Depends. We had a big "leaky home" problem in the biggest city, Auckland. It was largely due to inappropriate fashion - Mediterranean style houses in a rainy warm climate - incompetent architects, cowboy builders who weren't familiar with the properties of the newer quick-and-easy building materials, used untreated timber for framing etc
- and slack though expensive inspection by the building authorities. The knee-jerk response has been an absurd multiplication of rules and regulations, no increase in independent inspectors to make sure they're followed, and a system by which tradesmen can go to yet another course and get a certificate to say that they are allowed to supervise and OK work by those who don't have that piece of paper.
This of course guarantees that when the home-owner finds that something has been built poorly he can pursue the builder / plumber etc instead of the Council having been responsible for signing it off. If he can find him... if the company is still in existence. If the builder's company hasn't gone bankrupt or gone out of existence only for another to be started by the same people, if the tradesman hasn't gone overseas to retire, address unknown, or died (address ditto!). House-owners were forbidden to do - oh, heaps of things that competent home handymen have been doing since whenever-r-r-r-r. A lot of time and money-wasting silliness without, alas, any meaningful guarantee that when you buy a house it'll be soundly built of the correct materials for the situation, appropriately installed.
Rant over. Serve you right for pushing my indignation button :=)
A L P