Simpson Scott: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSimpson Scott: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 March 2015. Volume:703;Page:2058. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure to rise in support of this Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill in its first reading introduced by the Minister the Hon Nick Smith. I rise in my capacity as chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee. It will be my committee that will steer this bill through the select committee process. I want to assure the House at the outset that we will be giving this bill very due diligence very careful consideration and very thorough analysis as we do with all pieces of legislation.In a previous life I had a sad involvement with a multi-site apartment block. I was employed briefly to help as a facilitator to try to organise the nearly 120 owners who were involved in this multi-unit site who had the misfortune to have bought lived in or invested in a very leaky apartment block in Auckland City. At that time I became very very conscious and aware of the multifaceted incredibly complicated and mind-numbingly expensive process and the deeply heartbreaking emotional journey that those owners were going to confront. This was a process of trying simply to get the multiple owners to agree on a pathway forward about how to address the issues that confronted them collectively as luck or fate would have had it merely having thrown them together in an unfortunate circumstance.Just to put some kind of measure and context around this particular case for this multi-apartment site the initial estimates for repairs for the leaky building were in the order of $20 million. At the time there was no remedy there was no pathway and there was no way forward for that group to act cohesively or in a coordinated way other than to work through a group of keen amateurs who made up the body corporate. And there they were thrust into a legal minefield of epic proportion. Most of them were as I say just keen amateurs thrown together literally by a turn of fate that they had all invested in or bought property in the same complex and they were confronted with legal bills that were eye watering and numbing in their size. They had a range of different capacities and circumstances—each and every one of them. Many of them were property investors and they had some capacity to fund their portion of litigation. But I was struck immediately by the straitened circumstances of many of those unit owners for whom their unit in this leaky building was the manifestation of their lifetime savings. They had mortgages and they were all very keen to try to get it sorted.This bill is a bill that carries forward on the good work that was done at a time to try to resolve some of those issues. This bill extends the system that was put in place and I thought the very good work that was done by the Hon Maurice Williamson during his time as Minister. He actually developed a concept that this bill seeks to extend. This bill would have helped those people I was talking about in a way that was simply not available to them at the time. Now it is and it is very very good. The Government has taken significant leadership on this matter and I am pleased to see that this bill will actually take into account some of the certainty issues that have arisen as a result of subsequent litigation—most notably that case Osborne v Auckland Council in June of last year when some questions were raised about timing. Those issues are now going to be legislatively made certain by this piece of legislation.This is a bill for the sorts of people whom I was talking about in my introductory comments who would have had to go to very expensive time-consuming and cumbersome litigation and for the probably 70 properties concerned that will be captured by this bill that process will not have to take place for those people. I think this House can be quite reassured by the fact that this bill will bring a degree of peace of mind to those people who have already suffered emotionally physically and not least of all financially through a situation that is often something that they had no involvement in at all other than the misfortune of investing in or buying a leaky home property.This bill addresses three matters: the legislative location of eligibility criteria is made certain; the definition of “built date” which is the issue around the legal action in Osborne v Auckland Council—that matter is defined and addressed in this piece of legislation—and then the third aspect that is addressed is the application timing that has to be received within 10 years of the property being built. Ten years may sound like quite a long period of time but I can assure the House that for those people who are caught up in these matters 10 years goes very quickly but it is 10 years of agony and uncertainty and it causes great stress and heartache for every single one of those people involved.I am delighted that the Minister has introduced this bill. I think it is pragmatic it is sensible and it is a common sense outcome of what has been a bit of a tail end to the original legislation the original solution that the Hon Maurice Williamson so wisely brought together some years ago. Frankly lawyers have made vast fortunes from the misfortune of people who previously have been forced to litigate to solve their leaky home or unit problems. What we have got from this bill is a situation that means that those people will be spared that activity. That I think goes a long way to providing some degree of optimism and hope for the people who have bought into these properties. The numbers are quite staggering. If we look back to a time before the solution was put in place there were literally tens of thousands of properties involved and they were involved in leaky home situations all over the country. Electorates like mine in Coromandel were not spared. We have got a number of multi-level dwellings in the electorate where they are encased in plastic and where work is being done to ensure that their leaky home status is being remedied and put right as we speak.Back in the early days we found that there was this tsunami of issues that were confronting us as a nation and we had to do something about it. By the time we had got to 31 January this year there had been 1147 claims and those 1147 claims represented some 3500 homes that had been assessed as qualifying for the Government contribution under the formula that was set in place. The future cost of that benefit is going to be relatively minor in comparison with the bulk of work that has already occurred. I think as I said this House can take some confidence from the fact that this pragmatic piece of refining legislation will come as a great relief to those people who find themselves caught up in these situations.The points in this bill that are important to the ongoing validity of the Financial Assistance Package are that it ensures that as many homeowners as possible will be able to access the resolution formula that was put in place. It seems to me quite arbitrary to have cut those people off simply because of a finite time being put in the original solution that has now come close to finishing. This piece of legislation will extend that timing to allow confidence and optimism for a solution to be accessed and obtained by these remaining unsettled cases. This is a very good pragmatic piece of legislation. I know that the committee will give it very careful and diligent scrutiny. I am looking forward to watching it as it progresses through the select committee and through the House. I commend it to the House with full support.