Chris Penk: Building and Construction Minister says allowing foreign building materials will encourage competitive business

The Government says foreign building materials will help bolster the construction sector.

A new pathway will mean any product, no matter where it's from, will be able to be used if it passes New Zealand standards.

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says it will increase competition and in turn lower prices.

He told Mike Hosking that we're missing out on a lot at the moment, and that it's a no brainer to use a product if it complies with or exceeds our local standards.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And so what sort of effect does the big construction
product announcement have on the cost of your next new build.
A whole bunch of offshore building products are going to
be allowed into the country now, meaning choice and cheaper
prices theoretically. Chris Panker is the Building and Construction Minister
is with us.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Chris, morning to you, good morning right.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Just for clarification sake, are all of these products available
as of today at Bunnings and Mitery ten and all
the other places you want to buy window frames from.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Well, they'll be stocked when the retailers make those available.
And actually some of them are already available and can
theoretically be used in this country. But the point about
specifying this pathway is that you don't have to mark
around and argue that local council about whether, according to them,
these should be legitimate or not. So in some cases

(00:44):
it will be an immediate effects. In another cases it
will be a rolling more of people giving hits around
the idea important and being able to use. As follows,
a lot.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Of attention on plaster board is that the bulk of
it or is there genuine savings to be made on
a variety of other stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
We think that nuine savings across the board speak. But
plaster board's well known as a case study because there
is market dominance with one player at ninety seven percent
usage currently, but also because of that supply chain shortage
that we had back in twenty twenty two, which sparked
a lot of the conversations about the resilients as well
as the competition more broadly, and of course the downward

(01:22):
pressure and prices that we need. So we've specified doors
and windows, insulation and a few other items, but more
to come as well. It's the rolling more approach.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
So the numbers we got yesterday, X was more expensive
in Australia by thirty eight percent, thirty seven percent, et cetera.
In totality, if I work my butt off to get
the best product in the best price, what do I
bring my house price build down too?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well, I mean it's had to be sopecific and get
out the crystal ball. But let's say twenty five percent
of the cost of a building is materials, which is
what we've had indicated to us, maybe even slightly more,
and so on a six hundred thousand dollars new build,
for example, that's one hundred and fifty thousand dollars up
for grabs, so you only need a small percentage across

(02:08):
that kind of money to actually get quite a significant
saving of tens of thousands of dollars. So we're really
optimistic it'll make a market change.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
This might be an ignorant question, how do we get
ourselves into this mess in the first place?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, I mean it's risk aversion, and for all the
right reasons. You know, we don't want, you know, materials
that are not up to scratch, and by that I
mean not meeting unusual under standards. But if you think
about that as a natural starting point, but then go, well, actually,
are there ways we can get around that problem? There
must be something between flooding the market with cheap, nasty

(02:40):
materials and what we've got now. And the answer is
surely that if there are credible and comfortable countries that
use good materials according to standards that are equal or
higher to those in this country, then why wouldn't we
So that's exactly what we're doing to do.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
That's up. That makes perfect sense. I don't know why
we didn't do it soon. A Chris Pink, who's the
building and construction Minister.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
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