Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) (remote): Everyone knows somebody who has bought a leaky home or apartment and with the massive growth in apartment dwelling over the last couple of decades sadly the incidence of those who've been lassoed with faulty dwellings and massive repair bills has also grown. The damage here isn't just the financial side it's the stress of uncertainty it's infighting within bodies corporate rising repair bills—I know people in my electorate Taieri who are living in Dunedin who say their families have actually been torn apart and their lives have been ruined by the purchase of a leaky apartment and I don't think they're exaggerating their pain.I want to shout-out to my former TV colleagues Rachel Stace and John Hagen for their documentary A Living Hell: Apartment Disasters and then the follow up A Rotten Shame. They're both fine storytellers and their documentaries on leaky apartments that they've made are a real labour of love and they're an example of the fourth estate doing its job really well. They lift the lid on the leaky apartment sector and some of the cowboy developers who for decades have exploited New Zealand's housing crisis by making sub-standard dwellings. And so that's part of the housing crisis that Labour inherited when we came to office.There's a lot of work to do to review and modernise the Unit Titles Act 2010. Labour committed to that in 2020 and we will be introducing legislation that is broad and pretty much overhauls the way unit titles are managed. But in the meantime this bill before us tonight moves in the right direction which is why we're supporting it. So it's really good to see it in the House again and as others have said it is the end of a long select committee process. So for taking on a pretty messy and problematic sector and for her perseverance working with us all on the Finance and Expenditure Committee to panel-beat the original bill into shape I do commend former committee member Nicola Willis and look forward to seeing her back on the committee.Labour supports increasing transparency when it comes to the information owners disclose to prospective buyers. We also respect that all-important legal maxim caveat emptor and in this bill we think we've got the balance right. Others have mentioned what the bill changes—it creates a proportionate utility cost a code of conduct for body corporate committees requirements for long-term maintenance plans and a yearly audit of those plans for complexes larger than 10 units. And it requires sellers to disclose information about a unit to potential buyers and prevents bodies corporate from entering service agreements for longer than 24 months. So this member's bill makes some of the changes we would like to see. When it comes to unit titles as I've said there's a lot to sort out so the bill goes some ways in addressing some of those issues. Many of the changes created by the bill seek to implement recommendations from a 2016 review of the unit title regime. Those recommendations were really about trying to empower apartment owners and avoid leaky home - type situations. So specifically the changes seek to give prospective owners more information so as to be able to make informed choices when buying dwellings like apartments; make the governance of apartment buildings stronger and more accountable; increase the standards of body corporate managers to safeguard the interests of apartment owners; and ensure that unit title developments adequately plan for and fund long-term maintenance projects as we've heard; as well as strengthening the dispute resolution process. As I've mentioned the bill tonight looks quite different now to when it was introduced and as a committee we felt the industry-wide obligations were unduly onerous so we worked hard to make sure the industry compliance was reasonable while still keeping with the intent of the proposed obligations and duties. As a one-time lawyer myself I could appreciate the real value of having a professor in law chair our committee in the form of Dr Duncan Webb as we painstakingly made our way through the hundreds of clauses as we've already heard. We discussed things like whether a broom cupboard might be misconstrued as a room for the sake of a long-term maintenance plan we debated parties' rights and responsibilities if disclosure is incomplete inaccurate or not provided in a timely fashion—including a right for buyers to delay or cancel settlement. We were concerned that some of the original submissions didn't appropriately reflect how properties are usually bought and sold and actually most of the submitters shared similar concerns. So I'd like to acknowledge my Labour colleague Helen White MP who worked really hard to ensure that what was being proposed made practical sense on the ground in Auckland with the many apartment owners that she had spoken to over many months. They told her that sellers often hire agents to fulfil those requirements and therefore it seemed to us that requiring disclosure discussions specifically with the purchaser excluding their agent put an unreasonable obligation on the buyer especially at the pre-contract disclosure stage. We heard a diverse range of opinions from submitters about exactly what information should be included in a pre-contract disclosure statement. And based on those views and advice received we changed up the information required again to fine tune the balance and ensure that they worked in a practical sense.So for example we included the requirement for details of any weathertightness issues that had not been remediated. Plus we included needing details of any other known significant defects that might require remediation. We also said a copy of the body corporate's long-term maintenance plan should be in those disclosures along with the body corporate financial statements and audit reports for the last three years—and that was opposed to seven years in the bill as it was introduced. So those are just some of the examples of how technical we got however we believe the changes were important because they would strengthen the overall disclosure regime while balancing the rights and the obligations of the parties. This Government believes every New Zealander should live in a warm dry secure house whether they own or rent. There's no quick fix to the housing crisis we inherited but we are determined to do it. It's a problem that's been decades in the making and just like the unit titles problem it is basically that there's not enough new affordable homes that have been built—and our policies are on track to do that. We first moved to stop housing speculation with our ban on foreign buyers and now we're removing tax advantages for property speculators. We're on track to deliver 18000 public and transitional homes by 2024. We're replacing the Resource Management Act which is a massive step in the right direction. I'd like to shout out to my colleague Rachel Brooking MP who's based here in Dunedin and Otago and who brings her considerable expertise to this work. We're also introducing new building intensification rules which other speakers tonight have referred to and that will mean up to three homes of three stories can be built on most sites without the need for a resource consent. So new rules will result in tens of thousands of new homes built in the next five to eight years and I'm looking forward to seeing that in my electorate of Taieri. We've got lots of people needing homes apartments thanks to our record low unemployment rate and needing housing.So there's one thing this unit titles bill has taught me along with the assignment that I attempted a couple of weeks ago for my postgraduate studies into finance and policy. I attempted to do my own analysis on the housing crisis. And what I learnt was this: housing is complicated unit titles are complex; there is no quick fix. But Labour is using the right levers to sort out both the supply side and the demand side and unit titles are part of the equation.So the member Nicola Willis and before her Judith Collins and I think before her Nikki Kaye they took on a mammoth task bringing this particular bill to life. They should be commended for shepherding it through this House and they can take heart that despite the panel beating that it has had—because it is a complex area as we've heard tonight and I guess the bill was many years in coming. A lot of changes have happened and there were also just a lot of changes still to be made by us—and we've heard tonight that there are more changes being suggested by Nicola Willis which we are interested to see. I think that the bill that came to us at select committee was in a shape where we could work on it. We've done that work we're happy where it landed. I don't think it needs any more work but let's wait and see. It's well on its way to becoming law.So with that I commend this bill to the House.