Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): It's a pleasure to speak on this third reading of a bill that in many ways goes towards cleaning up what was a bit of a cowboy's territory with unit titles. I certainly wouldn't have recommended to any of my family members to buy one prior to this legislation because although there are good apartment developments it was just too difficult to know the good from the bad. It was cowboy territory and in fact Labour inherited that situation and in our manifesto we said that we would review and modernise the Unit Titles Act 2010. There is still some work to do on it but this bill does go a long way to cleaning that up and so I'd really like to congratulate the sponsoring member Nicola Willis for being able to get what has been acknowledged tonight as being a complex bill as a member's bill through this far. Also to acknowledge the work done by various committee member and—given that everybody's being very congratulatory—I'd like to congratulate my colleague Helen White who as an Auckland-based MP did a lot of work listening to people there travelling to Auckland to listen to submissions and made some really good points to the select committee around the need to be able to deal with those who represent vendors and purchasers not just the actual parties themselves so that was really useful to us. When I look at the characteristics of where this bill has got to it has really been around strengthening information strengthening governance and then a really long select committee process to grapple with the competing rights and how we balance those to make sure that vendors were protected by the caveat emptor principle—that buyers do need to beware and do their due diligence—but also that purchasers were protected by having enough information adequate disclosures correct information and being able to make decisions in a timely way if that information wasn't forthcoming or wasn't correct. As Dr Duncan Webb our very competent chair said we think we did strike that balance and that meant really going through with a fine-tooth comb clause by clause looking at all the little bits of this rather large member's bill to make sure that we got that balance right. And what we're hoping it will do is just get rid of the stress of uncertainty of in-fighting within bodies corporate—get rid of that situation where people have purchased leaky buildings where perhaps the vendors have known that there was a defect with their building and the purchaser has been unable to do anything about that and ended up in years and years of litigation which is incredibly painful. And I know of families like that in my own electorate in Taieri; this is not just an Auckland Central problem. There are families in my own electorate who say that their lives have been ruined by being in one of these leaky-home experiences. So the bill that we have before us tonight it's been acknowledged is good it's not perfect and there is still more work to do. But what it does do is increase the transparency for prospective buyers and it gets the balance right. The specific areas that it changes are the proportionate utility costs; it introduces a code of conduct for body corporate committees; and we've heard about the long-term maintenance plan. I hope I never have to hear that word as many times as I have over the last eight months: long-term maintenance plan" was a bit of a mantra for all of us and reminds us of those very long and involved select committee hearings. It requires sellers to disclose information about a unit to potential buyers and it prevents bodies corporate from entering service agreements for longer than 24 months. Many of the changes created by this bill seek to implement recommendations from a 2016 review of the unit title regime and I think it is to the Minister's credit—Poto Williams—that she was able to see the value of bringing that work plan into the scope of the member's bill so that we could actually facilitate this and enable more people to have more certainty so we could get more New Zealanders into apartments to help address the housing crisis that we inherited. It makes the governance of apartment buildings stronger and more accountable and it strengthens the dispute resolution process as I have mentioned. I'd just like to turn to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 144 which deals with some of the details that I've mentioned around further information—for example we've got clause 37 which sets out the requirements for the documents to be provided in the pre-contract disclosure statement. Other members of this House tonight have talked about there needing to be more disclosure but what does that actually look like? The select committee made the following additions—we wanted these disclosed in standard contracts—so weathertightness issues that had not been remedied; significant defects in the land; confirming the 12-month period of the financial year; details of the maintenance the body corporate has to carry out in the next year; the balance of every fund or bank account which is actually critical information if one thinks about it because if there's a bank account balance in deficit that would send a red flag to a prospective purchaser; a copy of the long-term maintenance plan; and an explanation of terms used in the Unit Titles Act and terms relating to property matters. And that's really just about governance and making sure that purchasers do have the information they need including legal information to be able to decipher what they are getting in front of them and what is relevant and material to the purchase that they're going to make. Another amendment in the SOP is about whether the vendor or the body corporate is involved in litigation—whether there are any proceedings initiated by the body corporate or intending to be initiated; whether there is any written claim by the body corporate against a third party that has not been resolved. We had some discussion about this at select committee just trying to make sure that again this was about getting the balance right that appropriate and material disclosures are made to purchasers that could have an impact on their decision to purchase and that they have full and complete information available to them; and that there would be no ugly surprises—that was a really important one that we did discuss at some length. Dr Duncan Webb has also referred to powers to investigate and the involvement of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and there was some discussion about this because that calls into question rights around search and surveillance and aligning the powers that MBIE might have with other pieces of legislation to make sure that the balance of the competing rights was appropriate for the situation. Again we think we got that balance right and the SOP inserted section 202B in clause 21E where it gives the chief executive or someone authorised by them the power to enter the unit title to inspect it either with the consent of the body corporate or authorised by an order of the tribunal. And that was really where they felt that there was sufficient evidence or cause to believe that inadequate information had been provided pursuant to an investigation or to a purchaser and that there needed to be some investigation taken to check the veracity of that information. So we looked at that very carefully. We wondered whether there could be implications around search and surveillance around entering property and so on and we feel satisfied that we made the right call on that and that the existing provisions align with other search and surveillance provisions in other similar legislation. Just in my remaining couple of minutes—apart from just once again congratulating Nicola Willis for bringing this piece of work to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and shepherding it to this point—we did do a lot of work on it. I think I might have said it was panel beaten at the last one; that's probably not very generous. It was complex bill and it's great to see it come this far. But also just to put it into context of what this Government is doing to make sure that we are getting more New Zealanders into homes because this legislation will certainly go a long way towards getting people into apartments. We have also removed tax advantages for property speculators we're replacing the Resource Management Act and it's important to recognise that because those would have played on the mind of the Minister as she decided to bring this forward into her work plan for her officials to be able to expedite the process that the member has been able to use to make sure we get this into the House. So once again congratulations Nicola Willis congratulations to all the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who put so much effort in and thank you to the officials for bearing with us. It's a great not a perfect piece of legislation and I really look forward to seeing lots of New Zealanders buying apartments. I commend it to the House."