Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction) Link to this
I move, That the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. I acknowledge the hard work of the members of the Local Government and Environment Committee, whom I believe worked very well together in refining the bill and bringing some minor amendments back to the House that I think improve it. I would also like to thank all the submitters who took the time to offer their comments and opinions on the bill.
I am proud to commend this bill to the House because it enables an assistance package that helps address an issue that has been a huge burden on many owners of leaky homes over a very long time period. The social, economic, and health costs of leaky homes are affecting many New Zealanders and it is time to get those homes fixed. If one refers to the work done by PricewaterhouseCoopers, one sees that its view was that the bare minimum damage done to the residential properties of this country by leaky homes was $11.3 billion, so I make the House aware of the magnitude of this issue.
Owners of leaky homes have said to me: “There must be some way out of here.” I have never been to so many meetings in my whole political life where people were crying on a regular basis because they were stuck. They could not find a way of getting funding, and they could not fund the repairs themselves. Their house was rotting around their ears and there was, as I said, no way out. There is too much confusion in the current litigious process, because a number of people who have sought litigation have ended up winning their case, and then their legal fees have been almost the same size as—and in many cases, more than—their settlement. It is a case of even when one wins, one still loses.
The hour is getting late and, in my view, it is important that this financial assistance package gets to market as quickly as it can and that we get it up and running as soon as possible, so that those people out there who want to get their homes fixed get them fixed—not that we pay money to lawyers, or that we give grants to homeowners and then let them decide what they do, but that we actually pay this money towards getting their homes fixed.
Last year the Government announced the financial assistance package to provide another pathway to the repair of leaky homes. I want to make that quite clear, because there are some people out there who do not like this package. I fully appreciate that view, but it is a voluntary package. Nobody needs to sign up to it if they do not want to; this is just another pathway that homeowners can follow if they so wish. The package is voluntary. It is up to the homeowners to decide whether it is the best option for them in the circumstances.
Homeowners will remain entitled to pursue claims through the Department of Building and Housing dispute resolutions process and the Weathertight Homes Tribunal, through legal avenues, or a through a whole lot other things if they so wish. But if a qualifying homeowner chooses this financial assistance package, then the Government will pay 25 percent of the agreed repair costs, the participating council that approved the original construction work will pay 25 percent as well, and the remaining amount will be met by the homeowner. The contributions will be based on agreed, actual repair costs. It is a pretty good deal. I know that there are people out there who want it to be more. I know that the Local Government and Environment Committee will have heard people saying that it should have been more and that it should not have had the 10-year limitation. I know that a lot of superannuitants say that they cannot even afford the half, so the Government should pay the lot. But every time I looked at any of the alternatives to what we have come up with here, the sums of money involved made one’s eyes water. The Minister of Finance was quite clear that even this measure is a huge drag on the Government’s accounts, and that anything beyond this would have been going too far.
I am pleased that we, as a Government, have offered up a package. As I said before, it will be voluntary. The package also includes assistance to owners to access bank finance for the remaining agreed repair costs—that is, for the 50 percent left—by way of a loss-sharing arrangement with the banks, which have agreed to participate for loans made to owners who qualify for the assistance and who can meet bank lending criteria. That is good, and the details of that are currently being thrashed out between me and some of my officials, and the Bankers’ Association and the individual banks. The scheme also provides an opportunity for builders, designers, and others to contribute to the costs of repairing leaky homes and, therefore, to limit their liability. It can be a financial contribution or a contribution in kind.
I shall now outline what I think are the key changes contained in the amendment bill. The bill will limit the liability of participating territorial authorities and of any other contributing parties—for instance, other solvent defendants—for claims being addressed through the financial assistance package. It will protect the Crown from liability for the failure of repairs made under the financial assistance package, and any losses suffered as a result of the provisions of this package. It will provide a power for the appropriate Minister to prescribe and guarantee, or indemnify, in respect of a loan made for the purpose of repairs made under it, and it will make the financial assistance package available for a period of 5 years from the time the package first becomes operational.
These changes are necessary to facilitate the delivery of the package. So basically what we are saying is that if people choose to go with this the two things they will have to sign up to is that they will not sue the council, because it is putting in its 25 percent so it is a done deal, and they will not sue the Crown. The Crown does not have to do this. There have been a number of cases that have tried to join the Crown in litigation and they have been thrown out; they have failed. So the Crown could do what Labour did for 9 years and say that this is not our role and we are not getting involved. Well, the current Government thinks that we should get involved and that is what the package does.
The bill has been considered by the Local Government and Environment Committee and I am pleased about it. The Local Government and Environment Committee received 39 written submissions and heard nine oral submissions. I understand that submitters supported the bill in general, but for the last few minutes of my speech I want to go over the same point again. I do understand why some people think that the package does not go far enough, but every time I tried to expand the limits of this and make it maybe a 15-year period rather than 10 years—even though 10 years is the period in the Building Act—it made the amount of money involved just horrendous. As it is, it will be over $1 billion of liability on the Government’s books to do this over the period of time.
But I also want to notify people out there now of another important point. A number of people have said that by the time the financial assistance package comes to market, their house will be 10 years old and they will not be eligible. That is not true. If they get in and register their property with the Weathertight Homes Tribunal today, tomorrow, or whenever, the clock will stop ticking the moment they register. So even if they do not apply for the package until 11 years or 12 years into the life of the home, the clock will have stopped ticking before that time frame.
I am pleased to be able to offer this package. I think it gives homeowners a way forward. I regret the history of this, which dates back to decades of decision making, and the systemic failure of the building industry. I think it is a point worth making again. Some people say to me that the leaky home saga happened only because of non-treated timber. That is not true. Other people say that it happened because of a lack of skills in the industry. That is not true. Others say that it happened as a result of poor design. That is not true. People say that it happened because of poor inspections and so on. What happened—
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON Link to this
Now he has bit the bullet. He is saying that it was the deregulation of the building sector that did it. What Mr Twyford does not know is that deregulation occurred from a thing called the Building Act 1991. One would suspect that that was under National, right? It was a bill introduced into the House in 1990 by the Hon Margaret Austin, and it went through its whole process in this House—
Hon Trevor MallardHon MAURICE WILLIAMSON Link to this
Oh, all right. Trevor Mallard says that deep down she was not a Labour member.
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON Link to this
National passed its third reading, and now Mr Twyford is saying that it is National’s responsibility. Let us get it right. Labour introduced it, Labour took it through the select committee, Labour brought it back to Parliament, Labour took it through the Committee of the whole House, then National passed the third reading and now it is National’s fault. I love it! It is beautiful! That is one of my personal favourites. I will really use that one in future.
If Mr Twyford were a bit more gracious he would have gone with my original statement. It is a systemic failure across the board of industry, Government, regulations, and non-treated timber. I am pleased to have a package before the House today that will finally address that problem.
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) Link to this
In spite of the strenuous efforts of the Hon Maurice Williamson to shrug off the responsibility of the National Government in the 1990s for the deregulation that led to systemic failure, we on the Opposition benches support this bill because we acknowledge that the Government is attempting to tackle the problem of leaky homes. But in expressing support at the second reading, we feel it is necessary to be very clear about both the limits of this package and a number of concerns we have about unresolved issues relating to this bill.
We have three concerns. Firstly, many, many affected homeowners will be excluded from this package, and they will not benefit from the provisions of this bill. Secondly, there are many unresolved questions about the way the bill’s provisions will be implemented. Thirdly, the Government’s failure to address the industry’s chronic skills deficit and looming labour shortages threatens to derail the very intent and potential benefits of this initiative.
At the Local Government and Environment Committee we heard from many people who came to us saying they would not be able to benefit from the package, and I will comment on some of those. It is clear that many affected owners of leaky homes will make the judgment that they can get more through court action. It is probably true that it will be owners with claims of relatively low value, where the cost of the legal action is proportionately higher, who may be first in line to take advantage of this package. Many people who now live in or own homes that are not weathertight will not know that fact within the 5-year period, and the number of those people will also be significant. There will be even more people whose homes are more than 10 years old, and they will be excluded by the 10-year time frame. Perhaps even more worthy of consideration are the people who simply will not be able to afford the 50 percent that this bill will require them to stump up. They are the people who are most deserving of support, yet they are excluded from that support. They are the most vulnerable and the most disadvantaged by this problem, yet, because of the 50 percent rule, they will potentially be excluded.
Another group who will be excluded are the owners of dwellings in multi-dwelling complexes—apartment complexes, and so on. These dwellings amount to about 25 percent of the total number of dwellings affected by the weathertightness problem. About 5,500 dwellings are affected by the leaky homes problem, and their owners will not be able, in all likelihood, to get any benefit from this bill. There are a number of reasons for that. The first is that the banks simply will not lend money to bodies corporate, because they are unable to secure collectively owned property under a mortgage. Under the Unit Titles Act, a body corporate would be required to get 75 percent of owners committed to an action in order to receive financial assistance under this package.
I know it was 100 percent. Many body corporate owners told us at the Local Government and Environment Committee hearings that they will simply be unable to get the agreement of 75 percent of owners. So right there we have 24 percent of the owners affected by this problem who will be effectively excluded from the benefits of this bill. I think that means that a relatively small number of people will be getting the benefits of this legislation.
We have a number of concerns about this bill, many of which we raised at the first reading, that have not been adequately answered or addressed during the select committee hearings. The first, and probably the most fundamental, is that this bill indemnifies the Crown, and effectively indemnifies the assessors from the Department of Building and Housing who will be the ones who go in to assess the cost of the repair job. The Department of Building and Housing officials themselves advised against this, and that is quoted in the regulatory impact statement. If the assessors make mistakes, the homeowners will have no come-back; they will have no redress against that. The Crown is indemnified. I did not hear any argument from officials during the select committee process that satisfied me there was a good reason why the Crown should not be required, like all other parties in this process, to stand by the quality of its work. That question remains unanswered.
There are a number of pitfalls that homeowners could face. It is not uncommon for a leaky repair job to get under way, and then for people to find out, a third of the way or halfway through the job when the cladding comes off, that the damage to the internals and to the structure of the house is actually much worse than previously thought. In that case—and we were reassured about this at the select committee—it will be possible for a kind of reassessment and a renegotiation of the agreed repair cost. That is fine, but what will that mean for homeowners who have already mortgaged themselves up to the eyeballs to meet the initial 50 percent cost? What happens then if they simply cannot take on any more debt? Will they be left to default on the contract? I think a lot more clarity is needed for situations when the repair jobs go pear-shaped.
Under this bill, as we have heard, Department of Building and Housing assessors are indemnified, but architects and builders are not. They are much more exposed than the Crown, and if things go wrong in the repair jobs, then it is the architects, designers, and builders who will get it in the neck. There are real concerns that because of the increased liability—the increased vulnerability—they face, it is quite possible that architects and designers, particularly in the kind of labour market we are going into, will not be lining up to do this remedial work.
The other thing we will also say at this point is that the bill does not differentiate between genuine homeowners who have been affected by the situation and people who are speculating. We raised that issue at the first reading, and I do not think there was a satisfactory answer from the Minister. It will be quite possible for property speculators to buy up affected properties at bargain-basement prices—thereby getting the full benefit of this financial assistance package at the expense of the taxpayer—and then to flick on those properties for a significant profit. It would have been quite simple to solve that problem in the drafting.
The third issue we have is less about the detail of this bill and more about the fact that this Government’s failure of leadership to address the entrenched problems in the building and construction industry could see a perfect storm developing in the coming months, which will completely overwhelm the intent of this bill to make a meaningful contribution to those homeowners affected by the weathertight homes problem. The building industry is in crisis, building consents are running at less than 50 percent of their peak, and we face a severely depleted workforce. Until today the Government had done nothing; in fact, it had done worse: it had slashed skills training in the industry, and we have been seeing large numbers of skilled tradespeople heading across the Tasman. Thousands of building apprentices have been laid off. We are looking at an acute shortage of skilled labour in the building and construction industry. There are some estimates that when the leaky home repairs and the Christchurch rebuilding get under way, we will have something like 25 percent of the skilled workforce that this country needs. If we have an acute labour shortage and a loosening of building regulations, as we are seeing with the amendments to the Building Act, this bill will be completely overwhelmed and will not achieve its objectives.
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) Link to this
I am very pleased to rise today to support the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill. First of all, I would like to acknowledge the Minister, Maurice Williamson, for his work on this bill.
Hon Christopher FinlaysonHe is an outstanding man, as the Attorney-General says. We are becoming so used to this Minister coming to the House to give us good news from his various portfolios—good news. In question time it happened again today, and this bill is yet another example of the good work this Minister is doing, in spite of the criticism that gets levelled at him from the other side of the House. But wait—
—but yes. But wait, there will be more about that later on.
To adopt a serious tone for a moment because this is a very serious business, we are all relatively familiar with this dire situation that many thousands of families have found themselves in, when they discovered that their home is leaking and rotten. It has been salutary to listen to some of the submitters who came to the Local Government and Environment Committee. Often those submissions were not, unfortunately, within the scope of the bill but, none the less, the personal misery, the personal discomfort, was palpable. In most cases we are talking about someone’s largest asset into which they have invested their life-savings.
It has been over a decade now and this long-running problem has been waiting for the leadership that this Government has now provided. When I say “waiting for the leadership”, let us just see what this leadership has been in the past. In 2002 a headline—
Well, this was a headline in the New Zealand Herald “Rotting buildings crisis is just a beat-up, says Clark”.
In 2002. The article stated that she had “dismissed the leaky building crisis as a Herald ‘beat-up’ because only about 1,000 calls—rather than tens of thousands—have so far been logged …”. It also stated that she “told Newstalk ZB host Paul Holmes that she had not taken too much notice of the newspaper’s numerous stories, because the Herald was well known for ‘banging on’ about issues of no substance.” It stated that her comments had surprised people and they said that things had to change. Well, this Government has changed things with this bill. [ Interruption] Indeed.
This is a very interesting bill to be part of, and may I express my appreciation of the way committee members from both sides of the House worked together, because everybody felt that we had to make this bill as good as it could be. It is less of a strong, legislative imperative than it is a sort of treaty between interested parties. It is not designed to give anyone a free ride or a cheap ride. It is designed to meet the requirements and to give certainty. That was repeated oft-times by submitters: people asking to be given certainty or to gain certainty. Local bodies wanted certainty over their responsibilities under this bill. The Government was giving certainty to people of its contribution. The banks have been involved in the discussion and they have started to show that they are willing to be involved in the same way. So it is more of an opportunity for involvement under the rules that this bill provides. My involvement has been as the chair of the select committee, and, as I say, I thank all members who have participated.
The Local Government and Environment Committee received 39 written submissions. We heard from nine of those submitters. Overall, the submissions gave general support to this financial assistance package. There are a number of changes that the committee has recommended, and I will run through those briefly. We recommended dividing the bill into Parts 1 and 2. The changes will clearly divide the bill between the amendments to the principal Act—the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act 2006—and the proposed amendments to the Public Finance Act 1989. We have also recommended that the commencement clauses include a set commencement date. Originally, the entire bill would have been brought into force by an Order in Council. Recommended changes would allow different provisions to be brought into force at different times by an Order in Council. Any provision that has not already come into force will then come into force on the first anniversary of the Royal assent.
This was considered a very advantageous way of going about it, by the parties concerned. But as a result of recommendations from the Regulations Review Committee, the commencement of legislation by an Order in Council should be used only in rare and exceptional circumstances. So we have recommended a change that remedies this situation, while still allowing flexibility around the commencements of various provisions. In addition, there are various changes to definitions used in the bill.
The financial assistance package will get leaky homes fixed faster. It will encourage people to take action with confidence. It will give huge relief to the people who have been involved. It is about spreading costs evenly. The package is voluntary. We expect that homeowners will be lining up to take this offer. The National Government has stepped up to the plate and got on with a way of finding a solution to this long-running problem. I am proud to be part of a Government, through the select committee process, that has brought this bill forward. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) Link to this
I am very pleased to take a call as we go through the second reading of the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill.I will pick up on the comments of Chris Auchinvole, the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee that considered this bill, and go back to Labour’s history on this issue.
I want us just to remember where the weathertightness issue emerged. It emerged in the early 1990s—
—as Mr Finlayson would well know, when the then National Government deregulated the industry and took away the requirement that timber be treated in building sites. The National Government took that requirement away, and the Minister who is leading this bill was part of that very same Government. Let us not forget that. So although he comes to the House triumphantly with this bill to mop up a mess, the bill has it origins back in the Government of which he was a principal part in the 1990s.
Let us not forget another component of that cocktail of disaster, which was National saying that we did not need to have apprenticeships supported by the Government; the market would provide. That was another important component of that comedy of errors, which has led, according to the Minister’s estimate, to an $11 billion repair bill. The reason the Government is now stepping up to the plate in respect of $1 billion is that the Government of the 1990s, under National, walked away from training young builders to get the appropriate level of skills to deal with the other elements that came to fruition in the early 1990s, which were the new building products that were emerging and the new Mediterranean-style flush designs. That was the origin of the leaky building disaster, which is still with us today and which this bill is attempting to remedy. But let us not try to sheet the blame home to the last Labour Government. The origins of the leaky building problems rest very firmly with the Bolger administration of the 1990s and the push for deregulation, which have had enormous consequences for us. That is what we are trying to mop up with this bill.
Let us still say that Labour is supporting this bill, because this is as good as it gets, to this point. Therefore, we are duty-bound to support this bill. But that still leaves many unanswered questions of detail about the bill. I would like the Minister, at some point during the bill’s passage, to give the House an assurance about where the banks are on this issue. The bill requires that homeowners meet 50 percent of the cost of repairs, but they will not be able to do that unless the banks have come to the party. I would like the Minister to tell the House, before this bill is passed by it, whether any of the major trading banks have stepped up to the plate, have entered into his embrace, and have said that, yes, they are with him, and they want to commit to supporting those homeowners who want to repair their homes under this package of assistance.
Hon Maurice Williamson Link to this
Certain banks have already said that. And we will have them all on board by the time—
Well, if the Minister is able to give the House that assurance more formally through the course of this bill, it would be very useful. We need to know that this measure has the capacity to work. It has good detail, but in terms of the fine print we need to know whether there will be support from the major trading banks, because that is a key matter.
There are some fishhooks in this legislation, as I think the Minister will observe. This is in fact the second iteration of the package. A year or two back the Minister put forward a package in which the Government component was going to be only 10 percent. Quite rightly, local bodies squawked indignantly at the thought that they should be bearing the lion’s share of the cost, alongside homeowners. They came back to the Government, and we now see the Government stepping up to a 25 percent share.
The Minister attempted to say in his introductory remarks to the second reading that the Government cannot be legally bound to this process. But if we go back to the origins of this problem—to the deregulation that happened and the waning away of apprenticeships—we see that the Government of that time took steps that at least in moral terms, if not in legal terms, say to me and to members on this side of the House that the Government has some moral obligation to step up and try to sort out this disaster, which by the Minister’s estimate will cost $11 billion.
No, I tell the Minister that we are not talking about doing nothing; we are talking about doing what is just and proper, and we are talking about sorting out a problem that began when that member was first a Minister in this House. He favoured taking the “heavy hand of the State” off the building industry, and we are seeing the consequences manifested through this bill today. So the Minister should stand up and take some responsibility for the mess he helped to create. Let us not just have the triumphant blowing of trumpets, because he was in part responsible for the disaster that we, as a Parliament, are trying to resolve today.
That is what this bill is about. It is a step forward, but it has many unanswered questions, and, quite naturally, people who have had a decade, or more, of distress will want to know whether this bill will sort out their particular problems. Yes, it will help some people; yes, it is a step up; yes, the Government is now contributing 25 percent of the cost; and, yes, the ratepayers of various councils will be paying 25 percent. But that still leaves people who were innocent parties—absolutely innocent—with costs to pay. Mums and dads who bought houses, investments, and properties in the 1990s, after the National Government had deregulated the building industry and had said: “You don’t need treated timber.”, still have costs to meet. Those are the facts that led to this disaster, yet mum and dad investors will still have to step up and meet those costs. We are hearing from the Minister—and I hope we will hear it more formally—that the banks will be stepping up and assisting those poor homeowners to pay the price. Fifty percent of the costs will still be sheeting back to homeowners, 25 percent to ratepayers, and 25 percent to taxpayers.
I ask the Minister another question: what assurance can he give the House about the competence of the Department of Building and Housing? That department will be providing the assessors who will make the judgments on whether houses are able to be repaired, and whether they will fit the criteria for this funding. I have to say that the Department of Building and Housing has a mixed bag of a record. I have worked for the Department of Building and Housing so I suppose I speak with some authority. It has done some things very well—tenancy services seem to be proceeding pretty well—but I have to note that in my city of Christchurch most recently—
Hon Tau HenareI am the MP for Christchurch Central, unlike the member opposite, who will never be a constituency MP—
Hon David Cunliffe Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not like to interrupt my learned colleague, but I understand there is a Standing Order against members moving seats for the purpose of interjecting. Mr Tau Henare has certainly moved his seat and is certainly incessantly interjecting. I think Mr Burns’ speech is worth listening to, but I cannot do so through that noise.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) Link to this
I am not sure that the member moved intentionally to get an advantage to interject. But I do have some discomfort at members who continue interjectory discussions—if interjectory is a word; I think members understand what I mean—apart from the member speaking. The member will desist.
Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I was saying that I am very proudly the member of Parliament for Christchurch Central. I am a constituency MP, which is something that some members opposite will never be able to achieve.
We had the unfortunate situation, post the 22 February earthquake, when the Department of Building and Housing, without any reference, it seemed, to the community of Christchurch, spent a million dollars to hire 300 campervans and park them in the middle of the AMP showgrounds as a temporary housing measure to assist people who had lost their homes in the quake. Do members know how many people took up the offer of a campervan in the middle of the AMP showgrounds, at the cost of a million dollars to taxpayers? One—one! One campervan was taken up. So I would like some assurance.
Now the department is moving to establish temporary villages—again with no reference back to the communities in which those villages are being sited. So I would like the Minister to give us an assurance that the Department of Building and Housing has the competence to go out and do the assessments that will see ordinary mums and dads, ordinary battler Kiwis, still having to find 50 percent of the cost for remediation of homes, when they should not have had to bear that cost. We acknowledge that a quarter of the cost is being met by the Crown, and a quarter is being met by ratepayers, but that still leaves a huge cost.
We also have a question about local authorities. Obviously, they are still concerned about the issues of liability. They are concerned that they still face some liabilities for existing legal action, in which parties can still sue local authorities for a further contribution towards the repair bill. This issue is very topical for local authorities. The Minister needs to give some assurance that the ratepayers’ 25 percent contribution under this bill is the only cost that councillors, councils, and ratepayers are going to face.
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) Link to this
The leaky homes saga is one of the worst man-made—I use the word “man” advisedly—disasters in the history of New Zealand. It affects, some are estimating, as many as 80,000 households and could cost anywhere between $11 billion and $23 billion to fix. It is such a fiasco that I thought I would go back to the Hansard record and discover how the fiasco came about.
I have to say that Maurice Williamson is correct. It was the Labour Government that developed the Building Act, which created this fiasco—and it was the National Government, under Mr Bolger, that took it over at the third reading. It was passed unanimously, with members of this House glowing with huge satisfaction about what wonderful legislation the 1991 Building Act was and what it was going to usher in.
Members all said they were going to deregulate the industry and wipe out all the previous regulations and controls in the industry, and they were going to do this because they were going to save money, reduce costs, and boost the building industry. So they loosened the councils’ inspection procedures to save money and to please the building industry. They tried to increase competition in the sector by allowing private sector building certifiers to compete with local council inspectors for work.
They lowered the standards, allowed the use of untreated timber and monolithic cladding, and then they allowed builders and developers to enter and exit the building industry with no liability, no skills, and no costs. Developers and builders could build a house, walk away without any liability, hide under the protection of a limited liability, simply disappear, or head off to Australia—as many thousands have done. They removed basic levels of skill and training—what did it matter, anyone could build a home, and all one needed to do was to ensure that the building complied with minimal standards in the building code. So it is interesting to look back and reflect on the debate, only 20 years ago, in this House.
It might be worthwhile during the Committee stage to read some of the speeches by Labour and National members about what a great idea it was to make all those changes. They crowed that by leaving it to the invisible hand of the market, and deregulating the industry, they would reduce building costs and usher in a wonderful new era. And here we are 20 years later, and, instead of saving money and reducing costs, we have an $11 billion—it could be $23 billion—bill.
We have, as the 2002 Hunn report stated: “a systematic breakdown across the entire building industry”. We have affected the lives of thousands, arguably hundreds of thousands, of New Zealanders, and we have ended up with somewhere between 24,000 and, possibly, even 80,000 newly built homes that are leaky, defective, and unliveable.
Families all over New Zealand are living in damp, mouldy, and unhealthy homes with Stachybotrys—more on that later. People are devastated and financially ruined all because National, supported by Labour, deregulated the building industry and left it to the market. So let us hope that the Government will learn from that fiasco. But no, it is running around trying to deregulate in a whole lot of other sectors and, no doubt, setting up similar fiascos.
Experts believe that as many as 89,000 homes built between 1992 and 2005 will leak. Some are saying that 80 percent or even 100 percent of houses, apartments, and multi-dwelling homes with monolithic cladding and untreated timber will fail irrespective of their design. John Gray, Home Owners and Buyers Association president, fears that every single house built from untreated timber will leak at some time in its life. He says that, contrary to official assurances, there are still houses that were built after the reforms of the building code in 2005 that leak like a sieve, despite the fact that builders are now using treated timber and are having to leave gaps between the walls and the timber frames.
Mr Gray said that there are still builders out there who are not builders, developers who do not give a damn, and owners who are trying to cut costs and build as cheaply as they can. So, actually, it is a saga of greed as well as of deregulation. The association warns that we have not even begun to estimate the true scope of the problem. Many people still do not realise they have a leaky home, or are in denial about it, or cannot afford to fix it, or their home has been fixed badly and will have to be repaired again. As many others have said, there are so many people who will not be able to pay 50 percent of the cost of repairing their home.
It was also pointed out that we are talking here in the legislation only about houses and multi-dwelling units. The weathertightness report pointed out that there are probably an equal number of motels, schools, retirement homes, and hospitals that are leaking like sieves. The fiasco that was created 20 years ago, with the unanimous support of Labour and National in this House, continues to ricochet through our nation.
Many people are concerned that they will not be eligible for financial assistance. They will miss out on this package because their houses were built in the 1990s, outside the time frames. The Government is saying that it is sorry about the 10-year limit, that it acknowledges people will be upset, but that the magnitude of the money required is so huge. But we believe it is quite simply unjust that a financial assistance package will not be available to people because of an arbitrary time frame. We believe the package should be open to anyone who has a leaky home, regardless of when it was built.
It is also galling, of course, to find that house owners whose houses were signed off by a private building certifier will not be eligible for the 25 percent council contribution. We had many heartbreaking submissions from people. I remember one submission from Rob Craigie. He said: “We’re in our late sixties. We’ve got a $160,000 mortgage on the damp house we own. We cannot sell it. We cannot possibly afford to pay 50 percent of a $300,000 bill”—which is what most of them are looking at—“on top of our mortgage, so we just have to stay here, working, and trying to keep paying our mortgage until we die.”
The problem with multi-unit legal claims has already been referred to, and many of these have stalled. Owners cannot afford to pay their fees. They cannot get enough of the body corporate to sign in. Then there is the whole business of the health effects, which no one has referred to. The mould and fungi from these damp, leaky homes produce tiny spores, and when they are inhaled they cause Stachybotrys. They produce toxins—mycotoxins—that cause adverse effects such as respiratory problems, eye and skin irritations, and flu-like syndromes, and they are particularly bad for people with asthma, bronchitis, and other breathing disorders.
From a health perspective we should be doing everything we can to fix these homes, because otherwise we will be paying for this situation yet again—through our health bill, for people who have incredible health problems as a result of living in these damp, leaky, unhealthy, and unsanitary homes.
I think our main message is that at least this bill is trying to say that the money should be spent not on legal fees but on fixing the homes. For that reason, and that reason alone, the Greens will support this bill, but we believe that anyone who has a leaky home should be eligible for this package. There should not be arbitrary time frames. We hope that the bill can be amended in that respect. Thank you very much.
RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) Link to this
I am very pleased to stand on behalf of the Māori Party to speak to the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill. There is little we could object to in this bill. The basic approach in establishing financial assistance measures for eligible owners of leaky buildings is one we endorse. It is about the basic right to adequate housing—not simply about a roof over one’s head, but also about the right to live somewhere in security, in peace, and in dignity. The proposed assistance measures are the result of negotiations between the Government, territorial authorities, and banks. Under the terms of the bill the Government and local authorities would each contribute 25 percent of agreed repair costs, with building owners paying the rest. Another approach within the bill is the push to improve owners’ access to finance to repair their buildings and divert litigation costs towards repair costs. Many of the members on the Local Government and Environment Committee were concerned that affected owners may not have the financial resources to opt into the scheme. The committee was told, for instance, that in the Greater Auckland area the Auckland Council estimates there are 3,301 properties with active claims. The council stated that it expects that a maximum of 12,000 new claims could be lodged.
The issue of costs is fundamental to effective implementation. Submitters told the committee that the leaky home scheme is too costly for many victims, and that owners are unable to raise the money to properly repair their homes. They were also concerned that rates may be bumped up to help fund the leaky homes bill. These are really deep-seated fears that must guide all parties in looking at the effectiveness of this bill. But it is good to see that the Government appears to be up to the challenge, and when we think about it, the challenge of a formidable budget blowout if the Government does not intervene is probably as good a reason as any to support this bill as a viable alternative. The scale of the problem is of course the biggest issue. More than 80,000 people are living in leaky homes, which were mostly built between 1992 and 2005 under relaxed building codes. The cost is approximately $11 billion to $50 billion. The Government’s 25 percent contribution towards agreed repair costs is expected to cost about $1 billion over 5 years. So for us, the most important thing is being able to alleviate both the financial and health implications caused by leaky homes.
The Māori Party supports a commitment to manaaki and awhi people affected by leaky homes, as it supported the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Bill passed into law in 2006 and related legislation since. By implication, we also support the Government’s proposal to act as a guarantor to financial institutions, so that the pressure of lending for the purposes of repairing leaky homes by these institutions can be eased and therefore money to fix leaky homes is more readily accessible. I want to also place on record our support for initiatives such as innovation in housing for Māori, including the Housing Innovation Fund, and social and affordable housing, and the Heat Smart home insulation programme to warm up Aotearoa. In many ways this leaky homes initiative is merely another platform within this wider context of Whānau Ora. The Māori Party is also clear about our support for a form of a credit support facility. Under this bill the Crown will act as a guarantor to financial institutions such as banks, so that the pressure of lending for the purposes of repairing leaky homes by those institutions can be eased, and money to fix homes is more readily accessible, as I said earlier. At its simplest form, therefore, the bill aims to provide owners of leaky homes access to cost-effective procedures for the assessment and resolution of claims.
Finally, the Māori Party supports a revised building code for builders and local councils. We do all this in pursuit of two very worthy goals articulated in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Article 21 specifies that “Indigenous peoples have the right, without discrimination, to the improvement of their economic and social conditions, including, … in the areas of … housing,”. Article 23 notes that “Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for exercising their right to development. In particular, indigenous peoples have the right to be actively involved in developing and determining health, housing, and other economic and social programmes affecting them and, … to administer such programmes through their own institutions.” We wonder whether this bill will enhance and expand upon those commitments, and we hope the Minister might be able to give us some certainty in this context. But we are prepared to support the bill at this critical time.
NICKY WAGNER (National) Link to this
At last there is a possible solution for owners of leaky homes. The Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill, now in its second reading, will provide a new option and a faster fix for leaky and rotten homes.
Leaky homes have been a nightmare for thousands of New Zealanders and their families. It is estimated that approximately 24,000 apartments, townhouses, and stand-alone homes are affected. They were mostly built between 1992 and 2005, and they have proved to be an expensive disaster right across the country. Although the majority of leaky homes are in Auckland, my home town of Christchurch has had its share. But because of our cooler climate, it is expected that even more will be identified in the coming years. As an MP I have been personally involved with some of the cases, so I understand the stress, the anxiety, and the fear of homeowners. I have seen some really desperate situations.
Although the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service claims process was introduced in 2006, it proved to be a complex, lengthy, and expensive exercise. In some cases, the cost of the process proved to be more than the cost of the actual repairs or rebuild. Only about 4,000 leaky homes have actually been repaired, so we need a much faster, much more effective fix. We cannot continue to argue and debate. We want to stop litigation and start the repairs.
This bill moves us on past the blame game, and provides a financial package so that people can get their homes rebuilt in a better, faster, and cheaper way. The financial package may not be perfect, but the Local Government and Environment Committee believes that it is fair and effective, and that it will spread the costs as evenly as possible. The committee received 39 submissions, and overall there was general support for this solution. The package is a partnership. It is a partnership between local and central government, with each paying 25 percent of the total cost, while the homeowner is responsible for the remaining 50 percent. That 50 percent is backed by a Government loan guarantee. The package is totally voluntary for homeowners, but we expect that perhaps 70 percent of owners will take it up. It is an attractive alternative funding option, and it will deliver for affected families.
Local authorities have supported the project because, although it is a huge expense for councils, it caps the percentage of liability for the homes involved. The Government’s contribution is estimated to be a cost of about a billion dollars over the next 5 years, but both local and central government are supportive. They are supporting this financial package because it is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do for the families who are affected, and it is a way for all of us to move on. Thank you.
Hon RICK BARKER (Labour) Link to this
I will speak on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill, and say that the Opposition will support this bill. Yes, the bill has been a long time coming, but although the previous speaker, Nicky Wagner, said that she wants to see the blame game over, one figures that within this legislation, and all the issues around it, the blame game has been played significantly by all parties.
One cannot underestimate the stress of homeowners who have built new homes and then see their homes leaking, sweating, and rotting around them. We must remember that a home, generally, is a person’s No. 1 major investment. It is not just an investment; it is a place where people live. It is an expression of people themselves. They put a lot of time and effort into decorating it, doing the grounds, and so on—it is where they live. To see their homes falling apart around them is very, very distressing for them.
There is no doubt that a number of factors have led to this situation. People have pointed to the deregulation of the industry, and I hope this House takes on board the consequences of having a totally deregulated industry. Lessons are to be learnt from this industry for a number of other industries that we deregulate. The fact is that we have an element of our society today that constantly carps in favour of deregulation and against regulation. They oppose regulation at every step of the way. But let this be a lesson to the deregulators: where there is insufficient regulation, the public are at risk. If people want to live in a completely deregulated society, with all the benefits that flow from having no regulations, then let them go and live in Mogadishu. They will be afraid of the water, the food, and the street violence, and there will be nothing there that is fit for the purpose for which it is being sold—unless it is some antique military arms.
We live in a civil society, and the purpose of a civil society is to protect ordinary citizens from the predations and incompetency of other people. We want a regulated industry. That means that when people undertake the tasks of design, building, and construction, they are skilled and fit for the purpose. This has been a failure on the part of many homeowners who built during the period of leaky homes.
We come to the issue of where we will apportion the problems. Councils, for their part, said they had no responsibility in the early stages, because they felt they were the victims of legislation to be passed by central government. They were simply following the deregulated environment of central government, and the problem lay with central government. Central government, on the other hand, said no, it was the responsibility of local councils because local councils had approved the homes being put up. Others pointed at the builders; others pointed at the designers of the buildings, the architects; others pointed to those who provided the monolithic claddings, and the seals, and so on that went with it. We had everybody pointing fingers at everybody, but in the middle of all of this the homeowners were left with stinking, rotting homes. That was well articulated by Sue Kedgley. I felt a seizure of catarrh and pneumonia coming on, as she adequately described all the health problems.
She likes that phrase: Stachybotrys, and all the other “greebs” and germs that go with it. No one has described it better than she. She is right: it is a health problem, a physical health problem. But I would add to the point that Sue Kedgley made that it is also a mental health problem. People have been incredibly stressed about this issue for a long time. When families are under stress of this nature, it adversely affects the whole family unit.
The families of the people who own these homes look to this Parliament for a solution. It could be possible for me to point out all of the failures of this legislation. There are some; it is not perfect. Very seldom do we pass legislation in this House that is perfect, and this is one of those pieces of legislation. It has its imperfections, but it has its strengths. The strength is that we will get the elements of the source of the essential problem. It will be central government, local authorities, and some liability will be placed on the homeowner. All three parties will have to come to grips with this and will have to pay their share. There have been some estimates of what it will cost, and the cost runs into billions. I think that is probably a very conservative estimate of the cost.
There will be another problem for the Government, which is how we undertake the fixing of these homes. I say to the Minister for Building and Construction and the members of the National Government who are responsible for training that the estimates are of 20,000-plus homes in Auckland alone. The Salvation Army in Auckland identified that Auckland is short by some 6,000-odd houses that need to be built. We have the rebuilding of Christchurch to undertake. In the next decade New Zealand will undertake more building and construction than it has in many, many a decade—probably in our history. There will be a massive amount of construction. The worry will be where we will find the skills and the tradespeople to undertake this work. At this stage I do not see a coherent plan from the National Government for how we will undertake this work. At present we should have many hundreds of young people, who are currently out of work, undertaking trade training in a mass way, similar to the sort of trade training New Zealand undertook at the end of the Second World War, when men came home from the war and New Zealand underwent a major reconstruction boom.
Jo GoodhewThe member across the House chirps that they have announced it today. I read the announcement, and I have to say to the member that although it is an announcement, I think the size of it is timid in comparison with the size of the problem.
We have 20,000 homes in Auckland alone to be fixed. Auckland needs more homes; it needs in the order of 6,000 to 10,000 homes. That is 30,000 homes in Auckland. Then we have large sections of Christchurch to rebuild. I would like to think the Government will deal with this problem in a very strong, firm, and crisp manner. I do not see that in the release the Government put out today. Yes, it is a start; it acknowledges the problem; it takes its hat off and says we have an issue to deal with, but it does not grab the problem by the throat, wrestle it to the ground, and fix it. That is what we expect: strong leadership from the Government. It talks about leadership, but it has not delivered on it in this case. However, I will go back to the bill. I have been sidelined by interjections from the Government.
The issue here is about fixing leaky homes—making a plan. I say to the Hon Maurice Williamson that any plan is better than no plan. The Minister has come up with a plan, and all of the elements are there. I think many of the homeowners who currently suffer from leaky home syndrome will feel that they have a pathway forward. It might not be the perfect path, but at least it is a path. It is an acknowledgment by the Government that central government has a role in this and will support them. It also acknowledges the role of local government, and local government will also support homeowners. This should be of some comfort to many homeowners. It will of course wipe thousands and thousands of dollars off the balance sheet of many homeowners, and they will be poorer for decades to come. It will take many homeowners a long, long time to recover from this. It will make many of them very timid about building a new home in the future. They will be very cautious, and rightly so.
Labour supports this legislation. It will help to address the issues affecting many homeowners. Many issues remain unresolved, and Labour will raise a number of issues during the Committee of the whole House. It will put forward amendments, which we hope the Hon Maurice Williamson, who has taken the lead on this, will entertain very carefully and discuss with Labour as we go through the Committee of the whole House, in order to improve this legislation.
The Labour Opposition welcomes that as a very positive acknowledgment that there needs to be some improvements in this legislation. The collective wisdom of this House should be able to bring to the House very good, improved legislation.
Labour will support this legislation, but it needs to be acknowledged that there are other issues on the periphery that are of concern. Those issues are the capacity and skills in the industry to undertake this massive repair work on thousands and thousands of homes across New Zealand, the under-build of homes in Auckland, and the rebuild of Christchurch. This is a substantial undertaking. The Government needs to take it seriously and really put in place some solid, enduring policies that will give the industry the skills and tradespeople necessary to undertake this substantial amount of work.
Dr CAM CALDER (National) Link to this
It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill. The bill is very, very important to our country and to many thousands of hard-working New Zealanders. A home is fundamental to providing safety and security to body, safety and security to family, and safety and security to property, which underlies Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for the human condition. A home is crucial to the health and the emotional and economic well-being of our people. I wonder who among us has not heard this line from a John Howard Payne poem:
there’s no place like home;
I acknowledge the contributions from members on all sides of the House in the Local Government and Environment Committee. Our bid is to come up with a financial assistance package to help New Zealanders get their leaky homes fixed faster. We must move beyond what has been a period of dispute and litigation. This package is about spreading the cost as evenly and as fairly as possible to get action. We need to help affected homeowners get on with their lives.
So what is the problem? I am a homeowner myself. I know a lot of friends who are carpenters and builders. They have told me that all properties leak. I have had that experience myself. In certain conditions, with wind coming in from a certain quarter and with torrential rain, some water will come into my home. It is an old home that was built in a traditional manner. The water comes in and drains out, the wood swells a little bit, conditions change, and the wood reverts to form and dries out in a reasonable period, and there is no problem.
But a problem occurred with the advent of a new building material. I can remember it appearing around Auckland, when a little bit of a blight started in the early 1990s. It was sort of a building envelope in Insulclad-type construction, which is a cladding system, and there were many others. The problem was that any water that got into the fabric of the home could not drain out. It affected townhouses, apartments, and stand-alone—or, as the English call them, detached—homes. It is interesting that leaky homes are not just a problem for Auckland. Probably 75 percent of leaky homes are in Auckland, but Wellington, Tauranga, and Christchurch are also affected. I believe, having asked the chief executive in Dunedin, that there is one in Dunedin.
Clare CurranOne leaky home—one only. Things move glacially. In 2006 the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services Act was the primary legislation passed, but, prior to that, the Government of the day seemed to believe that no problem existed. In 2002 the then Prime Minister said she had not taken much notice of the New Zealand Herald’s article on the issue, because the New Zealand Herald was well known for banging on about issues of no substance. Not surprisingly, that statement surprised the industry, including Prendos Director Phil O’Sullivan, who at that stage had been campaigning for 4 years to alert the Government to the problem and had asked for it to be addressed. He said that he was surprised the Prime Minister was badly informed. He said: “They need to take it seriously and not dismiss it. We’ve had the BIA [Building Industry Authority] dismiss it and the minister dismiss it and they’ve all been caught out. We’ve got no doubt [about the size of the problem]. We just go to site after site after site.”
This bill is this Government’s attempt to address a very serious problem. The legislation will deal with the forecast for leaky homes, which varies from somewhere around 22,000 homes to as many as 89,000 homes. The consensus forecast is that some 42,000 affected homes are likely to be leaky. We know that it is often very difficult to tell how badly affected a home may be.
At the time of the 2009 report, unfortunately 9,000 leaky homes were deemed to be outside the 10-year liability period. As a member of the select committee, I must say that it was a great sadness to me that even with the best will in the world there will be some homeowners who will not be able to find solace in this package. But we are doing our best to provide a process that will provide certainty without recourse to costly disputes. We have heard that this approach is a partnership, as it were, between local government providing 25 percent and the Government providing 25 percent. It is a voluntary process for the homeowner to be involved in, should they wish to be. They have the right to be involved if they decide to be, but they forgo their right to sue the local authorities or the Crown, although they are able to sue other liable parties, such as builders, developers, and manufacturers of any products that are deemed to be defective.
I look forward to contributing further to the debate in the House as the bill progresses. At this stage I commend the bill.
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) Link to this
Today the readers of that troublesome, irritating media outlet otherwise known as the New Zealand Herald have been given a very clear example of the treacherousness of the territory surrounding the issues that the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill seeks to address. I say no other words than “Pepperwood Mews”. Pepperwood Mews are an institutional, physical representation of what the bill seeks to do. But it goes further than that. Pepperwood Mews are evidence of egregious, scandalous behaviour on behalf of the New Zealand housing agency, which is wriggling out of its obligations, in terms of its own culpability in destroying the savings and affecting the mental health of people who in good faith invested in what has turned into a leaky building disaster. To make matters worse, the super-city, having taken over the responsibilities of Waitakere City Council, has also hired deep-pocketed Queen Street - based lawyers, whose willingness to solve the problem is inversely related to their appetite for ongoing fees.
The issues in this bill need to be sheeted home, and we need to find a context where we can talk about the people who have suffered. We also have a very spotty record as parliamentarians. I will be the first to say I support this bill, along with our spokesman and my colleagues. I would also be the first to say that when I was the Minister of Building and Construction, the figure confronting the Crown dwarfed a lot of our analysis. At least the current Minister has brought forward a potential solution, admittedly—I would not say a half-pie solution, because that would suggest that he has not been professional, and on this it is evident that the Minister has had a beggar of a time shepherding forward a solution.
I go back to the Pepperwood Mews example in west Auckland. There is a set of buildings—one might charitably call them terraced housing—that are now unfit for habitation; possibly good for poultry, potentially good for demolition work. Those buildings need to be fixed up. Will this legislation require the Crown to do good in terms of its own role in such episodes? No. Secondly, it shows that not only is the Crown not standing behind its remedy in terms of liability but also it is allowing a key organisation in the Crown infrastructure to worsen the prospects of the people behind that particular investment enjoying any remedy whatsoever.
An area where the Government has failed egregiously is in its unwillingness to seriously invest in vocational and apprenticeship training, because this will require a mountain of work. The only way that this could have been broadened and made into quite a popular cause was for it to be used as a platform to create and deepen the new cadre of building practitioners: tradespeople who will actually contribute, not only to the rebuilding of Christchurch—Lord knows when that will actually happen—but also to dealing with leaky homes drama in Tāmaki-makau-rau.
Although we agree, obviously the banking fraternity is playing the long game, hoping that a Government will at some point in time underwrite its role in seeking to remedy this problem. Secondly, we will face an inordinate skills shortage. We know that the magnetic impact from across the Tasman in terms of its natural commodities boom is drawing lots of our tradies over there. Therefore, a sensible Minister and a Government with a vision would be willing to gather up young people and put them into training, so that we shorten the line of people looking for jobs. Many of the people looking for jobs should actually be in jobs fixing problems such as this, but they are not, because they are not being rewarded or encouraged to go into training. If there are not people in training, then where will they go? They will join the unemployment queue, which is giving this very dismal picture of more and more young men and women wasting their lives looking for jobs. There is no shortage of opportunity in dealing with issues such as this for skills, vocational training, and employment, because if there is one good thing that can come out of this problem, it is that we can train and provide jobs for trainees at a level that we cannot possibly imagine.
It will take money. Well, if the Government did not spend all the money on a very narrow cast of economic players in the New Zealand economy and give them this massive tax benefit, then it would have money to invest in the most valuable kind of capital that any society has in excess—that is, human capital. But that was squandered. So let us ponder for a moment on why the banks are unwilling to come to the party. Minister Williamson has, correctly, been quite judicious about this. I suspect that the Australian-owned banks are giving instructions to their New Zealand staff: “Enough exposure in this sector.”, and they are hoping that the New Zealand Government will give them an underwrite. Well, this particular Government has provided, in my view, enough underwrites. Whether or not it felt it had no opportunity, whether or not it inherited historical obligations, the fact of the matter is that we cannot continually dance to the tune or jump to the beck and call of the banks. I think that a tremendous gesture for them to make would be to allow people to get on with their lives, begin to repair these aquariums that used to be called houses, and try to lessen the damage that has been done to their physical and fiscal well-being.
Potentially, a whole generation of people has been wiped out, when we add this problem to the meltdown of the financial companies—the intermediate finance, the mezzanine finance—and when we also look at the level of suffering visited upon a bunch of day-to-day Kiwis as a consequence of the Christchurch-based earthquake. What does all this point to? This points to the importance of training and developing the next generation of New Zealanders who can generate solutions that will have a practical form and a long-lasting benefit.
Minister Williamson has reflected a desire during the Committee stage to take on some of our suggestions, or to at least listen to them; he is highly unlikely to take them on. After all, he has the distinction in a former life of showing Steven Joyce how to ruin the telecommunications industry, so it is unlikely that that sort of deeply imprinted political DNA is about to change. But I direct his attention to the fact that under his watch, the building and construction industry has become anaemic. Under his watch, consents have plummeted. But under his watch there has been a growing and desperate need for more houses, and more housing solutions—because they will not all be houses—in Tāmaki-makau-rau, in Auckland. As people swell the place as a consequence of domestic migration, this Government continues to say: “Well, we’ll look to private - public sector innovations.” If members want to know how it goes wrong, they should go to Pepperwood Mews.
It is disappointing that unfortunately very few National MPs have either heard of that episode or know where it is located. But, rest assured, the people who are suffering know. They know that this Minister has had 2 years to remedy that situation, but, rather, he and Mr Heatley are quietly encouraging, I presume, the commercial directors there, that whatever they do they should not expose any further liability and they should not put their hands up to solve the problems for those day-to-day Kiwis. So although we support this bill, there are many areas where it can be improved. Kia ora tātou.
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) Link to this
I feel a real need to respond to Mr Jones, following his 10-minute diatribe. One of the things Mr Jones said was that the Minister, Mr Williamson, had failed egregiously in bringing the Weathertight Homes Resolution Services (Financial Assistance Package) Amendment Bill to the House. Let us reflect on the situation. If we take the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, we are talking about anywhere between 22,000 and 89,000 homes that are affected by the leaky homes issue. That is a major problem for people around this country, and it is one that gained huge momentum during the 9 years of a Labour Government. To say that Mr Maurice Williamson has failed egregiously is so far from the truth that it is ridiculous. Mr Williamson has come up with a solution to solve the problem.
Anybody who runs a constituency office will have had many, many meetings with constituents who have major issues with leaky homes. It has not been the issue in Hawke’s Bay and Napier that it has been in the likes of Auckland, in particular, and in other parts of the country, but I have dealt specifically with two or three cases where people have this issue—one on the Napier hill and one in Greenmeadows—and where, quite frankly, builders had walked away from the situation. The builders carved up their companies, become insolvent, and walked away from the issue and from homeowners who had invested their life and soul into those properties. The time it takes for these people to resolve the issues caused by their leaky home is really heart-wrenching in this whole situation. It leads to poor health and major stress and is a real issue for these people.
To think that during the 9 years of a Labour Government it never reached a solution that could help move this thing forward begs a whole lot of questions that National members asked during the 9 years of the Labour Government.
We have reached a solution here. It may not be the ultimate thing that all homeowners wanted, but the assistance package of 25 percent from the Government, 25 percent from local government, and 50 percent from homeowners provides us with something to move forward with. I think that for many homeowners around the country who are affected by this issue, the bill is a major step in the right direction. For Mr Jones to say that the Minister has failed egregiously is so far from reality that it required me to stand up and take a call to debate that. Thank you.