Webb Duncan; Salesa JennyDr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (remote): Kia ora Madam Speaker. Thank you for this. It's a real pleasure to speak on this bill. It is as the member said an important bill. It might be seen as more of a tidy up but I think its importance can't be understated because we really need to make sure that people who purchase homes which are in unit titles can do so with a degree of confidence and with as few costs as possible and that those homes are properly kept and maintained in the housing stock. That's I think what this bill seeks to do.Look as chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee which looked at this I'm surprised that the member's coming up with some more amendments by way of Supplementary Order Paper but I'm sure they'll be looked at very very carefully indeed. Look all members around the table had a lot of input. As a central city MP myself I was very interested in unit titles and I know that Helen White also took a significant interest in exactly how we can make essentially apartment dwelling and living in a more compact way more efficient and effective. The committee did give the bill a good old working over I must say and there was some as Nicola Willis alluded to some really important debates.I'm going to go to proxy voting first. There are a number of things I want to talk about if I get a chance but I actually want to talk about proxy voting because she has raised it and this spectre of proxy farming was identified. Now in another life I've had a fair bit to do with unit titles and I know that the politics of unit titles can be almost as fierce as the politics of this place. But I struggle with a rule which refuses the right of one person to give their decision-making power to another should they choose to do so. If I have a trusted adviser or friend or even a trusted committee member or a trusted manager then why can I not let them exercise my vote on my behalf? Now I accept that unit titles as with any neighbour dispute—disputes in unit titles can be fierce and people can feel that the process was wrong when they don't get the outcome they want. But I'm not sure that proxy voting or restricting the amount of proxy voting is the way to address that. In committee we did look at this and it went to and fro—one of the joys of virtual Parliament is I can see Chlöe Swarbrick quite clearly taking notes and I'm sure she'll have something to say on this. But what we did do is something quite important and that is address two things: remote voting is one—the ability of unit title holders who couldn't otherwise make the meeting to attend a meeting remotely and vote remotely—and also to vote in advance electronically perhaps by email. And the third thing was to give a proxy to a third party but direct how that proxy is exercised. So they've seen the motion and they have made clear that it's to be voted for or against so it's a very limited proxy. So I think proxy farming the idea that somehow it's illegitimate to go out and get votes for a particular course of action—even if we accept that I think there's a really substantial set of things which address that in the bill itself.One of the other things that we did was look at body corporate managers—because of course many bodies corporate simply by dint of their complexity need a manager—and that places the body corporate owners at something of a vulnerability. So whilst the original bill wanted essentially to require industry membership or membership of an industry organisation—a professional body of some sort—we thought that that was going to be difficult given the fact that there was no real industry organisation that was quite suitable at the present time and we didn't think it was appropriate in a member's bill to construct one from scratch. So rather we went down the road of a code of conduct. We thought that it was quite appropriate to impose a code of conduct on body corporate managers to make clear what their obligations were and essentially to give rights to unit title holders if they overstep the mark. Obviously things like conflict of interest and due diligence and those kinds of things are going to be critical as well.One of the other things we looked at was long-term maintenance plans. When you're digging in here it might sound very dull and unimportant but I can assure you thank you—I can see you again Chlöe—but when your roof is leaking and no one has put money aside and it's a $100000 or $200000 job you get pretty excited about it. So it is really important. For myself I was a bit sceptical of the ability to opt out of long-term maintenance plans but once again if you're a body corporate and you want to opt out of having them it's a big call but over to the owners ultimately. But what we did do was recognise that there's a kind of distinction between a long long-term maintenance plan—30 years—and sort of the immediate long-term of 10 years. In 10 years you can have essentially a schedule of maintenance but in 30 years what you're going to say is out there we expect we will be re-roofing or re-cladding or whatever it might be. So it's a different kind of plan. The first requires a lot more detail; the other ones are high level.I'll just touch on if I can one other area because it was in fact new to the bill and that's around the role of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) because at the moment if there's a problem in a body corporate it's up to the body corporate members to fix that problem or to litigate or to go through a dispute resolution process. In some of these large bodies corporate that may not work. There may be absentee owners or the owners simply don't have the wherewithal to do that. So essentially MBIE has been given some enforcement powers including the power to request documents. The one that we really wrestled with and we really did was a power to enter. I can say that the committee members and I think we were pretty much all one here were concerned about a power to enter. So that power to enter to see whether the Act is being complied with will only exist by order of a Tenancy Tribunal. I think that's a really good protection to have a sort of quasi-judicial oversight because particularly for entry into a residential property I think the threshold should be set very high and I think we probably got it about right there.So this is a really really important bill. There is a lot in it. The material around disclosure is going to be important and there was a significant discussion around how it would work in conveyancing terms particularly with the later disclosure—the ability to cancel or not for non-disclosure. Now there's pre-contract disclosure—the kind of pack that you get when you sign the contract—and then just prior to handing your money there is the immediate disclosure or the pre-settlement disclosure. Now that's usually an update and we thought whilst you could defer settlement if you didn't get it in a timely manner we didn't think it appropriate to have a cancellation right in there. So that's maybe something that the member will be asking us to have another look at. But certainly it's an important point to make sure that people get the right information and that they can look through it.The idea was to simplify the disclosure process. Again it's about cost because putting that documentation together the original bill I think was a little onerous. It required too much of the seller of a body corporate and that's just another transaction cost which will drive the price up string out a settlement process and make it more difficult for these really important housing units to be bought and sold.So look this is an example of the House coming together effectively to try and improve something—another little piece of the puzzle of housing in New Zealand. I'm really happy. You can see that there's probably going to be some debate yet to come. If we make the bill better that's good but I'm happy to say that I think the Finance and Expenditure Committee did an absolutely fantastic job and worked really hard with officials on making this bill as good as it possibly can be.So kia ora. Thank you Madam Speaker. I commend this to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the motion be agreed to.