Ethics Awoken

Sometime in 2020 or thereabouts, the Department of Housing(under MBIE) threw down an idea that builders in New Zealand needed the additional umbrella of a Code of Ethics. Whilst it may be one thing to demand moral behaviour, it is another thing entirely achieve it, and significantly more difficult to enforce.

Ripping off a granny, or those who have no idea what things should cost, is one of the oldest grifts going round, yet no amount of legal framework is ever going to impede the types of individuals who make their way in this world by taking advantage of the less wary.

Licensing of builders was the first big move made by the Department of Housing, (predominantly as a reaction to the leaky homes crisis) which had the best intention of creating merit-worthy and autonomous licensees who could be trusted to carry out work which will fulfil the building code requirements, and decrease the oversight required by territorial authorities. As the scheme developed, the scope broadened, and the department realised the variation across the industry was never going to be corralled by any precise categorisations which could allow builders to function in the way which, for example, electricians and gas fitters do, in certifying their own work.

Due to the complexity of the building industry, the variability of a person who can call himself a ‘builder’ has such broad interpretation, that either ends of the spectrum are separated by an ocean of speculation. Builder types (see here) can be skilled, honest, and efficient, or at the base level, lacking industry knowledge, poorly skilled, and unmotivated, yet both carry the same title. How to classify these disparities was the challenge which the Department of Housing set itself in its first attempt to regulate the industry, something which if compared to the prior regulatory environment (work signed off by local councils) has made very little headway.

Moving on from their initial underachievement, they have then followed on, like most government departments, down the dim corridor of woke hypocrisy. The moral crusade sweeping the planet, that of attempting to level the playing field by creating a rules set which does not differentiate between levels of competence, has reached our shores, and industry. The true test of proficiency comes ultimately in the form of reputation, and financial reward, or, market forces to put it simply. As with most forms of trade, there are those who make an honest dollar from an honest days work, and those who will steal pennies from peanuts, regardless of who they harm. Any attempt at introducing a form of legal penalty is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach, hoping to scrape up the vagabond builder from the ruins of a flawed contract, then heal his broken moral fibres, before sending him back out on the site, to do it all again.

Compelling ethical behaviour from an individual is no more likely than instructing a cat to play fair with its prey. The types of individuals who fail to meet the standards set in this area, generally do not give a damn for social norms, nor bother to comply with the legal frameworks which attempt to restrict such behaviour. Whilst the creators of the policy can be celebrated for playing their part, no amount of pink/blue/purple rinse will flush the poor character out of a bodgie builder.