous about it.

10:15

I appreciate the member’s question. The answer to the member’s question is outlined in our explanatory note on Amendment Paper 702, page 9, paragraphs (2) and (3). There is a detailed explanation on exactly the question the member has asked.

10:16

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Amendment Paper 702 be agreed to.

Tamatha Paul’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 133AF, inserting a new subsection is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.

The question is that Tamatha Paul’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 133ASB(3), inserting new paragraphs (c) and (ca) be agreed to.

The question is that Tamatha Paul’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 133AY(1), inserting new paragraphs (aa) to (ac) be agreed to.

The question is that Tamatha Paul’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 133AY, inserting new subsection (2) be agreed to.

The question is that Tamatha Paul’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 133AZE, inserting new subsection (2) be agreed to.

The question is that Celia Wade-Brown’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 133AZF(2)(a), deleting “as nearly as reasonably practicable” be agreed to.

Celia Wade-Brown’s amendments to clause 7 new section 133AZF deleting the crossheadings above subsections (3) and (3A) set out on Amendment Paper 656 are out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.

The question is that Celia Wade-Brown’s remaining amendments to clause 7 set out on Amendment Paper 656 be agreed to.

10:24

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will take the Minister through all of my questions to the changes to the regulations at once because I do not want him to miss the questions. Regulations 7 and 8 are being revoked by his changes. That takes out the definitions for moderate earthquake and ultimate capacity in the earthquake rating categories. I assume that’s because they’re no longer operative because of the change away from the existing new building standard percentage and rating framework, but particularly around moderate earthquake. Surely, that is still part of the methodology, and is he otherwise defining that, is the first question.

Regulation 9 is being revoked. That’s the prescribed earthquake-prone building (EPB) notice forms. Is that just because the new regime merged to the simpler warning sign and plain language definitions, which he has spoken about, or is he comfortable with the select committee’s findings that the existing notices that contained the legal information, that legal information was publicly available still elsewhere? It seems to me that with some of these situations like revocations and where the council has asked for unreinforced masonry information that what the select committee was considering is no longer the case. So why the select committee recommended that regulation 9 be revoked was that that dense information that was being currently provided on the notices—I think this was a change which was suggested by Andy Foster, the chair of that committee—was that it was being held by councils anyway, but under the new formulation and the changes that information might be nowhere. So can he assure the committee that regulation 9 is being revoked but that information doesn’t leave the public record?

Regulation 10, the exemptions: the existing exemptions regulations are meant to now work under the new section 133AW that I was asking him about moments ago, including removing the references to earthquake-prone parts. But that is something that I want to return to as a more substantive question about how the interacts with the Health and Safety at Work Act.

Regulation 11, substantial alterations: I’m annoyed about this. It is the fire and disability access issue in new section 133AZF, and the formula has changed from referring to the cost of seismic work to the broader “building work [that is] necessary to complete the building’s remediation”. So there is his protection around “necessary to complete the remediation”. But I am still unclear; it is not set out in his explanatory note whether a developer can undertake work that is tangential to the remediation of masonry and still get away with not applying the standards of the fire and disability access work. I disagreed when I heard the contribution by the member Celia Wade-Brown the first time, but now I think that assessment is right, that we will have developers here who are investing significant amounts of money in building work, not remediation work, and yet will get a free pass through the system to not do the fire and disability work. That will be on this House. That will be on every member of this House when we change the legislation, because of this Parliament, that there will be developers out there who have done significant remediations, but when it came to a fire that might result in the loss of life, they haven’t needed to upgrade it because of this provision.

Schedule 3 being revoked is another one that I would like to seek the Minister’s justification for. Is that simply because we are moving away from the EPB notice forms, or is it the case that that information is now not public information?

Finally, the substantive question I have is about the Health and Safety at Work Act’s change, and so does the amendment that has an effect on section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work Act from an earthquake-prone building to what it was under the old formula, which was building or a part of the building, to now just an earthquake-prone building, reduce the existing health and safety duties in relation to the dangerous part. So where you have a bridge like the Christchurch City Council example, where the council had to move its workers out of a part of its building because the bridge was the part that was deemed by its engineers to be a problem—have we now got a situation where if the building as a whole is identified as not meeting the criteria, the Christchurch City Council wouldn’t have done that? That seems to be the wrong outcome from a Health and Safety at Work Act point of view. It seemed to be the right outcome to leave the obligations for employers, even when the building owners were getting a different obligation.

10:29

Well firstly, I want to thank the member for asking questions in all but 4 clauses in this part. I will work my way through answers on all of those clauses. Starting with clause 13A and B relating to health and safety, the updates that are in there reflect a carve-out position, particularly around ensuring that the definitions within the earthquake-prone buildings Act are the same as the meanings within section 7(1) of the Building Act 2004.

In regards to clause 19—specifically, this was around regulation 7 being revoked—these are consequential amendments to remove, as the member noted, the new building standard - related concepts from legislation. Those regulations are now redundant.

The member asked a question in regards to “moderate earthquake”. The word “moderate earthquake” was part of the prior old regime and is no longer relevant, so that’s now being revoked. In regards to the member’s question on clause 20, again, in select committee, changes relating to that were the revoking of the earthquake rating category, because the replacement regime no longer uses earthquake ratings for the statutory system.

In regards to the member’s question on clause 21, again, the purpose of those changes—again, by the select committee—removes prescribed forms of the earthquake-prone building notices from regulation. The member asked about plain language: that is correct. I answered that in the prior part, with the replacement regime instead providing for earthquake-prone building notices and warning signs in the Building Act.

In regards to the member’s question on clause 22, which was revoking regulation 10, again, that is in regards to updating exemption-related references so the regulation aligns with the new provisions and the priority-building framework.

In regards to the member’s question on clause 23, regulation 11, the committee changes were consequential updates in regards to aligning the “substantial alteration” regulation with the new alteration provisions, the earthquake-prone buildings Act, and the removal of parts of the building references. The Amendment Paper 702 that I have on the Table, in regards to new subclauses (2A) and (2B), updates the definitions of that and also replace references to “seismic work” with “building work that is necessary to complete the building’s remediation”.

Lastly, in regards to the question asked by the member on clause 24, revoking Schedule 3, committee changes are again noted here, revoking Schedule 3 rather than replacing it, reflecting the removal of prescribed earthquake-prone building notice forms from the regulations.

There is not a lot of room left for questions, but I will entertain one more.

10:32

Madam Chair, I’m seeking a back and forth with the Minister for Building and Construction on his excellent answers. Regulation 11, which relates to new section 133AZF—he knows I am passionate about this. I have two questions for him. Can the Minister confirm that an owner cannot add unrelated renovation work to an earthquake remediation project and thereby obtain the fire safety and disability access exemptions in section 133AZF for that additional work, on his new wording?

Secondly, why? What is the policy rationale for the Government changing regulation 11 from seismic work to the broader building work? My question isn’t whether he has changed that; my question is, has he consulted on that? Has he been asked by developers to provide that in this bill? What sorts of buildings are intended to be covered by this? This is something we support that is unusual for us. It is not within the scope of ordinary Labour politics to allow developers a faster way to enable them to do developments cheaper at the expense of people’s safety in a fire, or people with disabilities who live and work in those buildings. I want to ask him what the rationale is, and who has asked for this change.

10:33

The rationale in regards to clause 23, regulation 11, is primarily to ensure that regulation and the alterations in the provisions align with the new section in the prior part, new section 133AZF. As I noted before, the new subclauses in the Amendment Paper that we have tabled, clause 23(2A) and (2B), include the updating of definitions in regards to regulation 11 and replace references to “seismic work” with “building work that is necessary to complete the building’s remediation”. There will be points of difference in regards to seismic work versus building work. This is allowing for a mechanism for that work to be undertaken on a practical basis.

10:34

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 2 set out on Amendment Paper 702 be agreed to.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Schedule 1 set out on Amendment Paper 702 be agreed to.

10:38

Point of order. Thank you, Madam Chair. For the benefit of the committee and for understanding how you intend to conduct the remainder of this committee stage, could you please explain the grounds on which that closure motion was agreed to?

Because I received it and put it.

Speaking to that, then, Madam Chair—I was hoping for a bit more of a fulsome response to that. It was a genuine request, and I think it did warrant further explanation, on the basis that our spokesperson indicated that it was her intention and hope to have her back to forth, which is outlined as the desirable approach for committee stages. It was indicated that there were detailed, relevant, and non-repetitious questions to come. My concern is that, given there was, essentially, one question and one follow-up, it serves as a disincentive for members to seek a back and forth when that is indicated. It is not often able to be had in a committee stage, despite that being the stated intention, and that was cut off. So, on the basis that as long as—

I understand—I understand.

Yeah. I’m just seeking a genuine explanation, please.

For your information, in response to that question, there were six parts in that first question, which was, as the Minister pointed out, almost all of them. There was a follow-up question. That area—Part 2—was covered.

Speaking to that—

No, no, I’m not going to entertain a debate on this. I’ve received the closure motion, I’ve put the closure motion—end of debate.

10:40

Point of order. I’m not trifling; I have a genuine question. It is related, but it is not trifling with you. Is it your view, as a presiding officer, that if a member asks more than one question in a contribution, that then prevents them from a follow-up?

No.

So, if they were to ask one question per contribution—

There was a follow-up.

OK. It’s useful to know. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just want to provide a little bit of a high-level explanation in regards to clauses 1 and 2. The title provided in the bill is the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Act, which is representative of the legislation which we’re discussing. In regards to clause 2, around the commencement, a little bit of background: as noted, it provides that, for most of the Act, it comes into force on 1 July 2027.

The Amendment Paper provides that clause 12, which inserts transitional provisions into Schedule 1AA, which we’ve discussed in prior parts, comes into force on the day after Royal assent. Clause 13 and the new Schedule 2A map, which we’ve had discussions in regards, now come into force with the rest of the bill, on 1 July 2027, with early digital map publication, as we’ve also discussed, dealt with in new clause 20C of Schedule 1AA.

10:42

I want to ask the Minister for Building and Construction about clause 2, the commencement, particularly subclause (2)—and no other part of clause 2.

The problem we have here is that we have a number of building owners who have complied and done everything that the Government asked them to do. They took on the significance and seriousness of the findings of the royal commission after the Christchurch earthquakes. This applies to most Cantabrian owners, who have now undertaken significant works at their expense. Yet now, the problem is that the Government has provided a regime which is almost never ending, as was established in the committee stage, where owners who drag their heels and do not wish to comply with the legislation, because they think that they can get away with it under this new Government’s formulation, will continuously not spend the money that is required to be spent in order to protect life and limb of the public, who, in some cases, do not know the risk to them.

My question on clause 2(2) is about the political tension here. On one side, we also have owners who, by the Minister’s extension of the rules that apply to Auckland, have immediate relief. Let it be on the record that this Government chose a group of owners who, almost immediately after Royal assent, will not be subject to any of these rules. There is a special group of building owners who are completely exempt, and that special group of building owners is completely exempt because, in the opinion of the Minister and the Mayor of Auckland, they should be completely exempt. Then, there is another group of owners, who from 1 July will need to start complying with the new set of timing obligations. This set of owners are not special and are not exempt, because they are not as politically important to the Minister’s decision making. That group will, also, then be subject to a system where they can apply to their council, and potentially convince their council, that there should be a specialness applied to them—that they should be considered special by their local representatives. These extensions and revocations should take their remediations into 2030 or 2032. That is also, then, a special category. And then we have another set of owners, who have done everything that’s been asked for them and they already comply with the highest standards, because that is what was asked of them six years ago. Do you get the point, Minister?

The point here is that the timing is critically important and that your commencement at subclause (2) allows for certain types of owners who can game the system, who can approach their elected representatives, who can approach the most experienced engineers, and argue against their council’s determinations, to perpetually fail to undertake remediations that everybody knows need to happen. That is unfair, and that is a feature of the timing provisions in this commencement part of the bill. What should have happened is a clear outline of the 7½ years as the extension, and then by that time, because of the risk of moral hazard, it should have come into effect. Instead, we have a Government that has elected to kick the can down the road, not only in the primary legislation but at the regulatory level, and with councils too. It is a shame that there is no single date which the Minister could tell me—no single operation or process which would set out the date which people needed to comply by—and we now have a system which incentivises the most well-resourced business owners and the most well-resourced engineering companies to perpetually play out the clock and make sure that they do not need to comply.

Those costs of compliance are high, but the costs of not complying are high too. The reason why we have these rules is that the potential for loss of life in our town centres—where people could not know, and do not know, that there is a risk—is very high. That is unfair, that is not the right decision, and that is not the right decision for the commencement date provision.

10:46

I thank the member Arena Williams for the question. I do not agree with the underlying premise that the member is making: that this legislation is about owners. This legislation is about the buildings. That is the focus of the legislation, and the risk of those buildings in terms of risk to life. The ownership of that—and we talked about that in regards to apartments—is not the defining point. The point is in regards to the building, and the structure of the building, and we’ve talked extensively around that.

The purpose of what we are doing around the commencement is to give the buildings the certainty in regards to what requirements are required. The intention of the overarching bill is, obviously, that buildings, in areas of risk to life, are required to be remediated to prevent and reduce that risk. There is a degree of priority given to high risk, medium risk, and low risk across the country, and that by no means takes away or provides some sort of benefit to the owner. The building defines that. That is the substance of where the legislation is targeted.

10:47

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to start with the commencement, and then I will move on to the title afterwards. I’m hearing what my colleague Arena Williams is saying, and what the Minister is saying as well.

I do think that, in terms of the commencement, while there is this transitional measure which is in clause 12, and it does make sense to have a transitional measure, I do want to acknowledge and also support my colleague Arena Williams’ concern around the fact that what that conditional measure would also mean is that the day after Royal assent—as soon as this gets Royal assent, which could be Monday, at the latest Tuesday—there will be a group of buildings and owners of buildings that are immediately exempted. If this is what the Government is referring to when they said it is beneficial for the economy, that is of genuine concern, because it’s actually not so much a benefit; it’s allowing those people who are able to have that kind of connection or close relationship or who are able to have a conversation with either the Minister or local council to be exempted. It’s not so much a benefit for the people of Aotearoa New Zealand; it allows them to alleviate or remove some of their liabilities, which they themselves should rightfully address in order to prevent the loss of lives. This is the concern that we’re seeing as we go through the Minister’s Amendment Paper 702.

This is where I want to come down to the title. The title is “Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill”. I’m deeply concerned that that is quite misleading now, because they’re not actually about buildings that are genuinely earthquake prone, but buildings that get special carve-outs, that gets special designated powers. The Minister talks about how this allows the designation of “high risk”, “medium risk”, and “low risk”. The Minister’s Amendment Paper, Amendment Paper 702, changes the very criteria that designates whether they are going to be high risk, medium risk, or low risk.

I want to draw attention, again, back to new section 133AB(6)(c), where “unreinforced masonry building” has had its scope and criteria narrowed, which means that more buildings will be exempted as a result. I do worry that the title of this bill, with “(Earthquake-prone Buildings)” no longer represents buildings that are genuinely earthquake prone.

Frivolous.

If the loss of our lives, Mr Dan Bidois, is considered “frivolous”, I have genuine concerns for the priorities of the current Government.

The things is, as we’ve heard as a part of this debate—the example that my colleague Arena Williams gave, in terms of a Wellington cinema and actually experiencing an earthquake and being there with her kids. I want to check with the Minister—and the question to the Minister is: I want to ensure, in those kinds of instances, that the people of Aotearoa New Zealand, when they step into a building, whether it is a private building or it is a public, Government-owned building, they can be assured that that building is going to stand up in the event of an earthquake because that building has ticked all of the boxes in considering what is considered an earthquake building.

What we don’t want to do is come back in a year’s time and then be like, “Oh well, we could have done better. Thoughts and prayers.” We could have actually made those genuine changes right here—to be able to have things that strengthen the legislation in a way that doesn’t allow these sorts of exemptions and doesn’t change the rules on the spot—because we are the people who are making the rules right here.

I want to check with the Minister if the Minister genuinely believes that, with this title, “(Earthquake-prone Buildings)”, every building that is earthquake-prone will be covered by that—that the Government has done everything they can to ensure that, in the event that something like this happens, there will be no loss of lives, or it will be kept to a minimum; that they are not going to be marginalising or further punishing particularly those who are disabled communities, as a result. Again, we’ve heard some of the changes there.

10:52

Mr Chair, just to provide assurance to the member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, I do believe the title of the bill is an appropriate title for the bill, and I have no intention to change that.

In regards to the questions around the commencement date and the fact that these changes, when they come into effect, will have impacts in regards to particular buildings, and as a result of that there may be circumstances where a building will not be required to have remediation undertaken to it, versus the status quo—as a result of that, the outcome will be, in effect, the non-requirement of undertaking investment, and that will therefore provide a benefit versus the status quo—I am comfortable that that will happen immediately. The reason for that is certainty, and certainty in regards to what people are required to do and not required to do under the law, without compromising the safety of the buildings in the context of earthquakes.

Taking into account that we are taking a proportionate, risk-based approach, based on the best available science and data, it gives me confidence and assurance that New Zealanders should and will be in a position where this legislation protects them in regards to the risks that they face.

10:53

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to ask the Minister for Building and Construction questions just on clause 2. The commencement opportunities here—they’re effectively a dual commencement but at different dates, so they’re not in parallel. One of the interesting things is that one change that he has made relates specifically to Schedule 2 not actually coming into force on the day after Royal assent. The Transport and Infrastructure Committee did suggest and recommend that actually Schedule 2, amongst a few others, would come into effect on the day after Royal assent. What the Minister is, effectively, doing with his Amendment Paper change—Amendment Paper 702—is he is suggesting that Schedule 2 would actually not come into effect then, but with the rest of the Act on 1 July 2027.

Now, Schedule 2 is related to the new map that we have become familiar with. My question is that the Minister has already today said that the only way in which this map will change is if Parliament chooses to change it. I just don’t see the logic of needing to delay the ability for this map in Schedule 2 to come into force on 1 July next year when there is no expectation that the Parliament is going to change the map between now and then, necessarily. There’s been nothing today that has indicated that there will be a need for Parliament to change the map. Actually, the Minister himself has indicated that it is highly unlikely that changes will occur, because it is around the seismic risk to the country, and that’s based on the information.

The select committee reported back that, really, there’s no reason why this map—which, in static form, is not going to change unless the Parliament determines that it will—should be delayed in terms of its implementation. The insertion of the map is the only thing here, in terms of Schedule 2; there’s nothing else that’s contained in the Minister’s Amendment Paper. He has referred to the existence of a digital map being stood up. The digital map that is referenced—and I’d need to check if that’s in terms of Schedule 2 or not, but it might be that it’s trying to align the two—from what we’ve understood in the last few hours, is still going to be exactly the same as the static map; it’s just that the level of granularity is going to be much more specific, because you’re able to zoom in and have a look at your own property. That’s what we’ve heard from the Minister.

I know that there have been a number of other changes in terms of the commencement, but the one that really did jump out to me, given that we’ve spent a little bit of time looking at the map, is why it is that there needs to be a delay when the threshold for changing that map—there is, really, no higher threshold in this country. It would require, as we understand it, an Act of Parliament or a change of the Parliament in order to do that. Given that that threshold is so high, why can the map not simply, through Schedule 2, come into force the day after Royal assent?

10:57

In effect, the map does come into force after Royal assent. The point on the date, around 1 July 2027, relates to when the map will go into the Building Act.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Mr Chair, I wish to take a call on clause 1—the title. This Act should be called the “Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings that are Everywhere Except Auckland) Amendment Act 2025”. I take issue with the Minister for Building and Construction saying in his answer to Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan that these distinctions were made on the basis of science and evidence—that’s not right.

His own regulatory impact statement, evidence provided by officials to the select committee, and numerous submitters all said that the exemption to Auckland is something that has called for but it is not something that could be based on science and evidence around risk. There are earthquake-prone buildings in Auckland. We accept that as a Parliament, and we should be told as such. The distinction between the earthquake-prone buildings in Auckland and the earthquake-prone buildings in other places is that some are included in the regulatory net and some are not, and that distinction is based on whether they are in Auckland or not.

Every electorate MP in this House should appreciate that, if you represent an area outside of Auckland, your buildings’ owners are not being treated as special in the way that the special building owners in Auckland are being treated. The Auckland impact of the regulatory change that the Government is introducing is big; within the billions of dollars that they like to champion. That is something we have supported, but we should be clear that the regulatory relief being offered to the Cantabrian building owners who are affected by this that Vanessa Weenink represents, that the building owners represented by Stuart Smith in his electorate at the top of the South Island, are not considered special enough to get the regulatory relief from day one that this Government has opted to give Auckland.

That is why it should be a part of the title of this bill that we could alternatively name it “Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings (Auckland is Special)) Amendment Act 2025”, because I believe that, but do the members in this House realise how the Government is treating the building owners in their areas who are affected by this and who cannot afford to remediate —that when they approach their local MP and they say, “Thank you for changing these rules. I have heard you on the news say that there will be billions of dollars of regulatory relief available to us.”, it doesn’t apply to them; it only applies to people within a certain geographic catchment.

The Minister says that it is based on science and evidence and that there are buildings that are much more earthquake prone and risky to the public, because Auckland is a populated place with urban centres where cars, buses, trains, and people are much more prevalent than those streets in Feilding’s town centre, but Auckland gets a special exemption not because of the life and limb that is at risk, not because their buildings are lower risk, but because the Government has decided on a special carve-out for Auckland.

They cannot be doing it in regulations, and they cannot change the regulatory map here that my colleague Tangi Utikere has been talking about. They could not do this in regulations, because there is no science and evidence which the Parliament could have delegated to officials to draw a special line around Auckland. We had to do this in this Chamber because this is a decision which is only available to the House, because it is a political decision. When the Government presents this as something which is based on science and evidence, we have to look at what kind of science and evidence they have relied upon. When we compare our regime to something like Sacramento, California, that is a regime which is entirely built around information. This is not a regime that is built around information or disclosure; this is a regime which is built around actual regulationary effect, which requires some building owners to make remediations which are costly to private property for public benefit.

That is a different way of designing the regime. It is not comparable to the science which has been used in those cases, so that is wrong, but we should be very clear eyed about what we are being asked to do here. This is no longer a regime which singles out the most earthquake-prone buildings, puts them on a list, and requires remediation and priority order. It is a regime which does that but excludes some because they are in a zone which is deemed to be less seismically active than others, a zone which is in the middle of the Pacific Ring of Fire with more than 20 volcanoes and an active volcano less than 700 years ago. It’s unwise for a Minister to stand in this Chamber and say that that is based on science and evidence, when we all accept that there is some degree of science here and some degree of woo-woo to go along with the plan advocated by the Mayor of Auckland and property developers who will benefit from this change. I am advocating for a change in the name, Minister. Will you accept it?

11:02

No, I won’t, but I’ll give a little bit of background just to finish this off in regards to the seismic risk, because it is an important aspect, considering a significant portion of New Zealanders live in Auckland. Auckland, Northland, and the Chatham Islands are further from plate boundaries or major faults, and the faults that do exist often move very slowly or haven’t ruptured in a very long time, with the last significant earthquake in Auckland being in 1891. While strong earthquakes can happen, they are much less likely to give in any given year. The media reports relating to a new study in regards to one of the fault lines south east of Auckland City say that it is considered active because it ruptured within the past 10,000 years and could create an earthquake as a result. However, any fault that has moved within the past 125,000 years is considered active within our model. On that basis, we believe that the cost-benefit analysis shows that Auckland has a low risk in regards to earthquake and, therefore, the requirements and intentions under this legislation are targeted and that we are proportionate and focused on the areas of New Zealand which have the highest risk to loss of life, and that is what this legislation will deliver.

11:04

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Minister’s amendment to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper 702 be agreed to.

11:07

I present a legislative statement on the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill.

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

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

I wish to firstly acknowledge all of those that have been party to preparing this legislation. This legislation is very, very important and is built upon some of the most significant challenges that we as a nation have faced as a result of the earthquakes in the Canterbury region and the remediation works subsequently. I would also like to acknowledge my good friend and colleague the Hon Chris Penk for his significant contribution as the Minister who led this reform under this Government and has put it in the position in which we are able to pass and will be passing it today.

This bill is about taking unnecessary costs and red tape off building owners and communities while keeping the earthquake-prone building system focused on protecting life safely. The savings from this bill are significant. The refocused system is expected to save New Zealanders more than $8.2 billion in remediation and demolition costs. That is a significant saving for the New Zealand economy and communities, but importantly, the bill and legislation ensures that the system remains focused on the buildings that pose the greatest risk to life.

The current system has not worked as well as it should have, and for many buildings, the price of strengthening runs from hundreds of thousands to several million dollars. As a result, these buildings are often left empty and become derelict, making them even more dangerous to bystanders in a potential earthquake. This bill takes a more pragmatic and practical approach. It focuses the strongest requirements on the higher-risk buildings in higher-risk areas. It removes low-risk buildings from unnecessary requirements, and it gives owners and councils the certainty, the clarity, and the tools to get on with the job.

The bill makes the system more proportionate to risk. It narrows the system to higher-risk buildings in medium and high seismic zones. It introduces more cost-effective remediation requirements. It ensures that risk mitigation is targeted, including in the areas of retrofit. It removes the new building standard from the statutory system. It provides more flexibility for owners through exemptions and extensions, again, to ensure certainty, including extensions for up to 15 years where progress is being made. It improves transition, implementation, and council decision-making tools, including through a digital map with drill-down capability. That is the right balance. We are not walking away from life safety. We are focusing the system where it will make the most significant difference.

The bill regulates higher-risk buildings in medium and high seismic zones only. That means that the buildings that are more likely to present real life-safety risks remain within the system. Buildings in low seismic zones will come out of the system. That is a common-sense change. It means owners are not forced to spend time and money on requirements that are not justified by the risk.

The bill also makes the required work more sensible. Buildings where there is key risk, particularly in areas of unreinforced masonry falling on to people outside, will need to mitigate that risk only. Other buildings, where the risk is full or partial in the areas of building collapse, will need a targeted retrofit that protects people inside and outside the building. Some buildings will stay on the register, but their owners will not be forced to carry out seismic work. That applies to one- and two-storey unreinforced masonry buildings outside urban centres. They will have warning signs, however, and their owners must mitigate the risk of facade collapse to get the building earthquake-prone status removed.

The bill also gives owners more flexibility. Councils will be able to grant extensions for up to 15 years with conditions where needed. That recognises the reality that seismic work can be complex, expensive, and difficult to plan.

At the committee of the whole House stage—and I wish to recognise the committee who worked on this bill—there was further improvement through the addition of an Amendment Paper, with amendments made to ensure the bill works as intended. These amendments allow owners to seek a seismic work exemption where prescribed risk mitigation measures sufficiently reduce the building’s risk profile, provide owners with a further five years to complete seismic work if the exemption is revoked after the deadline has expired, enable certain tall buildings using heavy materials and some unreinforced masonry buildings to be identified after the usual identification time frame, clarify which unreinforced masonry buildings are in scope of the earthquake-prone building system, and clarify the scope and the role of the earthquake-prone buildings methodology so that it can support the practical identification, evaluation, remediation, and other operational decisions councils and owners need to make.

The Amendment Paper also made other technical changes to improve the bill’s clarity and operation. These changes do not alter the purpose of the bill. They make it easier for councils to administer the scheme and easier for owners to understand.

This bill reflects practical reform by this Government. It protects people, it reduces unnecessary cost, and it makes the system easier to use. That is exactly what good regulation should do, and it’s for that reason that I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

11:14

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Labour support sensible rules to remediate buildings that pose the greatest risk of life and safety, and maintain affordability, particularly for regional communities. This is an issue that we have engaged with both the Minister in the chair earlier—and I thank him for his work—and the former Minister, Chris Penk, in his engagement with us at all stages of the development of this policy and bill.

It is not ordinary Labour politics to welcome the relaxation that will provide developers with some relief when they’re in the middle of remediation that is expensive and is for public benefit but paid for by private people who own these buildings. Yet we continue to support it because we recognise the significant impact that it is having, particularly on regional communities and regional towns, where these remediations are unaffordable and cannot happen and will not happen if the current regime is not amended. This is critical, and that is why we continue to support the bill.

But on this occasion of the third reading, it is also appropriate to remember why the regime exists and that on 22 February 2011, when 185 people died in the Christchurch earthquakes, 39 of those people were killed by the failure of unreinforced masonry and buildings. The findings of the royal commission were tabulated in Volume 4 of their report about the unreinforced masonry buildings and the tall buildings that we have been talking about today. Not only that, not only were people killed within those buildings when they should have been protected by the people who built them and who owned them, but there were also people killed outside of the buildings: they were walking past them, they were driving past them, they were on buses alongside them when the masonry fell. The royal commission concluded that there was “a demonstrated need in the interests of public safety” to strengthen hazardous elements of unreinforced masonry buildings throughout New Zealand because of that. That is because people cannot know and should not need to know the risk of buildings.

This isn’t a problem of a lack of information. This is a problem where private buildings impact on public places and on the public living of life within our communities, which people cannot go without and they cannot choose to do without just because of the impact on them by private buildings. That is why the Government will always have an interest in ensuring that there is not only a public register of that information and that information is provided in a timely way but also that these remediations occur at the expense of the private building owners. But that’s where the rubber hits the road on these politics—that the Government is requiring private building owners to maintain their private property in a way which is expensive.

The Labour Party does stand on the side of those people who cannot know and should not know, who require the Government to step in in these situations, so there are some pieces of this legislation which we continue to raise our opposition to. One is the exclusion of Auckland from the rules for remediation of risky buildings. I want to be clear on this point about what we do and do not support. It is fair to exclude many of the buildings that are being left out of the new regime in Auckland because it is a low seismic risk zone. It is sensible for a Government to recognise that these are far from faults, that there is low risk in some parts of Auckland, and that the science is relevant and that we should reflect that in our legislation.

What’s not sensible is that there are some buildings which have features like unreinforced masonry that are tall and that front on to public spaces, public squares, and streets that are being excluded by the Government’s blanket exclusion of Auckland. They are higher risk than other buildings which are included. But for the exclusion, they would still be on the register. But for the exclusion, they would be higher priority than some of those businesses in Feilding town centre. Because of the Government’s decision to leave Auckland out of the map, this is the effect.

We have to be clear-eyed about that: the majority of earthquake prone buildings, the majority of the figure that the Government likes to champion—I think the Minister said it was $8.2 billion as savings for New Zealanders—is being made in Auckland. These are not changes in updates to the science. There are some savings associated with the science being understood in a different way, but the majority of the savings are being made because every building in Auckland is being left out of the regulatory net. It’s not a minor issue and it is one we will continue to watch closely and engage with the industry on.

I also want to raise the point that the Greens have consistently been arguing for in committee and we have been at odds with them. We now agree with them. The regime in the Minister’s Amendment Paper 702 has gone too far in allowing developers who are undertaking some building works to pass over their obligations that they would otherwise be required to comply with for fire safety and disability access. Developers who have an earthquake building are now better off than developers without an earthquake building—who need to comply, when they are doing any building works, with the modern standards for disability access and for fire. What does that mean? It means that, for many of those apartment buildings in Wellington right now where 20 to 50 people live, where there is someone who accesses those buildings with a wheelchair, when there are remediations in their buildings currently, the owner of the building as a whole, or the body corporate, as it may be, would need to make remediations that take into account the requirements that they have not only in an earthquake but also in a fire. They will need to be able to get out of the building safely according to the modern regulations, not the regulations under which that building was built—say, in the 1970s, when those regulations wouldn’t have applied.

It’s fair for the Government to make a decision that, if the remediation is only to the unreinforced masonry and is only to the underlying parts, or the structural parts, of the building which are important for earthquake safety, there would not be the additional requirement to update the fire safety exits, say, from the 1970s regulations to the now 2026 regulations. It is certainly too far to allow a special pathway for developers to circumvent those requirements. That does affect people now. It does affect wheelchair users. It does affect elderly people. It does affect the new demographic of people who are choosing to live in one-bedroom apartments because they are elderly or sick and in need of support and because those apartments are all that they can afford. There is a changing demographic, in a city like Wellington, of those people accessing apartments. They currently think that it is a requirement for the body corporate or the building owner to update when they remediate or when they make alterations, which they will now not be entitled to expect.

That is a change in the way the legislation works. It is a change for those people who have bought apartments a year ago or two years ago with the understanding that they would be improved. It is a shame that we now have a situation where people with significant disabilities cannot rely on the Government to ensure that private building owners will spend the money—that they need and are already obligated to spend, but will now no longer be obligated to spend—on their needs of access to the places which they live. That is a shame. Yet we continue to support this bill, because we recognise that the affordability considerations are such that these things won’t get done if we don’t change the rules. The practical considerations for the Labour Party are that, if we make these changes, more remediations will be done. More remediations will take place because they are better able to prioritise those buildings which need to be remediated now, not later.

There are some liberalisations in these provisions, but the overall practical impact is that the buildings which need to be done now, which are hard to be done now, which councils are at odds with private developers about now, will need to continue. That is a good thing. It is a good thing to be able to prioritise these works. We do not have endless capacity of engineers in New Zealand, especially not after 20,000 construction workers are gone, and 1,500 engineers every year is what the Engineering Association says we are in deficit of, because some are leaving and some are not graduating in the first place. That is a critical workforce, and it is critical that we prioritise those resources where they are needed most. This bill does that. That is a good effect of this bill.

But the Labour Party does continue to have these significant concerns, which we will monitor very closely, because there are some things in this bill we cannot live with, and this must be a regime which is sticky, which survives future Parliaments as well, and which continues to deliver for people who cannot advocate for themselves. Teenagers going to a Wellington cinema shouldn’t need to check a sign about whether it is safe or not; they should be sure that the Government will step in on their behalf and make sure that that is a building which is safe to be in, in the kind of earthquake which we can legitimately predict will happen in an area like that.

11:24

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to support this bill at the third reading. I’d like to start by saying this country has a real earthquake risk, but it is only one of the risks that we face. I’d like to pay tribute to the people who died in the Christchurch earthquakes and the people who actually continued to suffer for a very long time when they weren’t sure what insurance would cover, how long it would take, or when their building would be inspected. It’s not only the impact in the immediate tragedy; it is an ongoing issue for many people.

I would also like to thank, actually, both the Hon Chris Penk and the Hon Simon Watts for taking this very seriously, for getting into the detail, and also for answering our questions—about a 90 percent pass rate on that; so there’s still a couple of things that we could, I think, improve. Also, it was a collegial process. I was on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee at the time, and it was helped by having Chair Andy Foster, who, of course, also brought his local government background to play.

There is no zero-risk strategy. I think we need to be clear about this. It is a balance between the renaissance particularly of some of our provincial and rural centres—it is quite depressing to go to some towns and just see buildings that are stickered and empty. And that doesn’t mean there’s zero risk if you walk past them. About more than half of the buildings currently on registers will be removed, and hopefully that, together with some better economic policies—but that would be going outside the scope of this bill—will rejuvenate and revitalise those centres.

There are some very strange outcomes. It’s quite easy for people without necessarily the background in this to say, “Oh, well, these old buildings, they survived that quake, and yet they had to knock down the BNZ building on the waterfront.” What people don’t understand is that each earthquake, because of the waves through the Earth, might affect two identical buildings quite differently. It’s too easy to say, “It has stood here and nothing’s fallen off for the last 100 years.”

I think the engineering and building assessments have been really good. We had a lot of submissions that were quite technical, that actually talked about materials, and, in Wellington, both before and after my time as mayor—we accelerated it under my time, and it continued to work—there was a lot of money spent not just on earthquake-proofing council buildings but also for grants to heritage buildings to keep the character of the city. Now, you can’t save every one, but it would have been tragic if some of the most interesting examples—I think of some of the buildings along Ghuznee Street or Cuba Street—had not been strengthened. It would not be the same city. It’s so good that people can go to the St James Theatre or the state Opera House, which I think are pretty important, even if they might not be listed in the local government requirements these days.

I would like to say a few more things. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment advice was good; GNS, which, of course, has changed names. The depth of knowledge in this country about earthquakes and about resilience is really fantastic. Once upon a time, we were going to have a centre of excellence for earthquake and other resilience, I think, based in this city, together with Massey, Victoria, Government institutions, and so on. I mean, it’s a bit like turning lemons into lemonade, but I think our experience of what risks we are prone to and what we can do about them—that includes technical items, it includes building, but it also includes community resilience. For example, Neighbours Day, in some ways, is just about as important as fixing the facade on an individual building. We need to make sure that we can continue to fund those too.

There is a slightly strange item that we didn’t get to in question time questions, about when councils can amend the strategic transport routes. Now, it makes perfect sense that whether it’s a road for an ambulance to get through or it’s a pedestrian mall that’s got thousands of people going down it should be a real consideration—that those buildings have to be strengthened—but I do think, for a Government that’s rather over-excited about new roads, it does seem strange that local authorities are not able to add any new strategic transport routes. Maybe this is quietly signalling a change in policy.

A bigger issue for me—and I really appreciate the words of my colleague Arena Williams, who really knows her stuff about Auckland and risk and buildings, and that she’s come round to seeing that we could be stronger on the disabled access and fire safety egress. It is not usually hugely more expensive to fix those things when you’re doing other building changes, and it is difficult for a building owner to commit to doing them just afterwards when you’ve fixed all the carpets, you’ve put the tiles back, and you’ve painted the walls. Is that really the time you want to be putting in a ramp access or better fire egress? Nevertheless, to give credit, it still says, “as far as reasonably practical”, and hopefully people won’t use that as an escape clause and they will take it seriously, because there are more and more people who have some form of visible or invisible physical disability, and buildings should be for all of us.

I think it’s important for some of the MPs down South to really come to grips with the fact that Oamaru, Dunedin, and so on are now included in the way that they were not before. Now, many of those buildings, you know, the solid stone blocks of Oamaru stone will be fine, but there are considerations for that council and for the building owners and for the residents and visitors that—of course, we haven’t actually changed the risk, but we recognise the risk, and I think it’s quite important to say that all of the parties, as far as I know, are supporting those changes. We do have similar reservations about taking Auckland out, partly for the numbers of people, partly because the real scientists are continuing to identify new faults and note the risks, whether it’s the Hikurangi fault, whether it’s the Alpine fault, or whether it’s something we haven’t found yet, because we actually do have relatively limited human knowledge beyond a couple of millennium. It’s not like Italy where we know so much more about the history of what has happened. I think that’s covered all the points I wanted to make. I would like to commend this bill to the House and pass on. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

11:33

It’s a pleasure to stand long overdue on this Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill and speak on behalf of the ACT Party. It puts me in mind a line of a poem: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.” The reason that comes to mind is that, 10 years ago, ACT stood against costly and kneejerk reactions that established this scheme. We called for a risk-based earthquake-strengthening regime, and that has finally been delivered today.

The costs and pain that individuals and towns have gone through for the last 10 years can’t be repaired, but sense has been restored and ACT is proud that we have now got parties around the House standing and seeing the light. I can promise you, ACT will continue to light that path to unlock New Zealand’s potential. Thank you.

11:34

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First, and also as chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, to speak on this third reading. I just want to start off just by thanking submitters, thanking the officials, thanking the always excellent members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee; but I did want to say thank you also to the Ministers, particularly to Chris Penk for the work that you did not only on this but on many other pieces of legislation we work with. I really appreciated that.

As we’ve heard, we live in a seismically-challenged country. We have, apparently, about 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which about 400 are over magnitude 4, and every four years we get one at 7 or more, so we are an active place. We have had some which have killed significant numbers of people, and, obviously, we’ve heard about the tragedy in Christchurch and earlier in the 20th century with the Napier ones, which, between them, killed 441 people if you take all the Christchurch earthquakes, and we want to try and avoid that sort of situation. But as Celia Wade-Brown before me said, risk is an inherent part of life and there is no zero risk. This bill is about being proportionate about risk. In fact, it was really interesting to read just a quick quote from Russell McVeagh. They said that “After eight years of New Zealand’s current earthquake-prone building system, the Government has announced a significant and welcome reset, aimed at delivering a fairer, risk-based approach to seismic safety.”, and I thought that was quite a measured thing to say.

We’ve already heard about the savings there will be, from $12 billion costs down to an estimated $4 billion. But a couple of things I did want to pick up. Arena Williams talked about the 39 people tragically killed in Christchurch from unreinforced masonry buildings. This bill would still require those buildings to be strengthened, obviously, at some point in whatever time they got to that point; they clearly weren’t at that point. We also did, as a select committee, insist that we did need to make sure that information was provided on those buildings to say that they are earthquake-prone.

In terms of the removal of Auckland, we did explore that at some length, and the very clear advice was it wasn’t justified, and that the benefit cost ratio of doing so was about 0.3, and so that is why we have taken it out because it was genuinely low-risk. The bill also removes low-risk buildings like single-storey wooden buildings—I can never understand why they were in there in the first place—and the level of strengthening required for many of them, so many buildings are facade only, but some will still need to do the whole full strengthening.

I did want to just touch on one area though in particular, and that’s coastal Otago, particularly recognising my colleague the Hon Mark Patterson next to me. We did engage significantly with Otago. They were really concerned about being moved from low-risk to medium-risk, and feeling that that would mean that there will be more impost on those communities and they would struggle to strengthen those buildings. But, in fact, when we explored that in greater depth, there are no new buildings that require strengthening—no new buildings require strengthening. Some will come out, some will require less strengthening, so it’s actually less onerous, but I did take the time to go and visit Dunedin at Mark Patterson’s request in direct response to and meet with some of those submitters, and hear some of their stories.

They’ve still got thousands of buildings to assess, which is an issue. Those places have fabulous heritage and we don’t want to lose that heritage—Dunedin and Oamaru in particular—and we in New Zealand First are a strong supporter of heritage. We think it really matters, and a lot of people have lost sight of that. It really matters to this country to protect our heritage buildings, and New Zealand First strongly believes that. I heard about the economic challenge, particularly in those areas, of strengthening some of those buildings, and seeing vacant building sites where, literally, buildings have fallen down, not because of an earthquake but because of that neglect we’ve been talking about. The economics of strengthening are really, really important. In our view, what we should be doing is allowing that strengthening to be written off much faster so that it’s not something that you put onto capital and take 50 years, or maybe 100 years, to write it off; but you’re able to do it over one, two, three years, sounds a whatever it might be. That bit like Investment Boost to me, and that will be something which we, I think, would be a good move to make.

Finally, this bill sees the end of the New Building Standard system, which was challenging. Most people didn’t really understand it. It moved around all over the place. It was seen as an uncertain and arbitrary, and also, often, as retrospective, because if building standards rose, then you could have had a building which was fine that suddenly become not fine. This is a proportionate response. I think it’s a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

11:37

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this bill. Firstly, I do want to acknowledge the former Minister in charge of this bill, the Hon Chris Penk, and also Minister Watts for the work he’s done. This is obviously an important piece of work that had to be done sensibly as well. I’d like to acknowledge the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, chaired by Andy Foster, for the work they did also on this bill as it passed through the House.

I think it’s really important, as I start my call, obviously, what started this regime for earthquake-prone buildings and the Christchurch earthquake that happened over 15 years ago now where 185 people lost their lives and 2,200 people were seriously injured, and so it’s really important that we do have a regime in place that looks to protect life. Obviously, with the changes that we’re seeing, there’s going to be significant benefits in the costs of the work that would have had to have been done, not done, and that was mentioned at around $8.2 billion. However, of course, at the same time, this also creates a risk to life. There’s a 30 percent increase compared to status quo, and we shouldn’t avoid that, because that is a reality when we reduce the amount of buildings that we are going to require to be fixed: it means it does increase risk to life.

It’s quite interesting when you look at Christchurch, around the Port Hills there are lots of tracks and there are some very clear signs where it says, “Do not stay still. Keep walking.” for, like, the next 200 metres because of the risk of rock fall. Obviously, the impact of that, which we know from the earthquakes—there was a lot of rock fall at the time that did kill people. When you see the signs, you’re aware of that risk yourself, and you take on that risk and you’d normally make the decision to keep walking through and not stop, or you may make the decision to stop and have a bit of a look round.

I think it’s really important that when people do have that choice, it’s very clear. But often, and we saw that in Christchurch, people aren’t aware of the risk. That’s why the warning signs on buildings need to be very plain and very clear so people understand the risk. But then again, if you looked at Christchurch, when you’re in a bus and some unreinforced masonry falls down, you are not aware and you’re put in a position that ultimately costs you your life.

I think it is very concerning, the political decision to carve out Auckland from the earthquake-prone building requirements. We just obviously heard the fact that they discovered this new fault line near Auckland. I think we just always remember that before the Christchurch earthquake, those were unknown fault lines. No one knew they existed. It wasn’t until the earthquake hit. I think we just need to be a little bit cautious when we say that there’s low risk, because there are things happening underneath this land of ours that we don’t quite know about until they actually happen. We just need to be very careful, because the impact of unreinforced masonry can be devastating. It’s probably one of the first things that does collapse when the earth starts shaking. So it was disappointing, to say the least, that Auckland was carved out, obviously to try and save money. I do agree we need to make sure that we assess the balance between life and cost, but I think this one went too far.

I also want to acknowledge my colleague Tamatha Paul, who put forward some amendments to try and get an outcome for multi-owner resident buildings that are actually stuck in a difficult situation where they want to repair their buildings but just don’t have the means, and actually how we could make that work, which—it was a bit of a shame that didn’t pass. I think we need to really assess how we can work better together to ensure that people that want to do the work can actually have the means to do that.

Finally, in my last 15 seconds, I do want to acknowledge local government in the work that they’re going to have to do in this space in the very near future. Once again, this is another cost to local government that’s being pushed down on to them, which is hard with all the costs they get. Kia ora.

11:43

Thank you, sir. I’ve said a number of times in this House over the years that I believe human life is infinitely valuable. I still believe that to be true, morally and philosophically. But, of course, from a public policy point of view, it’s important that we focus our resources, both public and private, where they can make the most difference. For that reason, I’m pleased that we are, together, amending our earthquake-prone building laws to refocus them. I thank everyone who has contributed to this work and supported it. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on this, particularly following the member who has just resumed has his seat. I want to acknowledge the work that the Hon Chris Penk has done in this space. I know that he is retiring from Parliament, and I know from my previous engagement with him when we were both chief whips that he is a fine parliamentarian, and I want to acknowledge the work that he has done and wish him well for what comes next.

I am speaking in support of this bill, and Labour has indicated that we will be supporting it. We do have a couple of issues that I’ll elaborate on in a moment, but what is very clear is that here in New Zealand we do need an earthquake-prone building system or approach that is practical, that works, that is proportionate, that can acknowledge the risk that exists, but fundamentally is also focused on the protection of human life and of safety. The sad reality here in Aotearoa New Zealand is that compared with some other parts of the world, our experience is very direct and dire when it comes to earthquakes and the resultant impact that they have, not just on buildings and structures but on communities all around the motu, and there are members in this House who have direct experience of that over the years.

What has become clear is that the current regime that we have in place has created some challenges—some challenges for local government and for councils, some challenges for building owners, for tenants, for community groups, for heritage organisations that think about the ongoing need for heritage, and fundamentally, for communities. So we approach this bill, and we have approached this bill, in a constructive way to indicate that reform, yes, is needed. It is necessary. We must reduce some of those unnecessary burdens. I’m not just talking about cost, but we also need to fundamentally ensure that we do not lose sight of public safety. That is why some of the concerns that we do have around this bill are not going to prevent us from supporting it, but we very clearly want to place on the record those concerns so that the Government of the day is very clear as to where we stand.

The resources in any respect can be finite, yes, but they should be directed at what can make the greatest difference. What we do know is that when it concerns a single property in this country, whether it’s in Feilding in the Manawatū or elsewhere in New Zealand, the fact of work that needs to happen in that space can have a far greater impact than just the person who owns the building. It has an impact on those that potentially use the building; it potentially has an impact on those that might be travelling to and from, and we’ve talked about that previously as well. It can mean that community organisations, effectively, are impacted because they lose use of a particular location or premise, and the funding implications around heritage, which is always a tightly constrained environment, can potentially be impacted. As I asked the Minister for Building and Construction just last night, it can also lead to some delays in revitalisation of town and community networks when there are particular gaps along the way in terms of buildings and what that might look like for the short term, but indeed into the future as well.

When I think about the community that we represent, there are some really strong transport opportunities there. Our community has a focus on heritage. But nonetheless, there are still resilient buildings that are in any community, and ensuring that they are fit for purpose is fundamentally really, really important. Those safety obligations do need to be achievable and they need to be credible. But I guess what we’re hearing through the Parliament is the need to balance that with what is fair, reasonable, perhaps economic, but also is not going to cause huge concern to public safety and public services.

Now, like Mr Foster, I want to acknowledge the fact that this bill has gone through a select committee process. I want to acknowledge colleagues who sit on that committee; it’s going to be still meeting and working into next week as well.

Busy!

Very busy.

I also want to acknowledge the officials who were here until late last night and here again this morning who have helped the committee work through a number of aspects. What the committee sought to do was to balance, I think—and did quite well—the practical considerations alongside the experience and the policy that was absolutely needed. I think the fact that it’s going to, at this stage, have cross-Parliament support is a good indication of that.

One of the issues that we have been concerned about is the lack of inclusion, so I guess by definition the exclusion of Auckland from this particular process. We know that Auckland is our largest city in this country. We know that there is a huge form of density and concentration of people. We know that there are a number of buildings. We know that there are transport systems in place there—the City Rail Link. My two colleagues immediately to my left were on the first train out of Ōtāhuhu in the early hours of Sunday—

4.50!

Thank you. That’s a fantastic opportunity. It will be even greater when Labour’s fare cap policy of $20 a week comes in. What we need to actually understand here is that this is our biggest city, and low risk and no risk are issues that need to be really considered here. The Parliament and the Government must accept that low risk is not no risk. It is a concern that there is this carve-out for Tāmaki-makau-rau, where, if things go wrong, they will go drastically wrong. We need to be ensuring that the Parliament is aware of that, because the Labour Party have real concerns about the exclusion of Auckland.

Now, there is a middle ground there—we could look at options around a lower level of implication, perhaps—but having no implication, we don’t believe is the right way to go. It may be that Governments of the future might actually realise that this is an issue and may wish to change that. The Minister himself has given the Parliament a little bit of a history lesson as to when the last form of volcanic activity was in Auckland. Well, what we’ve heard in this House today is that the experience of New Zealand is not always reliant on when the most recent volcanic activity was. We do need to place on record our real concern around this. We do believe that there were options available to the Government to ensure that there was some consideration of how Auckland might play out in terms of this regime and this plan, and we are disappointed that that is not going to happen.

I also want to acknowledge the role that local government as a sector has played. I’ve talked about the challenges and the pressures that exist—they are ever increasing under this current Government—but what is really important here is that this will provide the sector with a little bit of breathing space and a little bit of bandwidth to be able to still focus on the task and the job at hand, and also to adopt an approach that is reasonable in the circumstances.

We’ve talked previously in this House about some of the changes in the transport space. This bill will roll back some of that applicability, where we have in this country a number of strategic transport routes that have been identified as such. That means that there are limitations on it. This provides a one-off opportunity for that to be reviewed, not to add in additional routes but to review the existing transport routes to see if they are still suitable. It is important that we do have legislation that does identify those strategic transport routes. When we think about the role of first responders—of civil defence emergency responders, as well—it is important that they are able to get where they need to go in an earthquake or following an earthquake in an unimpeded form or fashion. This will provide an opportunity, I think, to take a balanced approach to transport routes in this country.

We do support this bill, with the caveat of some issues that have already been traversed today. Fundamentally, we want a regime that focuses on the paramount nature of safety and also provides some flexibility that is appropriate in the circumstances. I commend this bill to the House.

11:54

This is a very practical, good, balanced bill. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We do live in an amazing place at the bottom of the world, often referred to as the “Shaky Isles”. Our beauty is forged through volcanoes and earthquakes and winds and storms, through that volcanic and geothermal activity. It is what has helped create its beauty, but also, obviously, within the beauty, there is the pain that comes with that. That’s why we need to be thoughtful and considered when it comes to human life, when it comes to nature, when it comes to being prepared for what is to come and to protect human life.

Cameron Luxton, from the ACT Party, did use some theatre and poetry, so I thought I’d do the same. This is a very old one I found—actually, on the Parliament website: “They say, and it is quite believed by everyone in town, The Lords are shaking in their shoes, The House is tumbling down!” That was written in 1872 about the Parliament buildings on this site. It was a bit of a dodgy building back in the day, evidently. It was a bit of rot and a bit of timber that was sort of hacked together. There were conversations around the town about the fear, and the Lords in the House concerned about the shaking of the old building and it coming down.

Was it New Zealand Parliament House?

It was the New Zealand Parliament House, back in 1872. I jump forward to 2026, and, funnily enough, there are still some issues and shakiness about this place.

For some of my colleagues—I’m looking around the room, at the Hon Jo Luxton, Arena Williams; I’m looking at Tangi Utikere and myself—when we came in, in 2020, we got to move into these beautiful, wonderful renovated offices in the basement of the old Parliamentary Library. It was less than a year later that we had to move and they had to find spaces for us because of the earthquake risk and because of the regulations. It meant that the basement that had been beautifully fitted out for us, which was a wonderful space, suddenly realised it fitted into the current law in terms of the issues and the fact that it was going to potentially fall on to the car park below, and the Speaker’s lawn above could have collapsed.

Kept us in the basement.

They kept us in the basement. The good news: I went from the basement to the attic. I ended up in the attic of the old library. Anyway, there are still concerns, and, obviously, because of current legislation, we were moved, and I think partly rightly so, because, again, as has been said by my colleagues, human life is so important and protecting people.

We do need to reflect on legislation. In 2011, there was something massive and painful that happened, but we need to really consider, “Was it knee-jerk?” Potentially it was, but it was decisions that were made by this House to ensure that we strengthened safety. As Arena Williams said, there were 39 people killed in Christchurch from falling masonry. I look around the streets of Wellington, I look around the streets of our towns and cities around the country, and you see those challenges of those private properties, those private buildings, that impede or can impact when it comes to public spaces.

The reality that was brought up earlier, as well, is around Auckland and its carve-out from this, and whether it should be included. I think about my own home in Taranaki. For many years, the discussion was that Taranaki was an extinct volcano—that it had long since blown its top—but then more reports came out, and the most recent talked about the fact that there’s a 50 percent chance in the next 50 years that Taranaki will erupt yet again, and the mitigations that we have to put in place for that.

That’s why we challenge the decision on Auckland, because even though, as people like the Green Party member said, Christchurch wasn’t on the map in terms of earthquakes, we need to ensure that we protect the people and the places but also, obviously, we want to be fair when it comes to people’s property and what they do in those spaces.

We will support this bill. We would like more work to be done, but we want to ensure that life safety should always be the overriding objective to making good legislation. I commend it to the House.

11:59

The Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill is a common-sense, risk-based approach to earthquake-prone buildings. National’s changes are expected to save $1.2 billion across provincial and regional New Zealand in the years to come, including Whanganui, which is set to benefit by $24 million alone. For Whanganui, Ruapehu, South Taranaki, and Stratford, this means more money staying locally for jobs, for investment, and for growth. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I was in this Parliament in 2010-11, when the Canterbury earthquakes happened, and they were a momentous series of events. I think it was good when Arena Williams spoke earlier to really just make the point that this entire reform process started as a result of the Canterbury earthquakes and the unnecessary loss of life—34 people died. Many of them were hit by falling masonry; others were inside buildings, like the CTV Building. There was a very good royal commission into those events, and their subsequent recommendations were that there needed to be an overhaul of New Zealand’s approach in this area, particularly in relation to the fact that we have so many buildings in our cities that have unreinforced masonry and the hazard that that poses for people.

It’s fair to say—I think, from this point in time, looking back—that this Parliament and successive Governments have really struggled with this issue. There’s no dissent, I think, on the point that we must have a system that prioritises human safety and that there’s a huge hazard throughout our towns and cities that has to be dealt with, but we’ve really struggled to find a system that is rational, evidence based, has protection of human life at its heart, but is implementable and that is practical and viable and economic. What no one wants to see is a system that is impractical and has the effect of leaving buildings empty and derelict around the country because it’s simply uneconomic to do the seismic strengthening.

I just want to touch base with the key principles of Labour’s approach and position on this bill. Like everybody else in this House, we support a stronger, fairer, and more risk-based approach to earthquake-prone buildings. We support focusing regulation on the buildings and the regions that actually present genuine risks to life. The current system has created unnecessary costs for some owners and councils, and we support the approach which takes steps to reduce those burdens while still addressing the risks posed by the highest-risk structures—proportionate remediation rules and removing unnecessary regulatory add-ons that have made strengthening unaffordable for some owners—but it is important to say, as others have said in this debate, that the risk doesn’t disappear when you change the policy settings. It merely transfers to others—to future owners, tenants, councils, potentially insurers and taxpayers, but also to the people either in those buildings or walking beside unreinforced masonry buildings when earthquakes occur. The bottom line, in our view, is that these safety principles should apply everywhere, even if the level of obligation varies by risk. That is the key principle, and that is the basis on which we have been very critical of one of the key features of this amendment bill, and that is to carve Auckland out of the new system.

Government members have been very keen to celebrate an estimated $8.2 billion in savings as a result of the scaling back of reach of the system. We think that most, if not all, of those savings are a result of the Auckland carve-out. There’s been some good commentary, I think, in this debate about the extent to which the carve-out is based on science or politics. We don’t contest the advice from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to the committee that Auckland is a low seismic-risk zone—there’s no disagreement with that—but low seismic-risk does not mean no seismic risk, and as Arena Williams argued in her contribution earlier in the debate, undoubtedly there are buildings in Auckland, individual buildings, that will be just as risky or more risky than buildings that are in other parts of the country, which, under this new system, will be required to undertake remediation.

In our biggest urban centre, with 1.5 million people, with the biggest concentration of buildings, with entire suburbs where there are buildings from the Edwardian era and before that have unreinforced masonry on their exterior, and with large buildings in high-volume pedestrian precincts where there may be a very considerable risk to pedestrians and passersby on busy streets from these high-rise buildings, from these high-rise buildings—that’s the point: there is significant risk in Auckland and the carve-out, the geographic carve-out of our biggest city, of 1.5 million people, is an incredibly blunt instrument. The point has, I think, been well made that this is a political carve-out. The science is uncontestable that Auckland is a low-risk zone, but it’s not no risk. To just, with the stroke of a pen, eliminate the Auckland region from the system, because there is political advocacy and political pressure from the mayor and from others and the dangling prospect of reducing the total overall bill for the nation by $8 billion or more, doesn’t make for good policy.

It actually brings to mind a very similar calculation that was made in the recent passage of the health and safety amendment bill under the stewardship of Minister Brooke van Velden, when, in the desire to reduce the compliance burden and the cost for small and medium enterprises in New Zealand, their health and safety obligations were significantly reduced for 97 percent of the country’s employees—sorry, 97 percent of the firms in New Zealand were given, by that bill, a much lighter compliance burden for health and safety. Again, it was a blunt instrument for political reasons, carving out a huge part of the population from protection. In the case of the bill we’re talking about, seismic strengthening to protect human life—the analogous bill was health and safety protections to keep people safe at work—it’s the same approach. It’s politically convenient, but it’s not actually based on science and evidence, and the effect of it is to put a very significant section of the population at risk. We think that’s unfortunate. We think it’s the wrong policy choice.

The other objection we have is that we think that—by virtue of the Amendment Paper, the large Amendment Paper that the Minister put on the Table in the committee stage—the regime has gone too far in letting developers off the hook for what would have been an obligation to upgrade disability access and fire protection provisions at the same time as seismic strengthening. It will disadvantage and hang out to dry a significant group of people who bought, invested, and committed to dwellings in buildings that were due for seismic strengthening that will now not get the benefit of those important upgrades.

My final point is that there’s unfinished business here. There’s a group of apartment dwellers who face not only the very significant costs of seismic strengthening but the administrative and logistical difficulties of doing it as a body corporate. There’s nothing in here for them, and that’s outstanding.

This early draft is automatically published - it is not yet complete and reviewed.