Smith Nick: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Smith Nick: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:641;Page:11014] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 I want to remind the Committee of the debacle we are in. In 2002 under urgency and with a Supplementary Order Paper the Government set up the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service to try to deal with the plight of thousands of New Zealanders stuck with leaky homes a problem that the Prime Minister described as being paramount. Labour messed it up. It got it wrong. So in 2005 Clayton Cosgrove came into the House in a hurry and put a second bill through the House in order to fix the stuff-up that the Government had made in 2002. But the Government made a stuff-up in the fix-up on the stuff-up and that is what we are trying to fix up with this bill. 
Shane Jones 
: Boring! 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: No it is absolutely true. Mr Jones says it is boring but I think that it is not boring. It is not boring for those 10000 homeowners with leaky homes for whom 5 years after this Government first said that it would fix their problem the Government has solved only 15 percent of it—less than one in six cases. If Mr Jones is so heartless to think that it is boring then I say that it is not good enough. I also say that it is not good enough that the Government tried once to fix it and stuffed it up tried a second time to fix it and stuffed it up and is now trying for a third time. 
Let us remind ourselves of what we are actually doing here. We have already had a Committee of the whole House stage on this bill and it went through to the third reading. But then the Government said: “Oops! We have made another stuff-up so we will have to go back to the Committee stage to change the bill.” Not only did the Government do that but also it has had to suspend the Standing Orders—the rules of Parliament—to try to do this latest patch-up job. That is an extraordinary move. It is years since this Parliament has had to suspend its own Standing Orders its own rules about how we process legislation and we are doing it to try to correct this latest stuff-up. 
Shane Jones 
: Parliamentary sovereignty. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Mr Shane Jones says: “Parliamentary sovereignty.” Let me remind that member of Sir Geoffrey Palmer. This is what Sir Geoffrey Palmer calls unbridled power—that is the Government tabled new legislation outside the scope of a bill only yesterday and it wants to bang it through as law today. Opposition members say that the Government told them that it had got the legislation right the first time and it had got it wrong. Then the Government told them it had got the legislation right the second time in a hurry and it had got it wrong. The Government told Opposition members a third time that it had got the legislation right and to trust it as it rushed it through. Opposition members say that as the Government has got it wrong three times it does not deserve another chance. Members on this side of the Chamber say that owners of leaky homes deserve better. 
 Let me just point out to the Committee that the Government has spent $85 million of public money on the Weathertight Homes Tribunal. That works out at $111000 per case that has been resolved. Do members know what the average settlement is for each case? The average settlement is $70000. Hang on a moment the Government is spending $111000 on the bureaucracy of the process of the Weathertight Homes Tribunal only to provide the homeowner with an average settlement of $70000. It would be cheaper frankly to write the cheque out and send it to the homeowner. I say to the Minister that rather than waiting for 5 years to get a resolution we would have had some of these homes fixed. 
I have to say that I do not know of any area that has resulted in as big a mess and as many bungles as we have seen from this Government both on the issues with the Weathertight Homes Tribunal and with the building law. Of course the Government has got right to the end of this process and said: “Oops we’ve got another mess-up.” The Minister having only just assured all the councils that they would be accredited by 30 November this year suddenly changed his mind yesterday and said: “Oops they are not going to make it.” What he wants to do is rush through an extra amendment to extend that through to 30 June next year. 
Well we simply say to the Minister that his bullying will not work. You see it was a stupid provision to put in the law to say that no building consents could be issued until such time as a local authority was accredited. I ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Mita Ririnui—who I understand is also an Associate Minister of Health—why it is in respect of councils’ health responsibilities that to try to get higher health standards they are not threatened with a withdrawal of their capacity to do their health functions if they do not do what the Minister says. We do not do it in health we do not do it in resource management and we do not do it in any other area so why is it that Clayton Cosgrove in the area of building law wants to have this bullying power to say to councils that consents cannot be issued in their area? Is that a practical mechanism for driving quality? 
Well let us think of the consequence. Let us say that any council in New Zealand—for example my own Nelson City Council—is prohibited from issuing consents. That would bring about absolute chaos and so too for any other area. Over 80000 building consents are processed each year. It should never have been in the law that councils could be stopped from being able to issue consents; that is punishing the community not the councils. It should never have been at 30 November—that date will not be met. 
The irony is this. I have been speaking just this morning to the Building Officials Institute of New Zealand. It has said that to meet the bureaucracy of this law and the Department of Building and Housing all of the council building officials have had to respond to the demands of the department rather than processing building consents. That means we have had record levels of building consents not being processed on time with all the grief that that is causing. 
Why does all this matter? Well we are in the middle of a debate about record high home costs. With record high interest rates and record building costs we are seeing homeownership rates deteriorate under Labour to their lowest level. Homeownership rates are at the lowest level for 50 years. They have dropped by 1 percent for every year that Labour has been in Government. 
That is why John Key is right. In the keynote speech that he gave on the weekend he said we need to sort out our building laws so that we are driving quality by the lowest-cost method because— 
Shane Jones 
: You created this problem. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Mr Jones the new member says this is National’s fault. Well I ask Mr Jones to explain this to me. Why is it that interest rates went down from 15 percent under National in 1990 to 6 percent and since Labour has been in Government from 1999 to now interest rates have gone up to 10 percent? Does the Minister in the chair know that for the average house the cost of servicing a mortgage has increased threefold under this Government? This problem needs resolving and not by these sorts of juggernaut techniques.