PERMIT TIME

Talk to any builder, new home-owner, engineer, architect or developer and see how they feel about the Resource Management Act. They don’t see a wonderful tool for saving the environment. What they see is a long winded process designed to maximise frustration, grow the employment of plodders in a myriad of government and council organizations all seemingly there to increase costs and force us into confrontation with people who appear to have no direct interest in what is proposed in the first place.

You have to be a brave risk taker to even contemplate entering this mine-field, yet we open the national newspaper and there on the front page are our politicians attempting to build the biggest sports arena in the most prominent position in our biggest city on the edge of our best harbour and all without having to advertise publicly for submissions or even start the long dreary trudge that faces the rest of us.

A new footy field for the World Cup might possibly be a great idea and those in power have known it was coming for sometime, but to be able to just do what no other developer or citizen can do on the spur of the moment seems wrong to me.

Politicians have been calling the building industry cowboys for years and instituting all sorts of registration processes requiring those in the industry to demonstrate their skill and experience (which is fine) but a quick look around parliament and there are no builders, developers or engineers, so who’s a cowboy?

Remember it was politicians acting in the interests of large building supply firms who changed the rules to allow untreated timber that caused the leaky rotting buildings syndrome. Not the builders who had no say in that decision.

Countries where the powerful elite can behave in a way denied to the citizens going about their legitimate business are usually frowned upon. We think they are to be found in Africa or old communist countries. By all means get on with the Rugby stadium in a quick decisive way but make these same prompt processes available to those of us for whom a building permit normally takes months and a resource consent often runs to years.