Clarkson Bob: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — Recommittal In Committee 
Clarkson Bob: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — Recommittal In Committee 
[Volume:641;Page:10961] 
BOB CLARKSON (National—Tauranga) 
: 
 Laws should be made after careful studies to solve the problem; this is what the problem is. Debates should be had with people who understand the problem and can give good advice on how to rectify the problem. You should not make laws on the run. You should not wake up with a warm feeling after a long night. This bill— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member is bringing the Chairman into the debate. 
BOB CLARKSON 
: I apologise. The Government is protecting itself through the courts by letting the Building Industry Authority off the hook and it has caused a lot of mental stress for thousands of homeowners. Now we have a Minister bringing a bill into the House that allows people to claim for mental stress. How strange is that? The Government causes the stress by not dealing with the situation and by protecting one of its departments the Building Industry Authority so it cannot be sued for damages. This in itself causes the stress. 
The bill is a waste of time. We can fix the mental stress by fixing the problem. In case the Minister has lost sight of the problem I tell him that it is that we have leaky homes that are taking too long to get fixed. We have people who cannot face a hearing in the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service—or the later versions of that service because that has changed now too—because they do not know anything about houses. That is what got the Government into problems in the first place. 
There is a major problem with people getting stressed; the problem being that they cannot afford to pay a lawyer to assist them. They have to take a lawyer along to the hearings at the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service because the other side has top lawyers defending them. The Minister has the cheek to say that one does not need a lawyer to defend oneself in the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service hearings but if there are lawyers on one side it is only fair that there are lawyers on the other side; otherwise one will get stressed. 
I say to the Minister that he should wake up and get in the real world. What is the use of spending more money on a lawyer to win a mental-strain case when there is a fair chance that the full payment on the case just won concerning a leaky home will not be paid? The lawyer’s account will be bigger but there will be no extra money for the homeowners. Take the Hartley case in Auckland. If they had been allowed to claim for mental stress and damages they would have won the case; the problem is that they would have ended up with a bigger legal bill and would not be paid any extra dollars. In that particular case their claim was for $270000. They won $90000 through the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service hearing. The hearing was a failure—it put a lot of stress on them as it happens—so they went to the High Court and got another $90000 which made it a total of $180000. 
How could this new bill have helped them? Maybe they could have spent another $15000 on lawyers’ fees and been awarded another $20000 in compensation for stress. The bill would not help because the builder is hiding behind a company and has no money; he has offered $46000 in a full and final settlement. Therefore the Hartleys would have to pay their lawyer’s account which would be bigger and they would not get any extra dollars. So that makes the bill an ass actually. 
Would the Minister please get real get a decent policy sorted out and please think of the people involved and how they are getting ripped off. All the people I have met just want a deal in place that fixes their houses. They want their houses repaired and should not have to wait for years. The repairs should be done now. 
 I have got myself lost here; that is sad is it not? I will just finish off at any rate. I have tears in my eyes every time I hear the statement “with access to speedy flexible and cost-effective procedures” to fix these houses. What a joke! It will take 20 years to sort all these problems out. There will be a hell of a lot of stressed people around by then. They will not get any extra money. They will not get all the money on the first claim at any rate. We have to support this bill because some people might get some money. I will leave it at that.