It’s not enough for the Minister to monitor building supply prices – what about drainage?

MBIE to monitor building supply prices – Ministers

Building supply prices will be monitored by the government in response to the Commerce Commission’s building supplies study, Ministers have announced.

Land covenants across the entire economy will also be reviewed.

It’s part of the government’s response to the Commerce Commission’s final report in its Residential Building Supplies Market Study, delivered in December.

The government has largely agreed to eight of the commission’s nine recommendations and said it would go further on three, with the only recommendation not taken up – to promote compliance with the Commerce Act – fitting “within the commission’s current work programme”.

One of the eight recommendations agreed to, seven were agreed in full with one – introducing competition as a regulatory objective – agreed “in principle” and will be considered as part of the Building Consent System review.

The government said it would go further on this measure, by requiring MBIE to monitor building supply prices.

Last month the Government finally moved on regulating the outrageous situation of Building supply prices and while the Commerce Commission is now asking questions about the same uncompetitive tactics in the drainage industry, it isn’t happening fast enough.

The country is being forced to rebuild from the floods and storms yet the same uncompetitive duopolies controlling drainage supplies are still in effect pushing up costs to the final cost of the build.

This is particularly damning when you consider Kāinga Ora has so many state houses built on flood prone land!

They have 15% of state houses on current flood plains AND of Kāinga Ora’s future builds, 16 per cent were in rainfall or river flood-prone areas and 1.7 per cent were in coastal flooding zones at risk of sea level rise!

Why are we allowing the ongoing cost strangulation of drainage to continue to hit our base costs for State Housing when so many State Houses are prone to flooding?

The Commerce Commission needs to open an urgent inquiry into the drainage industry so that the two main suppliers can’t do to plumbing what the big construction players are doing to everyone built above the land.

 

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