Mackey Moana: Unit Titles Bill — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Unit Titles Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:661;Page:9873] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 Members will have to excuse me but I have screeds and screeds of paper in front of me. Because the Opposition wants to facilitate the passage of this legislation as quickly as possible I am struggling to find where I am up to in my notes. 
Chris Tremain 
: Page 159. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I thank Mr Tremain very much. We are on to the general provisions. The only issue in this part that I want to talk about is minority relief. 
Chris Tremain 
: Just here to help. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Oh Mr Tremain is just here to help; I thank him very much. 
The minority relief provisions in the Unit Titles Bill are very important and I want particularly to refer to the issue that my colleague Phil Twyford raised earlier which had been raised by the Home Owners and Buyers Association of New Zealand. The association was concerned that when we have a quorum of only 25 percent and now 75 percent of voters can make a decision that means that 19 percent of unit title holders will effectively be making a decision. This point was picked up by the Social Services Committee. It is a shift in power from the minority who in the past were able to hold up any changes to the majority. Because of that there are minority relief provisions in this legislation. It also became apparent when we were having our discussions that when we have small developments there may need to be provisions for majority relief as well. 
We have attempted in this bill to provide clarity around the disputes processes that minority shareholders can rely on if they feel they have been hard-done-by or that a decision has been made unfairly. We have added a new subsection to the provision currently in section 42 of the Unit Titles Act to allow for majority relief as well in the case where we have a small development of for example three owners. In that case the 75 percent threshold starts to become very very few people indeed. The new subsection allows for a decision to be made where 65 percent of the owners agree as opposed to 75 percent. In the case of a unit title development that has three units in order to have 75 percent agreement we would have to have 100 percent agreement which is certainly not what we intended. That majority relief now drops that down to 65 percent. 
We also had to address issues around time-share developments and issues that were raised by retirement village associations. We thought we had done this in the select committee. We were then contacted by the Retirement Villages Association which told us that it was worried that we had not done this and that there was still too much overlap with its own legislation. We apologise for that. The select committee thought it had managed to completely separate out the provisions of the two Acts. Supplementary Order Paper 112 in the name of the Hon Maurice Williamson makes the changes to ensure that what the select committee and this Parliament had intended does in fact happen. Again I say particularly to those submitters who were really concerned about the drop in the threshold for making decisions from 100 percent to 75 percent of owners and about what that might mean in terms of the rights of a minority to voice their concerns that they need to look at the provisions for minority relief set out in clauses 191 to 195 of the bill. I think we have struck a good balance. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 112 in the name of the Hon Maurice Williamson to Part 5 be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to. 
Part 5 as amended agreed to.