Bennett Paula: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services AMENDMENT Bill — Second Reading 
Bennett Paula: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services AMENDMENT Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:636;Page:7166] 
PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to stand and speak on this Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. I am the person whom the chairperson of the Social Services Committee was talking about earlier who actually has a leaky home. I start by acknowledging that and by saying that we have chosen not to use the service because the building is a multi-unit. We are taking the matter to the High Court because we felt that the service was not capable of addressing our needs and we certainly still feel that way. 
Unlike the Minister I would like to do more than just pay lip-service to the submitters and the thousands of people out there who came to us with personal stories and who stop us in the street to talk about the effect this issue has had on their lives. They are truly the blameless victims. In many cases they have invested everything they had to try to have a home that they could live in and pay their mortgages on. They went forth in all good conscience to do the right Kiwi thing and now find themselves in financial ruin and absolute emotional distress. They deserve to be acknowledged and acknowledged properly by this House—not by the tinkering that is currently being done with this bill. This bill does not work for anyone and we have heard that time and time again. It does not work for the councils and ratepayers it does not work for the builders it does not work for those who sell building products and who have got it wrong there and it most certainly does not work for those homeowners who find themselves in this predicament. 
Like my colleague Dr Nick Smith I was appalled when I looked up the numbers yesterday and found that to date only 7.6 percent of claims have been resolved. I stand here and as politicians I feel that the few changes that are being made are being done just so that Government members can stand up and say that they are actually doing something. In particular the Minister can now walk around and say that the Government has tried to fix the issue by trying to speed up the process and trying to make it more efficient. The words that kept springing to mind when I was listening to Sue Bradford give her speech were “I hope” and I also heard from the Maori Party “We hope”. We hope that this bill does something for the homeowners but we do not have faith that this measure is what is needed. 
It is the sort of thing we have just so that a politician like the Minister can sit there and feel better. People may have seen him on the telly a little while ago where he squirmed when he was faced with those personal stories of financial ruin and when he was faced with the emotional stress. Now what he has done is to put forward a bill that tinkers around the edges of the problem. It does a little but it does not do what is needed to be done which is a lot. This is an “Avoid Bill”; it avoids the realities of what is really happening to New Zealanders it avoids the total reform that is needed and it avoids the fact that this legislation is merely tinkering around the edges. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Tell us what you’d do. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: We will support it because we will not play with homeowners. We will not play the political buying going to and fro. We will find those who are caught in this web by doing the politics within it so we will support the Government’s amendments because—like other parties in this House—we hope. We hope that this bill might do something for those homeowners. 
Let us deal with some of the facts. The bill wants to encourage parties into mediation. Let us get real! Who would go alone against myriad lawyers and experts? I asked the Minister whether he thought for one moment that councils would not bring along all their lawyers and experts to fight cases—and in many respects the councils would be doing their ratepayers a disservice if they did not front up with all those experts and lawyers. And now the Government is asking those homeowners to front up to them alone. The victim does not have the buying power to provide for a balanced adversarial hearing or mediation and is more often than not bullied into accepting a lower than reasonable settlement just to come to a conclusion. The Minister is expecting those people to front up on their own. 
What about legal costs? What about the Government fronting up and helping these people so that they can help themselves? How about fronting up with legal costs for those homeowners who need it? I tell the Minister that the action group advises people not to go mediation and not to take their case because they will not be able to front up on their own and in many cases cannot afford the lawyers to see it through. At this stage we have huge concerns about the adjudicators. Only two of the adjudicators have building backgrounds—all the others have only legal backgrounds. Only two have the knowledge of the industry that is required to make these decisions. 
The other question I have is why so many claims are not being pursued. Why are they not being followed through? It is a serious question. Have these claims miraculously been resolved? Have these buildings been fixed? Is that why these claims are going away? Or is it because these victims have no one to claim from? Is it because some of those dodgy builders that the Minister speaks of have closed their businesses done a runner and left the victim with a leaky dangerous home and no one to be accountable for it? The Minister is nodding—he agrees that is the case in many instances. I ask the Minister what he will do about it. What will he do about standing up for these homeowners who need something? The answer is quite simple is it not? The answer is nothing. The Minister will avoid the real issues facing these homeowners and do a bit of tinkering around the edges on a bill that he hopes will work. 
I feel for the builders and tradespeople who want to be accountable and who want to front up and fix these problems who were perhaps sold products—like timber cladding and all that sort of stuff—that were faulty. I feel for those builders who want to do something. We have to be concerned for the councils who are often left dishing out thousands and thousands of ratepayers’ dollars because they are the only ones standing. What will the Minister do to fix the real issues? 
The Greens asked us to please look at a building court. How about we look at a building court? How about we look at addressing the real issues? How about a building court where we do not look at these issues as if they were in the future where we do not talk about the issues all around the edges and where we face up to the realities of the billions of dollars needed to fix these homes? The homes clearly are not being fixed. The Minister should ask himself the question of who will do the remedial work. Which builders will want to front up and be the ones fixing others’ work that has gone wrong and then have the checks and balances come in after that? 
Of the changes to the bill let us talk about the land information memorandum notifications to start with. Notifications in respect of claims must be placed on the land information memorandum for the particular property. We had expressed concerns about this issue. We felt that for the owner who is coming in and for the buyer who wants to purchase a building there needs to be some form of recognition that there has been a claim against the home. We also had a lot of questions about the limitation period on claims. I personally heard the submissions of people who had very real concerns about that 10-year limitation and whether it would go through. Upon advice from the advisers who did an outstanding job in getting this through in the time they needed to it was a number of other concerns—as has already been addressed by my colleague in the Green Party who sat with us on the Social Services Committee—that there was too much and that we could not go outside that limitation period. 
Next I come to the multi-unit claims. This is an interesting issue in which we have more of the same concerns. The Government would like it that 80 percent of people in a multi-unit—if that is what the body corporate says—have to agree on something before they can take it to the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service. One has to ask how these claimants can get to a place where there is agreement. In my case for example there are 87 of us who own apartments within an area. How are 80 percent even of 87 of us going to agree on what the costs are? We do not all have the same concerns—not all of the apartments are leaking in the same way in the same place or in the same areas—and yet we are expected to agree and then take our case. 
Let us imagine if we did take our case to the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service—which as I say we will not. How will this legislation tie up a service that is not meeting the needs of leaky-home owners now when we see only 7.6 percent of claims being resolved? Now we are throwing in multi-units and the substantial—huge—needs that they will bring before the service. We have huge concerns about the realities of much of this legislation. 
The Minister has stood before us and presented this bill. We hope that the new system is faster we hope that it is speedier and we hope that it actually lives up to some of the expectations of some of these homeowners. But it will not.