Prasad Rajen: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Prasad Rajen: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 07 July 2011. Volume:673;Page:19925. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill which has particular meaning for me and my family. In my maiden speech to this House I said one of the commitments I had given to my family was that if ever there was an opportunity to speak up about the leaky building issue I would. I did that because when my son and my daughter-in-law came home after getting married like a good—I would like to say Indian—family the first thing we told our children to do was to buy a house. My son and my daughter-in-law did that. We took them to a house that was nice and they selected it. They bought the house and set up their home there. But it was not long before it was declared to be a leaky building. I have never seen two young people who are so much in love and so close to each other love their home so much and then get progressively so frustrated and eventually even depressed in a colloquial sense because there were no fixes. People were not interested; people were turning away. 
I personally went to see those who had built the house. One builder whom I went to see was sitting there in his bula shirt from Fiji having just come back from a holiday but he said that it was nothing to do with him because the house had not been built by his company. I asked him the name of his company at the time. He said “Macrennie’s.” I asked him whether that was the name of his company currently. He said yes so I asked him what the difference was. He said “Oh it’s a different company.” I went to half a dozen companies that told me the same tale so there was the private sector acting in its worst guise. It was using every facility this Parliament had provided in order to run businesses yet I saw those crooks—because that is what they were—literally taking young people like my son and daughter-in-law to task. 
We worked our way through that situation. I joined the body corporate and tried to find solutions. I will talk a little about those solutions because they have some implications for some of the clauses in this bill. In the end it became so frustrating for the couple that they told me to put a match to the house and said they were going to leave the country. They wrote to every political party in this Parliament and they asked them for their policies on this particular issue. They got no change from anywhere. They were frustrated. That was part of what it took for those two young people to apply to go and live in a different country—and they did leave. They are living quite successfully in Canada at the moment but I hope they will return home before too long and come back to live here. Thereupon I said I would take care of the problem and we then wrote the cheques that it took in order to fix the building and finally sell it and send them whatever money was left. 
When it comes to leaky buildings I do not think we can take a great deal of credit for our lack of action over quite some time. I salute the Minister and this Government for saying they will do something because it takes courage. It takes moral courage to say this is an issue it is going nowhere and we should try to find a solution. So I salute the Minister in the chair the Minister for Building and Construction for that because we have spoken about this issue before as well. 
However there are still some matters that bother me. I ask the Minister still to look at the provision he has already put aside. The amendment on Supplementary Order Paper—which one is it— 
Phil Twyford 
: 251. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Is it about speculators? 
Phil Twyford 
: 251—qualifying claimants. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: The one about qualifying claimants. I know that people have been affected. I have talked about my son and daughter-in-law but they were not the only ones. Some elderly people who live close by came to me as well to ask what they should do. I know that people have bought leaky properties for a song. I even met some people 10 days ago who told me that they had bought these properties. They know that the properties were worth $500000 or $600000 and they purchased them for $200000 in the full knowledge that they were leaky buildings and in the full knowledge that there was a facility for 25 percent of the cost of repairs to come from the Government and 25 percent from the local authorities which will now subsidise the fix. Assuming that it takes $100000 for the purchasers to fix the property the value of that property will increase substantially from the $200000 that they paid for it to the $600000 that it is actually worth. Here is the State in the guise of the Government and local authorities signing that off. 
I wonder where the fairness is in that when the people who bought the property earlier who actually suffered and who personally have left the property and sold it for a song are not the ones who will get any benefit out of this package. It will be the new purchasers who take advantage of this. So there is a real moral aspect to this particular amendment and I urge the Minister to look at it again. It addresses a serious issue and there are cases like that around. We ought to know that we are helping those who cannot help themselves in this particular case not those who have knowingly entered into a particular deal to buy a property or house at a substantially reduced cost. It is ridiculous what some of the properties have been sold for and now we will subsidise the fix and there is no gain to us as a State. I think there is something wrong with that particular policy. 
I move to a second part of this bill about the assessor’s report. There is something I do not fully understand about the assessor’s report. I want to make two points. One is the reference to the assessor’s report. I get the impression it will be quite a—brief although brief is not the word—concise report. From the reports that I have seen about leaky buildings I think they need of necessity to be quite detailed. A quick look—or even a detailed look—without taking the cladding off does not give an idea of what the fix is about. What is to be the standing of the assessor’s report? Will the final amount settled for contributions be based solely on that? 
And what happens—because I know this actually happens—when the cladding is taken off and people really see the damage that water has done? They cannot see it from the inside or by taking little sample cuts in a building from either the inside or the outside. They actually have to take off the cladding and take the windows out before they can actually fix the problem. So what will happen if an arrangement has been made for a certain amount of money to be provided to fix the damage and then when the cladding comes off the problem is found to be actually bigger than that? Where is the space for the assessor’s report to be challenged? Where is the space or is it anticipated I ask the Minister in the chair that provision for that will be built in? If the cladding comes off and the costs are much greater than had been anticipated will there be a way in which the percentage increase that people are likely to fund is actually accounted for? That is a real problem; any builder will tell members that. Any person who has gone through this process will know that it was only when the cladding was taken off that they realised how much damage had been done. 
Then it is not just a matter of simply putting the cladding back again because there need to be some design changes. Inevitably there are design changes. There are the problems with cladding and there are problems with flashing and what have you that have to be changed. Sometimes there are no eaves for example. There is a cost to fix that which is not the same as simply fixing the damage that has occurred because the problem was in the whole design of the building. What will happen then? How is the assessor’s report to inform that fix or does it set limits? If so what kinds of limits does it actually set? There has been discussion I understand about some claims against that. The assessor’s report is pivotal it plays a pivotal role and where is the space for putting right the wrongs of the assessors so to speak? Is there an appeal is there some immunity or is there some process by which an owner can say: “Here is a problem and this is how we will go about fixing it.”? 
Those are two issues. I say to the Minister in the chair that I actually tried to get a report on my son’s property a concise report in order to get it fixed. We were almost on the verge of settling with those responsible and I thank God that it did not happen because we would have settled for about 25 percent of the actual cost of the fix.