Kedgley Sue: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Kedgley Sue: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 07 July 2011. Volume:673;Page:19930. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party believes in giving credit where it is due so I think a lot of credit is due to the Minister in the chair the Minister for Building and Construction for attempting to solve a very intractable problem and also for sitting in the chair listening to the debate on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill and answering the questions that we are asking. It is quite a unique experience to be in this Chamber have people raising questions and have a Minister actually listen with courtesy instead of ridiculing us and answer our questions. I would like to give credit to the Minister for giving good reasoned explanations for why he is or is not accepting various amendments. I also agree with the Minister that we should go beyond the blame game and look at solutions. 
However history will repeat itself unless we learn from it and I want to take a moment to look at the history of this issue. It is not actually a blame game. It is not about attacking National or attacking Labour because the 1991 Building Act was passed unanimously by both National and Labour. At that stage sadly there was no Green Party in Parliament. The point I want to make is that the lesson of history is the utter failure of deregulation. I think it is important that we accept that. We have a Government—not just this Government—and a whole lot of people who have the mantra of deregulation and self-regulation. We are being told everywhere we turn that self-regulation and deregulation will work and we do not need all this onerous regulation. This leaky home disaster is an abject lesson in what happens with deregulation and in the huge cost of deregulation. 
What did this 1991 Act do? The aim of it was to encourage competition in the market boost the building industry reduce building costs and save money. Everyone whipped themselves into a fervour about the wonderful things that would happen with the passage of the Building Act and with deregulation. The Act wiped out all the previous regulations and controls loosened councils’ inspection procedures and allowed the introduction of private house-inspectors so that there would be competition with council inspectors. Oh there was no need to bother about skills! We did not need to have skills any more. Training was removed. Everyone was so enthusiastic; this was going to encourage competition boost the building industry reduce building costs and save money. I want to repeat this because this is what we are hearing as a mantra on just about every other bill that comes to the House: “We are going to encourage competition. We are going to reduce costs by removing competition.” 
We cannot emphasise sufficiently that this leaky building crisis is an unmitigated fiasco. It is the largest man-made fiasco in our history with costs likely to be $22 billion. One of the National members talked about 40000 people being affected by leaky homes but the expectation is that the number could be somewhere around 89000 people. This is all happening because of deregulation. We left it to the invisible hand of the market. We allowed builders to enter and exit the industry with no liability and no costs. They could whack something up then disappear and go to Australia—deregulation. Please nobody ever tell me that deregulation and self-regulation are the solutions to save money and reduce costs. This is like a case study of the abject failure of deregulation. 
Having got that off my chest I will mention that we all know people who have been caught up in this fiasco. The most recent was a friend of mine from the United Nations. She thought she would like to return to New Zealand on her retirement and buy a building. She showed me this apartment she was going to buy on the Kapiti coast. I took one look at it—it was a mono-clad building—and said “Sue are you absolutely sure that isn’t a leaky home?”. She said “Oh no no.” Her brother-in-law was a real estate agent and he checked it all out. I said: “Please get it checked out. This could be a leaky home.” So she arranged for somebody to come and have a look at it. This person an independent consultant absolutely assured her that this was not a leaky home. She had owned that apartment for less than 6 months before the grim news came in that it was leaking like a sieve. This was only a few years ago. This independent contractor had absolutely assured her that her apartment was not a leaky home but of course it was leaking like a sieve. 
As the Minister in the chair is answering people’s questions to my great admiration I have a question for him. Yes I understand what he is saying about a time frame for financial assistance and that we cannot have an indefinite time frame. But we heard a lot about people who had houses built in the 1990s—some estimating the number could be 15000 to 20000—that will fall outside the time limit. I can understand that the Minister has set a limit of whatever it is—that financial assistance cannot be given after this particular time—but why are we excluding people who had houses built in the 1990s? They will miss out. That is one of those things that seems incredibly arbitrary. I understand that the Minister is saying there needs to be a time limit but why not at least include not exclude in the package those who built homes in the 1990s? 
I strongly agree with Phil Twyford about multi-dwelling homes. The Minister was not at the Local Government and Environment Committee to hear the submissions but we were told that about 5500 people in multi-dwellings will not be eligible. It will be very difficult for bodies corporate to be eligible. I think that the proposal that Phil Twyford has come up with for multi-dwellings is a very positive initiative. Again I would appreciate it if the Minister could answer why that one does not seem to make sense. I say to the Minister that that was one of the big issues that submitters raised with us. 
I was very pleased to hear the Minister acknowledge that  
Stachybotrys 
 can kill people. That also worries me. We had so many people say to us that they could not afford to pick up 50 percent of the cost so they were wondering what would happen to them. Some of those people said they were living in homes that were unsafe they were a health hazard and they have  
Stachybotrys 
 mould. So what are we going to do? It is fantastic that we are providing some sort of solution but what will we do for those poor people who simply cannot raise a mortgage get a bank guarantee or whatever for that 50 percent? What will we do about those people? We cannot just ignore them because we have people who are living in insanitary unsafe homes that are a health hazard. 
So yes congratulations to the Minister and to the Government for coming up with a package. I understand that it is extraordinarily complex and difficult. I am glad I did not have to go as the Minister did to numerous meetings with people sobbing—I can believe that. But we heard the submissions we all have our friends and we know the utter total tragedy this has caused for so many lives. We need to remember that it was deregulation—deregulation; nothing else—that created this problem. Deregulation is what caused this $22 billion problem which is estimated to affect 80000 New Zealanders and causes abject misery to so many people. It is deregulation that has done this so let us not hear that endless mantra from Rodney Hide the ACT Party and National that deregulation will solve our problems. Actually what it has done is create the biggest man-made disaster in New Zealand’s history.