Shaw James: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9592. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I rise in support of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. I just wanted to pick up on one of the points that my colleague Jan Logie made about the scale of the problem: the notion that 42000 homes were affected; that 80000 people in many cases lost the entire value of their home; and that the cost to the country of this was something in the order of $12.4 billion.As the previous speaker Paul Foster-Bell said this bill here is a pretty narrow bill that deals with just one aspect of the problem. But given that this problem really started in 1991 which is more than half my life ago this just shows how the Government is easily able—when it is attempting to do sensible things—to do extremely insensible things and create colossal failures. That $12.4 billion was 2014 dollars as well so I imagine it has inflated marginally since then.By comparison the Christchurch rebuild cost is something in the vicinity of $40 billion which is one of the greatest challenges that this country has faced in recent times. The economic cost to the country—direct cash costs to the country—were more than a quarter of the entire Christchurch rebuild to date. So this is a colossal failure of Government. This is a Government-created problem so I think as my colleague Jan Logie said we need to be very mindful that when Governments seek to do sensible things occasionally they create colossal problems.I do commend this bill to the House. I think it is important that when the Government creates a problem like this it seeks to clean that problem up even if it takes 25 years to do so—and we are dealing with the tail end of it now. But it does raise the question: what does it really take? New Zealand is actually starting to get a reputation for building quite poor houses and we have got no excuse. We are not short of materials there are not that many people here and we have extremely talented builders and tradespeople and architects and so on. I think again that it is just a sign that in our zeal for the free hand of the market and deregulation what we end up creating is generations of very poor-quality housing. We are in danger of doing it again now of course. Adam Smith actually in addition to referring to the “invisible hand” did actually refer to a well-regulated market as well. And so the idea that the Government is a partner in the economy and can help prevent these problems—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am now going to—having waved the bill at the member—draw his attention as I have to previous members speaking on the bill to the fact that the third reading is a very narrow debate. One thing I am sure of is that Adam Smith did not make a submission on this bill.JAMES SHAW: He would have been welcome to though Mr Assistant Speaker I am sure.Hon Member: They had leaky homes back then though.JAMES SHAW: Ha ha! Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. In that case I will conclude my comments by saying that the Green Party does support this bill that we fully support the victims of this colossal failure and that we hope that the Government learns from this kind of failure. I commend the bill to the House.