Twyford Phil: Unit Titles Bill — Second Reading 
Twyford Phil: Unit Titles Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:8940] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to support the Unit Titles Bill at its second reading. As with so many bills that have been passed over the last year in this House this bill is fundamentally the work of the Labour Government. What an easy life this Government would have had over the last 12 months had the fifth Labour Government not left it a considerable number of bills in the pipeline. I recognise the excellent work of my colleagues Lianne Dalziel and Shane Jones who has already been credited tonight as the former Minister for Building and Construction. We are not petty and we are not mean-spirited. We recognise and acknowledge the work of the Minister of Housing Phil Heatley and the Social Services Committee in bringing the bill to this stage. 
As my colleagues have already said this bill repeals and replaces the Unit Titles Act 1972. The last 37 years have not been kind to that Act and it is high time the Act was overhauled. We need a modern legal framework for the joint ownership of land buildings and facilities. Times have changed. The free-standing bungalow on a quarter acre section is no longer the only option for the aspiring Kiwi homeowner or the humble resident. Growing numbers of New Zealanders especially those living in Auckland choose a more urban lifestyle and choose to live in flats apartments and townhouses. Sometimes those options are the only affordable route on offer for someone wanting to get into the property market. The bigger picture as mentioned by my colleague Shane Jones is that Auckland in particular but also other New Zealand cities must embrace high-density living if we are to stop the endless sprawl of our cities if we are to accommodate a growing population and if we are to build cities that are both livable and sustainable. This bill updates the Unit Titles Act. It is an important step towards encouraging and supporting apartment and townhouse living. 
Shane Jones set out some of the background to this bill in particular in relation to the leaky homes situation. One of the things that has really exacerbated the hard time that many apartment owners have faced when they have had leaky or rotting homes is the outdated governance structures rules and regulations surrounding multi-title buildings. There are scenarios of minorities within bodies corporate holding back action that is needed to remedy structural problems and weathertightness problems and there are scenarios of majorities overriding the legitimate interests of the minority. In the latter case members of the public have approached me in terrible states of distress to seek help with completely unsatisfactory situations within the body corporate unable to get timely and fair redress for their problems. It has to be said that many bodies corporate are not taking responsibility for maintaining in a proper and timely way their capital assets. 
I want to provide a brief overview of what the bill sets out to do. It clarifies how land is surveyed to provide a clear legal framework for ownership by different parties simple and clear processes for building unit title developments and technical details that are essential for developers surveyors and territorial authorities. It takes a holistic approach to the management and maintenance of unit title developments clarifying the responsibilities of owners and the body corporate. It sets out some much-needed minimum standards for the sound management of unit title developments. It sets out a clear and flexible governance structure with reduced voting thresholds down to 75 percent in order to make decision making more easily managed and to prevent minorities getting in the way of actions that the majority of title holders want to go ahead with. 
Speakers before me have talked about the disclosure regime and how important it is so that unit owners bodies corporate and prospective buyers have good accurate and comprehensive information to allow them to make informed decisions before they sign on the dotted line. There is a cost-effective dispute resolution service so that anyone who is embroiled in a scrap can get justice by going in a cost-effective way to Dispute Resolution Services. 
I want to touch briefly on some of those things in a little bit more detail. Bodies corporate will be required to develop long-term maintenance plans to protect the capital value of the development and the capital value of the units owned by the individual owners. This means that owners will not be ambushed with big-ticket maintenance items like the replacement of a roof or in the case of leaky buildings and weather-tightness problems huge structural repairs which has not been uncommon in Auckland in recent times. The body corporate has to be able to act quickly and decisively on behalf of all unit owners for the good of the development as a whole when repairs need to be done. 
The bill provides that the body corporate will own the common property which includes all the parts of the development that are owned collectively. The body corporate is then responsible for doing repairs and maintenance. That means that if an apartment block has a leaky roof it is not just the owners of apartments on the top floor who are immediately affected by it who are responsible for making those repairs; the entire body corporate will be responsible. The second major change will make joint decision-making much more manageable. 
I have already mentioned that there is I think a good balanced regime that empowers a strong majority of three-quarters to go ahead and get things done but a minority always has recourse to Dispute Resolution Services if they feel they have not been dealt with in a just and reasonable way. Many disputes in the unit titles developments are created because people do not know their rights or are unfamiliar with the rules of the road or of the game. Owning and living in an apartment requires a much more detailed understanding of the rules and the regulations than any owner of a free-standing bungalow on a quarter acre section has ever had to contemplate. That is a cultural shift that we need to go through particularly in our larger cities as people live in these new environments. This bill is incredibly useful in clarifying and simplifying the rights and obligations of title owners and in fact the body corporate. So that will be a really useful step towards minimising the number of disputes that arise in the first place. 
The fourth key change is around disclosure. Educating consumers is an important part of this bill—enabling people to make informed and confident decisions. 
I did not serve on the Social Services Committee that considered this matter but there were a raft of detailed and technical issues that were presented to the select committee. I want to follow on from the comments of my colleague Moana Mackey on the concerns that the Retirement Villages Association of New Zealand raised in relation to the bill. I acknowledge that the select committee has reported back the bill with a large number of clauses to be amended. The Retirement Villages Association argued that it is already covered by quite an extensive accountability and regulatory regime under its legislation the Retirement Villages Act 2003. The association says the Act provides a good level of protection for residents. The concern it has is that this bill overlays an additional layer of regulation that duplicates many of the things that it already has to deal with and would create a very and unnecessary complex and costly environment. Its concerns have been largely dealt with but I understand that the association has written to the Minister pointing out that there are still a number of clauses where this problem has not been alleviated in particular clauses 67 68 69 and 71.