Smith Nick: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Smith Nick: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 July 2007. Volume:640;Page:10658. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 I was not going to take an additional call but after the speech from the Minister in the chair the Hon Clayton Cosgrove I feel compelled to respond on two important points. The first of those is that the Minister told the Committee that neither he nor his department had any idea that there was a problem with the provision in respect of general damages. I was accused of being clairvoyant and all sorts of other derogatory things. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: “Clairvoyant” is not right. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Well the Minister made other claims.  
I would like to read this submission on the Minister’s original bill from the now-retired chair of the Leaky Homes Action Group. It said: “In the past there have been grey areas over what a mediator an adjudicator will allow in claims and there have been a number of inconsistent decisions in this regard. It is recommended that this bill is specific on this matter to avoid confusion. Claims of stress should be allowed by specifically providing for general damages.”  
Well hello hello! I say to the Minister that that is a very specific submission from an organisation that only earlier in his debate he said was a respected organisation. Why did he not listen to that submission? Why did he not listen at that time? Leaky home owners would not be in this period of uncertainty and we would not have had the decision of the High Court if the Minister had made the law clear.  
It is all very well for the Minister to stand up in the Committee and say it is all the High Court’s fault and Parliament’s intent was quite clear. Parliament’s intent cannot have been quite clear or the problem would not have occurred. What is more I say to the Minister that he knew that the law was unclear because that had been made very plain in the submissions.  
So I ask the Minister in the chair again if he bothered to read the Leaky Home Action Group’s submission on the 2006 bill he was in charge of. I put the question to the Minister again—and I think the silence says it all. He did not bother to read the Leaky Homes Action Group’s submission. If he did he would have known in 2006 that his bill was flawed he would have fixed it and we would not have had the High Court decision because Parliament’s intent was unclear.  
The Minister then asked what National’s policy was. I am very keen to answer that. National thinks it is better to spend the $100 million - odd on fixing homes than on bureaucracy. National does not think it is smart to be spending more money on the adjudication process than it actually takes to fix the houses. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: So you’d abolish it? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: No I said we will spend the money on fixing the houses and that makes pretty good sense. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: So you’d abolish it? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The Minister seems to disagree with that. I tell him that I look forward to debating all over New Zealand the fact that the 96 million bucks would have been far better spent on fixing some houses rather than spending it on his 200 or 300-plus bureaucrats that he has expanded the department by.  
The further point is that I also believe it is quite flawed for the Minister not to allow leaky home claimants to claim for legal expenses. I say to the Minister that it is totally unrealistic for him to line up a leaky home owner with sometimes as many as a dozen lawyers for other parties and expect that owner to get a fair deal. So a further part of National’s policy as we indicated previously in 2006 is that we will allow leaky home owners to claim the reasonable legal costs of going through the tribunal process because we think what the Government has done is grossly unfair to leaky home owners in that regard.  
I come back again though to the real point on the minds of New Zealanders in respect of the tribunal and that is the question of whether the Minister believes we are getting value for money having spent $96 million and having resolved over 5 years less than one in six of the claims. I ask the Minister: when will we get some performance how many claims will we resolve in the next year and when can New Zealand’s leaky home owners finally expect to get some justice out of this tired repeatedly mistaken Labour Government? 
Part 1 agreed to.