Kia ora, talofa lava and warm Pacific greetings everybody, great to see you all here. Thank you all for joining us this morning. My name is Greg Pollock, I'm the Chair here at Business Central in the Wellington Chamber of Commerce.
We're very excited to hear from Minister Chris Pink shortly and just before that we'll do a few pieces of housekeeping. In the event of a fire, please evacuate the building to the nearest exit out this way, the way you came in and assemble on the designated assembly area out the front of the building on Lampton Quay or outside the car park entrances on Waring Taylor and Johnson Street. In the event of an earthquake, remain in the building, move away from the windows and any heavy equipment.
Toilets, the women's toilets are here just outside the door to your right and for the men's toilets you need to go through the door here and again to the right. As you will have seen on the flyers on your seats, on Wednesday the 13th of August we're hosting a lunch with the Honourable Shane Jones and having seen him speak recently I can tell you that will be at the very least entertaining and I'm sure very informative. So please book your tickets, it'll be great to see you all there.
Expect an honest and insightful discussion on politics and the New Zealand economy in an articulate and open forum. First off, particularly for the members in the room, I would like to acknowledge the departure of Simon Arcus recently. Simon was a tireless advocate for business and our members and led the organisation through a particularly difficult time during the pandemic and as a board we've wished him all the best for his future.
In the meantime, we have the fantastic Amanda Wood here who many of you will know and be familiar with, who is the acting CEO while the board conduct a search for the permanent CEO. So the next thing, just to acknowledge people in the audience, in particular Business Chair Andrew Hart is here, nice to see you Andrew, great to have you here with us. Now, without further ado, it's my pleasure to welcome our guest speaker this morning, the Honourable Chris Penk, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing, Building and Construction, Land Information and Veterans and Associate Minister of Defence and Immigration.
It's probably hard to find a Minister who has more relevant portfolios to the work we do here at Business Central. Be it the future rules facing our SMEs, helping supercharge the construction pipeline or powering up the manufacturing sector, Minister Penk's portfolios touch on most of the facets that make business move. We've been really encouraged by some of the moves the Minister has made since coming into government and have also been thankful for his continuous engagement with the sector and our organisation.
So Minister, thank you for that. New Zealand faces a critical skills shortage, an overly regulated SME sector and major productivity challenges. We need to see all of these issues addressed in order to truly capitalise on everything New Zealand has to offer.
Hopefully we'll hear more on that today. Minister Penk is certainly one to watch with his portfolios now for this very reason and undoubtedly one to keep an eye on with his trajectory into the future. Before we hand over to the Honourable Chris Penk, I'd like to thank our partners, Allen and Clark, for this morning's event.
As you're aware, we've been partnering with Allen and Clark to present the Beehive to Business series and we're very excited this time to welcome not just everyone in the room with us today but also our members from across the central region watching on live stream today. So just to say a few words, could I please welcome Sean Stack from Allen and Clark. Thank you Greg.
Tena koutou. As someone who's currently eyeing up a spot on my section for a 70 square metre log cabin, it's my great pleasure to conduct part two of Minister Penk's introduction. A quick trawl of Minister Penk's announcement page on the Beehive's website reveals a man on a mission to improve the productivity of New Zealand's building, construction and manufacturing sectors.
Examples I'm personally excited about include removing barriers for overseas building products being used, enabling remote inspections and expanding self-certification. At Allen and Clark, we do quite a bit of work around the construction sector. The big challenge in the sector is workforce retention and progression.
How can businesses in New Zealand hang on to their staff long enough to develop them and then realise the benefit of investing in their development? There's a whole lot of stuff that individual businesses can do to increase their performance relative to other businesses, but at a national level, the cyclical nature of demand makes retention and progression difficult. Which brings me into perhaps a brief unexpected aside into Minister Penk's associate defence portfolio. Minister Penk's defence delegations include the defence estate and defence industry.
Great crossovers with building, construction, manufacturing and small business. Defence Capability Plan 2025, released in April, includes planned commitments of up to $2.5 billion for defence estate and housing projects through to 2029 at defence sites across the country. I'll get to the crossover shortly.
Aside from providing NZDF personnel decent places to live, work and train, these programmes of work have huge potential to act as sources of counter-cyclical investment to bridge the gap between workforce supply and demand in the construction sector. This will give businesses confidence to invest in developing their workforces and using technology to improve their productivity. All things that Alan and Clark are good at helping with and New Zealand needs.
So thank you, Minister. And then one personal request before handing over to Minister Penk. Minister Penk was a navigator on a Collins-class submarine for a few years.
I'm sure that there must be some form of analogy between driving a submarine and being a minister. Perhaps something to do with huge responsibility, very little room for error, and big consequences for getting your speed and heading wrong. Minister, if you could work an analogy into your address, I'd appreciate it.
Please join me in welcoming Minister Chris Penk. Good morning and good morning. Thanks so much for the opportunity to join with you today.
I'll have to think a bit more deeply about how we can incorporate some sort of submarine reference into my remarks and steer away. Now, sorry, I can't stop. You shouldn't encourage me on this.
You shouldn't encourage me. But I'm thinking, all at sea is not probably the best. Losing away or even more controversially in the realm of naval vessels that go underwater.
I left New Zealand Navy to join the Australian Navy because we didn't have any that were underwater at the time. Sadly, that's no longer true. But with maritime fleet renewal, as another of my delegations from the Minister of Defence, Judith Collins, that's an even more urgent task.
But of course, on a very serious note, the mantra that there's no economic security without national security, regional security, global security, is what I'm hoping will sort of segue me back into the economic growth thing that I'm probably meant to be talking about. But look, thanks for the introduction. Thank you very much for having me.
I appreciate, of course, the generous support of the event by Ellen Clark. So again, appreciate the introduction and Matthew, whom I met previously, is here. And thank you very much, Jeff, for you and your team for supporting.
But also to all of you in the room, a number of you I've had the pleasure of interacting with already on a number of occasions in different fields, some of which are building and construction, some of which are explicitly small business and or manufacturing. And I really appreciate the engagement. And please know from a government point of view that we know that if we're to have that economic growth story in the country that we desperately need, then it's only going to be because the likes of yourselves and your respective partners and clients and those for whom you work will, you know, that's our only opportunity, frankly, to dig ourselves out of the hole.
And New Zealand is in a tough economic time, of course. And I don't need to tell you that. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir and you're all too well aware in many cases.
But I think it is worth reflecting because obviously, from my point of view as a government minister, I'm bound to say that things are looking rosy and at least the medium to long term. But I just do want to acknowledge that a lot of people have done it pretty tough over the years. On that note, thanks again for the opportunity to engage.
As far as I'm concerned, the connection between Beehive and business is at least as much me listening to you as speaking. And I haven't come with a list of Beehive press releases simply to read out. Really looking forward to the engagement.
So I'll keep my opening remarks suitably brief, maybe just cover sort of on a thumbnail sketch basis a few of the things that I'm working on within that broader picture that reflects the direction set by Prime Minister Luxon and also, of course, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis, and then see where you want to go from there. So on that note, with a number of different portfolios that I have, I think that could be helpful, hopefully, within that economic growth story. First of all, building and construction, which will be dear to the hearts of many in the room.
And it goes without saying that for any economy that has roughly one in 10 workers directly or indirectly employed in that sector and contributes, roughly speaking, a proportionate share of GDP, 10% or so for those who are even less mathematically agile than me. It's obviously hugely important in the places in which we live, work and play. So the importance of getting that sector to be more productive than it is currently, at which the level is, by the way, the same as it was in 1984, seems to me an urgent and important proposition.
The work in this area, as has already been touched upon, includes what I have been calling so far self-certification. But actually, I should probably rebrand, and I'm now trying. So for the comms people in the room, please refer to it henceforth as responsible builder regime.
The point there is that whereas a responsible trade person or builder or developer is able to do their own work in my conception of the world and sign that off, the implication that that's a little bit like marking your own homework makes people nervous and understandably so. But actually, if we think about it in terms of those trades persons and entities that can be trusted to respond in the event of a failure, then they're not only responsible in that general sense of being fit and proper persons and having the assurances that we want in terms of solvency, insurance, guarantees, bonds, indemnities and so on, but actually also be able to respond in the event that currently a local council does, frankly, when they're signing off your work. So we want more productivity in the system.
The lens is a risk-based approach whereby if there's relatively low risk building typologies, think repeatable, straightforward, small in the case of the Granny Flats design and trades professionals who are qualified registered professionals with accountability and the ability to have them respond in the event of a single building failure or, heaven forbid, a larger scale event, then we'll improve the productivity because the focus of the resources of the system can then be on those that don't fit that mould, frankly, in terms of the characteristics that we would say a responsible entity has. So that's so much for building construction, although with references having been made already to building product liberalisation, such that overseas jurisdictions that are credible and comparable, which is to say similar or higher standards to those in New Zealand and similar in respect of their environmental conditions, such that it makes sense for us to borrow their standards, and then the other elephant in the room is always, including where we stand, the earthquake-prone building rules, both here in Wellington and elsewhere. Regional New Zealand is being hollowed out and, frankly, if it's not demolished by a large quake, it will be demolished in the interim, but more slowly and less dramatically by the operation of a regime that was brought in in good faith and well intended in terms of wanting to preserve life safety, rightly so, but nevertheless, which makes it uneconomic to repair buildings for which the risk profile is, in some cases, and you can sense we're trying to carefully calibrate the regime, to have another look at that, basically, to ensure that we've got a risk-proportionate approach.
I'm being reasonably open about where I think that could go, but I emphasise where I think that could go. It's an important conversation, and the business community and, of course, the wider New Zealand public needs to be brought along the way with that, and the other side of the political aisle, by the way. I think it's important to be bipartisan in this space because we want New Zealand Link to have the confidence that any particular measures we put in place won't be on the ballot paper next year and in three years and six years and so on, but I think it's important that I'm open about where we're thinking about going, but with the caveat government decisions haven't yet been made in this space, but in a matter of weeks, I'll be able to talk more publicly, more definitively about where we might go with it.
To give you a heads up, though, there are geographical areas in this country that are low seismic risk, and it is a relative term in these shaky aisles that we inhabit, but low as opposed to medium and high, and then you've got building typologies that are more justifiable for exclusion or possible exclusion from the regime, being, for example, one or two storey buildings, and to the extent that we've got concrete buildings, it's worthwhile examining if pre-1976 structural reinforcement regime is such that we can regard older buildings as more risky and newer ones less so. Without getting into the weeds, and I know I'm in danger of doing it, the one takeaway I guess I would encourage you to have if you're interested in this space, and you might be directly affected or indirectly affected, but we're all affected at some level, is that we're wanting to have a regime that asks the question really thoroughly and diligently what buildings don't need to be caught by the regime, which can we exempt, and then for those that remain, of course, what policy levers can we pull to ensure that it's possible, feasible, and frankly economic to be able to do the work such that we can then protect life safety, which is of course the aim of the exercise. So much for building and construction.
Small business and manufacturing. Small business is an interesting aspect because, I mean, not only for the obvious reasons that it's so broad in terms of the number of businesses and so important to New Zealand, it's, you know, the cliche goes, the backbone of the economy, 97% of New Zealand businesses being 1 to 20 equivalent full-time employees, and therefore small by that definition, but also because they provide such community connection and part of the supply chain for medium and large businesses. But it's interesting from a policy sense because I don't have any particular levers that I can pull, so I interact obviously with ministers in the space of employment relations, workplace health and safety, revenue, economic growth slash finance in the case of the recent investment boost announcement that Nicola Willis made at the Budget, and so obviously happy to take on board any feedback or any discussion that you might want to have along the lines of those particular areas, and obviously I'll play my part to help to advocate for those within the beehive, and any other point that I'd make obviously is around regulation, and there's a few different ways that we can make sure we have a sensible level of regulation, and I don't want to sound ideological ever in relation to the degree of red tape that we have, but a sensible level of regulation, again in the sense of having a good risk-based kind of approach, I think would indicate that for smaller outfits that it's possible to imagine a world in which we lower the compliance burden, because of course it has a disproportionate effect for small players that don't necessarily have in-house legal, or a whole human resources department in relation to HR and so on.
So up for those conversations, and just know please that we're really determined to make sure that the burden of red tape is removed where it cannot be justified, either through my portfolio, talking with others in the beehive, the sectoral reviews one by one that the Ministry of Regulation is undertaking, and of course every minister in his or her ordinary course of work should be examining this within their respective sectors, so you know not going down the rabbit hole of building construction again, but that's an example that all ministers are undertaking across the board within their own realms. As for land information, I know that sounds quite arcane and maybe even technocratic, and in some cases in some parts it is, but it's actually really important in my view for economic growth that we have robust systems for people to have confidence in being able to deal with land and other assets. The mapping of New Zealand, be it for purposes of understanding natural disasters and recovery response that's needed, sadly an increasingly timely and important aspect of life and public policy in New Zealand, and also the ownership of large parcels of land and large numbers of parcels of land in New Zealand by the Crown, other than in the conservation estate.
A little-known fact, the Crown owns huge swathes of the South Island, not in the conservation estate or in addition to the conservation estate, but in a way that is under a temporary government regime that started in 1851 and persists to this day, known as the pastoral lease regime, and the pastoral activities that are currently allowed are those which were envisaged in 1851, sheep, beef, dairy, again insert reference to the backbone of the New Zealand economy, and with due deference and congratulations to the primary sector that continues to hold us up, frankly, from an export point of view and economically. But also noting that there are other ways that we can utilise and maximise the value of land in this country, other than or in addition to those traditional pastoral activities. So watch this space for some policy work that will ask and more importantly answer the question on how we can make sure that farming is productive for those entities and maybe in other ways as well for land that the Crown owns, for which it doesn't get as great a return as it can or should.
Passing really briefly then through to the portfolios of veterans, which is a subject dear to my heart, but roughly speaking, I think reflects the moral and legal responsibility that the Government of New Zealand has to those who have served as sailors, soldiers or aviators, and working with non-government organisations such as the RSA. We had an event at Beehive last night, so it's top of mind. But also thinking about the way that we can ensure that our obligations to veterans who qualify under a certain piece of legislation are met.
And then finally, just to round it out, associate defence we've touched on, and then associate immigration. And I hasten to add, for reasons of my own self-protection, I'm not the Minister for Immigration, that's Erica Stanford, she's doing a great job, but she holds the policy levers. So if you've got any feedback on that, obviously very happy to relay that to her and be part of that discussion.
And I'm sure from a small business and or manufacturing point of view, that will be important to you. You'll have probably views on whether we should be more liberal or conservative in terms of our approach to work visas, obviously, but also residence and study and so on, because a huge effect, of course, on the nation's prospects in terms of the Kiwis that we bring in here as new Kiwis and all those who come here for a short period of time and then leave. So we know that's important for them and for all the cultural and social reasons.
And given all the benefits that are possible through immigration, but also, of course, from an economic point of view, so grateful to hear your thoughts in that space as well. So with due weariness of the politician, he says he won't speak too long, and he looks forward to hearing from you. I think at this point, and without having started a watch and therefore really risked things, I'm going to hand back to our gracious hosts and through you, sir, take any questions or comments that you may have.
Thank you, Minister, for your really helpful address. I don't know about anyone else, but I remember the 1980s. And when you talked about 1984, I had this sort of image of scrubbies and barter bullets from my youth.
But it was really fascinating to hear that productivity hasn't shifted since that time. And so you've laid out the challenge, I think, to all of us. I know that was in a particular sector, but small business sector, I think, has got real opportunities to improve our productivity.
So really keen to hear more about that. We've now got some time for questions from the floor, but perhaps if I could just start with one. Just from that small business portfolio, if you could sort of magic away one regulation that you hear from small business all the time is really constraining for them, what's on the top of your mind? I mean, employment relations, it gets raised a lot.
And so I wonder if there's something we can do for smaller businesses that have the chilling effect of possible employment relations authority actions. And the fact that that's quite a broad remit for that body to decide whether a business should be allowed to let someone go. Obviously, excluding harassment or discrimination under the Human Rights Act type activities.
I think, obviously, of course, we always want a basic protection there. And even the 90-day trial regime that we have now recognises that, rightly. But I think there's something in there for smaller businesses that don't want to restructure their entire but small business setting just to be able to justify letting go someone who, frankly, wasn't working out.
I think businesses don't likely let someone go. They don't recruit them and train them and go through all that for the sake of being able to wave them goodbye later on a whim. And I think if we have a bit more of an understanding around the costs and benefits of hiring, then we know that counterintuitively, we might actually encourage businesses to be able to take on more workers with the confidence that if things don't go well, they're not going to have to spend some multiple of $10,000 to move someone on or be shaken down for $10,000.
And I can say that as a former lawyer. And I'm sure not all lawyers are like that, but I was. And now I've remembered it's been live-streamed and therefore recorded, which I would have done well to remember earlier.
But in the area of possible reform, I should add genuinely not government policy, but also with respect to the relevant Minister being Brooke van Velden, who's already doing work in other areas that I think have been helpful for small businesses. And you're wanting me to improve productivity. Make it easier for us, please.
Yeah, very fair challenge. Did everyone hear the question by the way or comment? Yeah. No, there's a couple of shakes.
She was just saying what a good job I'm doing. Are there any other questions? No. In all seriousness, the interaction of the real world with government, I know, needs to be more productive at our end.
I think, I mean, that's always a good challenge for government agencies themselves, but also as between them. I think the siloisation that occurs naturally, but with the best of intentions around Privacy Act and limitation of data, I think we do need to unpick. I think most people are not so bothered about that as maybe we imagine.
I should clarify, I'm sorry, it's the IT systems. Okay. It's just logging in.
Yeah, so IT systems and logging in. I think there are some potential answers in that space, and we're not going to crack that nut entirely today, but I would say we're broadening the NZBN number usage, and there's a combination of encouragement slash potentially mandating. We don't mandate lightly, and we wouldn't want to add more red tape at the same time.
We're trying to make it easy to deal with government. But I think a single identifier, according to which a business and also charitable, non-government, etc., can interact with government will make it easier to be able to do that. But frankly, it's probably a fair challenge in terms of the specific interactions you've had.
So I'll take that on board. Thank you. Yeah, nice points, Minister.
I'd say this from GS1, but in terms of Minister for Digitalisation, it's one of the ones that you clearly could interact with more, and I think there's been existing under your previous government, when Joyce was in charge, cabinet direction around how to do the NZBN ecosystem well, because after all, small businesses just want things to happen easily. I really concur with what the observation was. But I think it's more than just the legal entity.
I think that's useful. But actually, fundamentally, government agencies regulate places, they regulate physical locations. And I think we just need to get onto that, because actually, often these are the same place, but they're multiple ministries requiring the same information to be followed in different ways around physical locations.
What do you mean, physical locations? I mean regulated places, be it fisheries, required place. There's lots of things that could be done as the Minister of Regulation. I think you're closer with her because it depends more on her.
So I really concur with that comment. Yeah, no, good, good. Thank you.
I take that as a helpful comment and a rhetorical question. I guess in terms of digitalisation, the other point I'd be remiss not to make would be in relation to e-invoicing and in ways that government wants to be able to interact more readily and quickly in a digital environment. Of course, for those that don't want to invest in their systems at an individual business level, we sort of understand that.
But at the same time, we want to have the productivity at the government end and also to encourage that sort of halo effect that others then might go, well, actually, there is a better way than faxing the invoice, update the fax machine. But actually, even going beyond the measures that are currently in place. And government procurement, of course, has a role in that.
And I know this is a little bit further away from your question, man, but I guess in terms of procurement with the simplification of the rules that Nicola Willis is leading the work on consulting on to simplify, but also add a generalised National New Zealand Benefits Economic Test, I think might be helpful in terms of putting a thumb on the scale of Kiwi businesses that otherwise feel as though they are prone to be outbid by overseas players or larger players within New Zealand, whereas there could be a more meaningful allocation of frankly, you know, taxpayer funded work, you know, $50 billion being procured every year. And so just sort of doing that in a more thoughtful way. So hopefully that goes a little bit towards helping the issue that you've quite rightly raised.
Next question just here, but can I just ask you, sorry, I should have said this at the start, just introduce yourself and where you're from. Hi, I'm Marcus Ganley from Frank's Overweek. I wanted to ask a question about earthquake prone buildings.
The work you're doing around risk proportionate regulation is really important. I've heard quite clearly your point that, you know, still decisions are yet to be made. So that's it.
But I've also got a really important point about talking across the aisle and making sure this doesn't become litigated. I'm really interested in whether your approach is how it's being heard by officials and by councils, because that's another part of it. You know, it's really important, obviously, to get the political level buy-in, but is there some buy-in to what you're trying to do there? Yeah, a really astute question, if I may say.
I think everyone's on the same page much more than I would have expected, at least till now. And so the caveat now pivots to, let's see what happens when I get into public domain talking about how many lives we're prepared to lose and what the value of human life is, you know, for the record, including if it's been recorded. You know, for me personally and philosophically, the value of human life is limitless and infinite.
But in a public policy sense, of course, there is such a thing as a statistical value, and dare I say it, even a dollar figure. And of course, the public policy justification is that if we can spend the same amount of capital from a public fund or private point of view, saving more lives on the transport system or in the public system, be it drugs, through pharma or other public health measures, then of course, we should do that, logically speaking. But it'll be an interesting and difficult conversation.
Nevertheless, I think everyone instinctively gets that, certainly for those that are most deeply affected, if you can't afford to do the remediation, then it doesn't happen. The problem with gold plating isn't, of course, that you've got gold plate on things, it's that you don't have the things at all, you can't afford them. And that is a problem.
And that doesn't mean, of course, that we're blind to the life safety risk, but it means we get down to the lowest base level that we can reasonably justify. Of course, usually the answer to these propositions is you do some reasonably defensible benefit cost ratio analysis. You can argue the toss over assumptions, but you can get a number and you can see what stacks up.
In the case of earthquakes, it's a difficult proposition, I think, for us to comprehend, certainly at least for myself, because you have a large, potentially catastrophic event that's very unlikely in any given period of time. For example, within a 50 year period, which is the length of building durability that the building code demands, we've immediately got a mismatch. But I think the system is responding to the real world pressure to do something in this space.
I was really pleased on the bipartisan notes that whereas the Labour Party voted against the legislative measure to extend the deadlines initially at first reading, they did listen carefully to submissions at select committee and they supported us in their endeavour at subsequent stages. So credit where it's due, they did listen. And from my point of view, of course, they got that right.
And there's widespread appetite to get it right, because there's so much at stake. And I would just say, because you've specifically referenced local government, local government's a key player in all of this. I mean, they've got an interest not only in the sense that they've been asked to vacate buildings and be the regulator and the bad guy, frankly, when buildings aren't able to meet the standard, but also the large owners of these buildings themselves in many cases.
And I don't need to tell you in Wellington that council decisions around earthquake prone buildings can be expensive and politically difficult to navigate. So yeah, I'm really optimistic that we'll have a good outpouring. Outpourings are not always good, but in this case, hopefully a positive response to the idea that we're going to do something and that we're going to do it quick because we want the certainty.
We know that chilling effect of uncertainty is hindered, not helped, the longer that we throw things up in the air. But nevertheless, within the next 12 months to be able to legislate, and yes, before the next election is my intention, then to bring as many people on the way. So yeah, wish me luck.
Thanks. Minister, you mentioned procurement and I know there's a review underway, but how confident are you that the practises and the risk adversity in the public sector on procurement, i.e. I can't take a risk on a smaller operator in New Zealand, I need to stick with the big guys because otherwise I might get in trouble. So I'm better to pay twice as much for a big guy as pay half the amount for someone who does twice the job.
How confident are you that you're actually going to get change after the review? Really good question again, if I may say. I'm really confident we'll get the change at some point. I guess the caveat there is if we don't get change immediately, then we'll know we need to keep changing the settings because it's important that we do have the economic benefit of smaller as well as large players in New Zealand.
I mean, defence is a classic example in terms of risk aversion. And when you're paying for assets that have a dollar sign in and then the next character starts with a B, not an M, obviously a huge amount is taken. And of course, for the right reasons in national security, we want to get that right.
But we also don't have time given the geopolitics and frankly, the importance of all the other factors that go into the reason we want a credible, well-resourced defence force. We don't have the luxury of time to spend whole decades at a time planning and building and acquiring and testing the next thing. And maybe the point is to be more agile and to actually go with the flow in terms of the technological development, which is around, for example, drones as opposed to large fixed wing aircraft or even helicopters and so on.
So being more modular in design and interoperability with Australia and others being key, also interoperable in the sense that if we have a, for example, a naval vessel that is able to respond in a genuine blue water, navy, projection of power, World War III kind of event, but also at the same time be able to be equipped for that humanitarian assistance, disaster relief in the Pacific. And by Pacific, by the way, include New Zealand, you know, it's Pacific Island that we need to help out when they are hit by disaster and we're standing on one. So, you know, we need to be as agile as possible.
So I think the agility, but also the creativity is what the system needs to respond to. And again, I mean, it's not for me to speak for Nicola Willis in terms of what might happen should the intended and hopeful benefits, you know, come through in terms of the procurement rules. But, you know, frankly, we'd all agree and understand that we've got to get it right.
So, you know, again, watch the space, because if it doesn't, you know, respond as we need for the purpose of economic growth, then we'll have to keep working on it. OK, if there's maybe we've got time for one more question, if there is one. Donna Hurley from Simpson Greyson.
And I just want to touch on something that you haven't actually mentioned today, but wearing your Minister for Land Information hat. PWA is something that you've spent a lot of time and energy on so far this year. We've got the critical infrastructure bill before the House.
Just, you know, addressing the infrastructure deficit is a key to everything that flows right through to Wellington and small and medium businesses and everything in between. I'm in the weeds there, working day to day on this. What is your timing for getting the general bill before the House? Yeah, so thank you very much for that.
So PWA, Public Works Act, does sit within the realm of land information, but also other stakeholders who are particularly interested, Ministers of Transport, Infrastructure and so on. I mean, as you've rightly noted, the importance of infrastructure is such that we not only have to get the resource consenting right, you know, the fast track regime being one, and a particularly high profile effort to speed things up, and important for all the right reasons, obviously, as with the business as usual RMA reform that Chris Bishop is leading. But in terms of the PWA, so critical infrastructure, which is an umbrella term for Roads of National Significance, but also Fast Track Approvals Act consented works that have a public element.
You can see why we've gone with the more catchy critical infrastructure. So roughly speaking, Fast Track and Roads of National Significance projects will have the benefit of a critical infrastructure regime. So that's where we've got, frankly, more generous provisions in terms of compensating beyond 100% of the value of the property, but also a streamlined process whereby instead of having recourse to the Environment Court, it would come to the relevant Minister or the local authority.
And with Land Valuation Tribunal avenues and also High Court proceedings in the case of judicial review still available. I'm sorry, I know you know all this so far, and I'll get into the answer, but I was probably remiss in not having mentioned it before on that topic of land information. In terms of that one, I think within the next couple of months, certainly pre-Christmas, and actually a similar but slightly subsequent timing in terms of the business as usual version of the PWA.
And the long story short is that I'm aiming to have both of them passed by the middle of next year, because of course with an election and sometime in the second half of next year, it's beyond my mandate to know what that date is. A National Party MP called Chris will decide that, but it's not me. A different National Party MP called Chris will probably advise them as well, but between Mrs Luxton and Bishop, they'll set that date.
But I'm working backwards from the middle of next year as the point by which we need to have everything locked in. And the obvious point for that one, but also harkening back to our earthquake-prone buildings, is that as much public buy-in as possible will be helpful. In both cases, we've got the benefit of some excellent reviews chaired independently in terms of where we should go from an expert perspective on a policy sense, albeit with government and the minister responsible.
But with as much public buy-in as possible within a select committee period of four to six months, but needing to pass it before the middle of next year, you can see it's going to be tight. So that's very much the aim, to get it done. In the case of the critical infrastructure, maybe quarter two next year to be passed through all stages, and certainly by the middle of next year on PWA, BAU.
Never use acronyms, they say, I've just banged out a couple in a row. LOL. Minister, thank you very much for your time this morning.
To show our appreciation, here's a small gift from the Love Local box of goodies. Thank you. Oh, wow.
In particular, I really appreciate your tireless work on behalf of small business and manufacturing and all of the portfolios you've mentioned. It's great to have someone so receptive to the things that business is really keen to talk to government about. And we look forward to continuing that conversation as you push forward with various reforms and changes.
Wonderful. Thank you very much. Thanks so much, Greg.
And thanks, Tim. Really appreciate your time. As well as the presentation, I also enjoyed the humour.
And I think you did well with the submarine challenge. So thank you. Lastly, I just wanted to thank and acknowledge all the members in the room today.
Without you, we couldn't run these events and we couldn't advocate on your behalf. And we really appreciate you. If you're not a member and you are interested in becoming one, please talk to one of our staff today.
There's a number of us in the room about the many great benefits we have to offer. So thank you to our sponsors, Alan Clark, and I wish everyone a very good day. Thank you.
