Sitting date: 7 October 2025

BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION (SMALL STAND-ALONE DWELLINGS) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister for Building and Construction: I present a legislative statement on the Building and Construction (Small Stand-alone Dwellings) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: I move, That the Building and Construction (Small Stand-alone Dwellings) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

It takes too long and it is too expensive to build in New Zealand. So it's a real privilege to be delivering the second reading speech on behalf of my colleague, the Hon Chris Penk, who's doing fantastic work for all the grannies across New Zealand with the "Granny Flat Bill", as it's been colloquially called.

Arena Williams: Didn't you get the memo? We've stopped calling it granny flats.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Sorry, what's what? Oh, I've got to start calling it the "Granny and Grandpa Flat Bill". We should absolutely, we need to be far more inclusive in our language when it comes to this piece of legislation.

I thought I was getting jokes from the other side about Building and Construction (Small Stand-alone Dwellings) Amendment Bill and I thought we were going to comment on my height instead, but no, they decided not to find that as funny, like I did.

Anyway, as I said, it takes too long and it's too expensive to—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): It would be good if your side exercised the same restraint all night, throughout.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: The same restraint as I expressed myself. As Chris Penk has previously stated in the House, it is around 50 percent more expensive to build a stand-alone house in New Zealand than in Australia. We know that increasing housing supply and availability helps lower living costs for our communities and that is why this coalition Government, through the National - New Zealand First coalition agreement—can I just acknowledge the New Zealand First Party for putting this into the coalition agreement and committing us to make it faster and more affordable to build granny flats and grandpa flats. These simple dwellings, while small, have an important role in providing families—

Hon Rachel Brooking: And flatmate flats.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Sorry?

Hon Rachel Brooking: Flatmate flats.

Hon SIMEON BROWN: Flatmate flats—there we are; thank you, I look forward to the Labour Party's support as well—have an important role in providing families with more housing options, particularly for grandparents, people with disabilities, young adults, and the rural sector workers.

I'd also like to acknowledge Andy Foster, who was the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and I look forward to his judicious speech shortly, which will go into the detail of the bill, the submissions, and the changes that he made as the chair. I know that he guided that committee incredibly well, listening in detail to the submitters and making sure that everything that they had to say has been now reflected in the report and to improve the workability of this piece of legislation.

One of the biggest changes, I think, is that these small houses got bigger. They're now 65 to 70 square metres and I think that's fantastic. That's all part of the great work that Andy Foster and the team have been doing.

Look, there a number of really important changes though, making sure that we can get rid of some of the bureaucracy. Things like a project information memorandum, or PIM, making it easier to process; clarifying key phrases, defining them—that's actually really important legislative work that the select committee's been doing because, ultimately, we want to make sure this bill is effective, is easy for builders, for homeowners, for landowners to be able to use. Once this is legislated, I'm sure there are people up and down the country who can't wait to give effect to the changes.

This is one of the most popular pieces of legislation, I think, that this Government is implementing. I know how many people in my electorate come up to me and talk to me about this piece of legislation, and how excited they are, so I just want to say thank you to the select committee for all of the incredibly important changes you've made.

The select committee also recommended that a new section is inserted to ensure that implied warranties, which are an existing consumer protection mechanism under the Building Act, continue to be applied, because, of course, we also need to make sure that we are protecting consumers, protecting those people who will become the owners of these properties, as well.

Lastly, several changes have been made to Schedule 1A of the bill which sets out that the building design conditions for consent exempt granny flats. Again, that's all part of making it more efficient. I hear the member for the ACT Party saying we could liberalise things more, but I just appreciate the spirit of the coalition in terms of getting this piece of legislation through.

In conclusion, the committee's recommendations offer sensible changes to the bill that stay true to its intent while also addressing reasonable concerns by submitters. I'm confident these changes will not only improve its workability for building owners and qualified tradespeople but we'll also make clear that councils are protected from liability for building work they have not assessed.

I believe the bill will reduce the barriers to building in New Zealand and unlock productivity in the construction sector—and, boy oh boy, we need productivity in this country. These changes will increase the supply of affordable housing options and provide Kiwis with more choices.

Once again, I'd like to thank the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for their hard work on the bill, to those who've taken the time to submit, and on that basis, I commend the bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Wow! This is surely needed; good news for builders. Can we all agree around the House that that is something to be supportive of, and Labour does support this bill. We have worked very closely at select committee, and I also want to share the Minister's acknowledgment of chair Andy Foster over something that should be cross-partisan. Everyone can look at this and say there is merit to be found here; that, for most New Zealanders, when they are looking to build a flat at the back of their home for—it might be an older person in their family, it might be a teenager, it might be to be able to rent it out as accommodation, whatever it is, making that easier. At a time when the building sector is crying out for work, it's on its knees, and we desperately need more housing, this is a sensible change that we need to work through.

We are working at pace here with this legislation. There will be things that we come back to in this legislation because they do not work in the way that they are intended to. There are unintended consequences to be found here. We do not know what they are, because we are working through a system where the Government introduced this, took it to select committee, submitters had a limited period of time in which they were able to raise issues from both the building industry and from local councils. But we didn't really hear from homeowners, because they are not resourced to give those kinds of submissions in the select committee process, and so we will not know how this has a long-term impact on not only consumers and household owners who are affected by this but also for their insurance and for their banks. How this will play out in our housing market is simply unknown.

We think that there will be 13,000 more dwellings because of this legislation, and that is a good thing. We have engaged in the process of making this law on that basis, that this will be an incremental change in the way that housing is provided, that that will be spread around the country in a relatively even way with some more of the benefits felt in Auckland, but we don't know that. There are a lot of questions that remain unanswered here, and so I also look forward to the other speeches that will highlight some of the issues which are still being worked through the system, especially the new changes around making these things larger. Some of the things that we have worked through around the way that the council process will work remain untested ground for how this policy might play out for ordinary New Zealanders.

The risks here were raised with the committee over and over again—things like the way that hazards and stormwater might be dealt with on properties where people are building these properties without what you might expect in New Zealand for the kind of compliance checks. Also raised with us over and over again was the need for compliance with the Building Act and to make sure that our normal processes and regulations are followed, simply so that future owners of those properties can have confidence in the building work that has been undertaken and have the right sort of documents. You know, it's not unnecessary paperwork; it's just something to help them be able to get lending from a bank, insurance from an insurer, keep their costs down, and make sure they can live in the building safely. Those are simple, sensible things that New Zealanders will write to us, the select committee, about and which, frankly, we have not been able to get to the bottom of.

There are also some missed opportunities here, I would say. Submitters raised with us a slate of concerns, ranging from being able to use this bill to address some of the unaddressed issues for utilities companies—say, lines companies in connections to power—that are still unaddressed. There is also the issue of what a "simple design" is. It's pretty unusual for primary legislation like this to set out what a simple design might be and what the features of those simple designs are. But in New Zealand, that is because we don't have—like, say, many Australian state Governments or the UK system—a sort of book of designs for these sorts of simple builds that people can expect to have signed-off quickly and for there to be a very low administrative burden when they are building. In the UK, for instance, the UK Government Architect is a longstanding system which is part of that system of simplifying designs and of bringing down costs. This is not something that's a feature of the legislation but that came up as something for the select committee to consider, and we were not able to progress further.

Having said that, I think some of the innovations here that are really worth looking at and are making—it is on all of us that we keep a watching brief of how this will work. The project information memorandums—this will be a pretty different system to how those operate now. The intention of those is not to be a final check, but they will operate, in a sense, in the way that they will be councils' most active ability to be able to set out requirements with homeowners, and also to collect fees. They will work in a completely different way to the way they do now. That is probably the right system, but, again, we're going to have to work this through with councils, because if there are certain councils around the country that see the numbers of these very much increasing—and we had some very good questions from National members at the select committee about what will happen if councils see lots of these or lots of these on one property, or certain landlords using lots of these in their properties in a way that councils can't plan for and does actually create a burden on infrastructure for those councils—what is the mechanism for addressing that? Those are sensible questions. We don't know; we haven't answered those questions. This is legislation which we are passing in good faith, but it is something that we will need to be very clear with councillors about, that we are listening, we are open to feedback from the industry on this, and that we want this to work.

After outlining those concerns, it's probably important for me to outline why the Labour Party is supporting this. We are supporting this because housing is critically important to people, and anything that will bring down the cost of housing is something we will be working hard to find the merit in, and this is one of those. New Zealanders need different options for housing. They need to be able to have different building options as well as greater density options in their cities. We want people to be able to enjoy their land and be able to build on it in the way that they want to, and to be able to provide for their kids, for other generations of their family—all of those things are good in this bill.

The concerns are that we need to have high standards in our buildings in New Zealand. They need to be safe, they need to be dry, they need to be designed in a way which people can have confidence in in the future. Whether that balance is struck here is the question that remains for us. But overall, with the help of the submitters, I think we have got to a relatively even-handed place. There are a number of amendments in this bill tonight, because the committee has worked very closely not only on those submissions but with officials who were assisting with this. Because, again, acknowledging that they were working at pace, that this was legislation that they needed to also work through that public consultative process with.

I also want to speak to the possibility here for some of those large home builders to make a real difference in the provision of housing from these sorts of regulations. There is a real hope and intention that the builders who build homes at scale will also be able to use these rules to offer sort of standardised products, particularly in the cities where there is a real demand for housing and housing growth and smaller housing, for that to be rolled out quickly and effectively. That will depend on, though, the economy turning a corner and us having a pipeline of people who can build those small dwellings, and that's something that there are real questions about.

When you look at the enabling possibilities of this legislation, you also have to ask yourself: do we have the workforce there ready to go? Do we have the building sector that is ready to pick up this work? And there remain real questions around that. You know, we've seen 20,000 jobs in building and construction gone since the day of the election. We're also seeing more and more young New Zealanders who could be taking up those opportunities and building apprenticeships and getting into building, from whatever walk of life they are from, either leaving our shores—200 young New Zealanders a day—or not able to get into those jobs in building and construction. It's very common for young people, at least in my electorate in South Auckland, to be assisted into the building and construction sector through the various Government supports available, like being able to get your forklift ticket, being able to get your tickets for the use of heavy machinery, being able to upskill while you might be on the jobseeker benefit, or through one of the programmes that Government supports.

There is a real question now, with the Government's introduction of policy around how young people, particularly 18- and 19-year-olds, will be able to realise those supports, about what supports the building and construction sector will have when it needs to rapidly up its workforce and get more and more young New Zealanders into those jobs, unless we have rapid change in the immigration settings, that see more offshore builders being able to come in to fill those. There are questions here about how we will use this. We will be watching it, but Labour supports this still.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I just want to start by saying that the Green Party sees housing as a human right, and it is vitally important that the Government is taking effective action to increase the supply of healthy, secure, affordable housing. That's really important, and I'd say that this Government has kind of done the opposite, really, by cancelling a bunch of State homes that would have been built over the last few years that would have helped address the housing shortage but also would have kept builders and construction companies employed during this time. When you take away one of the biggest levers the Government has to address housing quality and housing supply—that is, through direct provision through the public building of homes, which is what most countries do, because there will always be a section of the market that will not be met. There will always be a section of housing—people who need housing—that will not be met by the private market.

Secondly, this bill definitely won't address the housing crisis. I'm all for making Government regulation work better, particularly resource consents and building consents, to deliver what we want. It hasn't; it's not good at the moment. Our building code is, actually, wholly insufficient, and we will be facing another issue of something similar to the leaky buildings over the next 10 or 20 years. There's a big question about who is going to pay for that when our building code hasn't been up to scratch. Even with the building consent process, we haven't had good building techniques that are delivering structures that will last longer and not be subject to black mould.

I have a constituent—a young person—who asked for a meeting in my electorate. He was particularly concerned to speak to his local MP because he is in the unfortunate position of having bought a home at the peak of the market and so now has more debt than what the house is worth. He went to do some really minor repairs that had been planned and found out, through trying to do those minor repairs, that there's substantial damage to the frame of the building. It's not a really old building; it was built in the last 20 years. This sort of thing is going to be happening all over the place, but there isn't that same support that we had for the leaky homes. That cost councils a fortune, and that was the outcome of the last time the Government decided to massively deregulate the building sector in order to, supposedly, achieve productivity, make it cheaper, make it easier to build more homes. There can be quite substantial costs to not doing things well, and we will face them at some point down the line.

The regulatory impact statement on this bill, which was developed quite quickly—because it was just one of those election promises that, unfortunately, gets prioritised in a coalition Government—didn't have the benefit of the Public Service doing the work before the election to say this is really the best way to address the problem. I think that all New Zealanders want to address the problem. As the previous speaker Arena Williams said, I think all parties in this Parliament want to see better-quality housing and a better supply of housing, delivered at a better price for people, so that they can afford to live—but we don't want that to be done in an "election slogan" way of what sounds good on the hustings but has no data or work done behind it to say that this is actually the problem we're facing and this is the best way to solve it. It would be good if we had a longer-term process leading up to this, because, if you look at the regulatory impact statement, it does say that it was developed in haste because it was part of the coalition agreement. We don't have good information, as Arena Williams said.

The select committee made some minor tweaks to the bill. I love our select committee, I think it's very constructive, but we didn't have a full process on this bill. It was a shorter process and, ultimately, the scope of what the select committee can consider is very narrow because it's within the bill that has been proposed. It doesn't look wider to say, "Is this the biggest problem that we have to solve, and is this the best way to address it?" I'm just saying, although the select committee might have made minor improvements, ultimately, I don't think the process that we've gone through as a country to deliver this particular piece of legislation is necessarily the best one.

It's pretty simple: the dwelling must be simple in design, it can be up to 70 square metres, it must meet the building code, the building work must be done by authorised professionals, and councils have to be notified before and after construction. There's still going to be a cost to that. If we want to have some sort of enforcement of standards, we need a public authority whose job it is to collect that information and then to ensure—otherwise, what do we do? We're leaving it to the courts and the insurance market to sort out. I think one of the issues that we didn't get a lot of advice about on the select committee, and which will probably be an issue, is that in saving the building consent costs, are we just going to see increased costs to insure dwellings like this? That's entirely possible. We might not actually be solving the problem.

From the regulatory impact statement, it's estimating approximately 7,800 additional granny flats—maybe the numbers are up a little bit. Arena Williams said 13,000; the number I have is more like 8,000. This is a tiny number of additional dwellings. For a lot of people, this won't be their primary dwelling; it'll just be a spare room or an Airbnb thing they can rent out for short-term rentals. We're dreaming if we think this is addressing the housing crisis. That said, look, we absolutely support the bill's intent to make it easier for people to create small, high-quality homes on existing properties. If we can actually improve the building code and properly resource authorities and take the liability away from councils, I think we would get better outcomes.

I speak to a lot of professionals in the building and construction sector who are very experienced, delivering much better, more energy efficient, higher quality buildings in other jurisdictions—like in Germany, in British Columbia, also in the UK—and they are quite frustrated, when they come to New Zealand, that they can be proposing something that's going to work far better than the building code but, because it's not an acceptable solution defined in the Act, councils have some reluctance to give them the building consent for it. That's ridiculous. If we're going to have a building code and if we're going to have consent authorities, we should be making it easier to do the things that get better outcomes. That's the big win-win that we could have in Aotearoa New Zealand. We don't have to completely reinvent the wheel. I admit that in Wellington we might have a windier and damper environment than most places where people live around the world, and that does put a certain strain on buildings, but, if you go to parts of British Columbia or coastal parts of Ireland or Canada, it would probably be somewhat comparable. We don't have to completely reinvent the wheel.

We heard that targeting engagement in 2024 showed strong support from Māori for the intent of this bill. I totally understand that. Self-determination of tangata whenua to be able to build on their own land is important, and anything we can do to enable and support that is a good thing. I just want to ensure, and the Green Party wants to ensure, that we are properly resourcing builders to have the know-how, knowledge, and tools they need to build good dwellings and that the social support system is there to support people so that you don't have the situation where you're having to pay a fortune for insurance or you find out your building is defective and it turns out the building company went into liquidation, so you can't sue them. Who is going to help people when things go wrong? That's why I think we need a much broader improvement to our building and construction sector that could actually address productivity, that could actually increase housing supply in a substantial way, and that could lift the quality of what we're building and bring down the cost of the materials and the techniques that are needed to build energy efficient, healthy buildings that have proper ventilation, so we don't get this problem with black mould, so we don't get the problems that we see so often in Aotearoa.

There's lots of potential. In this particular bill, the specific improvements around liability and around requiring the right information to be provided to the council—all of that is fine. I think the jury is still out. The Green Party supports the intent of the bill. We won't oppose the bill, but we are putting it very clearly on the record what our concerns are longer term and that fundamentally the slogan of cutting red tape is not the panacea that the Government wants it to be. We have to make much more substantial improvements. That is the role of the public sector, of the Government doing this together, working with communities and builders and everyone else, to actually lift our performance, because we all stand to benefit when we have more environmentally friendly, energy-efficient, healthy buildings.

CAMERON LUXTON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I've spent years on the tools. I've seen—

Dan Bidois: Which type of tools?

CAMERON LUXTON: Well, farm implements, but mostly construction tools as a carpentry qualified builder. I've built small buildings, I've tried to put them in backyards, dealt with the massive amount of issues that come up with councils that genuinely don't want this to happen. That's how it feels when you're on the side of people actually trying to build things in New Zealand. It feels like a non-stop battle.

This is a common-sense change. It's something that's talking about trusting tradespeople, trusting people to design houses that fit their needs on their land, providing homes that provide something that's designed for their family, whether it's a granny, a grandpa, a koro, an uncle, a parent, a kid, anybody—someone who you might want to rent a building out to. This is what we are trying to achieve here.

Look, I just want to talk about a couple of things before Suze Redmayne drags me down to sit down. She builds everybody up; she always wants me to sit down. The people are going to ask: what is a PIM—project information memorandum—and why do we have it in this piece of legislation? The reason is because a PIM provides the information about the site that a building is going to be built on. So that's one benefit: it's going to tell the people who are designing a project, the clients that are interrogating whether they'd like to do one, what sort of ground that they are actually trying to land a building on. For the builders, it gives certainty about the project. It gives accuracy about the costs that are involved. It means that can be planned properly. For councils—and this is the important part—it's a way for councils to keep an eye on what's being built in their area. The reason we've gone with a PIM instead of a certificate of acceptance or other such accreditation is because a PIM is just a way of letting a council know.

The councils are not there to be a blocking mechanism. This is something that the Transport and Infrastructure Committee had to work quite hard on. I'm going to say something that builders and developers who have dealt with this will understand, but the section 71 in the Building Act, it's an infamous section. It's used in the same way I'm sure many members of this House will recognise the term RFI—request for information. These are the sort of things that have got in the way of people trying to build in New Zealand. It's meant that there's been a loss of trust between the industry, the people operating in it, and the councils.

I think we really do need to see councils taking the spirit that this bill is intended, not finding ways to delay things being built because they don't want to see it built. I'm trying to get across the feeling of separation between the players in the industry, but there is a way forward. Councils can use things that already exist in the Building Act. Section 72 allows councils to grant consent for building. Section 67 allows councils to take a liberalised view of a project and allow something to happen. That's what needs to happen. The committee spent a lot of time making sure we were covering all the different ways that a council might wiggle out of allowing something to happen. For example, backflow valves on pipes and waste water, trying to make sure that councils don't find a way to get into the site.

The reason I wanted to say that was to make sure that it's on record that there does need to be a level of trust developed, and that is what this olive branch is trying to do. To the previous speaker's point, this is far from a fix, but it is a part of a solution. But we do need to go a lot further to fix one of New Zealand's greatest challenges, and that is the costly and complicated housing crisis. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): It's a pleasure to rise to speak to this bill as the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I just want to start off by saying thank you to the Minister for the generous comments he made at the beginning. I say thank you also to all the committee members for the way in which this was collegially worked through, and we got to a unanimous view which was really, really appreciated. Thanks also to the officials who provided us a lot of good information and to our 171 submitters.

This bill delivers on a part of the coalition agreement. It was something that New Zealand First specifically campaigned on, so we are delighted that we're now actually able to deliver this campaign promise. This is part of—and it's only a part—a response to the housing challenges that we face. It's about reducing the time and the cost of delivery of warm, dry homes.

Now, I want to respond to a couple of the things that the Hon Julie Anne Genter mentioned, because the example she gave us was that of a person in a 20-year-old house. Now, that house would have been subject to a building consent, and, obviously, something has gone wrong with that process, that building consent, when something is actually wrong with that house. And what's more, that building certainly would not be a building which will fall under this regime regardless, because this regime is quite clearly about simple stand-alone single-story—no mezzanines—buildings complying with the Building Act and also delivered by licensed building professionals and other licensed practitioners—electricians, gas fitters and so on. So that building that she was talking about would not have met the requirements of this piece of legislation.

One of things this bill does is it takes the councils' role and changes it from, as we've just heard from our resident builder, the certificate of compliance process where the councils are actually on the hook for liability, and that is a real problem for councils. If you want to know why councils are really risk-averse, it's because when something goes wrong, they get it in the neck and it's a cost directly to the councils. As the Mayor of Wellington and actually as councillor before that, I was in the position of starting to talk to officials, and Government officials were saying, "You want our building consent authority—here it is because it's just a liability for us." I must say, I don't think the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment officials were particularly keen to see that happen because the building consent process is a liability for councils. So this bill simply puts the councils in the position of being a provider of information and then a keeper of that information once the building is constructed. It also gives them the ability to be able to collect development contributions.

The other bit the councils have a responsibility to do is to make sure that if there are connections to utilities—which often there will be; not always but often there will be connections to stormwater, waste water, etc., systems—those things are done properly. It is absolutely critical that that is done. We don't want them interfering in the building process itself but the connection to services is absolutely essential because if you get that wrong, the costs of finding it and fixing it are immense.

The other area the councils are going to need to be involved in is the whole area of foundations, the connection to the land itself. This started off talking about 60 square-metre buildings. After consultation—there was consultation before the legislation was introduced—it was raised to 70 square metres. I just want to say we've heard some comments made, particularly by Julie Anne Genter, about the quality of the homes.

Now, I would invite anybody, particularly if you go to field days, to go and talk to a lot of the building providers there—go and see what it is that they're doing. And I think you'll find a lot of reassurance about the quality of the buildings that they're producing. Also, they are not one-offs. They are doing repeated jobs, and I've actually visited some of them at their factories as well. What is happening is at the moment they are getting inspected on every single building, paying the cost for every single building, even though they're all the same, and who wears that cost? That cost is worn by the consumer. So we want more affordable homes. Some of them actually said, "Well, why don't we just inspect one out of every 20 because it's actually good for us as well as the building provider, but not every single one of them." So this is about making a more sensible approach to reducing the cost of building of housing.

If we want to get the cost of housing down, we actually have to get the cost of building down. We could crash the market, but all you do by crashing the market is put people off actually building new houses because the cost of building a new house then becomes less than the value you can get for selling that house because existing houses are worth more than the new houses.

Just to finish off, there were a couple of other things which we did raise. Arena Williams made a very good speech, but there were there were a number of things—and I thank her for her contribution at the select committee—about the definitions of a building. There are three or four pages in Schedule 1 of all the component parts of what makes a complying building for this piece of legislation, so I think we've answered that particular issue.

There are two last things I want to pick up. I already talked about the connections to utilities but there's the issue around safe electrical distances. This was almost an amusing one but we did put it in there because we listened very carefully to the submitters. The electrical industry said that what we don't want to do is have a situation where you actually literally have the electrical wires right outside this small new stand-alone building so that people could reach out of their bedroom window and touch them. We said, no, we're not going to have that—we have to say that in building these buildings you have to have comply with those electrical regulations as well.

I think we've done a good job collectively as a team. I want to again thank the submitters and the select committee, and I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The next call is a split call. I call Tamatha Paul

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Granny flats—interesting little concept there. I just want to appreciate the work that different parties and different members have done to bring this to the House. Obviously, I think it's pretty well acknowledged that we are in a housing crisis. There are lots of people who are waiting for homes on the public housing wait-list. There is increasing homelessness and rough sleeping across the country. Overcrowding is a big issue in this country as well within housing.

We know that there's a crisis—a catastrophe, you might call it—and I think the important piece to understanding that crisis is understanding that there are lots of different solutions to that as well. There isn't one big silver bullet that's going to fix the housing crisis, but many different solutions coming together. I appreciate that this bill is identifying one solution that might work for some people, and, as submitters have said—particularly those in multigenerational families who might want to have a granny flat for their kids, or maybe for their grandparents or a family member to come and stay in that granny flat—that's definitely not a bad thing.

One thing that this bill made me think about is that a lot of this Government's solutions and responses to the housing crisis are often around planning—and I get why. When I was on Wellington City Council with Andy Foster, we made lots of changes to the district plan because we needed to—because we needed to enable more housing in Wellington City, because it had been locked down for a really long time in a whole lot of rules and processes. I understand that planning plays an important part in enabling housing, which is why I went and studied planning, actually, and have a post-graduate degree in it.

The shortcomings or the limitations of planning is that it enables something, but it doesn't necessarily make that thing a reality. There are still lots of other steps along the way that come after enabling things. That's not to criticise this bill—it's to say it's a good first step, but there are probably other elements that we have to consider as well as to why it is that the construction sector has been the hardest hit by job losses. Why is it that people aren't building? Is it because of council planning rules? Is it because the rules are too difficult to follow? Is it because of access to building materials? Is it because tradies can't make a living on the work that's available to them at the moment? Is it because major infrastructure projects have been cancelled, such as more than 3,000 State homes?

There are lots of different reasons, there are lots of different solutions, and I think understanding that this is a small part of the solution is important, but that we've also got to think about what next. This bill enables something; now how do we make those things a reality? Not just limiting ourselves to granny flats, how do we enable for truly multigenerational living if families want to renovate or make their homes bigger or more accessible for different generations living in their homes?

This bill is a good thing. We're really happy that there are still some good safeguards within this bill that will require the dwelling to still meet the building code, for the work to be notified to council, and for those people that are building or constructing those granny flats to have the right authorisations, which is really important. There's a lot of cowboy tradies out there. This is also important in the context of councils' consenting systems because, at the moment, council consents are at the lowest they have been over the last seven years, and I think there's a lot of different reasons for that, but this takes some of that out. We can definitely understand why those suspicions exist around this bill, particularly when we reflect on what happened during the leaky buildings crisis, when people weren't building properly, they weren't getting the right certification, and, obviously, that was disastrous for all of the people involved.

The other point I just wanted to raise at the end is that Andy Foster made some really good points about connection to utilities and about making sure that the power is connected in the right way, and it's connected to the right water systems and stuff. I think that's a really important point because we don't want to be creating risks and potentially creating little situations where there are lots of fires, because, just to plug the firefighters, they do not get enough support from Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ). They do not even have aerial trucks—lots of them don't have trucks in general, and won't be able to come out and service the fires if they happen in these granny flats. Up the firefighters! FENZ need to stop mismanaging. Thanks.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It's time we started saying "yes" to innovative solutions to our housing challenges. It's time we started saying "yes" to easing planning restrictions and unshackling ourselves from the bureaucracy of local planning laws. That is what this bill seeks to do; it is a good bill.

I wish to thank members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for diligently working through this bill. We have made a number of changes. Those changes have been outlined and my colleagues have mentioned those changes around the project memorandum, the design plans and liability protections, and also the building requirements that will be required. So with that, I just wish to commend this bill to the House.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Building and Construction (Small Stand-alone Dwellings) Amendment Bill. I'm interested in a couple of the words in that title that I just read out, and one of them is small. We've heard this bill referred to as the "Granny Flat Bill" and we've heard this word "small" a lot.

Of course, the size of the building is defined and, as we've heard, initially the policy position was going to be that it's 60 square metres and now it's 70 as the bill was introduced, and that hasn't changed. So we can argue about whether or not it is small—70 square metres—but it's certainly not tiny. It's not a tiny home and it's not as small as the flat that my husband's grandmother lived in out the back of their house in Oamaru, which was a granny flat. So we are talking about fairly substantial buildings. At 70 square metres, it could be a small three-bedroomed home with one bathroom. So not tiny, is my point on "small".

Then, of course, they're "stand-alone". So there are also—and I'll come to them—some requirements that they're a distance from the existing building and these buildings have to be new. We've heard that they're just the one story, as well, and the Transport and Infrastructure Committee has added in a ban on mezzanines, which makes some sense given that they can only be 4 metres high.

That is the "small" in it, and they are dwellings. As we were discussing, when the Minister was speaking before, they're not just for grannies, they're not just for uncles, they're not just for flatmates, they're not just for smelly teenagers; I think these were all recommendations of who they might be for. They could be for a family, as well. These are proper houses—they can be proper houses—and they're not tiny homes.

I want to start by going back to an earlier speech I made this evening about a totally different bill—related though—because it was about vocational training and of course the people that build these houses are trained in those great institutions. But this bill is not a flip-flop, and that is to be commended. It's very good to see this Government doing something that isn't flip-flopping. So, well done.

The process, however—good that it went to a select committee, this bill; that doesn't happen nearly enough. But unfortunately the process was a bit shorter than the six-month process and we heard from some of the members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that it was rushed and that there are probably more rooms for improvement. So I do want the Government members to hear my call that I hope the Minister, the Hon Chris Penk—who I know takes this issue very seriously—does look at further improvements that can be made in the committee stage. The report back from the Transport and Infrastructure Committee had unanimous changes, and I'm sure all parties who have been involved in the select committee would take good faith changes in the spirit that they were delivered.

Now, talking of spirit, I note that one of the ACT Party contributions was talking about councils and how they should interpret the spirit of this legislation, and he used the phrase that he didn't want to have the councils "wiggling out of", I think, the spirit of the legislation. He complained about councils being too finickity. That was not his word; that's my word.

Councils, as was described by an ex-mayor of a council, are held liable for substandard building work. So you can't just say to councils, "Oh, it's the vibe of the thing. We just want you to permit these things and we don't want any paperwork or anything." But then, "Council, if something goes wrong, you're going to get sued and the ratepayers are going to have to pay for it." That is not how the world works. So, councils, like any institution, are governed by the incentives around there, and there are some liability provisions in this, and it's very good that those issues are thought through and that it is acknowledged that councils are creatures of statute and have to follow the statute. In building cases—well, in all cases—they have to follow the letter of the law. That is, they have no other choice; that is what they have to do. So, no vibes please.

I also want to note that this legislation, when it passes, only applies to the building consent aspect of the consents that you might need if you're building a building. If you need a Resource Management Act provision, for instance, that is not covered by the bill that we're talking about today. It is interesting that the commentary to the bill notes that the Resource Management Act component of allowing these small, stand-alone dwellings to not have to go through a consenting process is going to be done through a proposed National Environment Standards for Granny Flats that is expected to take effect by the end of 2025. That is a regulation made under the Resource Management Act, and I, again, make a plea to the people opposite me that they talk to their Minister about that and perhaps change the name away from "granny flats" and make it consistent with small, stand-alone dwellings. That is my suggestion.

There's also some other permissions that might be needed. We see that the committee has made a change at clause 15, in what will be new section 42B. I'll come to what this section does, in a moment. It says "To avoid doubt, building work, sanitary plumbing, and drainlaying undertaken in connection with a non-consented small stand-alone dwelling must comply with applicable requirements under other legislation or documents under that legislation (for example, the New Zealand Electrical Code of Practice for Electrical Safe Distances,"—I won't give you the number— "unless the context otherwise requires."

So there might be other permissions that are needed on top of whatever the Resource Management Act and various plans and potential environmental standards say; there might be other permissions that are also needed. I think it'll be interesting in the committee stage to discuss what "unless the context otherwise requires" means, because, in this case, it is good that it's very clear what is exempt from a consent process and what isn't.

On that point, at clause 15 we have the new 42B, which is building work for which building consent is not required under Schedule 1A. I'll come to Schedule 1A in the in a moment. We've heard that from some other speeches, and that sets out exactly what the exempt buildings are. The reference to it is in this section, but it's interesting—and the Building Act, in the past, has exempt various buildings from needing a consent; this is not an unusual mechanism. This section refers back to the Schedule; if you meet the Schedule, then you can be exempt, except it is subject to the following conditions at subsection (3). So that is that it "complies with the Building Code to the extent required by this Act:", and some other issues, but it also relates to hazards. It is important that hazards are not exacerbated by additional dwellings being built on sites that might be prone to flooding, for instance.

My only point on these hazard provisions are that they do introduce an element of discretion that goes against the political rhetoric of "everybody is going to be able to build one of these 70 square metre houses." There are some constraints and they are important constraints. Whether or not that discretion has been thought through enough, I'm not sure; no doubt I will have some questions in the committee stage to ask about that.

I just want to quickly note: it is a shame that the small dwellings can have gas in them. This would be an opportunity to require electricity only, and also some other more ambitious building standards. But this isn't where those things are done. I hope that the Government continues more work on this field, as Labour did with the Building (Building Products and Methods, Modular Components, and Other Matters) Amendment Act.

Dr CARLOS CHEUNG (National—Mt Roskill): This bill represents a practical step forward in addressing housing affordability and accessibility. By simplifying the consenting process for small stand-alone dwellings, we are cutting red tape, supporting innovation, and enabling faster delivery of quality homes. It is a smart, balanced move to meet growing demand while maintaining safety and standards. I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call—Reuben Davidson.

REUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It's a privilege to take a small stand to speak to the Building and Construction (Small Stand-alone Dwellings) Amendment Bill. And a welcome back to this bill, that's come back to the House from select committee. As other members have commented, it's really good that a bill like this has been able to have scrutiny in that select committee process. By all accounts, from various members who have spoken about that process, it's been a really productive and—no pun intended—constructive process at select committee.

The other note that I think we should look at here is the very welcome work that this will bring to our builders, our sparkies, our plumbers, and tradies across the country who have been facing real challenge and uncertainty with the number of projects being slowed or stopped. The uncertainty in the construction sector has meant that a lot of construction companies haven't received the same levels of work that they would expect or that they had been used to expecting. So it is good to now see some level of certainty return for them.

Coming to the bill and what it does, we've heard a bit about the square metreage—the 70 square metres. In addition, the design must be simple, must meet the Building Code. The building work must be carried out by those authorised professionals—that's those registered builders and sparkies and plumbers who need that work—and councils must be notified that the work has been completed. That's really important too.

One of the things that is discussed a little in the assessment of the bill is some feedback from industry. I think it's worth noting that at this point, this feedback came from Master Plumbers, and they talk about the suggestion that digital record-keeping should be required by trade policy professionals. I think that's a good thing for us to focus on here because so much of the records that we've seen kept over time, and historically, around things like construction and building projects, have been kept in formats that are very hard to access, very hard to compare, and very hard to contrast, and because this bill has moved at pace, it does need to be closely monitored in its implementation.

Taking up the recommendation from Mr Wallace of Master Plumbers to ensure that digital tools are used to record the work and, therefore, be able to, at a national level, monitor what's been built—it's estimated 13,000 dwellings could be constructed over a 10-year period—I think it would be really good for any potential issues to be able to be identified and addressed as quickly as possible. We know that digital tools give us that ability for the level of oversight and the speed of assessment of the various data points that could be captured and collected. This also allows us to be far faster and more targeted at response when we see negative impacts through climate change and extreme weather events on these homes and dwellings. When people's houses are damaged, we would be able to get a far better sense of the horizontal infrastructure that provides the services for those dwellings to make sure that it can be addressed and remediated as safely and quickly as possible.

I think at the heart of this, though, what we know is that we have a desperate need for housing in New Zealand and we need to see a range of options made available and this, potentially, can fill one part of the market. But I think it's very important that it doesn't come at the expense of creating warm, dry, and safe homes for New Zealanders, because every New Zealander deserves to have a warm, dry, and safe home. In the speed to see this construction and this legislation take place, we cannot lose the focus on making sure that all New Zealanders have a warm home that is safe and that is dry.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It really is a pleasure to rise and speak to the second reading of the Building and Construction (Small Stand-alone Dwellings) Amendment Bill. As I said in my first reading speaking, I'm really looking forward to how this is going to help the over 50 percent of migrants in my community now that we've got the parent visa up and running. I commend this bill to the House.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to take one of the final calls tonight on the Building and Construction (Small Stand-alone Dwellings) Amendment Bill. I am a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, but didn't sit on the committee when this bill went through, but heard plenty about it.

As has been said in the House tonight, Labour will be supporting this bill. We do have some reservations, as has been well traversed by all of our previous contributors. I think it's important that we take the opportunity not only to talk about what the bill does, what we do like about the bill, but outline, again, why we have some issues with the bill—not so much in so far as some of the technical issues that have been well and truly outlined by my colleague Arena Williams earlier on, but also just taking some time to outline the fact that whilst there's a huge problem in this sector and in housing in general, this is a very small piece of the puzzle and therefore a very small contribution that's before us tonight.

We do agree with the fact that simplifying the rules for small standalone dwellings can help families. It can help them by adding space. It can help them by improving the flexibility in so far as the way that they conduct their living arrangements, including the flexibility for intergenerational living arrangements, which is becoming something that is perhaps more and more necessary, not just a choice—and a good choice it is to be made at the best of times, but a lived reality that many people find themselves in the situation of adapting to. Anything that we can do to make that easier and to make that simpler is something that we will support.

But that does not limit our ability to have some reservations and to have some caveats. Principally, this bill shouldn't become, essentially, a Trojan horse for lowering building standards, leading to what is quite patently riskier construction practices if not done right. We've seen in Auckland and other places around the country, all too frequently, how severe weather and various events can be incredibly devastating, and certainly devastating to homes and houses, and therefore devastating to communities. In the spirit of increasing housing supply, which we all agree is incredibly necessary—and, also, not always simple; it requires several levers and several tools in the toolbox. But in the service of aiming toward that, we have to make sure that we're not loosening those standards in a way that increases risk, because it's really important. A home and a house isn't just a financial investment; it's people's whole lives, and it's not just financial risk involved in those adverse events or unforeseen circumstances, it's risk to life and safety as well, which is incredibly important.

The bill, as has been said, will help some people build a small, self-contained unit for either a parent or a child or any whānau member, but we shouldn't pretend it's going to make a large dent in the housing supply. As my colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking said, 70 square metres is not a tiny house. Seventy square metres is relatively substantial, and it's certainly—depending on where you live; certainly if you live in the middle of Christchurch or Auckland or Wellington, 70 square metres can be a well-designed home. It's not the quintessential granny flat come shed out the back of the backyard that's a bit of a make-do; it is a substantial dwelling and therefore needs to have those protections and the substantive thoughts and process around making sure that they're safe.

Experts have already noted that the impact of this bill, of this piece of potential legislation, will be modest in so far as saving people perhaps a few thousand dollars and some paperwork—nothing to be sniffed at, absolutely, but it won't solve our housing shortage, and that is really important. As Professor John Turkey pointed out, without building consents, authorities almost certainly will lose that robust oversight of how many new dwellings are being added and the pressure on local infrastructure. That's something that we've heard mentioned tonight, but not in a huge amount of detail, and I think that's worth repeating. It means that local government could be left managing not just stormwater but stormwater drainage and road capacity as things develop, with less information and fewer resources. That's really important. Those are things that require management and require planning that can be difficult at the best of times without this added complexity, so I think that that is something, most definitely, to be mindful of as well.

The other overarching theme of the contributions that have been made tonight have taken the opportunity, whilst we're talking about housing and whilst we're talking about construction, to note—quite correctly—that the construction sector is in crisis, and it certainly is. This bill in itself is small, it's a positive step, but it's in the shadow of a much, much bigger problem. The National Government, as we've heard tonight, have made decisions that absolutely have caused a dramatic slowdown in new builds, and we've seen that manifest in various ways right across New Zealand.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Selling Albertson Ave.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: Yup, exactly. If we look at the statistics that are readily available for anybody to check in to, specific statistics that were released in April this year show that 33,595 new homes consented in the year to February this year—February 2025—and that was down 7.4 percent from the year before. That's huge when you start to quantify that, not only in terms of investment, not only in terms of the impact on the economy, but certainly in jobs as well. That is huge. It's the worst February for home consents since 2012.

As we've talked about, the housing shortage in this country is something that everybody agrees is incredibly important, but it requires momentum. The previous Labour Government had built more houses, more social houses, for instance, since the 1970s, and to sit on this side of the House and watch all of that momentum disappear through what I believe to be poor decisions from the current Government—you can't turn that ship around lightly. It's really disheartening. This drop came straight after the Government stopped Kāinga Ora building houses and cut $1.5 billion from the public housing build and that maintenance fund as well.

Those houses aren't just bricks and mortar; they are people's lives. As my colleague Hon Rachel Brooking has managed to interject in many parts of her discourse today, her very prominent example where she comes from in Dunedin. Where I come from, there's a single Kāinga Ora house in Lyttelton, for instance—one house, and they're selling that, and the woman who's lived there for 42 years has been unceremoniously told that, in her 70s, she has to leave. I think if this Government is hell-bent on divesting from the public good, public housing, it would have been much more preferable for them to get their own house in order before considering selling this single house that is actually quite life-destroying for the individual involved.

These cuts mean fewer homes, fewer jobs, and less capacity in our construction industry. When we think of the 20,000 construction jobs that have already been lost—which is 20,000 workers—we can only look at this particular bill, whilst we support it, being such a trivial, small step in the overall situation that we're facing. It's one thing to make it easier to build a granny flat, and we applaud that and we will be supporting it. It's one thing to make it easier to whip up a small building in the backyard. It's another to make sure that New Zealand still has the builders, the jobs, and the families with homes and communities that can certainly weather the next storm. Whilst the contributions from the other side tonight haven't been very substantive and we haven't gleaned much more information from that tonight, we now found ourselves at the end of this process. I commend the bill to the House.

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): This is a great bill. I commend it to the House.

SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei): I have great pleasure in commending this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am going to take the discretion of using about 40 seconds, and the House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 9.54 p.m.

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