van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise tonight on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the second reading of the Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. It must be quite a while since we had the first reading on this bill because I was in my office earlier and I went and checked Hansard on what I had said in the first reading and I had said in that speech that I don't own a home. It's coming up to nearly a year since I bought a property so I thought it was quite incredible how long this process must have been at select committee and how much has changed in that time. At the time I referred to the fact that I wanted to—in the future hopefully—be able to afford a three-bedroom weatherboard home with enough room for a dog and a garden and enough surface-level problems to justify weekend trips to Bunnings. Unfortunately I haven't been able to afford a home with three bedrooms that's weatherboard and it doesn't have room for a dog—definitely not. It does however have enough surface-level problems because I have already gone to Bunnings with dripping taps and I am very proud that I am able to fix my own home like many other New Zealanders. But I have been in the situation where I bought into a body corp like many New Zealanders who have also bought into body corps because we're seeing more and more apartment buildings and more unit titles being used for long-term residential development nowadays. And while my home is a well-established one there are a lot of townhouses and apartments going up all around New Zealand and more people will be finding themselves delving into the depths of body corporates and figuring out the ins and outs of what's happening and maintenance funds and long-term projections and how they get on in a relationship with everybody else who lives around them. Apartment dwelling and living in townhouses it's more than just students in temporary accommodation. It's more than just young professionals renting in town wanting to get to live closer to their work for a short period of time until they move out to the suburbs. More and more people are actually choosing to live in unit titles and to raise their families without a back garden and without a larger spot of land—but close to parks and close to their family. Around 150000 New Zealanders currently live in apartments and that is expected to double in the next 20 years. There is a need when people are buying into these types of developments to know what they're buying into: what the maintenance issues are actually going to look like how the body corporate even operates day to day and whether they have set aside contingency funds for any future issues. I found when I was in the process of trying to look for a place that the body corporate minutes are a goldmine a treasure trove of really interesting relationships and interactions—things as specific as whether or not a specific unit should have the ability to own a dog whether one person has complained about the type of carpet that their neighbour has laid down in the other unit next door and the fact that somebody stomps too loud overhead. There is so much information and some of it is quite hilarious. But there's also some serious points that happen with bodies corporate that happen too. That is the interactions between for example people who live long term in a unit versus people who own them and rent them out as landlords and the conflicting relationships that can exist between whether people want to put more money aside for long-term maintenance plans or the particular type of roofing style that should be used in the future. There are huge issues and this bill seeks to go some small way to improve the governance for existing owners and the disclosure for potential new owners and strengthen dispute resolution that is inevitable to happen in any form of body corporate or unit title arrangement. And there's a really good example when I was reading through the report from the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC) that says that when you are trying to obtain information about a unit title development it can be a lot more difficult than what you find on a standalone property. For example a buyer cannot reasonably assess an apartment building's ventilation system. However as a member of the body corporate they might be liable for the shared obligation for repairs and upgrades to the system and the integrity of the disclosure regime relies on the seller being able to access that information in order to disclose it to the buyer. So there's a really important relationship there that exists which is in the interests of both the seller and the buyer and the body corp. Nobody intends to buy into a new apartment development to not be transparent about what's going to happen in the future. But you can certainly see that you might in good faith buy into what you think is being run very well and in 20 years' time nothing's been maintained but it's not through any fault of your own; it's through the management of the body corporate system. And before you know it you're finding it incredibly hard to sell because the information that you rely on to be able to sell your own home isn't actually able to be found through the body corp. There's information that the seller needs and there's information that the buyer needs and there's information that the body corporate should be making available. So this goes some way to trying to fix that and make it in everybody's best interest. There are also the important points of making sure that we're not putting too much a costly burden on people that outweighs the benefits. And I thought one really good change that the FEC came back with was about the long-term maintenance plans. They said that they empathise with submitters' concerns and agree that it would be difficult to account for the future unknowns such as inflation or new technologies" when they were planning on changing the long-term maintenance plans from 10 years to 30 years and they instead settled on a bit of a middle ground that there should be a detailed cost estimate for the first 10 years and then projections for the following 20 years. So it's important that people know what they're buying into and what the long-term maintenance plans are but not putting such an unnecessary burden on the people who are living in that development that it's going into too much detail where those costs outweigh the benefits. So I think that is a good middle ground that we've settled on.Parliament should be here to help fix issues to make New Zealanders' lives better. We should be there for better public policy and I think this bill is a step in the right direction. On my final note I would just say that I particularly like the change that allows for more proxy voting via electronic means and I certainly look forward to being able to vote in my body corporate when I'm down here in Parliament. Thank you Madam Speaker."