Cosgrove Clayton: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCosgrove Clayton: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 March 2015. Volume:703;Page:2056. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): The Labour Party will be supporting this legislation in its first instance to the Local Government and Environment Committee. We obviously want to be apprised of the detail as described by the Minister. I would say that the measuresthat the Minister for Building and Housing Nick Smith has outlined will indeed on the face of it go some way to helping to resolve an issue that has been dealt with by a number of Governments and a large number of former and current weathertight homes Ministers myself included.I would just make a couple of historic observations. I do note that the Minister with goodwill has put these measures forward but I do note that when I was the Minister for Building and Construction the Hon Nick Smith was wont to interject on me and others whenever this legislation came up as we tried to embark on and put in place a series of measures to alleviate a problem that really at that point no one knew the extent of. He was wont to interject: “Just write a cheque and pay the money.” It is good to see that the Minister has after a few years in Government actually worked out that it is never as simple as simply writing a cheque for an open-ended fiscal envelope. Writing a cheque when you do not know the extent of the problem would simply let those peopleoff the hook—and I remember this at the time as the Minister; many of those in the building trade but not all are quality builders quality constructors quality architects and designers etc.—who perpetrated pretty shoddy work and left the victims in the cart whom we are trying to assist here today. So I do recall the Minister sort of interjecting: “Just pay the money and write a cheque.”It was very good political opportunism at the time but since then he has got his feet under the Cabinet table and worked out as I did that this is a very very complex problem one that has to be taken seriously. I am glad to see he has. It has affected thousands of people’s lives. Your home is your castle. Your home is the biggest asset generally that Kiwis have. Your house is what you have worked for all your life which you continue to work for and pay the mortgage for and it is often the biggest financial burden on the family. To have the rug pulled out through shoddy work through certain folk—and I say only certain folk both in the design community and the construction community because there were independent reports when we were in Government that showed there were failures right across the board not just in one section.Equally the inspectorate in local government is the last line of defence for your average Kiwi who gets a home built and has it inspected. I well recall going to some local authorities before we ensured they were accredited to do the job properly and recall retired building inspectors—some in the North Island—telling me that the days of the drive-by inspection had disappeared thank goodness. Drive-by—sort of waving at the building and saying: “Yeah we signed it off.”So this is an important piece of legislation and the changes in here I think are pretty straightforward. It is simple. There are changes to align with the Supreme Court decision of Osborne so that people are eligible on the basis of a compliance certificate not simply on the basis of a dwelling being completed but not having a compliance certificate and there are other provisions that the Minister outlined moving it from the Gazette to legislation. It would be interesting to know the history as to why—and it may be an issue around flexibility—the provisions if there was concern that they may be litigated were not simply enshrined in the original legislation or in a bill brought into the House to enshrine them and not simply put in the Gazette notice. It is slightly odd that we are embarking on making provisions that simply transfer the location of provisions from the Gazette notice to the bill. There may well indeed be a very good rationale for that. It would be good to hear that rationale from officials and from others as we go through.I think it is also noteworthy that both sides of the House I think over this issue of many years have learnt a lot. If you look at part of the origin of this difficulty I and others and many in the building trade would argue that when the last National Government the Bolger-Shipley Government deregulated the building and construction industry so that anybody at the time—God help me myself included—could have strapped on a tool belt and called themselves a builder and gone around and taken money off people—and I do not think I would be able to construct a doghouse let alone a proper dwelling for somebody. Basically the cowboys were let in. There were no rules; anybody could call themselves a builder.Prior to that you did have a good old-fashioned thing called an apprenticeship. You did have proper training and you did have—to be fair to the construction and design sector throughout in historical terms—the handshake the following-up on work done and the correcting of work that may have been wrong generally just happened. It was a very very professional industry. And most in the construction and design sector still I have to say are exceptional professionals. But we pass legislation in this House not for those who will obey the law but sadly for the minority who will abuse the law and will look for ways to get around it.I do say to the National Government that this is probably a very good example in historic terms of where deregulation of itself as a sort of ideology—the principle that we should deregulate—does not always work. It does not always work. I think that when we put in place the licensing of builders and construction folk and others and the National Government then carried that on—rightly so—it was an attempt to weed out those in the industry who had perpetrated the problem. It was an attempt to weed out those in the industry who had created actioned and executed the shoddy work and then disappeared gone broke or used every legal and other means to not live up to their responsibilities.The truth is that those who actually design build and inspect—those who are empowered to actually construct a building in part or in whole—are responsible for that work and should stand by it. It is not actually the taxpayer in fairness. Nor is it in any way shape or form the homeowner. But we did have people who simply just walked away. The company went broke so that they did not have to live up to their responsibilities. But equally as I say local authorities historically—many of them did not play their part.We tried to find a way through the original Weathertight Homes Resolution Service to give people an off-ramp—those who could not afford to go to court. Many of those who did go to court and could afford it got good outcomes. We tried to provide an alternative resolution service which in fairness I think had some very good points but of itself did not wholly solve the problem just as no one piece or no one silver bullet throughout this whole unfortunate saga has solved this problem.So we welcome the ideas and the proposals put forward in this legislation. We will be interested as it goes forward to the select committee—I am sure we will get submissions from people who have been through hell in terms of trying to deal with this issue who may well come up with other propositions remedies or other good ideas that hopefully we can record amend and put into this legislation to make it better. Because the politics aside there is I think goodwill and I think most of the glibness of the Minister in his former life as an Opposition spokesperson has been put asunder.This is a serious issue. I come from a province where housing is a major concern—not so much through leaky buildings but through an act of God called an earthquake. And you can see where people’s lives are almost destroyed. They have no way of coming back in many cases if their biggest asset is put in jeopardy. So we look forward to a debate on this. I am sure the select committee will do its job diligently in terms of working through this legislation because all of us actually do want to see this issue brought to a resolution. We want to get those people who are still going through the nightmare out of that and enable them to get on with their lives as best they can.But I say to those out there who may watch this debate or may read about it in the paper that those who were responsible those who did run to the bankruptcy court as it were and those who did not live up to their responsibilities not only gave a bad name to all those good construction and design folk who need only a handshake because they will stand by their work but should be cognisant of the fact—if not by law now—that they are ultimately the people who are responsible for this not the victim not actually the taxpayer and they should have been brought to account. And some of them I wager may not be able to sleep at night.