Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. What a great day—or a great evening as the case may be. I just want to start my contribution tonight by acknowledging Nicola Willis. It has been—if I may Madam Speaker speaking through you—a genuine pleasure to work with you on this Nicola and your collaborative efforts to improve this legislation and work through trying to find that political consensus. I also of course want to acknowledge the Hon Judith Collins who also helped to shepherd this through and of course my forebear in Auckland Central the Hon Nikki Kaye for the years of work that she actually did in working with those in the sector and with constituents in putting forward a draft piece of law which I think through the parliamentary process has ended up being improved massively. I also want to acknowledge the wonderful members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC)—great committee—particularly also needing to acknowledge the Minister the Hon Poto Williams. Enabling us to have her officials in front of FEC allowed us to really chew over a number of quite complicated and nuanced details. Whilst I'll get to later some still outstanding things that I hope that future legislators can work on I think that what we've come to—as in the words of the sponsoring member we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good and what we have tonight is something very very good. In question time today Minister Poto Williams referred to the fact that in March 2022 we saw 2172 town houses flats and units consented as well as 616 apartments. That is a trend that we are seeing more and more of and as many have acknowledged when the Unit Titles Act was originally put into effect nearly 15 years ago now the kind of world that we are living in now wasn't quite fathomed. There's a need to evolve the legislative background that those who live in apartment blocks and town houses and units that have unit titles are working to. To that effect it probably would make sense to offer some of my perspective and how I come to this personally because politics is personal not just in that we reflect obviously the wants and the needs and the desires and the concerns of our constituents but also in that we bring our own personal experiences into this place. So it might surprise some in the Chamber to know that I am not the only elected member in my family. Late last year my partner was elected to our body corp on—wait for it—an online meeting no less: exactly the kind of thing that this bill is going to be making a permanent feature of our unit titles legislation going on from obviously those interim measures put in place under COVID legislation. This is huge for Auckland Central not just because of more denser dwellings coming online as a result of those consents that I alluded to before but also because right now there are 40000 people living in Auckland's city centre alone in those apartments and town houses and denser dwellings myself being one of them. This law as many who have already contributed before me stated in detail makes big changes to disclosure regimes to record-keeping and institutes a code of conduct for body corp managers—as well as enabling those online meetings in perpetuity. It is a lot of work for a member's bill and again I just need to acknowledge that in that lot of work I think we've done a really good job. But there is of course ongoing into the future as other members have noted more mahi to do and more monitoring to do in terms of how this plays out in the real world in practice.I believe that all of us in this place—as actually the sponsoring member has mentioned that she obviously took this originally from the Hon Nikki Kaye and then through the Hon Judith Collins and now to Nicola Willis—that all of us in Parliament are part of a long line of people who have come before us and there'll be a long line of people after us. To that effect it would be remiss of me to neglect to mention the things that I want to put breadcrumbs if you will on Hansard—as we've peppered throughout the select committee documents—of information that I want to leave for future legislators to deal with. Unfortunately as I alluded to before there are a few niggly things that we weren't quite able to build political consensus around. Much like I won't stop banging on about the fact that had we listened to the Justice and Electoral Committee in 2008 we would have regulated property managers under the Real Estate Agents Act amendments—and now 15 years later we're looking to do just that when we're not quite sure if there's 2000 or 7000 of them in the country—I am hoping that some incredibly earnest future MP will pick up the points that I am about to make. So that stuff those points that I want to make those unresolved issues that I have alluded to are around limitations for proxy votes. As I've stated in other contributions to debates in this House and also in the select committee report I do not believe that having an online system of voting is yet going to get us to that place where we are going to be able to deal with some of the issues that we see in particularly the unequal access to information around who holds unit titles and therefore the kind of lobbying that is able to occur around the kind of aggregation of proxy votes in certain people's hands to push for certain outcomes inside of bodies corporate. Therefore that issue around limitations to proxy votes I believe still stands. That is of course also something echoed by a number of brilliant people who I'm soon to acknowledge who continued to talk to me about it over the months that we have taken to progress this legislation. I also secondly just want to point out that I still do believe very strongly that whilst we have made massive strides with a code of conduct for body corporate managers there is going to be need eventually for a legislated professional body for body corporate managers. That of course is the kind of thing that was actually originally outlined in the bill as it came to the House but was removed through that select committee process with one dissenting annoying or rogue as the case may be MP in the Finance and Expenditure Committee. But tonight the progress that we are making is huge. Much like the sponsoring member Nicola Willis mentioned I too want to acknowledge the Body Corporate Chairs' Group Tim Jones and Joanna Pidgeon. They are phenomenal know this stuff inside and out and have been a brilliant resource for us parliamentarians. I also need to acknowledge the Auckland City Centre Residents' Group particularly Noelene and Adam. In summation let's build more apartments let's live more sustainably and let's live happily ever after. But in a more realistic term as the MP for Auckland Central and as a happy apartment dweller I commend this bill to the House.