ACT is welcoming the passage of the Building (Overseas Building Products, Standards, and Certification Schemes) Amendment Bill, which delivers on ideas ACT campaigned on in 2023.

“Finally, we're liberating builders and tradies to make use of materials widely approved overseas," says ACT Housing and Construction spokesperson Cameron Luxton, who is also a Licenced Building Practitioner.

"Outdated local rules have denied New Zealand builders access to innovative, effective, and affordable products, and this has limited competition, driven up costs, and locked younger generations out of the housing market.

“We’ve seen massive price hikes for essential materials, and the previous Government’s response was to set up a ‘plasterboard taskforce’. It was like a bad joke. The real issue was that we’d banned popular plasterboard equivalents and other building materials used overseas.

“Internationally and locally, there’s constant innovation in building materials, but our bespoke local rules have held us back. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, because regulators in trusted jurisdictions are already doing the work of evaluating these products.

"This aligns with ACT’s wider war on red tape, including our ‘rule of two’ proposal for approving overseas medicines in New Zealand. It’s common-sense thinking: if a product is good enough for our friends overseas, we shouldn't deny access to it at home."

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