Webb DuncanDr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you Madam Speaker. I must say when I picked up this bill a shiver went through my spine. Hon Members: Ha ha!Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Oh well you may laugh but no in my time as a lawyer dealing with earthquake claims the worst cases of all were body corporate cases where you had extremely complex building problems technical building problems—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Lawyers' failings!Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —and extremely—well there was someone else who failed Christchurch then Gerry Brownlee. But here what we have is an attempted fix. And I must say seeing as we're on the topic of lawyers I wonder if perhaps this has not come straight out of a lawyer's notebook because it does strike me as something of a list of to dos" when a lawyer zapped through and said "Here's a whole lot of things that I've seen go wrong with bodies corporate." Now that's not altogether a bad thing and I certainly agree and commend Nicola Willis on bringing this topic to the House. But I do sometimes wonder if these have not been kind of not addressing the matter as a point of principle but rather as a list of detailed and technical amendments.I thank the member for seeking to refer this to the best most gifted most cooperative and most hard-working committee in the House the Finance and Expenditure Committee but the matter does have to go to a vote. The indefatigable Clerk was referring me to the Standing Orders. Apparently we can't debate the motion but we still have to vote on it. So don't count all your chickens before they're hatched on that particular number. But look I do want to point out here that there's a danger that we simply put another layer of rules on an already complex piece of legislation. Hon Simon Bridges: I laugh in the face of danger!Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Because of course we all know what the National Party want to do with regulations don't we: put them on a bonfire. And yet here we have a piece of legislation which has at least from my count at least three on a cursory glance additional regulations. Now regulations certainly have their place. And we know you know the Regulations Review Committee another fantastic committee recognises the quality of those regulations but I do have some concerns that we're simply going to impose more obligations.You've got to remember that many body corporates are simply small groups of individuals who are not particularly proficient in reading complex legislation let alone subsidiary regulations codes of conduct and so on and so forth. So body corporate regulations should be intuitive. And if you look at the conflict of interest rules an area in which I have a particular interest you can't be a member of the body corporate committee—and I'm glad Nicola Willis is taking notes for her reply because this is exactly what I'd like her to reply to. So you can't sit on a body corporate committee if you have an interest that is particular and not shared with every other member. So if the committee is considering a leak which is in your unit and the one next door but not the other four you have a conflict of interest and you can't sit on that committee. Now is that the case or not? Now I'm not entirely sure but absolutely these things need to be discussed at select committee but there is a real danger that we just have a hotchpotch fix-up.So I think there is a fair bit of work to be done in committee. Even the membership and voting rules you know. Yes we need clear voting rules and we need clear rules around proxies. But I'm fearful that we might have gone a bit too far and just be making rules not quite for the sake of them but for a very small number of cases where rules which are by and large workable have been abused. Now the Unit Titles Act itself has broad ranging dispute resolution mechanisms and that's certainly something that also needs to be looked at because we've got to accept that recourse to the High Court is not good for everyone in every instance and in many cases it's far too expensive. Perhaps that's where we should be looking. Rather than trying to write a rule for every possible twist and turn of human nature when you're living—and we know that neighbour disputes are the worst disputes of all because that's what unit title disputes generally are and you really can't write rules for all of those situations. So yes it'll probably come to the Finance and Expenditure Committee but if it does I'm sure we'll have a great time looking at it making it a better bill and seeing what happens to it from there. Thank you Madam Speaker."