Page 1788 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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with the environmental impact assessment system created under the Planning and Development Bill. Still other amendments, such as those to the Tree Protection Act 2005, align that legislation with the 15-day referral period in the Planning and Development Bill.
Government amendments to the Planning and Development (Consequential Amendments) Bill are technical in nature, either correcting errors in drafting or making sure that other legislation is amended to accord with the Planning and Development Bill.
The Building Legislation Amendment Bill facilitates one of the government’s principal reforms. It allows building certifiers to give building approvals for single residences in new estates, provided those houses meet the rules of the relevant code, thereby removing the need for a development approval. Government amendments to this bill are of the following types: amendments that are necessary to ensure that the bill’s provisions achieve their intended effect; amendments that make language clearer or more compatible with the respective provisions of the laws they amend; some amendments to fine-tune the administrative arrangements around the various aspects of the building construction, statutory approval, inspection and certification processes under the Building Act 2004; other amendments to take account of consultation outcomes on the bill and several amendments to resolve anomalies in the Building Act 2004.
Substantive changes to the bill by the government amendments will ensure that appointments of a certifier can be continued if they expire at the proposed five-year expiration date. This will discourage certifiers from exploiting a loophole to avoid their responsibilities as certifiers. Also, changes will ensure that certifiers do not have to notify government of matters government would already know about in relation to the certifier’s appointments ending. This will avoid unnecessary paperwork.
Changes will enable a regulation to prescribe the kinds of advice referral an entity is permitted to give when building approval applications are referred to the entity for advice. That can have the effect of establishing informal terms of reference to ensure that the referral entity’s veto power arising from disapproving a plan is not used beyond those terms. The changes will resolve an anomaly relating to when certifiers have to notify government about non-compliant building work; ensure that certain evidence certifiers have to give to government is adequate for the purpose for which it is provided; provide a mechanism for government to determine if it is appropriate to certify the demolition of a building or the erection of a structure and, finally, make more prominent the bill’s provisions dealing with estoppel in exercising rectification order powers. I table the revised explanatory statement.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Sitting suspended from 6.33 to 8.00 pm.
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