Calder Cam: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Calder Cam: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:672;Page:18670] 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill. The bill is very very important to our country and to many thousands of hard-working New Zealanders. A home is fundamental to providing safety and security to body safety and security to family and safety and security to property which underlies Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for the human condition. A home is crucial to the health and the emotional and economic well-being of our people. I wonder who among us has not heard this line from a John Howard Payne poem: 
Be it ever so humble 
there’s no place like home;  
I acknowledge the contributions from members on all sides of the House in the Local Government and Environment Committee. Our bid is to come up with a financial assistance package to help New Zealanders get their leaky homes fixed faster. We must move beyond what has been a period of dispute and litigation. This package is about spreading the cost as evenly and as fairly as possible to get action. We need to help affected homeowners get on with their lives. 
So what is the problem? I am a homeowner myself. I know a lot of friends who are carpenters and builders. They have told me that all properties leak. I have had that experience myself. In certain conditions with wind coming in from a certain quarter and with torrential rain some water will come into my home. It is an old home that was built in a traditional manner. The water comes in and drains out the wood swells a little bit conditions change and the wood reverts to form and dries out in a reasonable period and there is no problem. 
But a problem occurred with the advent of a new building material. I can remember it appearing around Auckland when a little bit of a blight started in the early 1990s. It was sort of a building envelope in Insulclad-type construction which is a cladding system and there were many others. The problem was that any water that got into the fabric of the home could not drain out. It affected townhouses apartments and stand-alone—or as the English call them detached—homes. It is interesting that leaky homes are not just a problem for Auckland. Probably 75 percent of leaky homes are in Auckland but Wellington Tauranga and Christchurch are also affected. I believe having asked the chief executive in Dunedin that there is one in Dunedin. 
Clare Curran 
: One what? 
Dr CAM CALDER 
: One leaky home—one only. Things move glacially. In 2006 the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act was the primary legislation passed but prior to that the Government of the day seemed to believe that no problem existed. In 2002 the then Prime Minister said she had not taken much notice of the  
New Zealand Herald 
’s article on the issue because the  
New Zealand Herald  
was well known for banging on about issues of no substance. Not surprisingly that statement surprised the industry including Prendos Director Phil O’Sullivan who at that stage had been campaigning for 4 years to alert the Government to the problem and had asked for it to be addressed. He said that he was surprised the Prime Minister was badly informed. He said: “They need to take it seriously and not dismiss it. We’ve had the BIA [Building Industry Authority] dismiss it and the minister dismiss it and they’ve all been caught out. We’ve got no doubt [about the size of the problem]. We just go to site after site after site.” 
This bill is this Government’s attempt to address a very serious problem. The legislation will deal with the forecast for leaky homes which varies from somewhere around 22000 homes to as many as 89000 homes. The consensus forecast is that some 42000 affected homes are likely to be leaky. We know that it is often very difficult to tell how badly affected a home may be. 
At the time of the 2009 report unfortunately 9000 leaky homes were deemed to be outside the 10-year liability period. As a member of the select committee I must say that it was a great sadness to me that even with the best will in the world there will be some homeowners who will not be able to find solace in this package. But we are doing our best to provide a process that will provide certainty without recourse to costly disputes. We have heard that this approach is a partnership as it were between local government providing 25 percent and the Government providing 25 percent. It is a voluntary process for the homeowner to be involved in should they wish to be. They have the right to be involved if they decide to be but they forgo their right to sue the local authorities or the Crown although they are able to sue other liable parties such as builders developers and manufacturers of any products that are deemed to be defective. 
I look forward to contributing further to the debate in the House as the bill progresses. At this stage I commend the bill.