Unit Titles Amendment Bill

I move, That the Unit Titles Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill formerly constituted Part 27 of the Statutes Amendment Bill, which the House has just considered. Although the Government Administration Committee considered that the amendments to the Unit Titles Act 2010 were minor and technical, there were so many of them that it was appropriate for them to be contained in a separate bill. Therefore, the committee resolved to divide the Statutes Amendment Bill so that Part 27 became a separate bill known as the Unit Titles Amendment Bill, which the House is now considering.

The Unit Titles Act 2010 has been in force since June 2011. Its purpose is to allow bodies corporate, which comprise all unit owners in a development, to operate and manage unit title developments. The Act provides guidance to bodies corporate and unit owners to assist them in managing their property. In 2011 Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment officials and industry stakeholders identified several minor and technical issues with the Act, such as incorrect cross-references for terminology, and the Unit Titles Amendment Bill corrects these minor drafting errors. Although the proposed amendments are minor, they are important, because they affect the day-to-day administration of property affairs by bodies corporate and unit owners.

The following amendments are examples of how the bill will clarify the original intent of Parliament when the Act was drafted. The bill simplifies disclosure when buying a unit by allowing buyers to choose from a list of relevant information from the seller, rather than receiving all material, as is currently the case. This will help both parties to the transaction. It clarifies that a body corporate can seek to recover unpaid levies through the Tenancy Tribunal, enabling bodies corporate to recover unpaid levies quicker, and it clarifies the types of general orders that the Tenancy Tribunal may make to resolve unit title disputes. This will assist with the resolution of more disputes.

I wish to thank all stakeholders for their input into the amendments in this bill, and I also acknowledge the support of my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith, the Minister of Housing, on the bill. I commend the bill to the House.

I think that some people will probably be puzzled when listening to Parliament debating this morning. It is probably not an unusual situation, actually, that people would be puzzled listening to our debate, but it is not common that we have a bill going through all stages under urgency when there is the complete agreement of every single member of Parliament on it. So, just to explain that a little more to people, this bill that we are debating, the Unit Titles Amendment Bill, originally came into Parliament as part of the Statutes Amendment Bill, which is a vehicle for making technical changes to bills that do not change the policy, but where there has clearly been an error in the original drafting or a lack of clarity about the intent, and every member of Parliament has to agree to the provisions of a Statutes Amendment Bill.

When our select committee, the Government Administration Committee, was given this bill to consider, we looked at the provisions in Part 27, which covered the Unit Titles Act amendments, and said that there were too many. None of them on their own constituted a breach of the statutes amendment regime in that none of them changed policy—they were just clarifications of the original intent—but there were so many of them that we considered that they should come out of the Statutes Amendment Bill and be considered as a stand-alone bill. We agreed that we would support its speedy progress because we understood the desire for better clarity in the unit titles legislation, so we said that we would support it going through the House in, you know, a reasonable fashion. We did that in May of this year. Nothing was further from our imaginations than thinking that our commitment to having this bill progressed would then mean that it would be put through all its stages under urgency It is just incompetent House time management that this is where this bill has ended up. I just want to put on the record the fact that it is very expensive for taxpayers to have Parliament sitting under urgency. In my view, the term “urgency” should have some relationship with the urgent need of the matter that is before Parliament, and this clearly has no such need.

The other point I want to make is that we have now been waiting—New Zealanders have now been waiting—for 5 years for the Government to take some substantive action in terms of the housing issues that we face. In Canterbury, as a result of the considerable population movement because of the earthquakes and the damage and the influx of a large number of people from outside Canterbury—indeed, from outside New Zealand—to help with the rebuild, we have a housing crisis. People are literally not able to afford rental property in their own communities, and that has caused a lot of anxiety. But the Government has not done a single thing towards addressing what I am sure the whole of Parliament would love to hear about: what the Government will do to address the serious and genuine housing needs that we have in our country. So we have silence from the Government on the substantive needs of New Zealanders, and here a bill that is totally agreed on by every single member is being put through under urgency. It smacks of incompetence, it smacks of arrogance, and it smacks of a total dislocation of this Government from the real needs of New Zealanders.

I rise to also support the Unit Titles Amendment Bill and associate myself with the comments made by my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson. This was part of the Statutes Amendment Bill. Unlike most other parts of the Statutes Amendment Bill, it did attract a number of submissions and well-reasoned submissions. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those submissions were outside the scope of the relatively minor changes that were being made as part of the Statutes Amendment Bill.

I do want to reiterate that there has been a commitment to a substantive change in unit titles legislation. We had a minor change in 2010. It became apparent in 2011 that there were at least 21 minor errors to the minor legislation, and some major errors to that and some areas that needed to be looked at. Unfortunately, despite the commitments that were made to the Government Administration Committee by officials and by the then Associate Minister of Justice, there has not been any progress—although I can be proven wrong. There might be a Unit Titles Act amendment bill introduced in the next couple of weeks. We did have an undertaking that we would have something back before the end of the year that dealt with the substantive matters that were raised with the select committee, but we had to tell the people making the submissions: “Sorry, this is a Unit Titles Amendment Bill, but it is not wide enough.” It was not wide enough to encompass and to deal with the very real issues that are causing harm to people who own or want to develop unit title properties, or who want to convert properties into unit titles.

I do say to members opposite to, you know, think about Auckland a little bit, and think about some of the intensification that needs to occur. To do it properly, one of the answers—it is only one of the answers—is to have decent working unit titles legislation. It is important if people are going to feel safe putting what is often their biggest investment—for most New Zealanders, their biggest investment is their property, the home that they live in. If people are going to feel safe about having unit titles, there has got to be good legislation and there has got to be appropriate legislation, and we have not got that yet, despite the promises of various Ministers, including Maurice Williamson and Nick Smith, over a period of time.

As has been indicated, this makes 21 amendments, all of them minor, to a minor bill that was enacted by Parliament under the National Government in 2010. The idea that the Government can make 21 mistakes in a relatively small bit of legislation does go to the lack of focus on detail and the lack of care of its Ministers, and the fact that they do not work their Cabinet committee and the select committee process well. In most countries making 21 errors in a relatively minor bill and having to come back to Parliament to get it fixed up a year or so later would be a source of outrage, but, unfortunately, that is the level of competence we have come to expect from the National Government. The bill comes to the Opposition, and the only reason we are supporting it is that it does a little bit of good for some people who have got unit titles.

Bill read a third time.