Twyford Phil: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7419. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): One of the first cases of leaky homes that I had contact with after becoming an MP was a very very unfortunate development called Pepperwood Mews. The building is still standing actually. It is on Great North Road in Kelston now in Carmel Sepuloni’s electorate. It had been a development that Housing New Zealand undertook in the mid-2000s and Waitakere City Council was the local authority that signed off the work. Basically what Housing New Zealand did was it did a deal with a developer and said: “We’ll sell you this land and if you develop it we guarantee that we will lease all of the dwellings from you.” It is basically a block of apartments. The developer built the building and sold off the individual units to a whole lot of mum and dad investors who ploughed their retirement savings into this development. It was the most shonky most dodgy rotten development that you could imagine and within about 3 or 4 years of being completed and signed off by the local council Waitakere City Council at the time the place was basically condemned. It was uninhabitable; it was leaky in the extreme and since about 2010 that building has stood as sort of a rotting hulk on Great North Road.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I regret interrupting the member. I am sure there is a way of tying his story into this part of the bill but since it has been going for nearly 2 minutes I would appreciate him doing that just to show that he is being relevant.PHIL TWYFORD: It is very important to provide some colour for the discussion of Part 2 because—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): That would be nice too.PHIL TWYFORD: Part 2 is the other part of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill that deserves some specific comment in this debate and what it does is—again it is a pretty technical minor tweak—it basically responds to a decision by the Supreme Court that is all around the definition of the word “built”. So let me explain that if I may. To have a claim declared eligible under the Act claimants must meet a series of statutory criteria and we have discussed that in relation to Part 1. Those criteria include that the claim must be made within 10 years of the date on which the affected structure was built. What is the meaning of “built”? It is very vague if you think about it. Until the case in question at the Supreme Court Osborne v Auckland Council 2014 was decided the interpretation of the word “built” was essentially the finalising of the building. What the Supreme Court held was that the meaning of the word “built” in this case would be the issuing of the code compliance certificate. The Osbornes of Auckland—not the Osbournes from television fame—took this case through to the Supreme Court. John and Helen Osbornehad been arguing that the 10-year limitation on leaky buildings basically should start when the code compliance was issued; not when the physical building had been completed. They took it all the way through to the Supreme Court. The commentary at the time said that the effect of the ruling could mean that another 300 leaky homeowners could benefit from the funding assistance package.I do not know what has happened. This was a year ago now when the Supreme Court handed down that judgment. I do not know what has happened since. I do not know what has happened to the Osbornes. It would be interesting to know whether John and Helen Osborne have in fact sought to be registered under the funding assistance package and to get the benefit of this scheme. So that is basically what the bill does and the effect of Part 2 will be to slightly increase the pool of eligible homeowners.