Woods Megan: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9593. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my intention to take a short call here. I think that much has already been said on what is an incredibly important but very small piece of legislation and I would not like the not-so-invisible hand of the Assistant Speaker to intervene to keep me on track on this debate for traversing material that has already been traversed.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member is risking it already.Dr MEGAN WOODS: Ha ha! There are a couple of things that I would just like to draw the House’s attention to. Some of these have been discussed. The first is the definition of “built”. The definition of “built” is incredibly important because at the moment it is relying on the statutory definitions and the court cases that have come around that. I think that by enacting this legislation and cleaning it up in this bill what we are stopping is a great deal of litigation that would go through our courts not only clogging up our court system but also imposing an immense cost on the homeowners.When there was the prospect of a class action by 500 potential claimants who were grouping together with the law firm Parker and Associates around the James Hardy Industries products that were used—what this case did draw attention to was actually the paucity of law that we have in this country around group or class actions. I think that is something that we are finding in a very similar way in the case of Christchurch and group or class actions there. So it is good to see that cleared up in this legislation so that it is not going to need to be redressed.The other point that I would like to draw the House’s attention to is the third change that this piece of legislation makes—one of the three changes. That of course is aimed at removing any doubts about the validity of the eligibility criteria for compensation as they were published in the Gazette notice. Of course these were criteria that were developed under regulation in the primary legislation.I think this does serve as a cautionary tale to the House: that we have to be very very careful when we are giving delegated regulatory powers to other bodies and tertiary instruments in a piece of legislation because we may have to come back and do a fix-up. That is one of the changes that this piece of legislation is needing to make. It sounds very technical the fact that you are coming back to fix the eligibility criteria but as other members have talked about if you are one of those people who have a leaky home—where your security and your investment and your future really has been eroded—having the eligibility your eligibility to compensation and the ability to get that fixed is incredibly important.So when we are enacting tertiary instruments as parliamentarians we do have to think very carefully and examine very closely—both in this Chamber and at the select committee deliberations—the blowback and the unintended consequences that they can have. This is a saga that started in 1991 my last year of high school. So this is a saga that has been going on for quite some time in this country.It is a pleasure to be taking a call on this legislation tonight and with Labour supporting this bill because we do need to provide a remedy for the people who have been caught in this saga and for their inability to get on with their lives. We know the kinds of strains that this puts on people’s lives and it is good to have this amendment bill and to clear up some of the ambiguities in this legislation. Thank you.Bill read a third time.