Building Amendment Bill: Rahui Katene
te-pati-maori
Tue Mar 10 2009 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Building Amendment Bill: Rahui Katene
Tuesday, 10 March 2009, 8:43 pm
Speech: The Maori Party
Building Amendment Bill: Rahui Katene,
MP for Te Tai Tonga
Tuesday 10 March 2009
Less than a month ago, I stood at question time, and asked the Minister of Housing what steps would he be taking to address the reported decline of homeownership rates amongst Maori?
The context for my question was the staggering fact that the proportion of MÄori who own their home has fallen from 61.4 percent in 1991 to 45.2 percent in 2006.
Putting it another way; the proportion of Maori now relying on rental tenure has increased from 38.6 percent to 54.8 percent.
And here we are before the month is out with a solution of sorts.
What Maori Housing Trends 2008 told us is that while the hike in property prices and rents have impacted negatively on Maori as they have on other New Zealanders; the impact has been exacerbated for Maori, particularly because they often need larger houses houses which are of course more costly to rent.
So any initiative to help first home buyers, is an initiative that we look at with particular interest in terms of how well it will assist Maori into homes.
The Building Amendment Bill is a fast-track approach which we in the Maori Party hopes will provide an avenue to provide starter homes to first-home buyers at a quicker and more affordable rate.
That would be good news for Maori, and good news for Aotearoa.
Maori home ownership is of particular concern to me as the Member for Te Tai Tonga, with the Canterbury region having the lowest ratio of Maori home ownership in New Zealand.
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This Bill today, amends the Building Act to reduce compliance requirements and costs to developers and home owners, in order to improve the efficiency of the building consent process.
According to the Registered Master Builders Federation, approximately forty percent of all new homes in New Zealand are built by volume builders.
A key initiative introduced in this bill is that of national multiple-use approvals.
Multiple use approvals will streamline the consent process for building work that uses the same design and that will be replicated nationwide.
A Lockwood in every street. Â Â Lockwood Homes that is.
Having multiple-use approvals in place will mean that developers and project managers can devote more time to the building itself.Â
All of the time devoted to the paperwork can be compressed into one focused approach.Â
A new pre-approval system will fast track the building consent process but councils will still need to assess site specific matters.
Another initiative introduced in the Bill is the voluntary PIMS proposal.Â
PIMS – the project information memorandum kind, not the liquor – are currently required before any building projects can begin. In the usual order of things, PIMS are applied for around about the same time as a building consent is issued.
And yet when we looked into we found that on the basis of evidence, less that five percent of PIMS are actually applied before in practice, before the building consent application is made – so the point of the whole process is often lost.
What started off as a good idea – that the PIMS would be a one-stop-shop boutique, hosting all information related to building consent – failed in reality because only a few PIMS were actually applied for prior to building consent application being made.
This Bill then will make it optional for a building consent applicant to obtain a project information memorandum from a territorial authority.
These measures are honourable in the intent to dramatically increase the supply of good quality, affordable homes. The thinking is that the Bill will help to reduce unnecessary delays in the building consent process – to streamline the process.
The whole point of the legislation is to increase flexibility and efficiency in the building consent process. The amendments include the reduction in the statutory time frame for processing a building consent application from twenty working days to ten working days – when the application includes a national multiple-use approval.
The hope is that owners and developers will benefit from reduced costs associated with the construction process; while at the same time ensuring that quality homes and buildings are constructed.
And this is where the key concern rests for the Maori Party.
While we can fully appreciate that the potential economies of scale are able to be achieved through volume; we must not see any compromise in quality or building compliance.
And this is where we are pleased that the capacity to record the process, is still formalised through the functions and powers of the Department of Building and Housing.Â
There are still some specific requirements to meet the technical application – as set out in section 30B of the Bill. This, in short, is that the application will be in writing; and contains prescribed information with the required plans and specifications necessary.
The last thing we ever want to see replicated is the leaky building syndrome.
While this Bill speeds up the process; removes unnecessary compliance requirements; and will achieve economies of scale, we must be mindful that in the haste to speed things up, we don’t dilute the quality.
We will be looking to the Select Committee process, to ensure there is due support for best practice models to be expressed in managing amendments to building consents.
While we are sure that every party in this House would gladly support any proposals which reduce and remove unnecessary costs and delays to the building process we must be careful that in streamlining the process we don’t end up creating a rod for our backs.
And this is where I return to the questions I asked of the Minister not too long ago.
In his response about how to improve the levels of Maori home ownership, the Minister said that he would be speaking to a number of iwi and hapÅ« groups and the MÄori Party.
He also suggested that he would be seeking specific feedback from these groups about how the Housing Innovation Fund can help and how papakÄinga housing can be advanced.
These were welcome signals from a Minister who is expressing a commitment to increase the availability of affordable social housing.Â
We want that commitment to come alongside the goal to resource iwi and Maori organisations themselves, to develop sustainable housing initiatives.
We will therefore support this Bill at this its first reading, to facilitate housing opportunities which we hope will reap benefits for Maori alongside other New Zealanders.
But we will be watching particularly for submitters to bring to the select committee their assurance that the quality of building construction will not be compromised by the amendments. We want to see too, that the reduced construction costs for developers will actually translate to reduced housing costs for buyers and renters that the down stream costs will contribute to improved housing affordability.
And we want to be absolutely convinced that the monetary savings are actually substantial enough to affect housing affordability.
Having all of these factors in mind then, we will support the Bill today, in the hope for a better tomorrow for so many of our whanau who have not yet enjoyed the opportunity to buy their own home.
Ends
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