White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour): I'm pleased to take a call on the Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I'm particularly pleased to do it because I am based in a big city and we do have real problems at the moment with the structures of bodies corporate and the gravitas behind them. It is a situation where I looked at this coming in and it was already on the table. I looked at it as somebody who knew Nikki Kaye and had actually been in campaigns with her. I could see that it was an issue that really meant a lot to anybody who was based in a big city because we were seeing real issues in that area and a lot of stress. It was something that was difficult to avoid. It was something that I thought about in terms of my own position which is that I own a stand-alone house. I was thinking about how in New Zealand we have these houses that are actually really very secure. We have the Torrens system we have fee simples and we have some structures that make these ways of owning things particularly attractive to people—in fact including probably too many investors because they're simple structures.What we have to do is we need to build a new system which is actually going to be much better in terms of city living. It's going to mean that we have a better environment because people are not moving around from work to home. It means that they will be able to bring up their children in a community. We will be able to rethink the way we live and it will be a really good thing. But the building blocks of that are things like this bill and being able to actually be secure when we make those investments. I think about the people that I know many of them could not afford to buy a fee simple house in the same area but they could afford an apartment. That's the most precious thing because that's the first money they've got that's the first asset; it may be the only one. So it's really important that those structures are sound. So Nikki Kaye I absolutely congratulate for having brought this in as a member's bill and Nicola Willis I absolutely thank you for pursuing it and doing the work that you've done on this bill along with Judith Collins.I know that one of the people I found was very supportive of this in my own caucus when we were talking about it whether it would be something we would adopt or try and do something new in was actually Grant Robertson who was very very supportive of it. I think again it's because in big cities we have these problems and we see them.I also want to acknowledge Anna Lorck's contribution about other areas because that's something I definitely learnt through the process. We had a lot of rural spaces that were changing the way that they were used and some of those were also things that were really important in terms of the balance in the revisit of this bill that took place. One of those was—I remember hearing from a submitter that was a little retirement set of houses that was in Thames. They were not wealthy people. They were not going to necessarily be able to afford a professional body corporate manager. They needed a simple structure but they were actually quite big. Now they have an option. They don't have a lot of maintenance they have rooves etc. but they have another option. What we do have is some good rules of thumb and a real cultural change and that cultural change will mean that we now can have things like professional managers knowing what their obligations are and actually those people living in those apartments also knowing what to expect of the body corporate manager. We have new rules for things like body corporate committees where they too will know what they're expected to do. One of the really good things I think about that was that we put a lot of codes and inter-regulations so that you could actually move with the times a little bit. Now I'm not sure that we will have got everything right because I think this is a movable feast. I think that we are changing the way we live significantly. In the next little while we will probably need to continue this journey. There are other structures out there. There are bodies corporates but there are also people who buy their apartments in companies. There are all sorts of other ways. There are people who do not have a body corporate. I want to make sure that we see this for what it is—it's a really really good start in revisiting the law but we need to make sure that we are all watching.One of the things that happened in the select committee was I think we all did that very well. We worked cooperatively we changed what was actually—I think I described it in an earlier debate as stone soup". We started with one set of rules we looked at the submissions we listened to lots of people and their experiences and we built something that had a lot of components that were different. It was not a normal member's bill in that way but it was an utter good-faith process. We ended up with something which is a really good starting point for that building. But it's not over and I think those of us who are privileged enough to be on the select committee learnt what we need to do. This issue—I've think I've talked to Nicola Willis about this—I don't actually see it as a political issue in some ways. Yes it's very political in the way that it affects people's lives but in a lot of ways it's apolitical. This is the new common ground. This is why Labour and National were able to come to an agreement over intensification because this is our reality. We have to face things like climate change together. We cannot afford to be petty about this. We need to get in the middle and sort these issues out and they are apolitical as far as that goes. So I look forward to that. This absolutely complements the work that we have been doing with regard to building new houses—lots of new houses—and it complements the record number of consents and it complements the intensification plans which are going to allow people to go up six storeys around our train station. They're also going to allow buildings that are connected in our inner-city suburbs for example in all our tier 1 councils. So this is a really important time to have done this work. I want to just take a little bit of an issue here with the Hon Judith Collins' suggestion that this was never on the work plan for Labour—it absolutely was. What actually Labour did at that stage was face a crisis all over the housing sector and what it did was prioritise rental laws. Rental laws are incredibly important; they are another big piece of the puzzle because there's a whole lot of people out there who can't get on the property ladder and haven't been able to for a very long time. Hopefully we can make that possible in methods like this and in building a whole lot more houses and bringing on supply and actually just changing the way we build and we build up. Hopefully that's possible but we are also dealing with a situation where things like rental are really important. We needed it to be warm and dry. I'll never apologise for prioritising that but I do see this as a very important piece of the puzzle and I am very pleased it happened. I just haven't spent a lot of time talking about the detail in this. So I just want to give a couple of instances of what my favourites are. I think the actual nuance about large and small and the distinctions that have been made throughout the bill are really good. I think the issue about the cost of for example long-term maintenance plans and what those maintenance plans look like is very interesting. We've gone to a situation where we've tried to fit size into the equation where we've talked about things like actually if you detail your plan to 10 years and then you go to 30 with a less detailed plan you're doing your job. I think we have a very interesting disclosure list and again it was because people took the time and cared in the select committee. We ended up with a list of things you actually really do need—not just a list of "nice to haves" not an onerous list; a good list of things that you will get when you are buying an apartment. That will make things a lot clearer for you.And I think we got the issue about remote voting right. That changed the opinion with regard to proxies. Proxies are an interesting phenomenon and yes we've all heard terrible stories about proxies being misused. But if you can remote vote then you can actually participate and I think that's the better solution—that people start to seriously think when they move into an apartment that they're not abandoning things that they're getting involved and being part of their community. I commend this bill to the House."