Hague Kevin: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hague Kevin: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 Housing is not my portfolio but I rise to take a brief call on behalf of my colleague Gareth Hughes. I begin by supporting the comments that Moana Mackey has just made in congratulating the Hon Maurice Williamson on bringing the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill to the House. It is good to see legislation come before the House to make some advance on this issue. The Green Party will be voting for the bill to at least go to a select committee. We do so in the belief none the less that the bill does not go far enough and we hope that some of its faults may be remedied at the Local Government and Environment Committee. But having something to debate and consider is better than having nothing to debate and consider. 
I also praise the Hon Maurice Williamson for already having distributed to members some explanatory material that could be useful for us when working with constituents. I think that is a very helpful and unusual development in relation to this kind of complex legislation. 
As Moana Mackey and other speakers have said this mess was created by the National Government of the 1990s with its failure to regulate the building industry and indeed the broader network of industries surrounding building—or rather the Government’s deregulating those industries. So it is only fair that National is the one to take the steps to put that right. That said the Government’s providing 25 percent of the cost while asking homeowners to front up with 50 percent is grossly unfair given that it was the previous National Government’s own failure to regulate that created the problem in the first place. 
We know that this issue affects the lives of a very large number of New Zealanders and we know too that homes built in those laissez-faire years of the 1990s are the worst affected as they coincided with that deregulation of the building industry. The Hunn report in 2002 called what happened at that time a “major systemic breakdown across the entire building industry”. No one escapes blame: product designers and manufacturers developers builders architects central government the Building Industry Authority local authorities real estate agents and even some private owners. In the Greens’ view the limitation of 5 years in the bill is too short and we hope it can be remedied in the select committee process. We think it is too short because often issues come to light only when houses are sold. Any home identified as a leaky home should be eligible to use the service so we think it is completely unfair to limit support for leaky home owners in that way. 
The issue of leaky homes and the failure of that deregulation approach bring to front of mind a bigger issue which is how we get the best outcomes. It is one of those fundamental political divides between political parties in the House and I have spoken about it several times. The Green Party can accept that in some situations a free market could deliver the best mix of price and quality for consumer goods or services. We think that probably would apply only in the conditions that Adam Smith himself identified as being necessary for the correct operation of the free market that he described. Where those conditions do not apply and they do not apply in most economic situations—in the situation of most goods and services—then that free-market approach will fail to deliver the best mix of price and quality. That provides a basis for the intervention of the State. 
The State also needs to intervene where vulnerable people need to be protected. The State also needs to intervene where it is necessary for public good to be generated because free markets are poorly suited to those purposes. The Green Party can accept that sometimes certain market mechanisms— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: His fault. 
KEVIN HAGUE 
: Yes it was Roger Douglas’ fault. The Minister has correctly put his finger on the problem and it is sad that subsequent Governments were slow to realise that fault and to remedy the problem. But I thank him for pointing that out. 
The Green Party can accept that market mechanisms and consumer choice are sometimes the best way of achieving the outcomes that we all want but in many cases they will not be. In many cases some level of regulation or rule-setting by the State will be necessary to achieve the kinds of outcomes we want. This issue of leaky homes is one that clearly illustrates one of those areas. I am not sure that this Government has entirely learnt that lesson because again and again we see an approach to issues that falls back on an ideological belief that free markets will somehow deliver the best outcomes for everyone. That kind of magical thinking consistently fails. We have seen that in the term of this Parliament—for example with biofuels. We see it frequently on issues like country-of-origin labelling. A personal obsession of mine is that we see it in the failure to act to remedy another one of these pieces of ideological wreckage and that is the free market in electricity generation and supply. That is another example of a failure to deliver many of the outcomes that as New Zealanders we expect. 
I make that point because the next bill we will be debating is a Government bill to adjust the building codes with again the aim of reducing regulation. The Green Party warns that the Government needs to be very careful that in that bill it does not through the cutting back of regulation create another saga equivalent to the leaky homes one that we are addressing now. Although we say that the system is far from perfect we applaud the Minister for bringing this bill before the House. We think there is enough in it of merit and value to support it being referred to the select committee. We look forward to engaging positively in that process to try to cooperatively bring about an Act that can best address these problems. Thank you.