Nash StuartSTUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I would like to talk about clauses 32 and 33. This is about who may call general meetings for bodies corporate. First of all—in this bill initially—these were set down in the bill itself but the Local Government and Environment Committee received a recommendation that this is best done through regulation. So the clause has been taken out of the bill and put into regulations. I am a little bit baffled as to why this would be done because if I look at the original wording that was in clause 32 inserting new section 89A of the bill it makes it very clear. I understand what regulations do and I understand the value of regulations but sometimes I think that it is just easy to actually have it in the bill itself unless you are thinking there is going to be a lot of change.I would like to ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Michael Woodhouse—there are a number of terms and requirements for calling an extraordinary general meeting but the interesting thing is that it says a request by unit owners of not less than 25% of principal units." Twenty-five percent is hardly a majority. In fact it is not even close to a majority at all and I cannot think of any other decision that would be made with only 25 percent. This could get to a situation where—well people know that if an apartment block for example is in different unit titles then there has to be a body corporate. If there is an apartment block of four units then in fact one person could call an extraordinary meeting—Peeni Henare: It's called a failed democracy.STUART NASH: Yes. One person could call an extraordinary meeting and could actually arrange it where they could sort of queer the pitch in a way that allowed them to push their views through without having a majority at all.The interesting thing about this if we go on to clause 34 is that what happens is that the body corporate operational rules are binding on basically everyone. So they are binding on the body corporate they are binding on the owners of principal units they are binding on any person who occupies a principal unit and they are also binding on any mortgagee who is in possession of a principal unit—so basically an owner a renter a flatter etc. So I can just see a way here where if a unit holder or a couple of unit holders or certainly fewer than 50 percent of unit holders wanted to be mischievous because they wanted to get something through the body corporate that they knew would be binding on 100 percent of the owners or the occupiers of these unit titles they actually could. I wonder why this does not say "not less than 50.1 percent" for example which I would have thought would put checks and balances in place that made sure that a non-democratic process could not in fact force an outcome on every single owner.I suppose what you could get in the worst-case scenario is you could get 25 percent organising this year so what you would end up with is an extraordinary meeting here and then it gets pushed through and then it comes to here and it gets pushed through and it could get very very messy indeed. This is why Winston Churchill for example said that democracy is the worst form of government except every other.But I do acknowledge that there may be a very good reason why this 25 percent is codified in legislation and I am suggesting that it is possibly based on experience because I have no doubt the officials said or the lawyers said or the Property Council said: "Hey look. In most of the situations all we need is 25 percent because that is a significant portion. It is not a majority but it is a significant proportion and we believe that if 25 percent of a concern that is salient enough to actually call an extraordinary meeting"—Hon Member: There could be reasons.STUART NASH: Yes and of course it has to be acknowledged. So the chairperson has to go out and of course notify all the unit owners that an extraordinary meeting is taking place but 25 percent is enough to trigger an extraordinary meeting because this is just what history tells us needs to be done. I could be wrong because just reading the bill like this it is a little bit concerning I must admit.It also says in clause 33(3): "An extraordinary general meeting of a body corporate may be called at any other time by the chairperson or the body corporate committee"—and this is where I am a little concerned that it is in regulations and not in the Act—"in accordance with the regulations." If I was a body corporate member and I wanted to know what was going on I would go and look at the piece of legislation that governed it then I would have to go and find the regulations. It just would have been tidier if it had been all encompassed within the bill. Again I know the committee got advice on that—"