PM defends Hawkins' handling of leaky buildings

By JOHN ARMSTRONG

It's an oldie, but a goody.

Sooner or later, the National Party was bound to resort to the tactic of asking the Prime Minister in Parliament if she had confidence in George Hawkins' handling of the leaky building crisis.

For the Prime Minister, this kind of question is lose-lose.

She can hardly reply "no", however much she privately might want to say "no".

Saying "yes" has her publicly backing a political liability. But anything short of that leaves the unfortunate minister in unhappy limbo.

Helen Clark's stock reply to such questions is to say she has confidence in all her ministers.

But yesterday she declared she had confidence in her Internal Affairs Minister because he was "hard-working and conscientious".

Which, by her standards, was a bit of a pat on the back for Mr Hawkins - and a one-finger salute to hooting Opposition MPs revelling in the Government's mishandling of the crisis.

Whether the Prime Minister had cause to revise her assessment later in question-time was a moot point.

Mr Hawkins was as lumbering as ever as he faced further Opposition probing on what he is doing to help leak-afflicted homeowners.

"The Government is aware that homeowners have a concern about some builders and developers avoiding liability," he declared - an understatement of the obvious, which brought an outbreak of ironic applause from the National benches.

Pondering why people found him so funny, Mr Hawkins soldiered on, outlining once again the Government's "three-pronged approach" to the rotting homes syndrome - the setting up of a mediation service to resolve disputes quickly and with minimum cost, ensuring the availability of building inspection services and "looking at what needs to be done to ensure that these problems do not continue".

For Winston Peters, the three-pronged approach was more accurately summarised as "see nothing, hear nothing, do nothing" as a potentially guilty party was hardly likely to turn up to a mediation conference.

Mr Hawkins was not going to be ridiculed quite so easily, cleverly noting that Mr Peters' three-pronged anti-immigration, anti-Treaty of Waitangi industry and anti-crime slogan had worked for the New Zealand First leader during the election campaign.


* If you have information about leaking buildings,
email the Herald or fax (09) 373-6421.

Further reading
Feature: Leaky buildings

Related links