Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister for Building and Housing: I move, That the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill amends the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act 2006 to make sure that the options available to homeowners under the Act, and in particular the Financial Assistance Package, keep operating effectively. In 2011 this Government amended the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act to set up the Financial Assistance Package. This is an important part of the help that the Government has been providing to owners of leaky homes. Instead of money being spent on litigation, the Financial Assistance Package focuses on getting on with the repair of leaky homes by offering funding from the Government towards the repair costs.

As at 31 January 2016 there were 1,198 claims, representing 4,177 homes that had been assessed as qualifying for the Government contribution of 25 percent towards the repair costs. The estimated future cost to the Government in the financial assistance contribution is estimated at about $105 million. That is expected to generate an estimated $420 million of repairs via this assistance package. As well as the Financial Assistance Package, the Act provides other alternatives to court action, such as mediation or adjudication by the Weathertight Homes Tribunal, for eligible owners of leaky homes. All of these measures are aimed at providing alternative routes for homeowners, in suitable cases, to costly and lengthy court litigation. The bill does not change any of the substantial provisions of the Act. It simply refines some aspects of the Act to provide clarity to claimants and remove doubt and uncertainty. It does this by amending the Act in three important areas so that the options available to owners of leaky homes under the Act continue to operate validly and effectively.

First, the bill removes the possibility of a legal challenge to the validity of some criteria for the Financial Assistance Package for leaky homes. This risk concerns two of the contribution criteria that homeowners have to meet before they can be eligible for the Financial Assistance Package. The bill lifts those criteria out of a Gazette notice and places them into the Act. The bill does not change the wording or the meaning of the criteria in any way, but puts the validity of the criteria beyond any doubt by relocating them into the Act and amending the Gazette notice accordingly.

Second, the bill addresses the consequences on a small group of claimants of the 2014 decision of the Supreme Court in Osborne v Auckland Council. In that decision the Supreme Court interpreted the term “built” differently to the way that it had been interpreted by the lower courts. The built date of a house is important because, under the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Act, claimants must make their claim within 10 years of their house being built. The Supreme Court decision meant that approximately 70 claimants may have missed out, because the old interpretation calculated the 10 years starting from the date that the physical construction of the house was actually completed. Under the Osborne decision, the relevant date is the date that the code compliance certificate was issued, which is usually later. The bill brings those approximately 70 affected claimants back into the system, so long as they have not sold their house. The claimants will still need to meet the other eligibility requirements to be able to proceed.

Finally, the bill deals with claimants who are actively progressing claims through the Financial Assistance Package. The process to get approved for funding under the Financial Assistance Package involves a number of steps, such as getting an assessment of the damage to the house and getting quotes for repairing the damage, before a homeowner can formally issue a notice to proceed. The Financial Assistance Package is a time-bound measure that is due to end on 23 July 2016, and, under the Act, claimants would need to have issued a notice to proceed by that date. The bill provides that claimants who are actively progressing their claims will not be shut out of the Financial Assistance Package, even if they have not quite reached the stage of issuing a notice to proceed by 23 July 2016.

Taken together, this package of three areas of change will ensure that the Financial Assistance Package will continue to be available to eligible claimants. I would like to conclude by thanking all members of the Local Government and Environment Committee for their careful consideration of the bill and the enhancements made to the bill during the select committee process. I would also like to thank the submitters who contributed to the development of the bill by providing their views to the committee. This bill is about providing more certainty and clarity to leaky home owners, and making sure that no one is arbitrarily excluded from the remedies available under the Act. I commend this bill to the House.

Before I call a member, I just want to draw the Minister’s attention, and the attention of the Government whips, to Speaker’s ruling 53/4, which involves the Review of Standing Orders: Report of the Standing Orders Committee as to the reading of speeches. There is normally a dispensation given to Ministers in the early stages of bills, and especially where there are technical matters in bills. I realise the Minister is not the Minister in whose name the bill is, but I think it is incumbent on the Government to have a Minister at least familiar enough with the material they are presenting to the House that they can make a speech without just reading it out. Otherwise, it becomes a pro forma exercise, and, I think, it does not show due respect to the House.

💬 Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Speaking to the point of order—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, it was not really a point of order, but the member might like to make one.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I will take that up with our whips. I noticed the Clerk handing you a note there to that effect, so I do wonder where that direction did come from. But I take your point. I think it is a valid one.

Well, actually, one, of course, never refers to the Clerk when one is referring to a ruling. And, I will say—and I probably should not respond to the member in that—the Clerk handed me no note.

I was just listening to the Minister Jonathan Coleman read his speech earlier, and it struck me that the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill is a rather poignant—I was going to say postscript, but it is not really a postscript, because, as we all know, the leaky homes catastrophe is not over; it continues on. But it is poignant nevertheless. This bill, the problem that it seeks to address, and the story of this bill’s development through the House really says a lot about major intractable problems in one of our country’s most important industries, and, I believe, the failure and neglect of this National-led Government to take those problems seriously and do anything about them.

The construction industry is one of the most important industries in our country. It is responsible for one in 12 jobs. It generates 8 percent of our national wealth, and it comprises 10 percent of all businesses in New Zealand. It is a huge employer; it is a huge generator of wealth. And, more important than that, it creates the built environment; it creates the very places where we live and work and play. And, as anybody who has followed the horrendous saga of the leaky homes disaster knows, the poor quality of building in this country has been a blight on the lives of so many people, and it is a drag on our country’s prosperity. The construction industry is incredibly important for the reasons I spelt out, but it is beset by low productivity, and it is wracked by a boom-and-bust cycle, which regularly cleans out the skilled workers who are so important in that industry. And those are some of the core factors behind the leaky homes crisis, which this bill seeks to address.

This Government—and, in fact, successive Governments—has struggled to get the regulatory framework right in the building and construction industry and find the right balance between protecting consumers and holding accountable the construction companies and all the other construction trades and professions. And, worst of all, the industry has subjected New Zealanders to a problem that PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated has cost the country in the region of $22 billion, and that is the leaky homes catastrophe.

We support this bill, and we have supported it all the way through. I will talk a little bit more about the three key measures of the bill. But the main point that I want to make is that this bill is symptomatic of so much that this Government does. This Government has made tinkering into an art form. When there are so many pressing problems and challenges that the Government should be addressing—and I will talk about some of those—it seems to focus its attention and the resources of this House on small measures that barely scratch the surface of the problems that the Government should be looking at.

What does this bill do? Only a few months out from the expiry of the Act—only a few months out—this bill basically gives some clarity and seeks to refine some of the provisions of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act. And it will have the effect of extending the provisions of the Financial Assistance Package, which is a scheme that gives homeowners who are affected by weathertightness problems access to the funding provisions that would see the Government and councils stump up with 25 percent each of the repair bill. So it gives them an alternative to going through expensive litigation. But the effect of this bill is to extend that benefit to approximately, according to the Government officials, 70 homeowners—70 homeowners. And, yet, what we know from PricewaterhouseCoopers is that there are about 42,000 homes in New Zealand affected by weathertightness problems. Approximately 80,000 New Zealanders are affected.

This is in stark contrast to Maurice Williamson, when he was the Minister for Building and Construction, who, with great fanfare, announced what he said was a billion-dollar funding initiative—a billion-dollar initiative. Well, actually, what we do know is that, up until a year ago, which I think are the most recent figures that are publicly available, there have been only 1,147 claims made under this package, and yet there are more than 42,000 homes affected by weathertightness problems. So this is tinkering at the margins, and it is so typical of this Government.

There are three key things that I think we need to mention. The first is that the bill aims to remove doubt regarding the validity of a couple of clauses in the Gazette notice published pursuant to the main Act. These clauses cover claimants who had applied for adjudication under the Act, or have applied for or are involved in other civil proceedings. Basically, it brings those provisions that were included in the Gazette into the Act for the purposes of removing any uncertainty.

The second thing that the bill does is that it responds to the Osborne v Auckland Council case, which went to the Supreme Court. It is all about the use of the term “built” and the definition of “built” in regard to the 10-year limitation that is built into this Act: 10 years after, as the Act said, the house was built, and that was interpreted as—well, it was unclear as to what it meant. But the courts had until then interpreted it as—what the Osborne case did was it ruled that the definition of “built” was when the code of compliance certificate was issued, and that ruling allowed a significant number of other claimants to come under the Act.

The third thing is about widening the definition of “qualifying claimant”, which, again, is about claimants who are actively progressing claims but have not yet become eligible to be covered by the funding assistance package. This, basically, just creates a clearer line and a clearer definition about their coverage.

As I said, this bill will extend the benefits of this legislation to another 70 claimants. It is tinkering at the margins of this problem, and it is so typical of a Government that has neglected and ignored a number of problems in this vital industry that have, basically, I think, caused a drag on the country’s growth and prosperity, and have created a situation where ordinary Kiwis are paying the price for this and are being ripped off. The leaky homes problem is the most well-known example, but we still see an epidemic of shoddy building: the Auckland Council recently said that it was failing between 25 and 40 percent of building consent applications because of shoddy building.

The reason for that is that this Government has failed to invest in skills in the building and construction industry. It has imported large numbers of migrant tradespeople to fill the skills gaps. Those skills gaps are endemic to this industry and they are one of the core factors behind the leaky buildings and weathertightness problems. Yet they continue today, and Paula Bennett, who was the then Minister of Local Government, with her loopy Rules Reduction Taskforce—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): OK, I am now going to interrupt the member to remind him that we are doing a third reading debate, which is a debate on the bill as it has emerged from the Local Government and Environment Committee. It is relatively tight, there are plenty of rulings on it—around pages 136 and 137 of Speakers’ Rulings—and, although the member has, generally, been quite good, having been fairly tight on the Minister I am now reminding the senior Opposition member that he should stay within the rules.

The argument that I was trying to make is that this bill is a small bit of tinkering right at the end of this Act’s lifespan—we are only 3 or 4 months away from the expiry of this Act. A lot of time has been spent debating this bill, taking it through the House. It is going to have an effect that will, obviously, have significant value for the people who will get the direct benefit of being covered by this bill, but we are talking about 70 claimants when there are some 42,000 homeowners around New Zealand who have been affected by this, at a time when this Government has ignored massive other problems with the building and construction industry.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

Instead of this kind of superficial tinkering that does not even scratch the surface, we need a Government that takes the issues and this vital industry much more seriously.

As chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee, which has considered and guided this bill through the select committee process, it is a pleasure and a privilege to speak in this third reading debate, particularly following Phil Twyford, who has come to this third reading debate ill-prepared, ill-informed, and trying to fluff and fill 10 minutes on a range of subjects to do with all sorts of things other than the bill.

This is a small bill, but it is an important bill, and to discount with such arrogance, really, the impact that this bill has on the people affected is to discount their situation in a way that I find appalling and shameful. I would have expected better from that member. This is a bill that will amend the principal Act, the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act, in a way that gives certainty resulting from a court case that created some uncertainty, and will also help those people who have already spent too much time and too much energy on long and expensive litigation to try to get their leaky home situation fixed.

This is a bill that provides an alternative to a litigation pathway, and I think that is a good thing. I think there have been far too many lawyers involved in expensive litigation in many leaky home matters. This is a Government that has decided that enough is enough, and it was this Government that decided to take action on the whole leaky homes issue in a way that the previous Government sought not to do. Given that a major commitment to the Financial Assistance Package was made by this Government during a time of incredibly tight economic hardship, it is an indication of this Government’s commitment to supporting those people who are confronting leaky home issues around the countryside.

This bill, admittedly, as Mr Twyford said, may impact on only a relatively small number of homeowners, but it is important to them and it is important that this House duly considers their situation, because we would like to take a pragmatic and sensible approach to solving those people’s issues and providing them with some certainty. This bill amends the principal Act to remove doubt and to sort out the validity of two criteria that determine eligibility for the Financial Assistance Package, and I think that is a very good thing. This bill does not actually change anything about the Financial Assistance Package itself as set out in the principal legislation; it simply removes doubt and provides claimants with access, for those who want to take recourse to the Financial Assistance Package and use that methodology to advance a resolution of their leaky home situations.

Clause 2 of the bill relates to the commencement, and it has been amended so that only the amendments made by clause 7 are brought into force on 23 February 2015—that is the date on which the bill was introduced to the House. That is important because the rest of the bill will now come into force on the day after it receives the Royal assent. There was a further amendment made during the select committee consideration, and that involved clause 7, which amended the bill to remove those provisions in the clause relating to the insertion of new subpart 9 of Part 2 into the principal Act. Those amendments are now moved to a new clause 8. This was necessary to avoid new subpart 9 coming into force on the date on which the bill was introduced.

This may sound all a bit technical and a bit pointy-headed, but it is actually quite important, because the courts are sometimes inclined to interpret the legislation that gets passed in this House in a narrow way. Indeed, it was that matter in the case of Osborne v Auckland Council that led to a significant issue in the Supreme Court where they interpreted the word “built” differently to the way that that word and that term had been interpreted previously by High Court and Court of Appeal decisions. The meaning removed from the point of final council inspection to the point at which a code of compliance certificate was to be issued.

That is why in this bill we are moving to clarify that definition. The new meaning of “built” can be applied not only to future decisions on eligibility but also to make sure that the position for these people is found to be based on a past interpretation in other courts. This bill clarifies the position for past claimants and is a further indication that we are a pragmatic, sensible, and good Government in terms of tidying up these matters.

This is a good piece of legislation. It is a small piece of legislation, but it is important, and this is a Government that takes these matters seriously. I commend it to the House, and I want to thank the committee members for their work in guiding it through to this third reading stage.

Can I preface my remarks tonight by saying that having a home that one can call one’s own is a significant part of the Kiwi Dream—it has been for many, many years. It also shows one’s commitment to the community they live in. It is a sign to the rest of us that they are prepared to be responsible in our community. I say those things at the outset of this debate because this was supposed to be a very simple act of just tidying up the Act and ensuring that those who were affected by the leaky homes syndrome, whose homes were affected, would be compensated—that is really what it was. We on this side of the House said at the outset that we would support this bill right through its passage through this House, and we have done so. We said at the outset that we would support it in the hopes that this Government would take getting this problem fixed up seriously so that those people with their homes affected would be able to move on.

Having a house that you can call your own, or having that “castle”, means so much to so many people. It has also become a tradition in the Kiwi psyche that this home becomes an investment for your children and for others in the family. But for those families who have been affected by the leaky homes syndrome, they are unable to move on. Those affected, those eligible for the financial aid package, have been waiting for this Government to get on with it. I do not know, for the life of me, why this Government has dragged its feet on signing this piece of legislation and getting it out of the House. We have held urgent sittings in this House on a number of occasions, and not one time has the Government attempted to try to ensure that this bill was passed as quickly as possible in this House. I feel sorry that the 70 families who have been waiting for the financial package that this bill will provide have not been able to move on, because of the way that this Government has dragged its feet on this particular bill. You see, the bill will expire in June of this year, and only now are we getting to it.

The leaky homes saga, as many in this House will know, has been an ongoing issue since the 1990s. People in this House who have been around during that time will know that this started as a result of the National Government of the 1990s deregulating the market and, essentially, allowing the use of untreated timber in the framing of building structures during that period. As a result, many of those timber-framed structures became unsafe, unsound. That is what has happened. I am gutted that the families affected have had to continue waiting. Some of the homes became unhealthy when the damp timber framings picked up mould and spores. This was supposed to be a simple tidying up of the legislation, and that just has not happened.

The bill addresses three matters, and I just want to refer to the information that is here. First, “the bill aims to remove doubt regarding the validity of clauses 1B and 1C of a Gazette notice published on 28 July 2011”. Second, the bill “provides that certain claims determined as ineligible on the basis of the meaning of the term “built” in Sections … are to be deemed to be ‘eligible’ claims”. It simply extends the eligibility for claims. Third, “the bill aims to widen the definition of ‘qualifying claimant’ ” as a result of the financial aid package that expired in July 2016. I do not know why it has taken the Government so long to get this out of the way but, as I said, the bill, essentially, was to tidy up the Act and ensure that those who deserve compensation get that compensation. Hopefully, once this Government can get this out of the way, those people will be able to do so.

Claimants have been fighting for many, many years simply to have their warm, dry homes, which are part of the Kiwi Dream that all of us have aspired to. It is an issue facing, as my colleague Phil Twyford said, 42,000 families who have been affected as a result of this, and this bill extends compensation to only 70 additional members. It is worthy to note that when the leaky homes syndrome was first raised, the former building Minister, Maurice Williamson, came out and championed it and said that the Government was going to get this fixed, and he promised that there would be a billion-dollar scheme that would be made available to fix this problem. You sort of wonder, as we are dealing with only 70 families, why they have dragged their feet on this.

This is also an example of why the deregulation of the building market, or the deregulation of our economy and reliance on the market, is not a good thing. It is interesting that during the Committee of the whole House debate, here we were, raising an issue that has arisen because of deregulation in the 1990s but we had a Minister of this present Government who was also at the same time talking in the media about allowing the building industry to self-regulate. I do not believe—I accept what you are saying, Mr Assistant Speaker—that going back to the old ways is going to fix this problem, when it was the old ways that put us in the situation that we are in now. When you think about the fact that far too many families have lost their homes and their livelihoods as a result of the leaky homes saga, I just think it is crazy for any Minister of the Government to start talking about deregulating the building industry, when it was deregulation in the first place that has gotten us into the situation that we are now in here.

Given that the legislation expires in June 2016, it just feels that this is a last-ditch attempt to get a fair outcome for those affected. Right from the very outset, we have said that we would support this because we wanted to see those families affected get the compensation that they are due. I started my remarks by saying it was most Kiwis; it was their dream that they wanted to own their own homes—something that they can call a “castle”. This is an example where, again and again, New Zealanders are seeing that that dream seems to be slipping away, when people have had to put their lives on hold waiting around for this Government to get its act together. There have been other examples that have arisen this week to show that despite this Government trying to profile itself as if it was a master of the universal economy, despite its trying to do so, we have seen time and time again that it mismanages the economy, because it does not care about people—it just does not; it just does not care. Because if the Government did care about the small number of people who will be compensated as a result of this bill, 70 people, it would have gotten this out of the way a long time ago, but it has not—it has dragged its feet about it.

I have to say that you sort of wonder, given the debacle over the Ministry of Health funding, where there was $80 million missing, why it is the Government is dragging its feet on the compensation for these families affected here. I do not have the answer for that, but I suspect that the families who are waiting for the compensation would be happy once this Government gets its act together and gets the compensation that those families need.

I rise to take a short call on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. As my colleague Scott Simpson has already informed the House, it is a good sensible bill that fixes up an anomaly that had been brought to our attention, and, as is typical of this Government, if there is a job to be done, we will get it done and make sure that we deliver for people who need our support.

But I do have to start, if I may, with a retort on the previous speaker, Su’a William Sio, particularly on what appears to me is an immense amount of crocodile tears. I would just like to remind him, perhaps, of some of the history here. He talked about the 1990s and into the 2000s when we had a number of houses—some in Tauranga and, obviously, many in Auckland—that were impacted by the leaky home syndrome, and he talks about, in his view, the lack of speed with which our Government has responded. Well, I would like to remind him that it took 7 long years of the Labour Government before it put up a bill to get this sorted. Then, once it got the bill passed in 2007, it took the National Government to actually pass the Financial Assistance Package to start ensuring that people who needed some financial support got it.

So to stand here and cry crocodile tears about the fact that this Government does not care or does not know how to put a proper solution in place is nonsense and does not get borne out by the facts, Mr Sio. This Government was the Government that acted. This Government is the Government that stood beside the people of Auckland and Tauranga who needed financial assistance. And when the courts said that there were a couple of anomalies that needed to be fixed, it was this Government that put this bill up and has put it through the select committee process, and now, tonight, it has a piece of legislation that is actually going to deliver for those homeowners.

There are 70 homeowners who are going to benefit from this bill once it passes. What is interesting is that, under the Financial Assistance Package, since it has been in place, there have been 1,200 claims representing over 4,200 homes that have already been assessed as qualifying for the Financial Assistance Package. What I think this bill shows is that there were 70 homeowners who had some potential opportunity to miss out in that process and we have identified what those anomalies are, and this bill seeks to address those.

We have already heard tonight about the two—I guess the two real key—components that needed clarification through this piece of legislation. The first relates to the term “built”. I think that most people in this House would understand why the view of the various agencies and the initial view of the courts was that “built” would be classified as the point of final council inspection. That was largely intuitive, so you could understand why that was perceived to be the point of eligibility. But, of course, the court case that came through resulted in a different interpretation, which is that “built” now sits at when the code of compliance is issued, and it is appropriate, therefore, that we make this amendment. It might sound small, it might sound very technical, but it is an amendment that enables those particular 70 homes to now be included in this process, if, of course, they meet all the other eligibility criteria.

I think it is appropriate that while we are having this conversation we look at the merits of extending the expiry date. It makes sense. Clearly, when this was first promulgated, 23 July 2016 sounded a fair way away. We are obviously pretty close to that now so it makes sense that we actually make that adjustment—as we have done and will do so through this particular change in the expiry date clause.

It has been an interesting process. It has had a lot of support through the select committee. There were not a huge number of submissions but it had pretty strong support. It was very technical and, despite the rhetoric that we have already heard from a couple of the Opposition speakers, when you strip it all back they know that this is good law, and they know that this is law that their constituents in their electorates support.

It is what this Government is doing and continues to do. When sensible things need to be done we do them. If issues and anomalies need to be clarified we sort them, and the people of New Zealand benefit from such an approach. I thoroughly support this bill and commend it to the House.

I seek leave for the House to adjourn at the conclusion of this current bill in the event that we conclude the bill prior to 10 p.m.

Is there any objection to us finishing early if we finish this bill before 10 o’clock? There appears to be none. Leave is granted.

I rise to take a call on this the third reading of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. We have just heard from the previous speaker, Todd Muller, that if there is a job to be done then this Government will do it—conveniently forgetting that the history of this, I think, is that when there is a mess to be made a National Government will create it, leave the market to fail and the people to suffer. Then there will be an inadequate response given by the Government—which we will all agree to because at least it is something and the people will get something, and then the Government will realise it made a few mistakes in that bit of a fix-up that it put to the House—and then it will bring the job to the House and, yes, this House will do it.

And this is the history of this. We have had an absolute crisis in this country from the removal of regulations around housing standards, and 42,000 homes in this country were affected—80,000 people. I have had friends who have been directly impacted by this, and I have seen the stress, the financial stress, the emotional stress, the physical stress as a result of having a house crumbling around them and threatening their lives and their children’s lives. This is no small matter.

However, this bill at the point we are debating now is, in itself, a small bill. It is a minor fix-up to provide clarity to those people who have claims in, as some clarity was removed due to a court ruling. So this is to ensure there is clarity for them, and it is also to ensure that those people who are working on putting in claims but have not got the process to the point that the legislation required by 23 July 2016 would still be able to have their claim considered. That will cover about 70 people, we understand.

I think that there are just over 1,000 New Zealanders who have put in claims for financial assistance to this Government. Even though 42,000 have been affected, there are fewer than 2,000 altogether who will benefit from this financial assistance. This equates to the Government putting in 25 percent of the repair costs—which, when you think that the costs of the repair and the damage was not those people’s fault in the first place and was a failure of regulation, does seem slightly miserly. But the Greens are happy to support this legislation because it is fixing up mistakes that were made, ensuring clarity, and helping those few people to get through the process and get it happening quicker, and we wish them luck in that process. Thank you.

Well, it is interesting. I am going to start by saying that I think the issues around this bill—the backdrop to this bill—have been very well canvassed. I have got to say, though, that sometimes one wonders whether we in this House are really in touch with the reality—the effects at the coalface—of the matters that we are discussing. I say that because a couple of the speeches I heard from the Government’s side would have everyone believe: “Oh, there was a little problem and there was a court case, and Auckland Council lost, and so we’ve got the bill before us now, and we’ve tidied it all up, and it’s all better and it’s all going to be fine, and we’re all going to vote in favour of this—so it’s all sweet, it’s all great, and there is not a problem.”

I think it is probably a good thing to touch on a couple of issues. I will talk about a property in Onehunga, which is a complex that has 25 owners. That property was built in 2000 and it was built at a time when the market was deregulated, when the building standards and the building codes changed under the Government of the day. We know the problems from the Local Government and Environment Committee, where eaves were not built and we had Mediterranean-type houses and complexes built; where the building code changed; and where the council responsible signed off on the work.

But that problem has not gone away for those 25 owners today. Today, as I speak, there are some young couples listening to this debate right now, because they are still embroiled in the legal actions, trying to get the work started. I mean, 16 years later, they are now starting to work on this—and this legislation will enable that work to go ahead.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, I want to thank the member for the assurance at the end there. I got—

Yes.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): —the impression that he was talking about something not in the bill.

So this legislation is good in the sense that this work will go ahead, but we need to remind ourselves that this is not a simple matter. There are human lives involved here. There are people who have separated through the stress. While all of these court actions have taken place and this legislation has dragged on in getting to a select committee and dragged on in getting out and dragged on in getting to a third reading, couples have separated and couples have divorced—and we need to remind ourselves that those matrimonial settlements have still not been settled because this legislation has not been completed.

So couples who might have separated 5 years ago or 2 years ago are still unable to settle for themselves in respect of the property that they jointly own because of this. This is not a small thing. People have left the country. Some of the people living in this particular block in Onehunga were actually scared—and I am just getting some texts through on the matter right now—into selling their properties for ridiculous money: $100,000. “You could be free of all the stress. You do not have to carry the mortgage—quit it and sell now and be shot of it.”

Other couples have had to carry two mortgages over all of this time—16 years of carrying two mortgages. This is not a small thing, I would say to the National MPs who stood up and sort of said “Oh, it’s OK. We’re passing the legislation.”—16 years of carrying two mortgages and of the stress. For some it has caused marriage breakdowns; for some it has not been concluded because one of the partners has died in the process. People were not able to get on with their lives—16 years later, we are now doing this and passing this legislation in the House.

The whole issue of work being done and signed off by the council, of changing the requirements, and of owners doing work only to find that that work should not actually have been done and that, therefore, they cannot get the 25 percent—they are not eligible for the 25 percent. People who cannot actually raise the first 25 percent—and under the current rules in legislation, everyone in the body corporate has to sign off. Three people hold it up, which requires those remaining owners to go to the High Court for a section 74 scheme to actually get control of the situation.

So we pass this legislation, but that, ladies and gentlemen and members of the House, is not the end of the matter for some people out there. So any MP in Auckland right now, think of these people in this complex in Onehunga. Think that for them this journey is just going to start now. It is going to take 26 to 32 weeks, I am told, to complete the work in this complex, and in that time those people are going to have to move out, and they are going to have to fund all this themselves. We can sit here and pat ourselves on our backs and say: “Oh, we’ve done wonderful work. We’ve passed legislation. It’s all going to be better. Take a little pill—it’s all going to be fine.” It is not fine.

We need to remember that when we pass legislation such as that which occurred in the deregulation in the market, which actually led to this situation, and which has resulted in this piece of legislation being before the House, there are downstream consequences for people. They are young couples, young couples with babies, and young couples who have struggled with the health issues of living in a mouldy home for 16 years whilst at the same time lawyers have argued and battled to get them the right to have the compensation that this House now says that they are entitled to.

I just want to send a little message to the Government: do not get so cocky and confident that everything that one is doing is fine and that there are no human consequences. None of us sitting here tonight will have any idea of the long-term consequences for the health of those children raised in those houses, and in this complex in particular; consequences of the last 16 years of living in a property in an apartment that was mouldy. None of us will understand that. But we will all pat ourselves on our backs and say: “Oh, well, it’s great. We’ve got free health care for children under 13. They’ll be right, mate. We’re looking after them.” Well, it ain’t right. We have not been looking after them. Parliament has failed them. Successive Governments over the time have failed them. The only people who have actually done them a good service is the court, in the ruling handed down by the Supreme Court, and the select committee process in the last few months.

We would do well to remind ourselves that at the end of legislation are human beings—people. It is not something to be laughed about—Mr Jami-Lee Ross. It is serious—human beings and children, and leaky homes full of mould. Young couples who struggle to pay the mortgage on a property that is devalued and on which they cannot get a loan because the value of the place has plummeted because it is a leaky home. Young couples who have to take on extra work because now they have had to move into another place, where they are able to bring up their children in a healthy environment, but they are still carrying the two mortgages: (1) at the leaky property, which, hopefully, will now get fixed; and (2) at the home that they are living in and raising their children in. Sixteen years, and this is the success? Sixteen years, and Parliament sits here and congratulates itself and pats itself on the back? Yeah, right!

It is good to finally see this legislation pass tonight, and if we get to rise early and all go home and feel comfortable about that, well, whoop-de-doo. But I just want this House to remember that in a complex in Onehunga, with 25 apartments, there are young people right now whose journey is only just beginning.

I just want to respond to a couple of points made in the contribution by the previous speaker, Ron Mark, on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. I do not think this is an arrogant Government. I do not think this is a complacent Government, and I for one—and I know all the other Government members of the Local Government and Environment Committee—have the utmost concern for those who have been affected by living in a leaky home and who have had their dreams of homeownership impinged upon by some of the faulty building that has been done.

This is a very narrow bill. It does not purport for a moment to resolve all those wide and varied issues suffered by the thousands of people who have had leaky homes. It deals specifically, and is in direct response to, a court case where we had a ruling from the Supreme Court that differed from previous definitions of the built date of a building, as given in Court of Appeal and High Court cases.

💬 Ron Mark: How did it arise?

So it responds specifically to that issue, Mr Mark, and not to the wider issues. That court case actually only dates back to 2014. It also deals with a technical issue raised in that court case around where the legislation sits, and it is right and proper that we clarify, in this House, that this is in the Act rather than sitting in the Gazette.

This is not a bill that solves everything for everybody, but it makes, I think, a practical change that will impact upon those 70 or so claimants in a favourable fashion. For that reason I commend it to the House.

I rise in support of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. I just wanted to pick up on one of the points that my colleague Jan Logie made about the scale of the problem: the notion that 42,000 homes were affected; that 80,000 people, in many cases, lost the entire value of their home; and that the cost to the country of this was something in the order of $12.4 billion.

As the previous speaker, Paul Foster-Bell, said, this bill here is a pretty narrow bill that deals with just one aspect of the problem. But given that this problem really started in 1991, which is more than half my life ago, this just shows how the Government is easily able—when it is attempting to do sensible things—to do extremely insensible things and create colossal failures. That $12.4 billion was 2014 dollars as well, so I imagine it has inflated marginally since then.

By comparison, the Christchurch rebuild cost is something in the vicinity of $40 billion, which is one of the greatest challenges that this country has faced in recent times. The economic cost to the country—direct cash costs to the country—were more than a quarter of the entire Christchurch rebuild to date. So this is a colossal failure of Government. This is a Government-created problem, so I think, as my colleague Jan Logie said, we need to be very mindful that when Governments seek to do sensible things, occasionally they create colossal problems.

I do commend this bill to the House. I think it is important that when the Government creates a problem like this, it seeks to clean that problem up, even if it takes 25 years to do so—and we are dealing with the tail end of it now. But it does raise the question: what does it really take? New Zealand is actually starting to get a reputation for building quite poor houses, and we have got no excuse. We are not short of materials, there are not that many people here, and we have extremely talented builders and tradespeople and architects, and so on. I think, again, that it is just a sign that in our zeal for the free hand of the market and deregulation, what we end up creating is generations of very poor-quality housing. We are in danger of doing it again now, of course. Adam Smith, actually, in addition to referring to the “invisible hand”, did actually refer to a well-regulated market as well. And so the idea that the Government is a partner in the economy and can help prevent these problems—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am now going to—having waved the bill at the member—draw his attention, as I have to previous members speaking on the bill, to the fact that the third reading is a very narrow debate. One thing I am sure of is that Adam Smith did not make a submission on this bill.

He would have been welcome to, though, Mr Assistant Speaker, I am sure.

💬 Hon Member: They had leaky homes back then, though.

Ha, ha! Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. In that case, I will conclude my comments by saying that the Green Party does support this bill, that we fully support the victims of this colossal failure, and that we hope that the Government learns from this kind of failure. I commend the bill to the House.

In this country we have an expectation about our homes. We do have an expectation that they will be warm and dry, but we also have an expectation that they will be built properly. We spend a lot of money, we invest a lot of money, in our homes. We expect them to be fit for purpose so that our children are well and that, you know, as an asset, homes grow in value.

The leaky homes saga, as my colleague Su’a William Sio called it, really knocked our faith and that belief that our homes were our castles. It did, actually, cause us to stop and think about all of those processes that we put in place to ensure that things go as well as they can do—the regulations, the legislation, the building codes, and the like. We were failed as a country when the market was deregulated in this case: when the treatment of timber was compromised, where construction methods were not fit for purpose, and where the inspections of those properties caused what became a massive failure. I am giving you some background to the bill, Mr Assistant Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): And the member does not need to give me background; she needs to address the bill. We are on the third reading.

OK. When we find that, in fact, we have made a mistake, we need to put it right. Have we done so in a timely way for those people who have been impacted by the weathertightness of their homes? It has taken a long period of time for those people to feel as though they have had the remedy that is required, which this legislation actually provides. But it does not provide for all the people who are impacted by weathertightness issues in their homes.

The bill has only three major components. Of course, the first is really around who will qualify for the Financial Assistance Package. Those 70 or so families who will qualify for the package only have until the end of June or the beginning of July to ensure that they get those applications in. The second component of this bill is around determining the time that the home was built, because knowing when your home was built and actually having that defined puts into play the period of time in which you can then apply for the financial assistance. The last component really deals with the claimants who will come under this bill, who may already be taking civil proceedings. They will no longer be able to take those proceedings because they will be covered under the Financial Assistance Package in this bill.

This bill is a bit of a cautionary tale. There are aspects of it that resonate with residents in Christchurch around some of the rebuild and repair, and the different applications of codes that are occurring in Christchurch. I just want to make that note, because it is important that we do not come back to this House seeking to pass legislation that will then fix up what could be dodgy repairs in Canterbury. Thank you.

It is my intention to take a short call here. I think that much has already been said on what is an incredibly important but very small piece of legislation, and I would not like the not-so-invisible hand of the Assistant Speaker to intervene to keep me on track on this debate for traversing material that has already been traversed.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member is risking it already.

Ha, ha! There are a couple of things that I would just like to draw the House’s attention to. Some of these have been discussed. The first is the definition of “built”. The definition of “built” is incredibly important, because at the moment it is relying on the statutory definitions and the court cases that have come around that. I think that by enacting this legislation, and cleaning it up in this bill, what we are stopping is a great deal of litigation that would go through our courts, not only clogging up our court system but also imposing an immense cost on the homeowners.

When there was the prospect of a class action by 500 potential claimants who were grouping together with the law firm Parker and Associates around the James Hardy Industries products that were used—what this case did draw attention to was, actually, the paucity of law that we have in this country around group or class actions. I think that is something that we are finding, in a very similar way, in the case of Christchurch and group or class actions there. So it is good to see that cleared up in this legislation so that it is not going to need to be redressed.

The other point that I would like to draw the House’s attention to is the third change that this piece of legislation makes—one of the three changes. That, of course, is aimed at removing any doubts about the validity of the eligibility criteria for compensation as they were published in the Gazette notice. Of course, these were criteria that were developed under regulation in the primary legislation.

I think this does serve as a cautionary tale to the House: that we have to be very, very careful when we are giving delegated regulatory powers to other bodies and tertiary instruments in a piece of legislation, because we may have to come back and do a fix-up. That is one of the changes that this piece of legislation is needing to make. It sounds very technical, the fact that you are coming back to fix the eligibility criteria, but, as other members have talked about, if you are one of those people who have a leaky home—where your security and your investment and your future really has been eroded—having the eligibility, your eligibility to compensation, and the ability to get that fixed is incredibly important.

So when we are enacting tertiary instruments, as parliamentarians we do have to think very carefully and examine very closely—both in this Chamber and at the select committee deliberations—the blowback and the unintended consequences that they can have. This is a saga that started in 1991, my last year of high school. So this is a saga that has been going on for quite some time in this country.

It is a pleasure to be taking a call on this legislation tonight, and with Labour supporting this bill, because we do need to provide a remedy for the people who have been caught in this saga, and for their inability to get on with their lives. We know the kinds of strains that this puts on people’s lives, and it is good to have this amendment bill and to clear up some of the ambiguities in this legislation. Thank you.

Bill read a third time.