Earthquake reset may be one of the Government’s most lasting achievements

Monday, 29 September 2025

ANALYSIS: The Government’s move to change standards around earthquake risk is both unexpectedly bold and long overdue.

It has gone further than most people expected — or wanted, depending on their interests. The previous Government, distracted by Covid and other crises, effectively parked the issue in the “too-hard” basket.

Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk has now scrapped the one-size-fits-all regime created in the legislative aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes. Instead, he has targeted the rules more precisely, focusing on the parts of buildings most likely to pose a risk to life.

Under the new system, most buildings under three storeys will be exempt — unless they are concrete, have loose masonry or a fragile façade facing the street. In those cases, only the hazardous frontage must be strengthened, not the entire building. In Christchurch, most deaths aside from the collapsed CTV and Pyne Gould Guinness buildings were caused by falling masonry and debris from shopfronts.

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This tighter targeting probably makes the overall regime marginally less safe. But it balances that with other risks, such as derelict buildings left to rot because owners couldn’t afford uneconomic compliance costs.

It’s a similar approach to Penk’s recent overhauls of building standards and product approvals. The Building Code, rewritten in 2004 in the shadow of the leaky homes crisis, became bogged down over time — slow, costly, and overly rigid.

Earthquake-prone building rules, which attempted to quantify the probability of death in an “average” quake, ended up forcing many buildings to sit empty while being uneconomic to repair. Like the leaky homes regime, it arose from a major shock — and like that system, it is now being sensibly reassessed.

Auckland has been removed from the seismic risk map entirely. Small towns can simply secure their main-street shopfronts. Thousands of buildings will be released from the system, with only about 80 now required to undergo full retrofits.

The savings are enormous. As The Post exclusively reported this morning, more than $8 billion in remediation costs will be avoided — over half of that from Auckland’s removal alone.

Of course, any loosening of the rules carries greater risk. The trade-off is stark: every regulatory relaxation could mean more lives lost in the next big quake. The question is whether the balance is proportionate. On the evidence, it looks about right — maximising the biggest safety gains, while letting most building owners get on with their lives.

Governments make decisions about acceptable levels of death every day: in the health system, on the roads, in countless areas. Usually these trade-offs are hidden behind dispersed, private tragedies, rather than concentrated in a single, traumatic event like an earthquake.

This is another significant achievement for Penk, who is now clearly the next in line for a Cabinet post — and surely sooner rather than later. The issues are technically complex, politically fraught, and difficult to resolve. By most accounts, Penk has struck the right balance: industry feedback is that he listens carefully, considers the detail, and then makes a call.

The changes have been widely welcomed by the property sector, local government, and mayors around the country. ACT, meanwhile, couldn’t resist reminding everyone that David Seymour opposed the original 2016 legislation.

As with all reforms, unintended consequences will surface. But Penk has handled this portfolio adroitly — detailed, pragmatic, and without unnecessary bluster or chafing bombast.

By the next election, these reforms — expected to be law by mid-next year — will stand among the Government’s most consequential achievements of the term.