Smith Nick: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Smith Nick: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21333] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 This financial review of the Building Industry Authority impacts on thousands and thousands of New Zealanders who have been grossly neglected by this Government in its response to the huge crisis in respect of leaky homes. I note that Damien O’Connor is in the chair. The first problem for homeowners is the way in which this important portfolio has been passed around the Cabinet table like a hot potato. Can members believe that in just 5 years there have been six different Ministers for Building Issues? It is little wonder that we have the scale of mess—with thousands of homeowners living in rotting and decaying homes with their health affected and struggling to try to find a solution—when Labour treats this issue with such disdain that it is passed from pillar to post. We have had Mark Burton—[ 
Interruption 
] Judith Tizard pipes up. Can Judith Tizard—who has hundreds of her constituents confronted with those awful problems—justify to me why we have had Mark Burton George Hawkins Lianne Dalziel Margaret Wilson John Tamihere Chris Carter and now Damien O’Connor on building issues? 
Then there is the matter of just how poorly the Government is managing the problem. We see in this report that $6 million is being spent on lawyers by this Government in order to fight the owners of leaky homes. Here are desperate people who need the Government’s help and assistance—but what is the Government’s answer? It will spend $6 million on Queen’s Counsels in order to fight them and in trying to pretend that the Building Industry Authority has done nothing wrong. What sort of insult is that to the intelligence of New Zealanders and of those poor families affected? 
Then we see that $100 million is being spent on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service but not one dollar of that is to be spent on a single home needing to be fixed. Instead that $100 million the Government is spending on the weathertight homes bureaucracy is according to the Government to provide a quick and speedy resolution of the problem of rotting homes. Well is that not interesting? That is what the Government said 3 years ago. Three years later fewer than 10 percent of claims have been resolved. Does Damien O’Connor the Minister in the chair realise that with current progress the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service will take 20 years to process claims under that “fast cost-effective solution” the Government rammed through Parliament in 10 days? That is simply insulting and it is a tragedy for the families concerned. 
I want also to draw the Minister’s attention to something that is truly shocking. A poor old homeowner who had a rotting home that had been certified by an independent certifier wrote to the Building Industry Authority in 2004 the year under review and asked who the insurer was for the independent certifier. The authority wrote back and said that it could not tell the homeowner because the information was commercially sensitive. Now that is shocking! There is a Government that should be helping those families but it is putting up bureaucratic barriers to the extent of even refusing to name the insurer. What does that mean? It means that the homeowner is not able to take legal action to try to get his or her home fixed because the Government is hiding behind the excuse of commercial sensitivity in order to protect the insurance companies rather than the homeowner. I say that that is a farce. 
How can members opposite even pretend with that sort of debacle that they have any compassion for the families affected by leaky homes? I saw in the  
New Zealand Herald  
last week the glaringly smiling photo of Chris Carter and I simply said: “What a disgrace.”