Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you Mr Speaker. This will be a brief call from me as the spokesperson for the Labour Party on building and construction to set out the Labour Party's position on this. But it will also give the House a sense of how eager we are to get into the detail of this bill in the Transport and Infrastructure Committee chaired by the very able Andy Foster and joined by representatives of all parties around this House because this should be something that all parties have an interest in and this should be something that submitter get to have a say on and that we get to work through some of these details because it is of interest to all New Zealanders. The starting points and the principles that I will be considering when we look at this in more detail at select committee level is that no one should be put at undue risk due to the building that they are in. We have to be mindful that these rules were set up in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake and in the context of things like the Kaikōura earthquake which represent real tragedies for New Zealand and we need to make sure that these very real events which happened in New Zealand and which caused loss of life huge loss of property and a huge cost to our national infrastructure are provided for in our legislation and that we have these settings right.At the same time I think everyone in this House is incredibly sympathetic to the plight of those people who find themselves owners or responsible for buildings that are earthquake-prone particularly in the context of residential homeowners and apartment owners in places like Wellington who are now faced with bills they simply cannot pay. So we need to be able to work our way through and find solutions which recognise the role of Government here in supporting people through this and the huge financial costs to them in a way that is safe and recognises that not everyone has access to information about the kind of buildings that they're in especially when they're commercial premises.The Labour Party is in opposition to this bill but we are really keen to work through at the select committee some of the questions that we have. So I'll outline what they are briefly now. The first is that absolutely key to this whole regime is the idea that someone will need to pay for strengthening. Is that the Government? Is that private owners? Is that retrospectively the Government paying for private owners to enjoy the support of Government and not requiring them to bear any risk or is there a role for local government here as well? All of those questions do not get answered if central government is unable to fulfil the role of holding to the remediation time frames that it sets and so there is a question there about whether extending the time frames essentially rewards procrastination. That was a point made in media commentary by one of the Christchurch earthquake survivors who commented and asked whether we are rewarding procrastination here if Government continues to kick the can down the road and that is a question we have on our minds because we must send clear signals not only to those homeowners and not only to the people affected but also to the local councils. There is a question of certainty around things like insurance and the costs spread around people if Government does not have hard deadlines in a case like this. Another question that we will be asking is whether the settings for homeowners who cannot pay are right and how we can support people through a really difficult time financially. Labour had a solution for this. I won't go into it as I don't have time but solutions around lending to people and requiring them to pay it back only on sale or death might be something here that we need to look to. I'm sure that the select committee will have the opportunity to discuss this with submitters because though this is relatively limited in scope—this bill in particular—we will attract a number of people who want to have their say on this issue which brings me in the final minute of my contribution to the report-back date. We oppose the shortened report-back date. We would like to hear fulsomely from those submitters particularly in local government and the homeowners who are affected and the people who have been through these earthquake events before their reasons about how these deadlines are important to certainty in their areas. We'd also like to hear from property developers and people with an interest in other regions like Auckland who might oppose the rules on why they think the deadline extension is a useful thing. So we're keen to get into this at select committee and there will be calls on this side of the House about the report-back date.