Fenton Darien: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Fenton Darien: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 07 July 2011. Volume:673;Page:19920. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I thank the Minister in the chair the Minister for Building and Construction for that explanation. Labour acknowledges that this is a genuine attempt by the Government to resolve what is a very longstanding and difficult problem. The Minister in the chair is right actually when he says that there are constituents out there who are waiting to see this issue resolved and we have seen many of them. I have certainly seen a few in my time even as a list MP. I have had people who are quite simply desperate come to talk to me to see what could be done to help them in their situation. There are some just awful situations. One that I will relay is about a woman—and I will not use her name but she is fairly well known—who has authored a book. In her former life she was a nun. She went through quite a bad experience in the nunnery left and wrote a book about that experience and how it happened. She married and then her daughter suffered a very debilitating crippling illness. She spent years trying to help her daughter recover from it—and she did in the end—but her marriage suffered as a result. So she has been through the most incredible experiences in her life. 
After she separated she bought a home in Albany that has turned out to be a leaky home. She said to me: “Darien I have been through so much but I had never felt like committing suicide until I experienced this.” It is the awful thing of living in a home that is leaky. We all know that water does the most damage and we know it brings fungi and disease but it also brings stress and no speedy resolution or sense of being able to get it resolved. 
So I acknowledge as I said the genuine attempt by the Government to deal with this problem. Most certainly we can look back—and we will no doubt during this debate—at the causes of the leaky home problem. We know that the previous Labour Government made some attempts to deal with it and it tightened up some of the regulations around building which is good to see. But one can drive around Auckland around some of those new estates look at the buildings and see that they have cladding Mediterranean style and think that they are bound to be leaky buildings. 
I had the experience of going to a building site the other day with the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation to talk to a builder who has five apprentices. The purpose of my visit was to talk to him about what is happening with building apprenticeships. I will talk about the skills gap a bit later if I get the chance because there is a crisis I think as my colleague Phil Twyford has alluded to. How will we get the builders to do this work given that we also have an enormous job to do in Christchurch? The organisation told me that there is a standard now when a house is built—there is automatically a standard. I do not know the ins and outs of building or carpentry but there is a standard now whereby when a new bit has to be added part of the job of the apprentices is to explain what it is how they do it and to demonstrate that they actually understand the importance of it. That was very very interesting. 
The other thing that was really good about that visit was it made me remember what a craft carpentry and building is—what a wonderful craft it is. This was an old home in Devonport not a leaky home that was being significantly overhauled. These guys are on 4-year apprenticeships. They have to do quite amazing stuff. They have to do the planning the concrete work and the steel roofs and they also have to be able to do very intricate woodwork particularly on the old-fashioned villas in Devonport. What an amazing craft. I think it is such a shame. I know there were some rogue builders and others who took advantage of the fact that our regulations were weakened. That was a crime—that was an absolute crime. I would hate to think that that had in any way put a blight on the occupation of being a builder because the people I met the other day in Devonport were fantastic. They will be wonderful builders and of course they will benefit from the work that is coming up with this bill. In fact I was thinking that I have a bit of building at home to do and that I had better get it done quickly because I may not be able to get a builder fairly soon. 
I think it is important to understand the purpose of this bill. It does not provide a whole lot of details around the scheme or the criteria to be eligible for the contribution—that has all been thrashed out elsewhere. The legislation does not require that to be there. People listening to this debate may be looking for that detail but it actually is not in there; the bill is really about providing immunity which the Minister has alluded to in reference to the amendments of my colleague. 
Labour is supporting this bill and I think that during the debate we will bring up some of our concerns. I know the Minister will do his best to persuade us that we are wrong and we are happy to listen to that but we still believe that there are many affected homeowners who will be excluded by this package and that is a worry—that is a worry. There will be people out there thinking that some resolution is coming and that is not going to happen. There are still some unresolved issues around the details and the skills deficit is an enormous concern. I know it is not covered by the bill. It is fine to deliver the money it is great that there has been progress and I accept what the Minister said about what a hard job it has been. In fact if anyone could do it Maurice Williamson could. 
Dr Cam Calder 
: Ha ha! 
DARIEN FENTON 
: No I want to record my respect for him actually. He was on the same select committee as me in the last term of Parliament. I always found that although we differed on lots of things he was always very very competent and capable. He is the kind of man who will just get on and negotiate. 
Phil Twyford 
: He’s still a free-market fundamentalist. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: He will say that—that is right; he freely admits it. But he says he is a social liberal so you know there are some things that we agree on. 
However in terms of what the Minister has said about it being the hardest job he has ever done I can see that; I can see the amount of work that has had to go into this and the enormous amount of detail convincing negotiation and work that has had to be done on it. However I would hate to see all that work put aside if we could not find the people to do the work because of the skills deficit that we have. I would hate to see that happen and I think that would completely derail it. 
One of the groups of affected homeowners I will talk about who are excluded by the package are the owners who are not found to be eligible under the legislation and owners whose homes are more than 10 years old. How long has this leaky building problem been going on for? 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Since 1995. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Since 1995. OK so there will be some people I say to the Minister who will be excluded—he agrees with that. For those people this legislation will seem incredibly unfair. There will be owners who cannot raise the remaining sum the other 50 percent and that will be really difficult for them. Most of those people will be vulnerable and the most disadvantaged. They are people who have put their lives on the line to build their new house. They have put everything into it. I have met a few of them. Then of course there are those who are vulnerable now because of job loss. They once had two incomes and now they have one. I think they are being described as the “nouveau poor” whom we are seeing in places like the North Shore. They are people who used to have two incomes they have a big mortgage and they have put an awful lot of effort into getting this lovely new house only to have this awful tragedy—this awful situation—occur. So I am worried about them and I am worried that they will not find any relief in this package. 
And there are of course health implications—not only the stress that goes with having to deal with leaky homes but also the health implications of having to live in them. Some people just do not have a choice do they? They will just have to stay in their homes. They will not have the choice to go anywhere else. So we are concerned about them. 
There are some issues around the financial package which I am sure we will talk about a little bit more. I think the amendments that have been introduced allow discussion for that. It is good that the Minister has given an early response up front and I am sure Phil Twyford will have quite a lot to say about those issues. 
Finally as I said my major concern is the issue of being able to get the work done—being able to find the builders to do this work particularly when there is such a huge amount of work to be done in Christchurch. I think a whole lot of blame can be lumped on a former Government in the 1990s that ditched the apprenticeship scheme and did away with skills training and that is what we are reaping now. It is good that we have young people coming through but what a builder said to me the other day and what the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation said to me is that they cannot find builders who will take on apprentices. So the skills shortage is something that I am concerned about. We hope that all of the hope that this bill offers and all the work that has gone into it is not wasted because of a skills shortage and the work not being able to be done.