van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Madam Speaker. As the building and construction spokesperson for National I'm happy to take a call on what is another quality member's bill proposed by this side of the House. We're used to seeing these sorts of bills put forward by National; so it's great to see widespread support for this debate tonight—and especially going to the select committee process. And I'll just acknowledge the comments earlier from Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki who mentioned that the select committee process always manages to improve a bill. I'd just encourage her to remind her senior ministerial colleagues of that too given their propensity to use urgency to bypass that process of late.Anyway coming to the unit titles bill in front of us. We've heard a lot of consideration from members throughout their contributions tonight around why this is an important piece of legislation and it is. Apartments are becoming an increasingly important housing option and provide capacity for further density in our urban environments which is an important part in my view of where we need to be getting to—building up more so than out. When we look at our pretty significantly large footprints in our urban centres we need to ensure that we're maximising the potential within those boundaries by going up. But—and this is the challenge for a lot of people—the current system raises a lot of questions. It raises a lot of red flags. And whenever you have uncertainty people will naturally shy away from it. So for a lot of people buying a residential property apartment or house is the most significant asset purchase they will make. And also because of that it's something they're not particularly familiar with doing; they are not particularly experienced with buying and selling properties and exactly what sort of things they need to consider when they're conducting their due diligence around a potential property purchase.Of course in the current situation the volume of information you can access when looking to buy an apartment is actually very low. And of course we saw some changes to the real estate Act a number of years ago now requiring disclosure to be made of any known problems and also that is an expectation placed on vendors; they must disclose any information they have. But of course if they're unaware—which can as we've heard tonight be the case with apartment properties—then you can end up with someone buying a home that they have maxed themselves out to do as a first-home buyer and then suddenly being confronted with an unaffordable maintenance bill to upgrade any particular aspect that has arisen as the result of some long-term maintenance plan that hasn't been funded fully. Because interestingly and I was amazed to see this in the Unit Titles Act currently there's a requirement to have a 10-year plan—that will be extended to 30 as proposed under this bill—but there's also a requirement section 117 that there must be a long-term maintenance fund unless the bodies corporate by special resolution decide not to have a long-term maintenance fund. Right so that seems a little bizarre that actually there's no requirement to have a fund for these long-term maintenance issues. So that's something I would expect we'll hear from submitters on during this process as well.But we're also seeing the evolution I suppose of different construction methods. We're seeing an increasing focus around modular or prefabrication construction and I think over time we will see more people looking for the ease the convenience and the cheaper purchasing price—particularly in the current market—that an apartment can offer or a property and a unit title can offer. And that's all good stuff. Of course we need to see Resource Management Act reform to enable more construction of these types of properties and I encourage the Government to continue their proposals in that space and we have plenty of advice to share or suggestions to make in terms of getting that in the right space.Look just a couple of the key points I want to touch on in my last minute here. As I said that disclosure is a key concern for a number of potential purchasers. So improving the information disclosure regime is absolutely vital. And you know that really I think potentially comes to the core of the issue for a lot of people. They don't know necessarily what they're buying and what it looks like as an ongoing commitment for them. So I'd also just like to at this point acknowledge John Gray the president of the Home Owners and Buyers Association of New Zealand for the work he and his organisation have done which has been significant on this. I appreciate the time he shared with me sharing some of his insights. So they're proposing having a building survey done on all existing buildings so that you know your starting point right? And for a lot of people that gives them straight away a lot more certainty. So I look forward to seeing discussion on that through the process as well.The other one around the professionalism of body corporate managers and codes of conduct—that's all good stuff; and planning and funding the long-term maintenance—that's a biggie. So I think there's some really good points here. We'll see some change. I encourage submitters to get involved with it and look forward to seeing it progress. Thank you.