Twyford PhilPHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to thank the Minister for Regulatory Reform the Hon Steven Joyce for livening up our afternoon with that contribution. It will not quickly be forgotten. We are supporting this legislation. There is nothing wrong with a bit of repair and maintenance work from time to time but I do have to ask why we are considering changes to the Unit Titles Act now when it has been well known that major reforms of the Unit Titles Act are overdue. I want to speak a little bit more about that later but it is a shame that we are spending the time of the House on a set of—inconsequential would be too harsh; but very minor—tweaks of the Unit Titles Act when such broad structural reform is needed in the sector.I also want to question with the Building Act for example why that was not included in for instance a Statutes Amendment Bill. I would have thought that could be easily dealt with in that vehicle. With the Unit Titles Act another possibility would have been for example the recent changes that we saw in the omnibus bill on affordable housing. I raise the question in fact why that bill was pushed through the House under urgency completely unnecessarily. It extended the special housing areas legislation and made changes to the provisions in the Public Works Act about the future repurposing of land for housing purposes that had been acquired under the Public Works Act. Why was that pushed through the House under urgency without select committee consideration when it could have easily been incorporated in an omnibus bill such as this one?But never mind that we are debating this right now and I want to just focus some comments around the provisions in the Unit Titles Act. What the bill sets out to do according to the commentary is that it wants to clarify and update the Unit Titles Act addressing various inconsistencies between the Act and other legislation update the regulatory system in the Unit Titles Act and try to reduce unnecessary compliance costs. On the face of it that sounds fine and we will at select committee be scrutinising the bill and testing the detail in the provisions of the bill against those claims. Specifically it allows a principal unit to comprise more than one car park it puts in place a simpler process for subdividing a principal unit and it expands the ability of an owner to deal with the unit by giving them the right with the body corporate's consent to grant an easement over their unit. So there are a number of things that are designed to try to ease the way for owners in multi-type dwellings to get on and manage their affairs with the body corporate. This sector is incredibly important. The residential apartment sector is estimated to be worth about $40 billion. There is no question that in our country's biggest city apartments are going to be a more and more significant part of the urban fabric. We are seeing a significant number of apartments being built and one hopes—with the passing of the Auckland Unitary Plan that will allow much more up-zoning much more density—that we are going to see more and more apartments.Anyone who lives in an apartment or works in this sector will tell you that there are serious problems with the legislation as it stands right now. There is an overdue need to put in place protections and accountability requirements to do with the body corporate managers. Better disclosure rules are needed so that very early in the purchase process people have all of the relevant information they need about a unit or an apartment or the governing body corporate. We need better dispute resolution processes in place and it goes on.I know that the Government has done some work on this and I want to acknowledge the work that the Hon Nikki Kaye has done bringing this to the attention of the Government. Nick Smith has said that he is looking at the recommendations from the unit titles working group which was set up with a number of significant players: consumer advocates lawyers apartment owners. That did I think some pretty solid work looking at the whole reform agenda that is needed for the Unit Titles Act.One of the other concerns is about abuses of power really within bodies corporate—the whole practice of proxy farming where a single individual manages to marshal a whole lot of proxy votes and essentially dominate the decision-making process for their own purposes.One of the other concerns that I have had raised with me a number of times is the lack of rules and requirements about the funding of long-term maintenance plans. I know some people have proposed that there be requirements in place that would require long-term maintenance plans not only to be in place but to be properly funded and there needs to be an accountability mechanism so that if those plans are not up to scratch and if they are not properly funded then there needs to be some kind of body that members of the body corporate can go to for appeal purposes. Without that you get the kind of situation we are seeing more and more with bodies corporate and that is that people find themselves faced with massive repairs and maintenance costs that in some cases have seen people forced to sell their title. We have seen people in their retirement years facing financial ruin because of this. Notwithstanding this minor piece of repair and maintenance to the Unit Titles Act I am hoping that we are going to see from the Government something far more substantial in this area before very long.The other matter that I want to comment on is to do with the Construction Contracts Act. I am glad that my colleague Clayton Cosgrove is in the House because he knows a lot about this area and I am sure he will have something to say about the provisions in the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill. What we can see at the back of this bill is that it basically corrects a drafting error—a drafting error in the bill that Nick Smith Minister for Building and Housing brought to this House. I am pretty sure it was passed earlier this year.What this does is essentially it clarifies that the requirement for retention money to be held in trust kicks in as of 31 March 2017. It does not apply to contracts that were in place prior to and at the time of this provision becoming operative and that lack of clarity in the legislation has caused a great deal of concern and confusion in the industry. All of those jobs that are under way prior to March 31 2017 face the prospect of their contracts being made much more complicated as a result of that drafting error. I think this bill will be very welcome for parties in the construction industry who have been expressing concern about this. It is worth noting I think that the requirement for retention moneys to be held in trust was a really important reform that people throughout the construction industry welcomed and I think it was supported by all parties in this House.So we will be supporting this bill to select committee. Other colleagues are going to comment on all of the other elements—the workplace relations elements of this legislation—but we look forward to scrutinising the detail of these provisions at select committee. Thank you.