Williams Poto: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7419. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I am going to make a small but hopefully useful contribution to this Committee stage. As I understand it the need for the bill is really to tidy up some definitions and to allow for claimants to qualify where they may not have qualified previously. There are three main components that are contained within Part 1. The first really is around the criteria with which claimants may access the Financial Assistance Package. It is very clear from the work that has been done through the Local Government and Environment Committee that the definitions around the criteria are very much aligned with what stage the claimant is at in the process. So it makes it very clear that if you are engaged in any type of proceedings or legal process you exempt yourself from the ability to then be part of the Financial Assistance Package.Also part of Part 1 is around identifying what the actual built date is. The definition is not within the primary legislation and I just want to say that it is really important to ensure that we get the definition right because the definition of the built date which we have here as running for 10 years from the date on which the code compliance certificate for the building work for the affected structure was issued has actually provided an opportunity for a larger number of claimants to now be part of a claim where they would previously have been excluded. So it is very important that the built date is secured and defined within the Act. Just going back to the criteria for the Financial Assistance Package it is important to have this defined to avoid any doubt of who is actually intended to be part of that.But the main part of Part 1 is around “qualifying claimant”. I do have a couple of questions to ask about this. The qualifying claimant definition as I see from one of the submissions that was made by the Law Society does include a greater set of claimants now potentially being able to access the Financial Assistance Package but there also may be a subset of owners who were previously ineligible who may become eligible under the Act. I would like to know who they might be because potentially some of them might not qualify for the Financial Assistance Package.The other question I would like to ask is this. According to the Law Society in the bill’s current form some of those who are affected claimants specifically those who repaired their homes after their claim was deemed ineligible will still not be able to obtain financial assistance under the Financial Assistance Package provisions. So I would like to ask the Minister whether there has been any work to ensure that those claimants who are currently going to be ineligible will become eligible—whether he has made any recommendations or has written any Supplementary Order Papers that would include that subset of claimants within the bill.The other part of Part 1 is about the contribution criteria and that really just sets out the relationship between the Government and the participating territorial authorities as to who has what role in ensuring that they contribute to that criteria.