Sio William: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 09 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9586. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Can I preface my remarks tonight by saying that having a home that one can call one’s own is a significant part of the Kiwi Dream—it has been for many many years. It also shows one’s commitment to the community they live in. It is a sign to the rest of us that they are prepared to be responsible in our community. I say those things at the outset of this debate because this was supposed to be a very simple act of just tidying up the Act and ensuring that those who were affected by the leaky homes syndrome whose homes were affected would be compensated—that is really what it was. We on this side of the House said at the outset that we would support this bill right through its passage through this House and we have done so. We said at the outset that we would support it in the hopes that this Government would take getting this problem fixed up seriously so that those people with their homes affected would be able to move on.Having a house that you can call your own or having that “castle” means so much to so many people. It has also become a tradition in the Kiwi psyche that this home becomes an investment for your children and for others in the family. But for those families who have been affected by the leaky homes syndrome they are unable to move on. Those affected those eligible for the financial aid package have been waiting for this Government to get on with it. I do not know for the life of me why this Government has dragged its feet on signing this piece of legislation and getting it out of the House. We have held urgent sittings in this House on a number of occasions and not one time has the Government attempted to try to ensure that this bill was passed as quickly as possible in this House. I feel sorry that the 70 families who have been waiting for the financial package that this bill will provide have not been able to move on because of the way that this Government has dragged its feet on this particular bill. You see the bill will expire in June of this year and only now are we getting to it.The leaky homes saga as many in this House will know has been an ongoing issue since the 1990s. People in this House who have been around during that time will know that this started as a result of the National Government of the 1990s deregulating the market and essentially allowing the use of untreated timber in the framing of building structures during that period. As a result many of those timber-framed structures became unsafe unsound. That is what has happened. I am gutted that the families affected have had to continue waiting. Some of the homes became unhealthy when the damp timber framings picked up mould and spores. This was supposed to be a simple tidying up of the legislation and that just has not happened.The bill addresses three matters and I just want to refer to the information that is here. First “the bill aims to remove doubt regarding the validity of clauses 1B and 1C of a Gazette notice published on 28 July 2011”. Second the bill “provides that certain claims determined as ineligible on the basis of the meaning of the term “built” in Sections … are to be deemed to be ‘eligible’ claims”. It simply extends the eligibility for claims. Third “the bill aims to widen the definition of ‘qualifying claimant’ ” as a result of the financial aid package that expired in July 2016. I do not know why it has taken the Government so long to get this out of the waybut as I said the bill essentially was to tidy up the Act and ensure that those who deserve compensation get that compensation. Hopefully once this Government can get this out of the way those people will be able to do so.Claimants have been fighting for many many years simply to have their warm dry homes which are part of the Kiwi Dream that all of us have aspired to. It is an issue facing as my colleague Phil Twyford said 42000 families who have been affected as a result of this and this bill extends compensation to only 70 additional members. It is worthy to note that when the leaky homes syndrome was first raised the former building Minister Maurice Williamson came out and championed it and said that the Government was going to get this fixed and he promised that there would be a billion-dollar scheme that would be made available to fix this problem. You sort of wonder as we are dealing with only 70 families why they have dragged their feet on this.This is also an example of why the deregulation of the building market or the deregulation of our economy and reliance on the market is not a good thing. It is interesting that during the Committee of the whole House debate here we were raising an issue that has arisen because of deregulation in the 1990s but we had a Minister of this present Government who was also at the same time talking in the media about allowing the building industry to self-regulate. I do not believe—I accept what you are saying Mr Assistant Speaker—that going back to the old ways is going to fix this problem when it was the old ways that put us in the situation that we are in now. When you think about the fact that far too many families have lost their homes and their livelihoods as a result of the leaky homes saga I just think it is crazy for any Minister of the Government to start talking about deregulating the building industry when it was deregulation in the first place that has gotten us into the situation that we are now in here.Given that the legislation expires in June 2016 it just feels that this is a last-ditch attempt to get a fair outcome for those affected. Right from the very outset we have said that we would support this because we wanted to see those families affected get the compensation that they are due. I started my remarks by saying it was most Kiwis; it was their dream that they wanted to own their own homes—something that they can call a “castle”. This is an example where again and again New Zealanders are seeing that that dream seems to be slipping away when people have had to put their lives on hold waiting around for this Government to get its act together. There have been other examples that have arisen this week to show that despite this Government trying to profile itself as if it was a master of the universal economy despite its trying to do so we have seen time and time again that it mismanages the economy because it does not care about people—it just does not; it just does not care. Because if the Government did care about the small number of people who will be compensated as a result of this bill 70 people it would have gotten this out of the way a long time ago but it has not—it has dragged its feet about it.I have to say that you sort of wonder given the debacle over the Ministry of Health funding where there was $80 million missing why it is the Government is dragging its feet on the compensation for these families affected here. I do not have the answer for that but I suspect that the families who are waiting for the compensation would be happy once this Government gets its act together and gets the compensation that those families need.