van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise tonight on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the third reading of the Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.Many people in New Zealand already live in body corporate arrangements but the number of people who do is increasing as we are seeing more apartment buildings and unit titles popping up all over across New Zealand. More unit titles are not just being used for short-term student accommodation but they are being used for long-term rentals and long-term family units in residential developments. More and more people of course are finding themselves delving into the depths of bodies corporate many for the first time as first-home buyers being very hopeful that this new apartment that they are going to look at could be the place that they settle down and start their family. And they're taking it very seriously and looking through all of the body corporate minutes and figuring out what on earth are long-term maintenance plans and how they are supposed to interact and get on with their neighbours in a structured rules-based way that the body corporate sets out.Around 150000 New Zealanders live in apartments—that will grow over time because we expect over the next 20 years that's going to double. So more and more people will be finding themselves delving into these pages and figuring out those intricate relationships between people who are renting and people who have bought their apartment unit and those conflicts that may arise between neighbours living in very tight confines next to each other.The minutes of bodies corporate can be a wonderful treasure trove of information. You can see in the pages the types of scraps that come up between neighbours when they're talking about what sort of pets people are allowed to have what type of colour the carpets and the curtains might be allowed to be—you can see the relationships between people in the minutes of meetings and who wants to put in an electric vehicle charger and who doesn't. There's all sorts of hilarious stories and anecdotes that you can find when you're going through a new purchase of an apartment.But there are also very serious things. One of the most serious is of course the long-term maintenance fund. This bill goes some way to help solve that problem of information where people ultimately will be buying and selling apartments. People who are buying will be wanting more information about what they're buying into and people who are selling will be wanting access and making sure that they have all of that information available to then be able to sell their apartment to people who are asking for the information. So this bill improves the governance arrangements of body corporate units for the existing owners for the new owners—for disclosure—and it strengthens the dispute resolutions that ultimately come about when people are living in close quarters next to each other. Information gathering is a difficult exercise. The Finance and Expenditure Committee's (FEC) report showed that it is harder to access information in a body corp than you would find in a normal stand-alone home—a good example was accessing ventilation systems; that's just not something that you can easily do when you're in an apartment building versus when you're in a stand-alone home. So having access to that information through the body corp is extremely important. But as a member of a body corporate you're also liable for shared obligations that you wouldn't be if you were living in a stand-alone home for things like repair upgrades that everybody needs to agree to. So the integration of that system and the integrity of the system relies on access to good information and the relationships between the buyer and the seller.I don't believe anybody truly buys into an apartment and thinks that they're not going to be transparent or thinks that the body corporate is not going to be transparent and pass along information. But we do know that it is possible for people to buy into what they think is a very very well-run body corporate only for people over time to move in and out of the dwellings the membership of the body corporate changes and things can fall through the cracks. People might not keep proper minutes. And before you know it in 20 years' time you're going to sell and there isn't the information that's needed to actually adequately address the issues of people's future risks and future concerns. Things may not have been maintained and it becomes very hard to sell. So it's in people's interests when they're selling and they're buying that they understand the relationships and they understand that the body corporate is well-managed.Another really important point is that we also want to make rules that don't impose too much burden or cost on people. It's very important that as Parliament we're here to fix people's issues and not impose too much cost when we're doing that as well. One area that I think FEC did well on was the long-term maintenance plans. They said that they empathised with submitters' concerns and agreed that it would be difficult to account for future unknowns such as inflation or new technologies when changing the long-term maintenance plans from around 10 years to 30 years. And they landed on a middle ground where the body corporate would have a long-term detailed cost estimate for 10 years but they would—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Can I ask the members on my left just to keep the volume down. Thank you.BROOKE VAN VELDEN: —thank you Madam Speaker—allow for projections of 30 years rather than asking for a detailed cost estimate for the 30 years. I think that was a good middle ground because we do know that we want people to have access to information so they know what they're buying but at the same time not imposing such an unnecessary burden that the benefits of this change to the law would be outweighed by too much cost. So this is about fixing those issues and establishing a good framework for buyers for sellers and for dispute resolution.And I did just want to very briefly touch on a point that my colleague Chlöe Swarbrick touched on which was about the online ability to now join into your body corporate. And I cannot wait being a member of a body corporate myself to be able to be here in Parliament and joining into my meetings that I cannot do so when I'm in another city. So to all my fellow body corporate members I look forward to seeing you on screen. Thank you Madam Speaker.