Will the government's changes bring down building costs?
Photo:
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Opposition parties say while the devil will be in the details on the government's latest building products changes, they support in principle what looks like a "sensible" change.
But Labour and the Greens are also criticising the coalition's cancellation of hundreds of construction projects, saying that is what has led to a downturn in the industry.
They also say delaying changes to the Building Code will mean New Zealand lags behind the rest of the world.
The government on Sunday announced it would be
releasing a list of overseas certification schemes that would automatically qualify products for use in New Zealand
.
Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk said the list would "have the potential to reduce total building costs by thousands of dollars when building a home".
"There are thousands of well-made, high performing products that have been tested against rigourous international standards but have faced barriers for uptake here, purely because they have not been specifically tested against our own standards. From tomorrow it will be much easier to use plasterboard manufactured in New Zealand, Australia, UK, Europe and the United States," he said.
"This is just the beginning of our work to open the door to more building products, lower the cost of homes and turbo charge the construction sector and there will be more to come."
He also announced a pause on "any new major changes to the Building Code system" and shifting instead to a "predictable three-year cycle for Building Code system updates".
"This new approach will give businesses the clarity they need to prepare in advance, rather than constantly having to react to unexpected rule changes."
The government will be releasing releasing a list of overseas certification schemes that would automatically qualify products for use in New Zealand.
Photo:
123RF
ACT's Building and Construction spokesperson Cameron Luxton was a builder in 2022 during the plasterboard crisis that saw some builders paying six times the standard price for 'GIB' branded plasterboard.
"I had designers trying to get changes to the existing consents so that we could use other types of wall lining ... if we could have recognized overseas plaster boards and the components around their systems, we would have been able to get things built in New Zealand a lot easier and a lot quicker during that time," he said.
"Those crazy days of the post-Covid building construction boom with us at the moment but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be focusing on getting the price of all building down."
ACT's Building and Construction spokesperson Cameron Luxton
Photo:
VNP / Phil Smith
He said the government's approach was almost exactly the same as what ACT campaigned on.
"What we campaigned on was a recognised list of products. The bill came into the house as that, it's been through select committee, we've come out the other side with it being schemes, standards and products.
"Minister Penk has done an incredibly good job engaging with the industry and making sure that this bill works - it's so close to ACT's you couldn't find much air between our original policy and this one, it's the same principle, called some different things."
Both Labour and the Greens supported the bill through the legislative process.
Labour's Building and Construction spokesperson Arena Williams said it was likely to make it easier for building products to get into the New Zealand market, and increase competition - but that doing so was one of the recommendations of the Commerce Commission study launched under Labour.
"We think this is an important step, but the government has talked a big game on lowering the cost of building because that's an excuse for absolutely collapsing the building and construction sector and seeing 17,000 jobs lost since the day of the election."
She pointed to a range of projects that had been cut - Kāinga Ora public housing, school builds, the downgrading of hospital builds - saying that had directly led to those jobs being lost.
Labour's Building and Construction spokesperson Arena Williams.
Photo:
VNP / Phil Smith
The minister was now admitting the solution would not be a silver bullet for the sector, she said.
"Now they're saying this will only be part of the solution and it won't do everything that's needed to bring costs down ... they have no answer for a building and construction sector that's on its knees, it's slumped lower than it did in the global financial crisis, and we're seeing thousands of young Kiwi builders going offshore."
Announcing the change without releasing the detail until the next day was "an unusual way to do things," she said.
Williams said she planed to carefully examine the standards when made public, to ensure they were sensible.
Green Party Building and Construction spokesperson Julie Anne Genter took her criticism of the approach further.
"We see every week pretty much announcements on a Sunday don't have any substantive new actions or information, and in the last few weeks, it's been related to the building sector or infrastructure, because the government is desperate to turn around the narrative.
"This is very much a government that is focused on PR spend more than substance."
She said the changes themselves "could be great or it could be terrible, depending on which building products and which licensing schemes they're looking at".
"The devil will be in the detail. The detail hasn't yet been released. But I really can say that the government has put the construction sector in a terrible position by cancelling hundreds of projects related to public homes, which we need now more than ever. I saw last month, one third of company liquidations for construction firms, and that was up on last year."
She criticised the pause on Building Code changes.
"That is a huge lost opportunity. The previous government had a work programme on building for climate change and it was going to address a lot of the issues that we have in terms of energy efficiency, resilience," she said.
"The certainty is we're not moving forward with our Building Code, they're providing the certainty that we're going to lag behind most other countries and have a much longer period before we have sustainable, healthy buildings."
"Ultimately, this is not enough to help New Zealand with the problems we're facing when they've cancelled so many public home builds."
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