Clarkson Bob: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Clarkson Bob: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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BOB CLARKSON (National—Tauranga) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker for this chance to speak on the subject of leaky homes. It is quite interesting that it says at the top of the bill “(Remedies)”. That is a bit of a joke. I really want to go through the whole thing about the leaky homes issue but let us go through some of these— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Give it a whirl Bob. 
BOB CLARKSON 
: Yeah that will do; good. If I solved some of my business problems the way the Government does I would be broke in a very short time. One cannot wake up in the morning and change the rules just because one has a good feeling in the middle of the night. It is as simple as that. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Define that Bob! How many good feelings have you had in the middle of the night? 
BOB CLARKSON 
: I cannot remember. 
Darren Hughes 
: But plenty of people went to a resolution service about it. 
BOB CLARKSON 
: Would members please keep quiet eh—I am trying. The Government is a bit lucky. It just keeps spending more taxpayers’ dollars and hoping that the problem will go away. I have news for the Minister Clayton Cosgrove: this bill will not make the problem of leaky homes disappear. Labour’s policy is quite simple. If dollars do not fix a problem then Labour changes the Minister in charge of it. There have been seven Ministers so far since this problem started. Six have failed to solve the problem and the seventh is about to fail. 
If changing the Minister fails try changing the law! That is the next move. This law came out of a bad dream and it will not help. Laws should be made after careful studies are done on how to solve a problem. Debates should be had with people who understand the problem—it is as simple as that—and who can give good advice on how to rectify the problem. One should not make laws on the run as seems to be happening at the moment. 
This will be a total failure because it was rushed through with very little thought by people who do not fully understand the full problem. The Government protected itself through the courts by letting the Department of Building and Housing off the hook and this has caused a lot of mental stress for thousands of homeowners. Now we have a Minister bringing a bill into the House to allow people to claim for mental stress. How strange is that? The Government causes a stress by not dealing with the situation and by protecting one of its departments the Department of Building and Housing so that it cannot be sued for damages. That in itself causes more mental stress. 
This bill is a waste of time. The mental stress will be fixed by fixing the problem. In this case the Minister has lost sight of the problem. The problem is that we have leaky homes—leaky homes that are taking too long to fix. We have people who cannot face a hearing in the Weathertight Homes Tribunal because they do not know anything about building a house. That is what got them into the problem in the first place. 
There is a major problem with people getting stressed in that they cannot afford to pay a lawyer to assist them. They have to take a lawyer along to the hearing at the Weathertight Homes Tribunal—even though the Minister says they do not—because the other side has top lawyers defending it. The Minister has the cheek to say that people do not need lawyers to defend themselves at the Weathertight Homes Tribunal hearings. If there is a lawyer on one side it is only fair that there is a lawyer on the other side. I say to the Minister that he should wake up and get to the real world. It could be a situation where there are no lawyers allowed such as in small claims courts. I am not recommending that but I would like to debate it. 
The Minister quoted in a select committee on Wednesday that some person—I think he was a reverend—was sorting out his own house and had handled the complete Weathertight Homes Tribunal hearing himself without a lawyer and won the case. The Minister stuttered a little on the percentage of the claim the man won. Also he did not say whether the person who won actually got the dollars paid to him. It is a funny thing that he quoted only one case. Was there only one case? 
I had better move on fast here. I will just quickly say that the National Party has two top people to deal with the leaky homes situation in the future when we are in Government next time: Nick Smith and myself. I assure members that we will not fluff around the edges with a half-baked policy.