Mackey Moana: Unit Titles Bill — Second Reading 
Mackey Moana: Unit Titles Bill — Second Reading 
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MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I was saying last week that this legislation is very good Labour legislation; it is nice to see it back in the House. It has been a bit of a night for Labour legislation has it not? We have just dealt with the Financial Service Providers (Pre-Implementation Adjustments) Bill— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Shouldn’t it be referred to Judith Collins? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That is a very good question. We have this Unit Titles Bill; here we are 15 months into this new Government and we are continuing to pass Labour legislation. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: It’s time for a change. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That is right. I hope that Minister Simon Power acknowledged Lianne Dalziel’s work on the financial adviser bill. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: He did tonight. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I have been told that he did tonight. I wish Phil Heatley had acknowledged the role that Labour had had in doing all the work on the Unit Titles Bill before he picked it up put it in the House and sent it to the Social Services Committee. I often refer to Minister Phil Heatley as a bit like a cuckoo bird; the cuckoo bird is one of those birds— 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Oh that’s not very nice! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —no no hear me out—that jumps into other birds’ nests. The cuckoo bird lets another bird do all the work—build the nest—and then jumps in and claims credit for it. The Minister of Housing Phil Heatley is a little bit like that in that he never acknowledges that he has done none of the work on the legislation he is putting through this House. I have to ask what he has actually done in his 15 months as Minister of Housing apart from progress Labour legislation. But the least he could do was acknowledge the fact that he had nothing to do with the Unit Titles Bill; all the work was done by the previous Government and all the drafting was done by the previous Government. All he had to do was come down to the House and give a speech written for him by his officials which he did and he did very well. He read his speech very well. But I thought he could have perhaps just mentioned in passing that it was the previous Government that had done all the work on that legislation. Of course Labour will be supporting this very important legislation. 
The other thing the Minister said last week was that this bill was so important that it had to be progressed through the House in haste which begs the question why when this bill was reported back from the select committee in September last year has it languished on the Order Paper until now? If it is that important— 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Because we have had very important legislation. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well Mr Auchinvole who has once again completely missed the point of what I was saying says that it is because it is incredibly important legislation. My question asked why it was not progressed through the House ahead of some of the useless legislation that we passed under urgency prior to Christmas. This bill could have been passed prior to Christmas if it were so important. It is important which begs the question: where oh where is the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill? I ask where that has gone because that is other legislation along with the Unit Titles Bill that Labour drafted and did all the work on. Yet Minister Phil Heatley has jumped in and said: “Mine! I did all the work; I take all the credit”. 
Hon Member 
: Again. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Again—that is right. The Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill was brought into the House and was sent to the select committee; the Minister was going to progress it with the utmost haste because it was incredibly important. But it has disappeared. It too was reported back from the select committee last year but it has not gone anywhere. That bill is particularly important because it extends the protections of tenancy law to boarding-house tenants. We have heard of boarding-house tenants who were asked to shift out of their accommodation over Christmas so that other people could move in for the Rugby Sevens and if those tenants had had the protection of the law under the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill that would not have happened. It is nice to see the Unit Titles Bill back in the House but we ask where the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill is which this Government promised to progress. 
The Unit Titles Bill is very important and I want to say how much I enjoyed working on it in the select committee. At first glance the bill is incredibly technical; it is the kind of thing that is plonked down in front of us and we think: “Oh no this is really going to make our heads spin.” It is incredibly important legislation and it is long overdue for an overhaul. As the Minister said in his speech and as I absolutely concur the law that is currently in place was drafted at a time when we probably did not envisage the range of developments that fall into this category or the significant number of people who will be affected by it. It is estimated that within 50 years 500000 people in Auckland will be living in this kind of accommodation. For that reason it is incredibly important that the legislation be brought into the 21st century; it should have been brought even into the latter part of the 20th century. 
We have dealt with even simple things—things that we see coming through our offices and that clarify what most people would think were self-evident. For example there have been stoushes over whether only the people who live in the top apartments should pay for repairs to the roof of a building despite the fact that everyone benefits from having a roof on the development. When we heard those kinds of things coming to the select committee it was almost hard to believe that they had never been clarified before. We have clarified that issue: where there is common property such as a roof then it is the domain of all the residents to pay for the upkeep of that not simply the people who are in those top apartments. That seems simple and like real common sense but I am really pleased that it has now been clarified in legislation. 
The other thing which probably was not envisioned at the time the previous law was written was multi-stage developments. It is really really important to make clear exactly what rights the people who hold a unit title have in a multi-stage development where the next stage may change significantly from what they expected it to be when they purchased their unit title. We have made clarifications on that in this legislation. 
We have introduced a lot more transparency in terms of the financials and the running of the body corporate. Bodies corporate are not cheap. One of the things that a lot of people might find difficult—and we have a lot of retired people who move into these unit title developments—is when they suddenly get whacked with a really big bill. They have been going along and they have been paying their body corporate fee; they are able to do that and they can budget for it. Then suddenly something needs to be repaired—the lift needs to be put back in or the roof needs to be completely replaced—so all the members of that body corporate get a large bill. For some people particularly for those on fixed incomes it is really difficult to come up with the money at short notice. We wanted to set in place management plans and maintenance plans so that these things will have to be planned for. The body corporate will hold the money in reserve so that the immediate impact will be lessened. But during the course of the select committee process we also accepted that bodies corporate did not need to have incredibly large reserves all the time because that in itself might be difficult for some people to maintain. I am really pleased that the select committee was able to take a common-sense approach to that issue as well and to introduce flexibility in that provision. 
I have also been made aware tonight that although I thought we had fixed the issues about retirement villages and made sure that we had clarified the requirements where there was overlapping under their own legislation the Retirement Villages Act and this legislation that is not so. I understand that the Retirement Villages Association of New Zealand has been in touch with the Minister; perhaps we did not get it quite right. A Supplementary Order Paper will be introduced to the House just to clarify that we are not trying to put two entirely different laws which require different things on to the same people. Labour will want to examine that Supplementary Order Paper. Certainly it is our intent that we want to support whatever we can to clarify that we did not intend to duplicate the compliance requirements on retirement villages. 
This is important legislation. I think the select committee did a very good job in making sure that what came out the other end incorporated the common sense that we had heard from submitters in the select committee. I thank the officials for this legislation; they were very easy to work with. They were able to explain very technical things in very simple language and they were able to take the concerns that were raised by submitters and put them through to amendments. I acknowledge the Hon Shane Jones who is in the House for all the work that he did in developing this incredibly important legislation. It is nice to still have a little bit of the Labour Government coming through 15 months later. I wonder when National is going to start to do some of its own legislation in housing and stop doing ours.