Rich Katherine: Real Estate Agents Bill — First Reading 
Rich Katherine: Real Estate Agents Bill — First Reading 
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KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to speak to the first reading of the Real Estate Agents Bill. I very much enjoyed the last contribution about sharks and the long list of different types of sharks but I have to say that it did not have anything to do with the bill tonight. 
If we are looking for a reason why real estate agents are so exercised and upset about the way in which these reforms have been handled we find that one of the things comes down to the use of that word “shark”. For good honest people who take their work seriously and conduct their work professionally being called a land shark is incredibly emotive and deeply insulting. I think that the Minister Clayton Cosgrove needs to go and talk to some agents in order to understand how deeply insulted they have been by being called not only land sharks but rogues and cowboys. The board of the Real Estate Institute certainly did not enjoy being called a B-grade  
Goon Show 
. 
These people take their work extremely seriously and conduct it with a high level of professionalism but by the way we hear the Minister talk about the industry in that kind of John Wayne meets Buzz Lightyear style—he is there to shoot up the town to reform this industry and to drag it kicking and screaming into the new century—it is as if he is on a crusade to tidy up a range of issues that are purely and simply not there for by far the majority of those hard-working Kiwis who work in this area. The crusade is certainly designed to build the Minister’s own profile and to build a platform—which has been successful—to elevate his position in the Labour Government. But it bears no relation to what is going on out there in the industry. If we look at what is happening in the real estate industry we find that in any given year there are about 200000 transactions. Most of those go well without incident. This year there have been only 57 complaints. I have been told today that about one deal in 10000 goes wrong so what we have here is a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. 
The Minister wants to give the impression that he has dragged the industry kicking and screaming into reform but that is not true. The industry has been calling for reform for years. The industry has been saying that its Act needs to be updated and that it needs to have a modern Act that reflects today’s situation. But that has not happened. The Government has actually dragged its heels and it has not updated the Act. But it now wants to give the impression that the industry has been against these reforms and that it is somehow being dragged into a modern century. 
I think the Minister has also overlooked the fact that some of the changes being called for—and some are in this bill—are exactly what the institute has been asking for for years. The Minister said that in the event that something went horribly wrong and there was a crook in the industry the fine would be “a paltry $750”. Well it is $750 because that is what it says in the Act. And the agents themselves have been saying: “Let’s increase it. Let’s increase it dramatically so that when crooks are found they can be pinged for $10000 $20000—$50000—and we can really make a difference and send a strong message.” But once again the Government has dragged its heels in updating the reforms. 
Likewise industry representatives have been calling for changes to the way that agents are educated. They have wanted to add a lot more rigour to their education and to make sure that the hurdles are significantly higher for agents to get into the market. Once again the Minister has dragged his heels. We know that he has on his desk for sign-off a new education regime for agents but he is refusing to sign it. 
So while the Minister is channelling a Clint Eastwood - type character our message from this side of the House is that he is not Clint Eastwood actually; he is a Minister in a responsible position and it is not his job to use emotive language to highly politicise an issue that could have been straightforward. It should have been a genuinely straightforward reform issue but the Minister has made it a highly political issue and has done 20000 agents a disservice. He has done their families a disservice but more important he has created the impression that all real estate agents are crooks that they are all land sharks and that they are sort of Herb Tarlich goons who are there just to rip people off. He actually used the phrase “ripping off” in his speech. If we bring some common sense to the discussion and the debate and if we bring the debate back down to a more reasonable level we find that that is not the situation. 
There are tens of thousands of agents who work extremely hard. They are small-business people. They pay their taxes. They take their own risks. They put bread on their families’ tables and they take their jobs extremely seriously. They see what they do as being a profession. They see what they do as being something really important. But that has been lost now in this debate because we have had this hysteria created that they are all a pack of crooks—that they are all out there to rip off Kiwis. And that is a deep insult. 
I have been speaking to some real estate agents and many of them the Minister might be interested to know voted Labour. I do not know why but they voted Labour in the past and they feel deeply insulted by what the Minister has said. He has used this bill as a platform for his own profile; he has not looked at this issue in a common-sense way. While he has talked about tarring agents with the same brush he is the one who has done that. He is the one who has used that emotive language to create the impression that all agents are crooks. Had this been handled in a different way I think our side would probably have supported the majority of these reforms. 
In terms of what needs to be done we think there are some significant areas to tidy up. Who knows why property managers are left out of this bill— 
Simon Power 
: Bizarre! 
KATHERINE RICH 
: It is utterly and totally bizarre when one in five complaints is as a result of some kind of property management issue not the real estate aspect at all. We have 200000 transactions in a year and only about one in every 10000 of those goes bad. This Minister is pretending that it is the norm for real estate transactions in this country to go bad. Well I do not think that Kiwis buy that kind of rhetoric. I hope they understand that the debate here has been very misleading it has been hysterical in parts and it is a method of building a platform for the Minister to build his own profile as opposed to doing a service to New Zealanders by putting forward reasonable reforms. 
Real estate agents themselves have been calling for many of these reforms so although I think that the Minister wants to create the impression that he has corralled these outlaws and that he is the one who is bringing some professionalism back into the industry that is not true. It is a deep insult to those agents who have worked extremely hard have built up a professional background and have done work in our communities over the years. That is one of the things in this bill that we think needs to be tidied up during the select committee process. We want to see things like the issue relating to property managers debated during the select committee process. 
We want to see some changes but more than anything we want the Minister to peg back the politicisation of this issue. We want him to bring back some common sense to get these reforms through and to update some of the laws relating to this industry in a common-sense reasonable way because the politicisation of the issue has been deeply insulting to the professionals who work in the industry and to their families and it has done a disservice to the community.