Foster-Bell Paul: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFoster-Bell Paul: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 March 2015. Volume:703;Page:2062. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Contrary to some of the things said by the previous speaker Mr Sio we on this side of the House are not patting ourselves on the back prematurely over this bill the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill. It is an important piece of legislation and as my colleague the honourable member from the Coromandel Scott Simpson said it is timely it is pragmatic and it is something that is required to address the concerns that affect so many New Zealanders who have had leaky homes. But it is not something that we take particular pleasure in having to do in order to fix up a mess that has been present in this industry over a number of years and now across the tenures of three Governments.We welcome the Labour Party’s support of this piece of legislation and I actually agree with the honourable member Clayton Cosgrove. It is not as simple as writing a cheque and we should not let entirely off the hook that tiny minority of builders who were dodgy and the housing designers the architects the engineers and the certifiers who also played a part in leading to a situation where a number of New Zealand houses were not built to a standard that could be reasonably expected with regard to weathertightness. But this is important to a subset of the owners of leaky homes who have been affected. So I think it is timely that the bill has been introduced into the House now.I go back to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report that Mr Sio referred to in his speech and the estimate was that between 22000 and 89000 homes were affected by weathertightness issues. But the consensus among the experts who looked at this including people from the Weathertight Homes Tribunal which assesses these cases but also the Building Research Association of New Zealand and other industry players was that the likely figure was around 42000 dwellings. That means that 80000 Kiwis were affected by weathertightness issues. The reason I bring this up is to give members a sense of the scale of the issue that we found when we came into Government in 2009 because what had happened prior to that was yes a tribunal had been introduced and people who had leaky homes were able to take their claims to that tribunal to be heard but many thousands of New Zealanders were still left in a terrible position.The circumstance we found when we came into office was that in terms of the costs being met for a leaky home 69 percent of those costs were accruing to the owner of the home who in a few cases may have been involved in the building of their own home as New Zealanders are entrepreneurial and the No. 8 wire mentality does still exist in this country. But 69 percent of the costs accruing to owners was not reflective of a fair attribution of liability or blame for the problem in my view. Twenty-five percent of the cost was being met by councils which perhaps is a fair attribution of cost to councils given their role over many years of failing to recognise the weathertightness issues that were present in buildings they were consenting and authorising to be built. Only 4 percent of the cost in 2009 was actually being met by the third parties—the builders the designers and the engineers who one could argue played a larger part in the creation of this issue and 2 percent of the cost was being met by the Government. That was the administration of that tribunal. Owners carried the largest share of the costs and that was a situation that we did not feel was fair to those who had been affected often through no fault of their own by this insidious issue. It is an issue that often takes many years for homeowners to recognise they suffer from.So in 2011 the Government announced the leaky homes Financial Assistance Package and this was to give a greater Government share. Neither we nor the previous Government accept legal liability for this situation but we did feel it was a fair solution to offer a 25 percent contribution to those cases that had been through the proper hearings procedure and where the homeowner had been recognised as a duly affected homeowner who had been impacted by a weathertightness issue. So there was a 25 percent contribution from the Government and then access to a loan with Government backing should it be required so that homeowners could borrow the money they might need to bring their home up to a reasonable standard so that it could either go up for sale or remain habitable for the homeowner. The fiscal implications of this issue are significant. As I have said 80000 individuals and 40000 homes are affected and an estimate made in 2008 put the cost at $11.2 billion for the New Zealand economy. It was almost on the scale of a natural disaster and comparable to some of the costs that we have seen of the destruction of homes in Christchurch for instance after the earthquake.That gives the context for why we think it is an important piece of legislation that we are introducing now to remedy three particular technical aspects of the current system which have in recent litigation proven to be difficult or have led to various different interpretations and difficulty in establishing clear precedent. The first of these is around where in legislation this sits. The courts have taken some issue with the fact that by notifying in the Gazette we are providing the criteria for claimants. We will move from the Gazette notification to actually codifying in the Act itself the validity criteria to remove that doubt. It is not an issue that has actually impacted on individuals yet but it is something that was identified by the courts. They have sought the guidance of this House to remedy that lack of clarity and this bill does provide clarity in that particular instance.As my colleague Scott Simpson has referred to another major issue has been around establishing the definition of when a building is built. We know that throughout the country with regard to the Resource Management Act there is a lack of clarity around measuring the height of a building. That was one example that has reached recent media attention. There are 50 different definitions of how to measure the height of a building. Well we have two different definitions that the courts have referred to in terms of determining the built date for a building. The reason the built date is very important is that it is the date at which the clock starts ticking for those who may have suffered a weathertightness issue given that there is a 10-year expiry period for the detection of a problem and the lodging of a claim with the tribunal.We have had a disparity between the High Court and the Court of Appeal which have in recent cases determined the built date of a building to relate to the date that a final building inspection is conducted by the council whereas the Supreme Court in the Osborne v Auckland Council judgment which was reached in June 2014 determined that the built date of the building—the date from which the building is considered to have been built—was not when the inspection happened but when the code of compliance certificate was issued. A considerable period of time can elapse between those two events the council inspection and the issuing of the certificate.This does affect a number of claimants who are currently before the tribunal and it behoves this Parliament to ensure that that is clarified and that we have a clear direction as to when a building is deemed to have been built particularly so that we do not get disparities between individual cases. It would in my view be very unfair to have a situation where a home was built on the same day in two different local authority areas and because of these two different judgments they are treated differently in terms of eligibility to access the compensation that is provided by the Weathertight Homes Tribunal. This bill also has retrospective effect so those who would have been eligible had this provision been in place when they were previously perhaps denied access to a claim will have that opportunity to take up their case.The final technical element relates to cases that are currently before the tribunal. Once a case has had the notice to proceed issued then they will be able to access the package even if it falls outside that 10-year limit. As we know 23 July 2016 is the cut-off date and there may be some homes where the owners are currently before the tribunal and can reasonably expect their case to be heard because through no fault of their own there have been delays particularly in the complex multi-home apartment buildings of the sort we have here in Wellington central. Those cases with those complexities can take a long time.This is an important piece of legislation. The Government is certainly not patting itself on the back but it is something we have a responsibility as a sensible Government to progress and I welcome cooperation with the Opposition. I commend this bill to the House.