Clarkson Bob: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill Building (Consent Authorities) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Clarkson Bob: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill Building (Consent Authorities) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:641;Page:11308] 
BOB CLARKSON (National—Tauranga) 
: 
 In regard to the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Remedies) Amendment Bill and the Building (Consent Authorities) Amendment Bill—what a flipping mouthful—I say that we are going to change this legislation to allow claims for mental distress. I find this strange. To fix the mental stress we just have to fix the leaky houses. It is as simple as that. People will get over their stress problems straight after their houses have been fixed. Unfortunately that is how it is. We need to back this legislation because some people will be awarded extra funds to cover their stress and they might get paid. I agree that this could happen. 
I ask who will pay these extra funds. In most cases builders have gone broke and they do not pay out in full. In some cases the owners have been left high and dry. They will not get paid out on the house repairs let alone on the mental stress. I suggest we change this amending legislation. I think it should say to vote to get rid of the Minister. He knows nothing about building houses and that is a fact. The guy knows nothing about building houses. He does not know how to fix this major leaky home problem. This is tearing the hearts out of the people of New Zealand. 
I will just jump in here. Today I saw 40 apartments and one house in Auckland and it is just shocking. These people are torn to pieces. They have no money to fix their homes. We should take advantage of all these amendments and vote on whether this Government should be thrown out. On second thoughts I will withdraw the second part. The people of New Zealand have already decided what they are going to do. We are ahead in the polls of course. Labour is like the setting sun. The lights are going out on this party. 
Would the Minister please get real get a decent policy and get it sorted out. Please think of the people involved and how they are being ripped off. The people of New Zealand who have leaky homes just want their houses fixed; it is as simple as that. They should not have to wait for years to have their homes made waterproof. The Minister keeps saying that the Weathertight Homes Tribunal is a good system. He quoted one person in a select committee one day who had had success with the tribunal. He said that this person had sorted out the whole problem himself. He used no lawyers nobody else just himself. He handled the complete Weathertight Homes Tribunal hearing himself without a lawyer and had won the case. I wonder whether that owner was paid out in full. If he was not paid out in full he will now be very mentally stressed. If this new amendment was in place he could have claimed for mental stress. But the funny thing is that he would not get any more money because the builders have mostly gone broke and will not pay out any more money. It is a waste of time. He would end up with a bigger bill from lawyers who would be chasing this extra money. 
Please tell me how this amendment to allow claims for mental stress will help a person who wins a claim at the Weathertight Homes Tribunal hearing when there is no money to pay that person. I will repeat myself. The builder has closed the company down and there is trouble getting money from the defunct company. The Minister is breaking the hearts of many New Zealanders. I suggest that the Minister should concentrate on getting leaky homes fixed. He should stop playing around with different amendments to the legislation and deal with the problem. We have leaky homes. The owners of these houses trusted their builders and trusted the inspectors who signed the compliance certificates. They have no money to repair these houses. I ask the Minister to think outside the square and deal with this problem. Labour will not find the answer; National will. 
To finish I say that claiming for mental distress and winning the claim but not getting paid out in full will not help. These people will end up with a bigger lawyers’ account as I said earlier. I would like to mention something that the MP for New Zealand First said before. He was talking about the Hartley deal in Auckland. This is a funny case. In actual fact the claim was for $270000 and the Weathertight Homes Tribunal through its system got them $90000. The system completely broke down. The Hartleys took their case to the High Court and they got another $90000 which is a total of $180000. You see I can count. But they are still out of pocket. I happen to know that the builder who built that house has offered them a full and final settlement of $46000. If that case had been up now and they had gone for mental distress where was the money going to come from? The builder has no more money. It is almost a waste of time. We have leaky homes that need fixing and we have people who have no money to finalise their affairs. I say again let us find a way to fix these houses. 
We all make bad decisions at some time in our lives. Labour members make a bad habit of blaming National for this but they have had 8 years in which to sort out this damn problem. I say that it takes a good person to rectify a bad decision if they blame us. The point is that those members are not making that decision. They have had 8 years in which to deal with this problem and they still have not dealt with it. The Government has failed and failed just like the amendments have. Thank you very much.