Minister for Building and Construction Megan Woods has set up a ministerial taskforce to address plasterboard shortages.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The taskforce includes key construction, building consent, and supply chain experts.
"The government is committed to supporting the building sector to deliver the homes and buildings that New Zealand needs," Woods said.
"That's why my top priority is to ensure builders, from big companies to single tradies have the materials they need to do their job with confidence."
It is made up of Naylor Love chief executive Rick Herd, Registered Master Builders Association of New Zealand chief executive Dave Kelly, Simplicity Living managing director Shane Brealey, The Warehouse founder and chair of the Tindall Foundation Sir Stephen Tindall, an LGNZ representative and 2degrees founder Tex Edwards.
The taskforce will look at whether regulation of alternative plasterboard products is needed, ways to streamline the use of products untested in the market, new distribution models, advise on consent approaches and act as a forum for related supply chain concerns.
Woods said she had asked the taskforce - which will come together for the first time next week - to rapidly offer solutions.
She said she was concerned the trademarks Fletcher Building had placed on certain colours of plasterboard could be impeding the importation of alternative plasterboards.
"That's why I have written to Fletcher Building to seek confirmation that they will work with the sector and not take action with regard to their trademark protections, to further free up supply.
"I know that they want to help us solve this problem, and asked them to ensure that they weren't applying that trademark restriction. They've given me an assurance that they're not, and they won't until May '23."
Fletcher Building said it would welcome constructive suggestions to solve the current supply problems.
It said it had already given nonexclusive, royalty-free licences to 10 parties to import foreign made plasterboard, which might breach Fletchers' trademarks.
"This morning we confirmed to the minister that we will grant similar licences on similar terms to other parties until May 2023 after which time our new factory in Tauranga will be operational and more than meet the current demand requirements," it said in a brief statement.
National's leader Christopher Luxon said the taskforce was a "total farce".
"It's an urgent issue and sending an urgent letter and actually forming another working group or taskforce or whatever you want to call it, it doesn't get the job done."
He urged the government to work with National to pass a bill under urgency allowing imports of plasterboards that met the Australasian standard, actively seek those out, and stop councils prescribing the GIB brand.
"Why don't we actually work together on this and cut through and pass something under urgency next week exactly like we did around the Ukrainian sanctions ... I think that's what we need - it's an urgent issue, we need urgent action, not another working group to discuss some stuff."
ACT's leader David Seymour urged the minister to order the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to set up a materials equivalence register to ensure foreign imports were considered the same as GIB.
"It's not technologically sophisticated, it's just a sandwich of cardboard and plaster of paris, and yet the government's solution of a plasterboard taskforce? Bureaucracy as a solution to bureaucracy sounds like the start of a bad joke rather than a solution."
Equivalents were used in Australia and the US, and the risks were minimal - especially in dry interior areas, he said.
"This government has rushed through every possible type of legislation under urgency and when it comes to a serious problem holding up the whole building industry, threatening industry players with bankruptcy, all of a sudden - crickets, they're going to set up a taskforce," he said.
"I thought this government had moved on from having 180 working groups ... we're back where we started."
Woods said the taskforce was no working group.
"Absolutely not. This is a group of people that we've been talking to a few weeks now ... we're seeing action out of the ideas that these people are having, I want to bring them together into a taskforce so we can make sure that government is putting all the support that it requires around them."
The government also wanted to prioritise ensuring quality safeguards through brand certification, she said.