Street Maryan: Unit Titles Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Street Maryan: Unit Titles Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 30 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:10220. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak in the third reading of the Unit Titles Bill. I will make a couple of points that have been made before but bear repeating. I appreciate the words of the previous speaker Hekia Parata. I remember interviewing her at one point for the position of chief executive of Housing New Zealand Corporation. I regret that she was not appointed to that position at that time because she would have been a very able chief executive of Housing New Zealand Corporation had she been appointed. However the proximity of that appointment to her standing in the election made it a little bit difficult in terms of the kind of impartiality that was needed. But I recognise that member’s commitment to housing and that is really the basis for what I want to say about the Unit Titles Bill. 
This bill does some good things—there is no doubt that it does; we would not be supporting it otherwise. It came from the previous Labour Government. It was introduced by Labour on 29 May 2008. It was referred to the Social Services Committee after its first reading on 5 March 2009. The select committee report came to the House on 2 September 2009 and the second reading was held on 16 February 2010. The Committee stage took place at the end of March 2010 and here we are in urgency with the calendar on the wall in the Chamber showing “March 30” but we all know that outside it is April Fool’s Day. 
The point of rehearsing that history is that this bill is one of the few things that this Government had done on housing since its tenure began at the end of 2008. Although we are supportive of this bill—as I said why would we not be as it originated with us—the fact that it has taken as long as this and we are sitting during this fabricated urgency in order to see off the third reading is an indictment on this Government quite frankly. It is in fact the only thing that has been done on housing since this Government took over. 
I applaud the fact that the bill gives greater flexibility to unit title holders and those who participate in bodies corporate. The bill was designed in its initial stages to address the 38-year difference between the original unit titles legislation and the kind of situation we have now where blocks of flats and high-rise apartment buildings have been proliferating in recent times. 
I applaud the inclusion of maintenance plans and I applaud the fact that there will be some orderly progression of expenditure in maintaining and developing any buildings that are owned or managed by bodies corporate with unit titles. That will help individual unit title owners to manage the costs of maintenance and ongoing improvement. 
But is that all there is from this Government on housing? Housing is one of the most pressing issues that we have in front of us at the moment. There has been no improvement in housing affordability under this Government. Although I am very pleased that the Unit Titles Bill will bring unit titles into the modern era there has been no progress on housing affordability nor any imagination applied to creating affordable housing since this Government took office. Despite the Government’s slogans during the election campaign that is one area where it has been palpably lacking in ambition. There is no such thing as being “ambitious for New Zealand” when it comes to this Government housing the poor or allowing people on modest incomes to get into the housing market for the first time. 
Although the Unit Titles Bill may help people who have been able to buy a unit in a block of flats or an apartment in a high-rise building and they will be grateful for the modernisation of the legislation there has been no measure taken no imagination applied and no announcements made that would give anybody the impression that this Government cares a jot about whether people can afford to buy their own houses and to live with the security that owning one’s own house provides. We have seen no affordable housing being created by this Government. In fact we have seen quite the opposite. We have seen the abolition of affordable housing by this Government. There were to be 3000 houses built at Hobsonville—1000 of them were to be affordable houses and 500 of them were to be State houses—but that project has been axed. At the very least the affordable housing and the State housing components of that project have been axed by this Government. So forgive me for showing a little irritation and impatience over this bill but it is the only thing in the housing portfolio that the Government has to show for 15 months in office. There is one disgraced Minister and one bill that the Government did not even think of. 
I am pleased to support the bill but I do not want it to go by completely unnoticed that it is the only thing the Government has done in housing. Now the Government is rehabilitating the former Minister of Housing at breakneck speed but for what purpose? Is it so that we can have another 15 months of inaction of no announcements about the Government’s fabled Gateway Housing programme? There has been nothing about urban renewal to provide affordable housing. The only thing that relates to urban renewal is this little bill which was not even the National Government’s in origin. That is a pathetic performance. For Government members to sit there and pretend that it needed to be passed under urgency when it should have been passed a year ago is shabby and inadequate and speaks of gross incompetence. 
Moana Mackey 
: Where is the residential tenancies bill? 
Hon MARYAN STREET 
: Where indeed is the residential tenancies legislation? 
We do not even have any advertising of the previous Labour Government’s shared equity scheme. It has not been shelved to my knowledge but it certainly has not been advertised. So in respect of the creative solutions that the Labour Government came up with particularly towards the end of our tenure in office when the problem of housing affordability exploded on to the scene the fact that this Government has not addressed those solutions and all we have is the Unit Titles Bill’s third reading being debated under urgency when it could have been managed more competently in ordinary hours is an indictment on this Government. 
The Minister who is now responsible—Phil Heatley’s name was on this bill but now I see that it has Maurice Williamson’s name—may go off into his Easter break feeling proud of himself. Well I ask him to reflect on this issue. Firstly it was not his idea; secondly it has taken him ages; and thirdly he had a disgraced colleague who could not bring it to fruition himself. This bill is all the National Government has to show in respect of housing. It is not good enough. 
Labour will vote for the bill; of course we will because it had things in it that we designed in the first place. And it is good that it is finally here. But the process and the things that are missing from this Government in terms of housing are glaringly wrong.