O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It gives me great pleasure to speak on the Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Bill—again one of those bills that on the surface of it looks like it'd be fairly technical but actually it is a bill for our time and I congratulate the member opposite Nicola Willis for having it drawn. So often when members' bills come here they're relatively simple affairs that are really designed to attack one part of a bill or one deficiency but this is something that obviously—and if anyone had heard Ms Willis' speech they would've heard that it has had several iterations. It's had something of a journey to arrive in this House and has been through several sets of hands. Congratulations on having it drawn and certainly it is a bill that now has its time.The face of particularly our inner cities but even increasingly as we go out into the provinces—people are living differently either by choice or by being forced to do that. In Wellington and most other cities we have the national policy statement which was released last year. That national policy statement essentially requires councils in certain circumstances certainly where the applications come or arise where they are close to public transport within 10 minutes' walk of rapid transport—then the councils must consider applications of up to six stories and with variations thereof. So it certainly means that a greater proportion of our population are going to end up living above ground and it is really those above-ground arrangements not exclusively that this bill is to address because certainly to live in shared space—shared arrangements shared buildings—of necessity there simply needs to be the sort of cooperation that this bill and the Act it amends are meant to remedy.The other thing that will happen is that as we now seek to reduce our carbon footprint much of that obviously will pertain to transport. In any city here on any day New Zealand starts the world moving and if you go every two-hour block around the world there are a large number of cars that turn on and spew forth into our atmosphere. There is an absolute recognition that that cannot continue and that will require us to learn to live in close quarters even as we have experienced COVID. That in itself has brought us closer to home and made us understand we have to learn to cooperate a little better. However cooperation is often—and anyone who's been involved in any of these group activities will know it often only takes one or two on either side to ruin it for everyone. So that is why you do get regulation like this that becomes absolutely necessary.So what does it actually seek to do? Really to improve the information disclosure regime to prospective buyers of units and as MPs with offices we all have had terrible stories of constituents coming in who have ended up buying into an apartment block buying into something administered by a corporate governance regime body corporate regime and finding out that all of a sudden they'd inherited a leaky building inherited the need for new lifts inherited all sorts of needs. Unfortunately really no one has been really able to be held responsible for that until we get legislation like this that ensures that at least—and this is one of the provisions here—the minutes of any meeting can be examined and must be able to be examined. Terrible to find out that yes there has been a corporate meeting that has decided Yes we're going to have to spend a considerable amount of money on this building." but somehow there was actually no record of that.So as you look through the bill you'll see some of these things that on the surface of it may look like common sense but it is absolutely necessary to give protection to really all parties not just the purchaser but actually those that are selling to make sure that they can't actually be accused of having pulled the wool over sellers' eyes because there was the information able be collected. Just interestingly in preparation for speaking tonight I was speaking to someone who related their own probably typical experience of having a building which they purchased stand-alone or there was some shared space and there was subsequently an apartment built. That shared space had drawn them into the body corporate and all of a sudden that apartment that was built became a "leaky"—that terrible word that's entered our lexicon—and they found that they were actually then responsible for the costs of the apartments even though theirs was a relatively stand-alone affair with only shared costs or "shared" being some parking areas. That for them began a very expensive exercise for that particular person to ensure they came free of that.Again it's quite interesting when you get an anecdotal case like that. It's good to look at the legislation see if it is covered and it pretty much would be covered because one of the provisions of this bill is apportionment to ensure that if you're—and the previous speaker the sponsor of the bill mentioned about living on the top floor of a building where of course the lifts ensuring that they were working well had full access to them. There's certainly no way that someone who actually didn't even avail themselves of that should be paying the same cost as those who live on the top floor. Again this bill will give opportunity.Now I will say as the first Government speaker on this bill that we will certainly be supporting this to select committee and I'm fortunate I'm pleased that the member chose the Finance and Expenditure Committee of which I'm a part to examine this bill—Chlöe Swarbrick: Great committee—great committee.Nicola Willis: Great committee.GREG O'CONNOR: —because—great and hard-working and well-led committee can I say in deference to my junior whip here from whom I may need leave at some stage. So certainly this ensures that we are looking at such apportionment and it's absolutely essential that we go down that path.Even another very interesting part of this bill is the fact a quorum—who would've thought that you would have to ensure that bodies corporate actually had a quorum but actually you do. It also addresses the matter of proxy voting. Again those parades of people that come to our electoral offices often there have been—and I won't sort of cast too many aspersions on those who perhaps—and one incident I know where they inevitably held their corporate meetings when there was an All Blacks game on to ensure that probably those people may not have actually had the time or interest in attending the meeting. So to ensure that there are basic meeting requirements around ensuring that there is a quorum—also just ensuring that no one shareholder that the person cannot act as a proxy for more than a certain proportion of the ownership—again all these basic things but when you look at this bill you suddenly see in the absence of these provisions just why we have had so many problems and why we do get as I say this parade of people to our electorate offices looking for this.So I think this is again one of those bills certainly whose time has come. Just previous to this there was some commentary on my colleague Louisa Wall and her luck at getting bills drawn at the right time which I—Louisa's here at the moment. Perhaps she always put it down to the fact that it was the time for each of those bills that needed to be debated. So perhaps it may well be and I'll give it to Ms Willis to say that perhaps this bill's time has come—again congratulations on having it drawn and I'm looking forward to being part of the debate on this bill at select committee. Again as I say we are going to be voting for it to go to select committee. I think there's one or two little improvements we can make and I'm looking forward to being part of that. So I certainly commend this bill."