Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWeathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 March 2015. Volume:703;Page:2055. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment BillFirst ReadingHon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Housing): I move That the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported by 31 July 2015. The Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act 2006 was amended by this Government in 2011 to establish the financial assistance package to help owners of leaky homes to get their properties repaired. The financial assistance package is an important part of the Weathertight Homes Tribunal scheme that the Government has provided to help those owners of leaky homes. Too much money was being spent on litigation instead of getting on and fixing the leaky homes. The financial assistance package provides an alternative track to litigation by offering funding from the Government towards the repair costs. The financial assistance package represents a major commitment from the Government especially in pretty tough financial times to the repair of homes.As at 31 January 2015 there were 1147 claims representing 3528 homes that had been assessed as qualifying for the Government contribution of 25 percent towards the repair costs. The estimated future cost to the Government in the financial assistance contribution is estimated at about $115 million. That is expected to generate an estimated $460 million of repairs via this assistance package. This bill has the same objective as the Government when it established the financial assistance package: to avoid unnecessary litigation that would divert resources away from the practical job of repairing homes. This bill addresses three matters that could be the cause of litigation if the Government does not address them in the law. Given the history of litigation around leaky homes I want to do all I can to prevent money being wasted on needless court battles and delays to the repair of those homes.The first two matters addressed in the bill arise from legal interpretations of eligibility for the services provided under the Act. It is important that the legislation is clear about who is eligible to make claims under the Act and who can get access to the financial assistance package. First the bill takes two of the criteria from the financial assistance package out of the Gazette notice that they are currently in and puts them into the criteria in the Act. Last year a High Court case caused concern that the criteria could be successfully challenged simply on the ground that they are set in the Gazette notice rather than in the Act. In light of this the bill proposes to move two of the criteria from the Gazette notice and put them in the law. The change is simple—it simply moves the location of the criteria. The wording and effect of the criteria are actually completely unchanged. The bill simply moves the criteria from one legislative instrument to another. The bill also validates past decisions that have been made using the criteria when they were in the Gazette notice. This validation is not because there was any error in those decisions but to avoid any unnecessary debate about those previous decisions after the criteria have been moved into the Act.Second in relation to the word “built” which is used in the Act a Supreme Court decision issued on 10 June last year in Osborne v Auckland Council interpreted the word “built” differently from the previous decisions that had been made by the High Court and the Court of Appeal. The interpretation of “built” has a significant impact on determining whether a claim made under the Act is eligible to proceed as eligibility under the Act requires claimants to make their claim within 10 years of the dwelling being “built”. Had the Supreme Court’s interpretation of “built” been current earlier it is possible that more claims would have been eligible to access the dispute resolution services available under the Act and also possibly the financial assistance package. The bill therefore proposes to deem those claims that would have been in the situation had the interpretation applied at the time to be eligible but only in respect of the time they were built. The claims will still have to meet other eligibility criteria in the Act to be able to proceed. It is estimated that there will about an extra 70 families with homes that will be eligible as a consequence of that change.The third matter dealt with in the bill relates to the proposed expiry of the financial assistance package. When it was introduced it was for a fixed period of 5 years; that period will end on 23 July 2016. Claimants who wish to access the financial assistance package will need to have issued a notice to proceed by that date. The steps involved in getting to issue a notice to proceed can take varying amounts of times to complete depending on whether the claim relates to a single home or to a set of apartments. To ensure that the closing date of the financial assistance package does not arbitrarily kick in for claimants who are making good progress towards issuing the notice to proceed the bill proposes to allow claimants who are making active progress with their claims to issue their notice to proceed after that 23 July deadline in 2016. This bill does not change anything about the financial assistance package; the bill simply removes doubt and provides certainty for claimants who want to access the financial assistance package. Certainty for claimants was a matter of key importance raised in submissions on the 2011 amendment bill that established the financial assistance package.This bill will ensure the ongoing validity of that financial assistance package. It will ensure that as many homeowners as possible are able to access the services under the Act by aligning the law with the most recent decision of the Supreme Court and it is going to reduce the risk of litigation around the operation of the financial assistance package by transferring Gazette issues into the law. I commend this bill to the House.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): The Labour Party will be supporting this legislation in its first instance to the Local Government and Environment Committee. We obviously want to be apprised of the detail as described by the Minister. I would say that the measuresthat the Minister for Building and Housing Nick Smith has outlined will indeed on the face of it go some way to helping to resolve an issue that has been dealt with by a number of Governments and a large number of former and current weathertight homes Ministers myself included.I would just make a couple of historic observations. I do note that the Minister with goodwill has put these measures forward but I do note that when I was the Minister for Building and Construction the Hon Nick Smith was wont to interject on me and others whenever this legislation came up as we tried to embark on and put in place a series of measures to alleviate a problem that really at that point no one knew the extent of. He was wont to interject: “Just write a cheque and pay the money.” It is good to see that the Minister has after a few years in Government actually worked out that it is never as simple as simply writing a cheque for an open-ended fiscal envelope. Writing a cheque when you do not know the extent of the problem would simply let those peopleoff the hook—and I remember this at the time as the Minister; many of those in the building trade but not all are quality builders quality constructors quality architects and designers etc.—who perpetrated pretty shoddy work and left the victims in the cart whom we are trying to assist here today. So I do recall the Minister sort of interjecting: “Just pay the money and write a cheque.”It was very good political opportunism at the time but since then he has got his feet under the Cabinet table and worked out as I did that this is a very very complex problem one that has to be taken seriously. I am glad to see he has. It has affected thousands of people’s lives. Your home is your castle. Your home is the biggest asset generally that Kiwis have. Your house is what you have worked for all your life which you continue to work for and pay the mortgage for and it is often the biggest financial burden on the family. To have the rug pulled out through shoddy work through certain folk—and I say only certain folk both in the design community and the construction community because there were independent reports when we were in Government that showed there were failures right across the board not just in one section.Equally the inspectorate in local government is the last line of defence for your average Kiwi who gets a home built and has it inspected. I well recall going to some local authorities before we ensured they were accredited to do the job properly and recall retired building inspectors—some in the North Island—telling me that the days of the drive-by inspection had disappeared thank goodness. Drive-by—sort of waving at the building and saying: “Yeah we signed it off.”So this is an important piece of legislation and the changes in here I think are pretty straightforward. It is simple. There are changes to align with the Supreme Court decision of Osborne so that people are eligible on the basis of a compliance certificate not simply on the basis of a dwelling being completed but not having a compliance certificate and there are other provisions that the Minister outlined moving it from the Gazette to legislation. It would be interesting to know the history as to why—and it may be an issue around flexibility—the provisions if there was concern that they may be litigated were not simply enshrined in the original legislation or in a bill brought into the House to enshrine them and not simply put in the Gazette notice. It is slightly odd that we are embarking on making provisions that simply transfer the location of provisions from the Gazette notice to the bill. There may well indeed be a very good rationale for that. It would be good to hear that rationale from officials and from others as we go through.I think it is also noteworthy that both sides of the House I think over this issue of many years have learnt a lot. If you look at part of the origin of this difficulty I and others and many in the building trade would argue that when the last National Government the Bolger-Shipley Government deregulated the building and construction industry so that anybody at the time—God help me myself included—could have strapped on a tool belt and called themselves a builder and gone around and taken money off people—and I do not think I would be able to construct a doghouse let alone a proper dwelling for somebody. Basically the cowboys were let in. There were no rules; anybody could call themselves a builder.Prior to that you did have a good old-fashioned thing called an apprenticeship. You did have proper training and you did have—to be fair to the construction and design sector throughout in historical terms—the handshake the following-up on work done and the correcting of work that may have been wrong generally just happened. It was a very very professional industry. And most in the construction and design sector still I have to say are exceptional professionals. But we pass legislation in this House not for those who will obey the law but sadly for the minority who will abuse the law and will look for ways to get around it.I do say to the National Government that this is probably a very good example in historic terms of where deregulation of itself as a sort of ideology—the principle that we should deregulate—does not always work. It does not always work. I think that when we put in place the licensing of builders and construction folk and others and the National Government then carried that on—rightly so—it was an attempt to weed out those in the industry who had perpetrated the problem. It was an attempt to weed out those in the industry who had created actioned and executed the shoddy work and then disappeared gone broke or used every legal and other means to not live up to their responsibilities.The truth is that those who actually design build and inspect—those who are empowered to actually construct a building in part or in whole—are responsible for that work and should stand by it. It is not actually the taxpayer in fairness. Nor is it in any way shape or form the homeowner. But we did have people who simply just walked away. The company went broke so that they did not have to live up to their responsibilities. But equally as I say local authorities historically—many of them did not play their part.We tried to find a way through the original Weathertight Homes Resolution Service to give people an off-ramp—those who could not afford to go to court. Many of those who did go to court and could afford it got good outcomes. We tried to provide an alternative resolution service which in fairness I think had some very good points but of itself did not wholly solve the problem just as no one piece or no one silver bullet throughout this whole unfortunate saga has solved this problem.So we welcome the ideas and the proposals put forward in this legislation. We will be interested as it goes forward to the select committee—I am sure we will get submissions from people who have been through hell in terms of trying to deal with this issue who may well come up with other propositions remedies or other good ideas that hopefully we can record amend and put into this legislation to make it better. Because the politics aside there is I think goodwill and I think most of the glibness of the Minister in his former life as an Opposition spokesperson has been put asunder.This is a serious issue. I come from a province where housing is a major concern—not so much through leaky buildings but through an act of God called an earthquake. And you can see where people’s lives are almost destroyed. They have no way of coming back in many cases if their biggest asset is put in jeopardy. So we look forward to a debate on this. I am sure the select committee will do its job diligently in terms of working through this legislation because all of us actually do want to see this issue brought to a resolution. We want to get those people who are still going through the nightmare out of that and enable them to get on with their lives as best they can.But I say to those out there who may watch this debate or may read about it in the paper that those who were responsible those who did run to the bankruptcy court as it were and those who did not live up to their responsibilities not only gave a bad name to all those good construction and design folk who need only a handshake because they will stand by their work but should be cognisant of the fact—if not by law now—that they are ultimately the people who are responsible for this not the victim not actually the taxpayer and they should have been brought to account. And some of them I wager may not be able to sleep at night.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.Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I suspect that at a time when this country of ours is faced with a housing crisis and the leaky home scenario that has been around for quite some time it would be premature for Government members to be patting themselves on the back and claiming that this is a wonderful piece of legislation even though it may be. I suspect that the thousands of people who have experienced a leaky home and who have been fighting to try to get claims through their council and central government will not feel as optimistic as Government members might feel.I think it was the Home Owners and Buyers Association that said that the term “leaky building” has now been in the Kiwi vocabulary for 10 years. That is an indictment on the pieces of legislation that enabled such buildings to occur in the 1990s. Yet today the country is still struggling to come to grips with the reality that many of our homes built in the last 19 years or before 2006 are seriously defective and in need of repairs that often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.Just by way of background the initial response to the leaky building crisis was the introduction of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act in 2002 which was later replaced by the 2006 Act in force today. This Act was intended to provide speedy flexible and cost-effective procedures for assessment and resolution of claims relating to leaky buildings as opposed to using privately engaged building surveyors and the courts.In April 2009 the National Government engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers to produce the report on the size and cost of New Zealand’s weathertightness problem. The report released to the public late in December 2009 found that the likely number of homes affected was in the range of 22000 to 89000 with a consensus focus of about 42000 failures at an economic cost to repair of about $11.3 billion. The report also recorded the view of many experts that the majority of mono-clad dwellings constructed before 2006 would suffer from weathertightness issues making the total number of failures in excess of 110000 homes at an estimated repair cost of about $30 billion. Many experts in the building industry suggest that this figure is more likely to be the case and that it even understates the size of the problem.As a response the Minister for Building and Construction at the time Maurice Williamson announced a financial assistance package for leaky home owners in May 2010. Under the package an eligible owner will get a contribution of either 25 percent or 50 percent of the agreed repair cost if they can prove their ability to fund the balance. The financial assistance package has been described by the Prime Minister John Key as “spreading the costs as evenly and fairly as possible.” He suggested that this is the solution to the leaky homes problem.Many in the industry many homeowners and those who are facing leaky and defective homes do not consider this to be the case at all. Owners of stand-alone homes constructed or renovated more than 10 years ago under the New Zealand law have no chance of recovering the cost of repairing their home from those responsible for the faulty construction. To be eligible to use the Government’s system for assessment resolution or to take up the financial assistance package the home has to have been built within the last 10 years. Therefore owners whose homes are more than 10 years old are left to bear the full financial burden of repair by themselves.There are situations where homes may not meet the eligibility criteria for Government assistance but may still have a viable claim in the courts. For stand-alone homes less than 10 years old certified by a council and where the council has been responsible for the certification of the home the council owes a duty of care to the owner no matter whether you are the first owner or a subsequent owner. As a result owners in this category have the opportunity to recover a significant portion of the repair cost from the local council and any other regional party still in existence either through the Government’s Weathertight Homes Tribunal or the court.Where the council is found to have breached its duty to the owner it will usually be found liable for 100 percent of the total amount awarded with the opportunity to recover a portion of this from other liable parties. For those with joint or several liability an owner gets paid all that is owing to them if others default but under the financial assistance package an eligible owner in this category would receive a contribution of only 25 percent of the agreed repair cost from the council and the same from the Government as long as they can prove their ability to fund the remaining 50 percent.For stand-alone homes less than 10 years old where the home was certified by a private certifier unfortunately the local council owes no duty of care to that owner as all the private certifiers are now in liquidation or are struck off. In many cases the other parties involved in construction are also long gone. Owners in that category often have no chance of recovering their repair costs.I state that because I have owners of leaky homes in my own electorate of Māngere as I am sure other members have. To talk to them about this after many many years of trying to get a claim through is just distressing for them. They just do not have any confidence whatsoever that they are going to see a light at the end of the tunnel. So yes absolutely the Labour Party supports this legislation and will support it going to the select committee.It is important for the Government of the day to attempt to try to serve the very communities that are hurting at the moment. Housing is such a significant issue. This just compounds the state of dire need that many families are facing. It has just been going on for far too long. We have got another bill before the House that hopefully—hopefully—is going to fix this. Far too many families have lost their homes and their livelihoods as a result of the leaky homes saga.I want to say that one of the reasons why I said at the beginning that it is too premature for Government members to be patting themselves on the back for this piece of legislation is that the late Paul Holmes in a 2000 interview discussing the leaky homes crisis said that it was the Bolger Government that passed the Building Act 1991 which allowed untreated timber and mono-cladding to be used on homes. I think that of all the members on that side of the House Maurice Williamson will know that because he too admitted in an interview during this saga that the fault lay with the Government when it deregulated the building industry. There was no oversight in terms of ensuring that the quality of the homes that we were building was to the highest standard.So the Labour Party has no problems. The bill clarifies that the claimants are not eligible for a Government contribution to the financial assistance package while pursuing a civil case against a participating territorial authority unless that participating territorial authority agrees and they discontinue legal proceedings. I think we do need to state clearly for all those concerned what their rights are.I would hope that when this bill comes through the select committee the opportunities are given to everyone—homebuyers homeowners organisations—to make their submissions on it. I would hate to see the select committee rush through the analysis of this bill. As much as it may want to I think it has taken us so long to arrive at this stage here that we do need to get it right and in order to get it right it is going to be important for homeowners homebuyers and all of those in the building industry who have a stake in the leaky homes situation going forward to be given every opportunity to participate.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Before I call Paul Foster-Bell and without breaching the convention referring to the absence of members I will say that I do know that the previous speaker Mr Sio was not here for part of the time in the last session when the Speaker was very clear on a ruling he gave as to the reading of speeches. I did not interrupt the member for that reason but I do want to just give a general warning again for those members who did not hear the Speaker.PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Contrary to some of the things said by the previous speaker Mr Sio we on this side of the House are not patting ourselves on the back prematurely over this bill the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. It is an important piece of legislation and as my colleague the honourable member from the Coromandel Scott Simpson said it is timely it is pragmatic and it is something that is required to address the concerns that affect so many New Zealanders who have had leaky homes. But it is not something that we take particular pleasure in having to do in order to fix up a mess that has been present in this industry over a number of years and now across the tenures of three Governments.We welcome the Labour Party’s support of this piece of legislation and I actually agree with the honourable member Clayton Cosgrove. It is not as simple as writing a cheque and we should not let entirely off the hook that tiny minority of builders who were dodgy and the housing designers the architects the engineers and the certifiers who also played a part in leading to a situation where a number of New Zealand houses were not built to a standard that could be reasonably expected with regard to weathertightness. But this is important to a subset of the owners of leaky homes who have been affected. So I think it is timely that the bill has been introduced into the House now.I go back to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report that Mr Sio referred to in his speech and the estimate was that between 22000 and 89000 homes were affected by weathertightness issues. But the consensus among the experts who looked at this including people from the Weathertight Homes Tribunal which assesses these cases but also the Building Research Association of New Zealand and other industry players was that the likely figure was around 42000 dwellings. That means that 80000 Kiwis were affected by weathertightness issues. The reason I bring this up is to give members a sense of the scale of the issue that we found when we came into Government in 2009 because what had happened prior to that was yes a tribunal had been introduced and people who had leaky homes were able to take their claims to that tribunal to be heard but many thousands of New Zealanders were still left in a terrible position.The circumstance we found when we came into office was that in terms of the costs being met for a leaky home 69 percent of those costs were accruing to the owner of the home who in a few cases may have been involved in the building of their own home as New Zealanders are entrepreneurial and the No. 8 wire mentality does still exist in this country. But 69 percent of the costs accruing to owners was not reflective of a fair attribution of liability or blame for the problem in my view. Twenty-five percent of the cost was being met by councils which perhaps is a fair attribution of cost to councils given their role over many years of failing to recognise the weathertightness issues that were present in buildings they were consenting and authorising to be built. Only 4 percent of the cost in 2009 was actually being met by the third parties—the builders the designers and the engineers who one could argue played a larger part in the creation of this issue and 2 percent of the cost was being met by the Government. That was the administration of that tribunal. Owners carried the largest share of the costs and that was a situation that we did not feel was fair to those who had been affected often through no fault of their own by this insidious issue. It is an issue that often takes many years for homeowners to recognise they suffer from.So in 2011 the Government announced the leaky homes Financial Assistance Package and this was to give a greater Government share. Neither we nor the previous Government accept legal liability for this situation but we did feel it was a fair solution to offer a 25 percent contribution to those cases that had been through the proper hearings procedure and where the homeowner had been recognised as a duly affected homeowner who had been impacted by a weathertightness issue. So there was a 25 percent contribution from the Government and then access to a loan with Government backing should it be required so that homeowners could borrow the money they might need to bring their home up to a reasonable standard so that it could either go up for sale or remain habitable for the homeowner. The fiscal implications of this issue are significant. As I have said 80000 individuals and 40000 homes are affected and an estimate made in 2008 put the cost at $11.2 billion for the New Zealand economy. It was almost on the scale of a natural disaster and comparable to some of the costs that we have seen of the destruction of homes in Christchurch for instance after the earthquake.That gives the context for why we think it is an important piece of legislation that we are introducing now to remedy three particular technical aspects of the current system which have in recent litigation proven to be difficult or have led to various different interpretations and difficulty in establishing clear precedent. The first of these is around where in legislation this sits. The courts have taken some issue with the fact that by notifying in the Gazette we are providing the criteria for claimants. We will move from the Gazette notification to actually codifying in the Act itself the validity criteria to remove that doubt. It is not an issue that has actually impacted on individuals yet but it is something that was identified by the courts. They have sought the guidance of this House to remedy that lack of clarity and this bill does provide clarity in that particular instance.As my colleague Scott Simpson has referred to another major issue has been around establishing the definition of when a building is built. We know that throughout the country with regard to the Resource Management Act there is a lack of clarity around measuring the height of a building. That was one example that has reached recent media attention. There are 50 different definitions of how to measure the height of a building. Well we have two different definitions that the courts have referred to in terms of determining the built date for a building. The reason the built date is very important is that it is the date at which the clock starts ticking for those who may have suffered a weathertightness issue given that there is a 10-year expiry period for the detection of a problem and the lodging of a claim with the tribunal.We have had a disparity between the High Court and the Court of Appeal which have in recent cases determined the built date of a building to relate to the date that a final building inspection is conducted by the council whereas the Supreme Court in the Osborne v Auckland Council judgment which was reached in June 2014 determined that the built date of the building—the date from which the building is considered to have been built—was not when the inspection happened but when the code of compliance certificate was issued. A considerable period of time can elapse between those two events the council inspection and the issuing of the certificate.This does affect a number of claimants who are currently before the tribunal and it behoves this Parliament to ensure that that is clarified and that we have a clear direction as to when a building is deemed to have been built particularly so that we do not get disparities between individual cases. It would in my view be very unfair to have a situation where a home was built on the same day in two different local authority areas and because of these two different judgments they are treated differently in terms of eligibility to access the compensation that is provided by the Weathertight Homes Tribunal. This bill also has retrospective effect so those who would have been eligible had this provision been in place when they were previously perhaps denied access to a claim will have that opportunity to take up their case.The final technical element relates to cases that are currently before the tribunal. Once a case has had the notice to proceed issued then they will be able to access the package even if it falls outside that 10-year limit. As we know 23 July 2016 is the cut-off date and there may be some homes where the owners are currently before the tribunal and can reasonably expect their case to be heard because through no fault of their own there have been delays particularly in the complex multi-home apartment buildings of the sort we have here in Wellington central. Those cases with those complexities can take a long time.This is an important piece of legislation. The Government is certainly not patting itself on the back but it is something we have a responsibility as a sensible Government to progress and I welcome cooperation with the Opposition. I commend this bill to the House.KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I spent yesterday in Christchurch in particular looking at housing issues in that city. It is I believe a national disgrace that people in Christchurch are still living in broken houses years on from the earthquakes that devastated that city. But in relation to this bill we are dealing with people who have been living in broken houses potentially for decades and that also is a national disgrace and an ongoing stain on this Government and its predecessors.We in the Greens have from the word go supported measures to provide justice and a remedial path for those who have been affected by this shocking failure of regulation. It is certainly sobering to hear the accounts of members in the debate today echoing the words that have occurred in every single debate on this issue in the House since the very beginning of the issue. They have been talking about the accounts that we have heard of citizens who have been exposed to these disastrous conditions in their homes with the consequences for their physical health their mental health and their financial health. They have told us their stories about the devastation that this has wreaked on their lives. It is I believe appalling that 9 years on from 2006 when the principal legislation was first enacted we are still having to patch up that legislation and are still hearing those stories.The Green Party will be supporting this bill although I note with interest some of the points that Clayton Cosgrove in particular made in his contribution to the debate and I will be looking at those points in particular during the select committee process. The changes that the bill makes are essentially technical in nature. The change to the built date which effectively the Government has been forced to move on by the Osborne decision is a sensible process and I support the points that Paul Foster-Bell has just made about that issue. I think those are points well made.The other technical change I guess is expanding the definition of the qualifying claimant and in particular this change to acknowledge those who prior to the sunset date in July next year are actively working towards meeting the list of criteria. If I may I will actually read from that list because it is one that I cannot recall and it is a lengthy one. The provisions in the bill currently state that the claimant must obtain an assessor’s report arrange funding sign a homeowner’s agreement commission a repair plan obtain a building consent and obtain quotes before agreeing to a payment plan. The fact that I had to read that probably indicates what a daunting process it actually is for a person who is already subject to the enormous stress of having their home destroyed by this blight. So we support that provision also.I think the third small matter around clarifying the ineligibility for financial assistance for those engaged in civil proceedings against territorial local authorities is on balance something that we support. It reflects the same kind of intent that underpins the accident compensation scheme—that actually we are interested in resolving these disputes. We are interested in making good the wrongs that have been done rather than wasting the time of the courts in a process that—I believe it may have been Scott Simpson who said this—makes lawyers wealthy but actually provides satisfactory solutions for few.We have always said that this legislation ought to have gone further. In 2011 Sue Kedgley referred to some of the issues that Su’a William Sio has raised today—the fact that people whose houses were built in the 1990s are ineligible for this financial assistance yet they have been subject to exactly the same failure of the Government to meet its duty to New Zealand citizens as those who are covered by the bill. It is a discrepancy an inequity that has yet to be resolved.In 2011 in that same debate I gave a speech on behalf of my colleague Gareth Hughes who was then the Green housing spokesperson. I pointed out the fact that it seemed manifestly unfair when this problem has been caused by the failure of that Government led by Jim Bolger in the 1990s for the scheme to provide for the Government to put in 25 percent of the remedial cost but still require the homeowner to meet 50 percent. Where is the justice in that? There is no justice in it. I also pointed out to the House that in our view the sunset provision of 5 years was inadequate. Here we are today coming back to revisit that issue. I point out to the Government that if only it listened to me just a little bit more often we could perhaps save some of this House’s time. [Interruption] I have got some other ideas too.In the light of this bill and the ongoing saga of this House’s time needing to be taken up in trying to find some kind of remediation for those whose lives have been so blighted by this problem of deregulation there is an irony that is just sitting on our Order Paper and coming down the tubes towards us pretty quickly—a bill to amend the Resource Management Act. It will be seeking to deregulate the process of resource management to in the Government’s mind make it easier for houses to be built. It is sometimes said that those who do not learn the lessons of history are sometimes required to repeat them and that appears to be the case here.I want to finish by coming back to something I have mentioned several times in the House in relation to housing and that is to draw on work done by a guy called Maslow on the hierarchy of needs. What are people’s basic needs? Maslow said that in order to function at all in society a person has got some really basic needs that need to be met. They need to be well fed; they need to have a safe physical environment in respect of the air and the water that they consume; and they need warmth and shelter. There is a way of conceptualising the fundamental role of the Government as being to ensure that every person has those basic needs met so that they can actually fulfil their duties as a citizen and enjoy the rights that are recognised in instruments such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and in New Zealand law.The State houses that were built in the 1940s and 1950s are now desirable properties because they were built soundly and they were built with the ethic in mind of ensuring that everybody was housed so it is a shocking indictment on successive Governments that we now have an environment where New Zealanders are homeless living in cars and garages or as we see in Christchurch right now living in houses that have not been repaired or living in leaky homes that ensure their health needs will not be met. It is time that the Government stepped up and once again met that basic responsibility to ensure that New Zealanders have their essential rights and needs met. Thank you.RON MARK (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a short call on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. I have got to say from the outset that although it is nice to have a nice warm fuzzy feeling in the House about the Government coming forward with a wonderful piece of legislation to deal with a problem that has persisted over how many decades now and everybody in the House including New Zealand First saying to the Government: “Look this bill makes a lot of sense and we need to tidy up the loose edges.”—I was not here in 2011 when the last piece of legislation went through. But what stands out to me and I take it from the previous speaker’s speech is that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.I think it is very timely right now while the bill is on the floor of the House to remind people how we got there because it has been due to those decisions that were taken back in 1991 when a Government focused on deregulation. And the funny old thing is that I still hear every day how deregulation is such a wonderful thing. Self-regulation is another term that is often thrown at the House and we are told consistently and persistently particularly by one party that responsible people in the relevant industries out there regulate themselves in the best interests of their fellow New Zealanders. We are told that they regulate themselves appropriately because they want to protect their professional standards and they certainly do not want to be labelled as people who provide tardy or shoddy workmanship.But 1991 was an era that we forget and ignore at our peril. Here we are—1991 was the year when the Building Act was changed and it came into effect in 1994. Homes that were built between—what was it—about 1994 and 2004 are the homes that we are still here in 2015 attempting by this legislation to put right and to fix.Again it stands out even to the dimmest wit on the planet that here we have a piece of legislation that went through in 1991 and it cost the nation an absolute fortune just to get the legislation through. It was highly controversial under what could be described only as the most right-wing National Government that ever walked the planet—or maybe this one is heading that way too now; I do not know—and it was subsequently proven to be flawed and faulty legislation. What is the bill? Well we have heard today: $11.2 billion it has cost.Let me put it to you this way. I know a number of families and I have a lot of friends mainly in the cities who bought houses unsuspectingly not knowing that they were leaky homes. It is not hard to find people who have been driven to take—well some in fact took their lives because of the trauma that they were put through. I have got to send a message from New Zealand First to the Government: let this be the last piece of legislation that comes to this House to deal with the leaky home syndrome. Let this be the last time that this House—and please take advantage of the goodwill that exists right across the floor of this House to get this right and do the right thing by those New Zealanders who actually got shafted. They were shafted by shoddy National Government thinking in 1991. I want to say that again because I am starting to see the same syndrome on the Government benches today. It is almost like that famous Cullen line: “We won. You lost. Eat that!” for ever. Better start listening people—better start listening.To have New Zealanders having to redress this issue and have Parliament having to revisit this issue time and time again—you know is it going to come back to the House in another 4 years’ time? Are we going to make mistakes along the way? I just hope and I am confident that the Local Government and Environment Committee—there is a pretty good team in there. I am confident and I am hopeful—I am hopeful—that we will work together.The issues that stand out to me that I do worry about are around the issue of “qualifying claimant”. We have got a member of our family who is still trying to resolve issues with a leaky apartment that they live in which is part of a body corporate arrangement. Why does that problem still persist today in 2015? Because we do not seem to get it right in Parliament do we? And no matter how many times we come back to the House no matter how fine the speeches may be and no matter how much support is offered by the Opposition parties of the day to the Government of the day. And it is interesting that each time—well the last two times it has been National Governments in here.Let us just do this right. New Zealand First is putting it on the line here: we will work constructively with the committee; we will work constructively with the Government. I will be talking at length with Local Government New Zealand to get a better understanding as to how the councils are dealing with these issues. We understand the complexities and the legalities that so torment everybody including councils. We understand that the people who are being double hit on all of this are those taxpayers who are also ratepayers who are getting hit as they fund the financial assistance package with 25 percent from either direction. From our perspective in New Zealand First it has been a pretty sordid and sorry affair and one that blights New Zealand’s reputation.So there are two things I will leave the Government with to think about: let this piece of legislation and let this issue be for ever a reminder to this Government and to National Party people who think this way that deregulation is not the be-all and end-all and that deregulation does not protect innocent New Zealanders who actually trust in builders and trust in architects to deliver them quality advice. When you offer up opportunities to let loose the cowboys and the architects who want to experiment and when you create a situation in legislation that leaves local government inspectors in a difficult position where they are not really quite sure what their position is then everybody pays.This has been a sordid and sorry affair and I for one hope that this is the last time we have legislation on this matter. I would actually like to see coming out of this an indication as to how many leaky houses are still left out there. I know from my time in local government that there is great fear amongst ratepayers particularly with the emerging amalgamation that there is a second tranche of leaky homes that are still out there to be dealt with. We are hearing consistently in the Wairarapa about getting amalgamated into a super-city Wairarapa ratepayers do not have any leaky homes in their territorial authorities actually. Carterton had two—two—and that was it. They are good builders over there good architects good people. No rip-offs no cowboys. But we have paid for the restoration and the refit of those houses. For ratepayers in the Wairarapa now to be told that they may end up having to pay a share of what 1000 1500 or 2000 extra houses—that is something they worry about. That would be on top of whatever contributions they might have to make in a super-city model to the earthquake strengthening of what 740 buildings in the Wellington basin?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am just going to encourage the member to come back to the bill now.RON MARK: I will come back to this bill but those are the issues that test us over in the Wairarapa. Those are the issues that councils are talking about. I look forward to working constructively with the committee to see whether we can deal with this matter once and for all.JOANNE HAYES (National): I am pleased to stand and take a call to support the first reading of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. When I sit here in the House and I hear other members saying leaky homes are a disgrace for this Government and the previous one I say that that happens when people and when Governments decide not to do anything about it and we are a Government that will do something about it—we are doing something about it. That is the bottom line and the only catchline that we should be thinking about is that we are getting on with it and we are dealing to it.You know it is putting things right that counts. When I hear our member Scott Simpson talking about the Local Government and Environment Committee which this bill is coming back to I say that I too am looking forward to it coming back because a few years ago at the end of 1999 I was working in Auckland and I saw some of those homes being built.In 2013 when my husband and I decided to build a home—well we did not actually decide to build a home; we had to build a home because we did not have a home—that was one of the things that went through my mind when we were designing the actual build itself. I can tell you now that when it comes to physics I am pretty poor at physics. I do not really know a lot about it. My husband would try to explain to me what a parapet was and he would actually have to draw it on a piece of paper for me so I could see what we were looking at when we were looking at the common features of a leaky home. Even the roof-to-wall junctions—even though we were building only a single-storey home he drew what that meant on a two-storey home and I thought: “Thank God we’re building a one-storey home.” Pergola fixings were pretty OK because we had a big deck around them. But yes when he started explaining it to me—especially what a flashing around a window was—and I started to get a bit of a feel about what the people the owners of leaky homes were going through I started to understand the issues that they were facing.This bill amends the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act 2006. In 2011 we amended it and that is when we introduced the financial assistance package to help owners repair their homes and to reduce legislation because the legislation was getting a little bit out of hand in terms of costs. We did that and I will keep reminding the House about this whenever I get the opportunity to speak. We decided to move to work on this particular legislation because it was the time when we had our global world recession which was hitting the world and this country. We were having the devastation of our earthquakes in Christchurch. Financial companies were going to the wall and then later of course we had our terrible tragedy at Pike River mine. You know the coffers were bare when we came in yet we were able to plan so that we could address the leaky homes issue that this country was facing.This bill has three main areas and my colleagues have been very articulate in being able to define what those three areas are. The location of eligibility looks at the financial assistance package which moves the criteria in clauses 1B and 1C of the 2011 Gazette notice into the Act which is good. It ensures that validity cannot be questioned over previous decisions made based on these criteria. So that is very good for this bill.The other area that it covers is the definition of what is “built”—yes my colleagues have defined that and clarified that very well. Just to round it up or to give an overview on it it is when a building is deemed to be built and not at the time of the council inspection. I am pleased to say it is at the issue of a code compliance certificate and that is exactly what happened with ours. So you know at the local government level things are working well I am very happy to say.Of course the last area of this bill is the expiry of the financial assistance package which I want to just flesh out a little bit more. Obviously it expires on 23 July 2016 but the little kind of difference about that is that for everybody who has a claim who gets it in on that day the claim will continue on. That is the key area—or I suppose a kind of little change—that we have put in here. So all of those people can claim right up to 23 July 2016 and they will qualify for assistance until they receive an issuing notice to proceed.With this financial assistance package the extension of the criterion of the date to include everybody up to that date adds another 70 applicants who could benefit from this bill. I just read in a clipping out of Stuff that the Minister for Building and Housing Nick Smith said that the changes to that particular area of the financial assistance package provided “sensible refinements” to the Act.By the end of January this year there were 1147 claims. That represents 3528 homes assessed and qualifying for Government assistance with as you will have heard before a lot more to come. Also as for the future cost we have heard before that the Government will put in 25 percent and so will local government leaving the owner to pay 50 percent of repair costs and that is a great step forward for those people who are affected by leaky homes. Essentially what we are expecting is to generate about $460 million in home repairs over that period.Really at the end of the day the bill does not change anything about the financial assistance package as I said but it does remove doubt. It removes doubt and uncertainty for the claimants and essentially it is a good bill. I am pleased that it is a bill that members across the House are supporting and that it is going to come to the select committee so that we can listen to the submissions from the applicants and/or family members as they put their cases to us in those hearings. So I am looking forward that.In summing up I just want to do a little bit of a background over the leaky homes issues because I think it is really important especially when somebody defines what a leaky home is. It is where water seeps in under the cladding system through the roof or through the sides and it cannot drain. It does not even dry out; it stays there for some time because it cannot go anywhere else. As we know this leaky home issue affects apartments townhouses and in some areas stand-alone homes that were built mainly between 1992 and 2005. I think that the legislation that is coming through has really tightened up building and the builders’ code of practice and code of compliance which is really good. So we are eliminating the cowboys within the sector and that is good for all those people who are wanting to build their new home—it was very good for us anyway.I want to say that we are prepared as a Government to stand by this awful situation. We are prepared to stand by it. I opened my speech by saying that in the first place and we will see this right through to the end for those people affected because at the end of the day it is those people who matter to us. They are the people of this country and they support what we are doing. We are spreading this package out as evenly and as fairly as we can and as I said before the Government and local government are helping with the payments of 25 percent.There is so much more that I could say on this bill but I will not. I will save that for its second and third readings. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. It is James Shaw—5 minutes.JAMES SHAW (Green): I rise in support of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. I would just like to start by noting that this is a bill to finish the clean-up of a problem that started half my life ago with due respect to those who were involved in that at the time. We all know people who have been heavily affected by this. In my electorate in Wellington Central there are both individual houses and also apartment buildings where people have lost almost the entire value of their house and where they have had to negotiate with all of the other apartment owners in their apartment buildings to get those fixed and it is a colossal problem.The PricewaterhouseCoopers report that Paul Foster-Bell referred to earlier mentioned that the cost to New Zealand is about $12.4 billion. I just want to compare that with the cost of the Christchurch rebuild which is about $40 billion. So the cost of repairing after an earthquake that levelled our second-largest city was only four times the size of the cost of this problem and this was an entirely human-made problem. It was made by people in this Chamber. It was a Government-created problem so I am pleased that the Government is cleaning up the mess that it created in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I would like to note that the Greens were not present at the time and perhaps if we had been we might have been able to do something about it.This is a problem of market failure and of relying too much on the market to sort out these kinds of things. I want to say that in spite of this failure it seems to me that we are on the verge of creating another generation of poor housing. There are three basic things that we need to do to create good housing. One is the orientation of the building—does it face the sun; does it optimise the sun? Two is insulation—is it dry and is it weathertight? Three is ventilation—in other words can air move through the house and stop it from going mouldy? These are not hard problems to solve but with the current round of Resource Management Act reforms that the Government is looking at it is just going to make it easier for developers to continue to ignore these basic rules. Why? Because it is cheaper and easier for a developer to go on to a site and to create a building that ignores those three basic rules of orientation insulation and ventilation and to pass the cost of those on to the occupiers of that building whether it is an individual house or an apartment building.That is something that we are in danger of going through again despite the fact that we are now nearly 25 years after the original legislation that created this problem about to introduce another round of legislation that it seems to me will do something quite similar. The Greens fully support the idea that the victims of this crisis be given the financial support that they need to be able to get themselves out of the situation they have found themselves in from this entirely human-created problem. The Greens as my colleague Kevin Hague said earlier believe that we have not gone far enough. We need to look at the whole body of legislation and regulation in relation to the housing sector and also at the role that Government has played in the past and can play again in the future. It would be very easy for us to create a new generation of houses that generate more energy than they consume because they have got solar panels on the roof; that are warm dry and healthy; and that use the scale that Government purchasing can provide to drive down costs across the whole sector. So we really believe in an active approach and we are disappointed that Government after Government just refuses to step up to the plate.In the meantime we do fully support this bill and we commend it to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Poto Williams—5 minutes.POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Good evening everybody. It is great to be able to have the opportunity to speak on the first reading of this bill. I want to start off by saying that everybody deserves a home that is well built warm and dry. You will get no argument from this side of the House when we make those statements: that shelter is a basic human right; that our homes need to be of a condition that is warm and dry and that not having decent housing impacts on us socially it impacts on our health and well-being and for people who are struggling through this scenario to actually get their issues addressed it impacts on their mental well-being as well. We know full well from Christchurch that when your house is destroyed or when you are battling to have your home repaired your mental well-being and your well-being in general suffers. Your home is your major asset unless of course you happen to be one of the almost 50 percent of New Zealanders who cannot afford to purchase their own home. If you are lucky enough to own your own home it is your major asset. We know in Christchurch after our major disaster that your insurance does not always protect you and your assets in the manner that you expect. So we are talking about significant financial stress upon people who are impacted by leaky homes.This particular tidy-up I guess of the legislation has come in part as a result of a Supreme Court judgment the Osborne judgment where we look to the determination of the eligibility for compensation under the financial assistance package. What does it take and how long does it take to actually have these issues resolved? As many of the other speakers have already stated tonight it has taken some 20 years and we are still working our way through the issue of weathertightness in legislation that came out of this House 25 years ago. What does it take to actually get these issues resolved?The bill itself deals with three kinds of components: firstly the eligibility for compensation and the criteria that provide eligibility for that; the built date and we have quite a bit of discussion on that; and what it means to be a qualifying claimant. These are very important issues. I have to admit that it did take me some time to work my way around the eligibility for compensation and the criteria in that but I see that what this bill attempts to do is actually move what is currently gazetted into the Act itself so that clauses 1B and 1C which define the criteria actually become part of the Act which is as it should be. The built date that is defined within this bill really tidies up the definition of the term “built”. Currently the claimants have based their claims on the date of final inspection which means that it is a prior date to the certificate of code compliance.I want to refer to the regulatory impact statement because I think it is really important to ask the question why there has been such a low volume of repairs up to this date. There have been several barriers quoted within that—the high cost of repairs access and affordability of bank finance and the lack of awareness. Often homeowners do not know that they have an issue until they come to sell their home. So my final statement is about the final date for claims. I am really concerned about those people who are completely unaware that their home is a leaky home and I hope that these issues are resolved in the submissions to the select committee. Thank you.MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It is an honour to rise to speak to this very important bill the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. I would like to acknowledge the good work of the Hon Dr Nick Smith. I would also like to mention that coming back from an adjournment week I have a spring in my step after winning the Canterbury MPs’ scone bake-off competition. [Interruption] Thank you. In good faith across all parties I would like to offer the recipe if anybody would like it. It was a very good scone actually—bacon cheese and onion. It was a scone in tribute to the primary industries in recognition of the primary industries and the role they play especially in an electorate like mine “Waimak”. The role that primary industries play in New Zealand is great because very much when the farmers are doing well the whole community benefits.This bill amends the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act 2006. It is about supporting victims of leaky homes it is about supporting the resolution process and it is about supporting people to get back in their homes.A key part of this bill is ensuring that people who have applied to be supported in repairing their homes through the Financial Assistance Package which is a great package of support—25 percent of the home repair costs are covered by the Government 25 percent are covered by the council and 50 percent are covered by the homeowners. At the moment what we have under the current Act is an expiry date of July 2016. I think it is only right and fair that people who make this application will see this through and receive their financial assistance post - July 2016. So I wholeheartedly support this amendment. I think that this legislation is very much about creating more certainty for leaky home owners to better assist them to get their homes repaired. I think that for a new MP like myself one of the drivers to come into Parliament is that we firmly believe that the role of Government is to support people empower them and inform them to make better decisions to improve their lives very much by legislation like this which will seek to support people and empower them by understanding. Getting more clarity around the criteria for this support can only be good for the homeowners and good for the community as well.There were a few key areas in this bill and one I have talked about is the clarification of the “built” definition. We know that this meant within 10 years of the application being received but we know that since further Supreme Court rulings this has changed. The definition has moved from the point of final council inspection to the point at which a code compliance certificate is issued. Again it is very much great for the homeowner to be provided with that clarification.I think that for me coming from a health and specifically mental health background I just want to touch on some of the social costs of leaky homes as well. We have heard from many speakers in the House today about the financial costs but I think it is very important to talk about the social costs. My parliamentary colleague Poto Williams touched on this as well about the mental costs and health costs as well. We know that growing up and living in a warm dry house is fundamental to a healthy life.Many New Zealanders look to buy a house over the course of their lives. I must say that drawing on my own experience—and many in the House will agree with me—it is very much an exciting time of your life when you talk to your spouse or partner and think about the type of house you would like to buy. You think through the rooms and the size of your family. Maybe you have got a dog you need a big yard for. What it is about is thinking about the memories you will have as a family and providing those memories with a house. I think that that is very much something we as New Zealanders focus on and I suppose this National Government which supports homeownership and is a party for homeownership. It is an emotional time when you go through that process of buying a house: putting in bids and contracts and understanding whether you have received the confirmation of buying that dream house. So you can imagine the stress at the time when after you have bought your family house that you are going to bring your family up in you find out that it is a leaky home.For me I have had constituents come through the office who have been through this situation. One couple sticks out in my mind. Even though their house was built in the 1990s they bought it only 6 years ago. Unfortunately they took the word of people that building reports had been done and did not check them themselves. After living in the house for a while they discovered the moisture. On further inspection they found out there were no eaves and no flashings in the house. On further inspection into the walls what they had to do was actually cut the cladding away and look in by the skirting boards to see the water literally running down the sides of the walls. The plywood cladding had soaked up a lot of the moisture. The moisture readings they got were 65 percent whereas the building code for moisture would be only about 18 to 24 percent. They were using towels to soak up extra moisture on the carpet and they had young kids as well so this was not a good place to be in. I am happy to say they are receiving support through this financial package but you can very much see from that example the physical conditions that then start translating into the impact on the health and mental health of the adults and the children. In their case there was the start of fungi and mould growing around the house as well. That was very hard to get rid of.We know from health research that these conditions can lead to conditions such as asthma and bronchitis in vulnerable people especially the old and young. In New Zealand where we are focusing on a preventative health system it is very much not a situation we want people to end up in. You can imagine also the power costsfor a couple like thisof running dehumidifiers and heat pumps full-time to address these issues.I know that in my electorate we cover over two councils the Waimakariri District Council and the Christchurch City Council. The Christchurch City Council has put aside $1 million a year to support home repairs for people who have leaky homes. There has been a comparison drawn between leaky homes and the earthquake recovery. I must say I am very proud to be standing with a Government that is supporting people eitherwith leaky homes or the earthquake recovery. What we have found in Canterbury is that people have actually been affected by both. Some people through earthquake damage have gone in and looked at their houses structurally and found they were suffering from leaky homes as well which has been very much a double hit for them. It is something I know that all Canterbury MPs on either side of the House are very much working hard to address for their constituents.Just to summarise I am very much honoured to support a much-needed amendment bill that will reduce litigation provide clarity around eligibility and support people who are at risk because of an expiry date. So I support this bill and commend it to the House.I am very much looking forward to the select committee work around this and the submissions we receive all in all to improve the well-being of New Zealanders. Thank you.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Before I make some specific comments about this Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill I just want to respond to one or two things that the member Matt Doocey said in his contribution. He gave us a very interesting if somewhat ponderous journey through a number of different housing issues. I could not help but notice one or two things that Matt Doocey said. He made the rather startling claim that the National Party is the party of homeownership which will come as something of a surprise to many New Zealanders who for the last 6 years have watched this Government sit on its hands while house prices in our two largest cities have gone through the roof. Homeownership rates are plummeting and this Government does nothing about it. The Reserve Bank says it is not doing enough and it should do more. Harcourts—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! This is about weathertightness.PHIL TWYFORD: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No no. I have ruled.PHIL TWYFORD: OK. Well I just want to say following on from the previous member’s lengthy disquisition on his baking exploits in Canterbury that at least I am talking about housing issues. I am responding directly to outrageous claims that were made by the member who spoke previously that the National Party is the party of homeownership because clearly it is not the party of homeownership. In that member’s city this Government has presided over the snail’s pace residential rebuild which has caused rents to go through the roof in the very communities where that member lives and that is a disgrace. That he can stand up and claim to be in the party of homeownership when his party has presided over plummeting homeownership rates shows an audacity that I admire.Matt Doocey also talked at some length about the problems faced by the young and vulnerable in cold damp homes. Well he is right—big problems. One-third of New Zealanders live in private rental accommodation and by and large those houses are not insulated and we are hospitalising far too many young people in this country with chest infections and respiratory and infectious diseases because those homes are cold and damp and yet that member’s party does nothing about it. It refuses to take notice of the ground-breaking public health research we have in this country that makes the connection between cold damp homes and kids being hospitalised. What is needed are guaranteed minimum standards that would require that private rental properties be insulated and have a heating source but what does Matt Doocey’s party in Government do about it? Sweet FA.Hon Members: Oh!PHIL TWYFORD: They bake scones—they bake scones.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not a parliamentary term that is acceptable. I will ask the member to withdraw that phrase.PHIL TWYFORD: I withdraw that. That party on that side of the House does very little at all to address the problem of unhealthy housing. All it has done is implement a pathetic little pilot scheme in a few hundred State houses and it does nothing about thousands and thousands of private rental properties where kids are being hospitalised because they are living in cold damp homes. So it shows either an ignorance of his own party’s policies or an extraordinary audacity for that member to get up in the House and pretend sympathy for the many young people who are growing up in cold damp homes and getting sick because of it.I wanted to really just underline my colleague’s comments that Labour is supporting this Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill to the select committee. What does it do? It clarifies some of the provisions—let us say the drafting errors—in the bill that was originally passed in order to help the weathertight funding assistance package to work better and goodness knows the weathertight funding assistance package needs to work better. What will the bill do? It will actually benefit about 70 homeowners—seven-zero. Seventy homeowners will benefit from this bill by the clarification of the eligibility criteria and the tweaks that this bill makes. It is a very modest very minor bill. It does very little to improve the situation of leaky home owners.I want to point that out in the context of the fact that the National Government promised a lot on this issue. When Maurice Williamson was the building and construction Minister he promised a great deal about fixing the problem with leaky homes. In 2010 he announced the burden-sharing agreement that would see the Government contributing 25 percent of the repair costs if councils contributed 25 percent of the repair costs and the homeowners contributed 50 percent and—and—promised to forgo their right to sue their right to legal action. Maurice Williamson was all over the news with this. He was all over the headlines and he announced and John Key announced that National was putting aside $1 billion—$1 billion—to help fund the repairs of leaky homes. Well it promised a lot but it has delivered very little. In July 2009 PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that between 22000 and 89000 homes were affected with a forecast of 42000 dwellings that were likely to be leaky homes. That is the scale of the problem. Maurice Williamson said he was going to solve the problem and the Government was going to spend $1 billion helping the owners of leaky homes—$1 billion they promised.Well what actually happened here? In 2012 a year after Maurice Williamson trumpeted this new billion-dollar scheme to bail out leaky home owners Tim Rainey of Rainey Law one of the legal firms that has spent a lot of time working for leaky home owners asked the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment how many payouts had been made. In the year and 3 months after the scheme this billion-dollar scheme came into effect only 1232 leaky home owners had lodged expressions of interest only 186 homeowner agreements had been finalised and only 12 homeowners had received their final payments. Mr Rainey and John Gray of the Home Owners and Buyers Association—HOBANZ—criticised the scheme’s excessive bureaucracy long delays and difficulty getting repair jobs approved and money paid saying that although the Government scheme sounded good in theory it actually did not work in practice.So let us fast forward to 2013 when the Government had paid out only $8 million of the $1 billion that it promised. So $8 million was paid out 2 years after Maurice Williamson trumpeted his billion-dollar scheme. You know Auckland Council announced last year that it had spent $22 million on lawyers and consultants trying to deal with its share of the leaky homes problem. So one council has spent more than twice what this Government has paid out under the funding assistance package when it promised a billion-dollar bailout scheme. National has promised a great deal on this issue but it has actually delivered very very little.I want to talk just briefly about a case just outside my electorate in west Auckland. There is a building that stands really as a monument to the whole leaky homes fiasco. It is called Pepperwood Mews. It was a development initiated by Housing New Zealand. It did a deal with a shonky developer to build a whole lot of apartments. The apartments were sold by the developer under this agreement to a whole lot of hard-working Kiwi first home owners. That building now stands blighted graffiti covered and partially demolished while the homeowners—the leaky home owners—try to get their money back from Housing New Zealand through the courts. That is a fitting memorial to this whole leaky homes disaster.NUK KORAKO (National): Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. I stand to take this call as the final speaker speaking on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. I will continue to be audacious as well if I could particularly when talking about this bill because of the fact that there is nothing like being right at the coalface of a situation like this where you actually know people you have met people and you have heard about the tragic circumstances of this unfortunate situation.Before I do that I would just like to pick up on a couple of comments that have been made in particular around Christchurch and the rebuild. On that side of the House the glass always seems to be half-empty. The fact is that there is some incredible work that is going on there around the Christchurch rebuild. Last weekend was the largest kapa haka festival in the whole of the world. Over 20000-odd people came to Christchurch. It was the festival of Te Matatini. The situation is that I was fortunate enough to actually be talking to a number of those people who came to Christchurch particularly on the first day and on the last day and what they were saying was: “Isn’t this incredible? Isn’t this incredible because this city is actually being rebuilt? Isn’t it amazing?”. I just want to make that point first of all—I just want to make that point.Coming back to the bill the fact is that being the last speaker it has been really interesting listening to the previous 11 speakers. I just want to make a few points—an overview of the conversation of the presentations. I picked up around 13 points that I think are really pertinent to this actual debate. The first thing is the fact that OK around 80000 New Zealanders have been affected by this unfortunate situation of leaky homes. The first major point which has a consensus across the House is that there is no silver bullet for this situation. That is the first point. The second point is that people have indeed been through hell and back again. The third point is that politics aside there is goodwill across the parties to find a pathway in order that people stuck in the leaky home situation can see a way through. That is really the general view right across the House.The next point is that we all want this issue this situation brought to a timely resolution. The next point is that it was originally up to the owners to find their own leaky home costs. Well guess what? Under the National Government help is there—help is there. The next point is that this bill carries forward the good work that has already been done to rectify this unfortunate situation. The other point—with a general consensus too—is that there has been no real duty of care in some ways by local bodies. The next point is that there have been a number of speakers who have blamed the deregulation of the building industry for this situation. The next point is that there is the opportunity now—which is happening—to actually remedy the technical and administrative aspects of this situation by way of this bill.The next part of this is that we are all in agreement too that a sensible refinement of this Act in regard to financial assistance is here. The next part of it is that what this bill does—and we are all in agreement with this—is that it indeed creates the avoidance of unnecessary litigation moving forward. The other part that I make a point on is the fact that 70 houses are better than nothing. I think that is a really really important point.When looking at this bill to me and to my colleagues on this side of the House it really does exemplify the fact that the National Government does support vulnerable New Zealanders. That is the whole essence here. This legislation is another very very good example of what we are doing for those who actually are vulnerable because of this situation.The next part is the fact that National’s Better Public Services programme is really focused on getting better results for New Zealanders and giving them the support that they need and this is what this bill does. This is what it does. The Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act—and this is the beginning of the “help is on its way”situation—came through in 2006 and was amended in 2011 to establish the financial assistance package. This legislation was to help owners of leaky homes to get their homes repaired. That was the important thing.I started off by saying that I have met these people. I have met them on their doorsteps I have met them in my office in the Port Hills I have met them at various functions and things and one of the things that they have told me is the fact that yes they have a leaky home. At the beginning of that when they found that they had a leaky home there was very very little in the way of help. But they continually tell me now that if it was not for the situation of help—assistance—created by this Government they would have lost all of their confidence in moving forward. I think that is a really important part of this as well. The other part of what they tell me is that it is terminology as well. What does the terminology of something that means “built” actually mean? So they have actually seen light at the end of the tunnel for that because the fact is that there is indeed better interpretation of this kind of legislation moving forward.In conclusion then the weathertight homes legislation seeks to avoid unnecessary litigation—we have said that—that would divert resources away from repairing leaky homes. Again there are 70 properties—better than nothing. But the bill does not change anything about the financial assistance package; it simply removes the doubt and that is the whole essence of this as well. It removes the doubt and it provides certainty for claimants who want to access it. The next point is that certainty was a matter of key importance raised in submissions on this issue and which I just highlighted a few minutes ago as well. The points in this bill are important to the ongoing validity of the financial assistance package ensuring as many homeowners as possible can access the resolution service and financial assistance package and reducing the risk to the Crown of possible litigation about the validity of the criteria.Finally it is indeed the fact that not only do we have this legislation that is being put forward by the Hon Nick Smith and the fact of rectifying and embellishing the original legislation it is also a situation where not only are we doing this for leaky homes but if you actually bother—and I am saying this for my colleagues across the House—you open your eyes when you go to Christchurch and see the incredible work that is being done on the rebuild. Kia ora.Bill read a first time.Bill referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): We are waiting for a Minister. The Minister needs to move the report-back date.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration)on behalf of theMinister for Building and Housing: I move that the committee report to the House—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No no. There is wording for this so I will ask the whip to give you the wording. We must have this right.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I move That the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill be reported back to the House by 31 July 2015.Motion agreed to.