Jones Shane: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Jones Shane: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:672;Page:18671] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Today the readers of that troublesome irritating media outlet otherwise known as the  
New Zealand Herald  
have been given a very clear example of the treacherousness of the territory surrounding the issues that the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill seeks to address. I say no other words than “Pepperwood Mews”. Pepperwood Mews are an institutional physical representation of what the bill seeks to do. But it goes further than that. Pepperwood Mews are evidence of egregious scandalous behaviour on behalf of the New Zealand housing agency which is wriggling out of its obligations in terms of its own culpability in destroying the savings and affecting the mental health of people who in good faith invested in what has turned into a leaky building disaster. To make matters worse the super-city having taken over the responsibilities of Waitakere City Council has also hired deep-pocketed Queen Street - based lawyers whose willingness to solve the problem is inversely related to their appetite for ongoing fees. 
The issues in this bill need to be sheeted home and we need to find a context where we can talk about the people who have suffered. We also have a very spotty record as parliamentarians. I will be the first to say I support this bill along with our spokesman and my colleagues. I would also be the first to say that when I was the Minister of Building and Construction the figure confronting the Crown dwarfed a lot of our analysis. At least the current Minister has brought forward a potential solution admittedly—I would not say a half-pie solution because that would suggest that he has not been professional and on this it is evident that the Minister has had a beggar of a time shepherding forward a solution. 
I go back to the Pepperwood Mews example in west Auckland. There is a set of buildings—one might charitably call them terraced housing—that are now unfit for habitation; possibly good for poultry potentially good for demolition work. Those buildings need to be fixed up. Will this legislation require the Crown to do good in terms of its own role in such episodes? No. Secondly it shows that not only is the Crown not standing behind its remedy in terms of liability but also it is allowing a key organisation in the Crown infrastructure to worsen the prospects of the people behind that particular investment enjoying any remedy whatsoever. 
An area where the Government has failed egregiously is in its unwillingness to seriously invest in vocational and apprenticeship training because this will require a mountain of work. The only way that this could have been broadened and made into quite a popular cause was for it to be used as a platform to create and deepen the new cadre of building practitioners: tradespeople who will actually contribute not only to the rebuilding of Christchurch—Lord knows when that will actually happen—but also to dealing with leaky homes drama in Tamaki-makau-rau. 
Although we agree obviously the banking fraternity is playing the long game hoping that a Government will at some point in time underwrite its role in seeking to remedy this problem. Secondly we will face an inordinate skills shortage. We know that the magnetic impact from across the Tasman in terms of its natural commodities boom is drawing lots of our tradies over there. Therefore a sensible Minister and a Government with a vision would be willing to gather up young people and put them into training so that we shorten the line of people looking for jobs. Many of the people looking for jobs should actually be in jobs fixing problems such as this but they are not because they are not being rewarded or encouraged to go into training. If there are not people in training then where will they go? They will join the unemployment queue which is giving this very dismal picture of more and more young men and women wasting their lives looking for jobs. There is no shortage of opportunity in dealing with issues such as this for skills vocational training and employment because if there is one good thing that can come out of this problem it is that we can train and provide jobs for trainees at a level that we cannot possibly imagine. 
It will take money. Well if the Government did not spend all the money on a very narrow cast of economic players in the New Zealand economy and give them this massive tax benefit then it would have money to invest in the most valuable kind of capital that any society has in excess—that is human capital. But that was squandered. So let us ponder for a moment on why the banks are unwilling to come to the party. Minister Williamson has correctly been quite judicious about this. I suspect that the Australian-owned banks are giving instructions to their New Zealand staff: “Enough exposure in this sector.” and they are hoping that the New Zealand Government will give them an underwrite. Well this particular Government has provided in my view enough underwrites. Whether or not it felt it had no opportunity whether or not it inherited historical obligations the fact of the matter is that we cannot continually dance to the tune or jump to the beck and call of the banks. I think that a tremendous gesture for them to make would be to allow people to get on with their lives begin to repair these aquariums that used to be called houses and try to lessen the damage that has been done to their physical and fiscal well-being. 
Potentially a whole generation of people has been wiped out when we add this problem to the meltdown of the financial companies—the intermediate finance the mezzanine finance—and when we also look at the level of suffering visited upon a bunch of day-to-day Kiwis as a consequence of the Christchurch-based earthquake. What does all this point to? This points to the importance of training and developing the next generation of New Zealanders who can generate solutions that will have a practical form and a long-lasting benefit. 
Minister Williamson has reflected a desire during the Committee stage to take on some of our suggestions or to at least listen to them; he is highly unlikely to take them on. After all he has the distinction in a former life of showing Steven Joyce how to ruin the telecommunications industry so it is unlikely that that sort of deeply imprinted political DNA is about to change. But I direct his attention to the fact that under his watch the building and construction industry has become anaemic. Under his watch consents have plummeted. But under his watch there has been a growing and desperate need for more houses and more housing solutions—because they will not all be houses—in Tamaki-makau-rau in Auckland. As people swell the place as a consequence of domestic migration this Government continues to say: “Well we’ll look to private - public sector innovations.” If members want to know how it goes wrong they should go to Pepperwood Mews. 
It is disappointing that unfortunately very few National MPs have either heard of that episode or know where it is located. But rest assured the people who are suffering know. They know that this Minister has had 2 years to remedy that situation but rather he and Mr Heatley are quietly encouraging I presume the commercial directors there that whatever they do they should not expose any further liability and they should not put their hands up to solve the problems for those day-to-day Kiwis. So although we support this bill there are many areas where it can be improved. Kia ora tatou.