Brian Rudman: 'Blame game' ends when justice is served

Despite years of warnings, bureaucracy responded to the leaky buildings disaster at a snail's pace. Photo / Derek Flynn

Building Minister Maurice Williamson is dead right to describe the leaky home crisis as "equivalent to a natural disaster of huge proportions".

The 1931 Napier earthquake, our biggest previous civil calamity caused $548 million of damage (in 2008 dollars) to the cities of Napier and Hastings.

The repair bill for the leaky homes saga could be $11.3 billion or more.

Highlighting the parallels however, serves only to deliver fair warning of how slow and inadequate the official response is likely to be if New Zealand is struck by a major natural disaster.

If another volcano suddenly pops up in the Waitemata, or Wellington is unexpectedly reconfigured by an earthquake, chances are the survivors will still be stuck under blue tarpaulins in 10 years while the Government fiddles.

We all sat back with a certain "it wouldn't happen here" smugness, criticising the United States government for its slow response to the New Orleans hurricane, the Haiti earthquake and the current oil leakage calamity in the Gulf of Mexico. But compared to New Zealand officialdom's snail-like approach to the leaky homes crisis, the Americans moved with the speed of a bullet.

In 1994, the bureaucrats and politicians were getting early warning signals from experts about the impending risks of an epidemic of rotting houses.

In October 1994, the Herald reported building surveying expert Greg O'Sullivan talking of "a potential time bomb" ticking away in new houses.

The Auckland Master Builders Association agreed. Instead of listening, the government went ahead the next year and exacerbated the problem by allowing the use of untreated, kiln-dried timber.

In December 1998, Mr O'Sullivan's brother and business partner, Phil O'Sullivan, distributed a a six-page report on "dry rot in monolithic-clad New Zealand buildings", which concluded: "I have little doubt that we are being confronted with a large proportion of modern buildings that leak." The bureaucracy did not respond.

Not until March 2002 was an independent inquiry set up by government, chaired by former state services commissioner Don Hunn. The Hunn report acknowledged major problems and predicted a $240 million repair bill - which now seems laughable.

It took until 2004 for the Building Act to be changed to stop any more "leaky homes" being started. By that time, an estimated 42,000 - possibly up to 89,000 - potentially leaky homes had been built.

For most of the past decade, the impression one gets is that the main aim of government was to avoid any responsibility. It's an approach that continues with Mr Williamson's latest announcement.

To the question of liability, he replies: "The Court of Appeal held that the Government has no legal liability. Issues can be laid at the doorstep of a lot of people and organisations, but the blame game has been played for too long."

He would say that of course, because he was a minister in the National-led government that enacted the permissive Building Act 1991, which allowed the disaster to happen.

That the Court of Appeal says the Government has no legal liability may be legally correct. But it just shows the law can be an ass. The cause and effect is there for all to see.

Just as is the fact that once the law was changed the problem seems to have dried up. This is why Mr Williamson is anxious for an end to the blame game. I disagree.

As the minister says, this is "a disaster of huge proportions". As such, it requires an official inquest of the sort other disasters have received. Tangiwai, Erebus and Cave Creek were all examined and reported on, not just to apportion blame, but to learn from. In the case of leaky homes, such an inquiry might teach us that relying on Nanny State to set strict guidelines is not such a bad thing after all.

This week's announcement is a belated acknowledgement from the Crown that whatever the Court of Appeal has said, it must accept some responsibility both for the crisis and for compensating the affected.

It's been bullied into this by local body mayors, including Auckland City's John Banks, North Shore's Andrew Williams and Wellington's Kerry Prendergast, who are anxious to spread the burden being lumbered on their ratepayers.

As the last parties standing in court proceedings after many developers, builders and architects folded their tents and fled, local councils faced having to pay all the compensation awarded.

As those involved have been observing, this package is not the Eureka moment. Even if they take up the 50 per cent payout from local and central Government, victims are still left to battle through the courts for the rest, or dig into their own pockets.

But it is cash that wasn't there at the beginning of the week, for which they will be grateful. But cash is not enough. We need an inquiry, too.