Nash Stuart: Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Canterbury Property Boundaries and Related Matters Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 November 2015. Volume:709;Page:7585. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): It is my pleasure to take a call on this bill. It is an interesting bill because as the last speaker Scott Simpson alluded to the fundamental tenet of property law is that boundaries do not change. But of course we are dealing with a very unusual situation in this case. Let me just give you a little bit of an indication of the situation we are dealing with. I was surprised when I read in the regulatory impact statement that there were just over 124000 properties that moved between zero and 20 centimetres but there were 10000 properties that moved between 20 and 50 centimetres and over 1000 properties that moved over 50 centimetres. So we are dealing with a situation here that is brought on only by the sorts of things you get in an earthquake and it does have to be dealt with.But I do have some concerns about this. Megan Woods alluded to the fact that we are going to support the bill going to the select committee but let me run through a couple of issues that I hope will be addressed through the select committee process. First of all let me say and we know this that New Zealanders have a love affair with property. I am not talking just about homeowners; I am talking about investors I am talking about developers—in fact I think we are trying to deal with one of these situations in the next bill on the Order Paper when we bring the brightline test in. That is going to be a very interesting debate but back to this one at this point in time.What this bill in my view seeks to do is to minimise the risk of those who are involved in the business of cadastral surveying or who may have some sort of liability whether that be the surveyors whether that be the council whether that be the Crown. In a way that is most important because there would be nothing worse than a whole lot of cases being tied up in the courts for years and years and years as this sort of thing draws on due to a whole lack of certainty.There are a couple of things in the regulatory impact statement that sort of caught my eye. I do not expect answers now obviously but hopefully these answers will come through in the select committee. We have got to remember that this has been going on now for 4 years. The earthquakes as we know were in 2010 and 2011. It is now nearly the end of 2015. This is a fundamental issue with regard to property—i.e. where is my boundary? Where can I build the fence? Where can I situate my property? Nearly everything to do with building a house or a fence has some reference to where the boundaries are where you can situate a house etc. We all know this.What the regulatory impact statement did say is that some surveys have been undertaken and approved using a cadastral survey method inconsistent with the preferred approach. I am not too sure why this was done keeping in mind that only licensed cadastral surveyors can actually undertake a survey. These are men and women who have gone through I think it is a 3-year university degree course—it might even be 4 years—and they are well versed in how this works. I would have thought that one of the first things that would be dealt with by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority or the Crown or Mr Brownlee was “OK when we are looking at property boundaries that we know have moved this is the method that must be used”—or if not the Crown then certainly the Surveyor-General.This was always going to be an issue in Christchurch. The fact that it has taken so long to come here and the fact that some surveyors did use a method inconsistent with the preferred approach makes me wonder why this was done in the first place. Or if surveys were lodged with the council or with the Surveyor-General with Land Information New Zealand why were these particular surveys not pulled up with someone saying “Hey Mr Surveyor we have slight concerns about your methodology. Can you walk me through why you are doing this?” so we would not end up with the situation we are in at the moment?The other thing that concerns me a little bit is that in the regulatory impact statement it actually talks about the status quo and I am going to quote this: “Under the status quo case law will eventually emerge to establish the most appropriate approach to surveying within these areas. It is unclear whether the case law will produce a legal interpretation that best meets the Government’s objectives for the survey and land title system in Greater Christchurch in post-earthquake rebuild.” The thing that concerns me a little bit about that is that it talks about the Government’s objectives for the survey. It does not mention there at all the landholders’ objectives or the landholder outcomes.Whenever there is a piece of legislation like this that indemnifies a profession or the Crown inevitably there are winners and there are losers. If there was not a winner or a loser then we would let case law deal with this. But as mentioned possibly due to the scale—there are over 1000 houses that have moved by 50 centimetres or more. Again I do not know how many of those are in dispute. One of the Christchurch MPs may know this. But there are obviously a number of houses or a number of property boundaries that are in dispute—Hon Ruth Dyson: There may be 300.STUART NASH: There may be 300. It is more than the courts can reasonably handle. Therefore what we need to do to just expedite this is come up with a legislative solution where ideally a case law solution would be the preferred method. But with 300 or 400 houses as mentioned we cannot work through this.But what we really need to understand with this is who are the winners and who are the losers. We cannot have a situation in my opinion where the Government is the only winner here and it is the Government’s objective to expedite these at the expense of a fair deal for Christchurch landholders. We must get this right. Whatever the outcome I think there will be aggrieved parties. Whether it is the surveying profession which is indemnified whether it is the Crown or whether it is landowners what the Government what Parliament needs to be able to do is to say we went through a very robust process we understood the arguments and due to fairness overall we came up with a solution that meets the requirements of all parties. That is my concern when I read this regulatory impact statement.It does go on to say and I understand the arguments about this that until we get a piece of legislation—and obviously there is not case law because if there was it would set the precedent—there is a level of uncertainty and cost for landowners. Goodness me those Christchurch landowners who are still in boundary dispute—for how long has this been going on? It has been going on for far too long. They need a level of certainty. They need the ability to be able to move on to build that house or locate that fence without having the fear or the uncertainty of having to rip it up again. There is no doubt about that.What we also need is surveyors to be able to apply judgments that lead to rules and outcomes that are understood. As mentioned at this point in time my understanding is that one of the main reasons for this is that there are inconsistent or conflicting boundary determinations. There is nothing worse when you get one surveyor saying this and another surveyor saying something else and where does that end up? If you are lucky it is sorted in mediation; if you are unlucky yet again it ends up in the courts which is far from ideal especially for residents who will have to foot the bill themselves and no doubt have faced immense cost just in the rebuild process let alone in taking a case to court where like I said there are winner and losers.The other thing also is that there is the belief that there is a lack of clarity about whether the information provided by Land Information New Zealand is actually an accurate representation of the title. This is most important because the Land Information New Zealand information is what lawyers surveyors real estate agents and of course those who buy and sell houses rely on. If we cannot rely on the Land Information New Zealand information the cadastral maps that we see on the website or when we go to a legal office then the whole system begins to fall down. Again the last thing we need in Christchurch—and as I mentioned there are over 130000 houses that have had some movement—is legal uncertainty—Poto Williams: More.STUART NASH: —more legal uncertainty—where people are reluctant to buy a house or people cannot sell a property or investors are unwilling to build the necessary rental properties or developers are unwilling to put up a high rise or basically anything that hinders the rebuild of this city. The risk of that must be mitigated.But as I mentioned we are going to support this to select committee. Unfortunately I do not sit on the select committee but I will be watching this very very closely because I think there are some precedents that are going to come out of this as well. But as mentioned there are some questions here. We do need to know who the winners are and who the losers are going to be but most of all we do need certainty. I have no doubt there are going to be a lot of submitters on this. There will be great interest from a number of Christchurch landowners and the Crown. We will support this to select committee and so let us see what comes out of that. Thank you very much.