Subsequent to the Christchurch Earthquake in February 2011, Minister Nick Smith introduced the bill into Parliament which would require most buildings to be brought up to at least 34 per cent of NBS within a specific timeframe.
The rationale behind this arbitrary number is that buildings under 34 per cent are "likely to collapse in a moderate [100 per cent strength] earthquake". A large number of buildings in the Christchurch CBD were under 34 per cent and yet in a 200 per cent strength earthquake they did not collapse and in fact performed remarkably well.
The Seddon quakes of 2013 registered 100 per cent strength in parts of central Wellington and yet not one building collapsed - in fact there was almost zero damage. So the science is not settled on this and many leading engineers disagree strongly with the minister's approach.
The economic impact of the bill will be enormous - at least $1 billion in cost to save an estimated 24 lives in the next 100 years - that from MBI. The select committee has recently adopted the recommendations of Dr Anne Trower and others that much more important was the need to immediately secure building facades and parapets, the collapse of which caused the majority of injuries and death outside of the awful CCTV building. This work can be done for a fraction of the cost and save many more lives. Dr Trower is a senior lecturer in Public Policy at Lincoln University and was the sole survivor in a bus crushed by an unstable facade in Colombo St.
As the prominent economist Shamubeel Eaqub says, this bill is likely to cause zombie towns in provincial New Zealand in areas already suffering from population decline such as the West Coast. He describes this as "really bad policy. If we focused on what was likely to cause death and injury, we would have much better policy." His view is supported by Richard Bentley who says "the whole thing is just mismanaged and unfortunate, and a really stupid piece of policy making". Mr Bentley is a distinguished fellow of the Institute of Professional Engineers NZ and a director of GNS Science from 1991-1998.