From Morning Report yesterday:
Auckland Mayor John Banks: “I was part of the Government of the time when this legislation was put in place that allowed this untreated timber, that allowed no voids, that allowed chicken wire, that allowed…”
Sean Plunket: Why did that happen?
John Banks: I reflect on this often. I am not a builder. I have no knowledge of these things. It has been a legacy of disaster step by step.
Sean Plunket: No no but why did you vote for that? What was said at your caucus that convinced the Government of the day to remove protections and remove hitherto entirely adequate provisions around building materials and construction methods?
John Banks: I can’t remember. But I’m not going to…
Sean Plunket: It is your job. Surely. I am sorry Mr Banks, that is not going to stand. What do you mean you can’t remember?
John Banks: You are being silly Sean. You are just being silly.
Building and Construction Minister Maurice Williamson sat around the same Cabinet table with Mr Banks when those fateful decisions were made. I wonder if he remembers?
What do you say on August 15, 21 years ago Phil?
Cant remember they passed a law allowing parole after 1/3 sentence served ( so they didnt have to build new prisons)
cant remember they repealed the provision that finance companies had to report ‘audited’ results every six months ( a level playing field)
Well done Sean. At last people are asking the right questions. Of course Banks can remember, he will remember the dinners and shmoozing of him by the manufacturers…
This isnt a crisis it’s a scandal, National started it, Labout buried their head and hoped it would go away, and National is back burying its head in the sand. Maurice looks like a hero, but he is not being truthful.
He says “no claims on homes built since 2005 means no homes are leaking” That’s untrue. I know of many BUT the owners dont want to claim because it will be noted on their LIM and they will never be able to sell.
This is a scandal, and this industry is rotten to the core. The people who matter have learned nothing… timber suppliers, manufacturers Branz (has learned a little but not alot), and so on…
SCANDAL
At least people now know why banks was so keen for Govt to share the cost, he KNOWS they share the blame
Tracey – I agree.
As far as I am concerned, neither National or Labour have the moral high ground on this, but the fact that Labour allowed these poor people to remain stuck with an asset that they couldn’t sell and couldn’t afford to repair for 10 years is unforgivable.
And like you have said earlier Tracey – it’s not like building of leaky homes stopped 10 years ago. They continued to be built well into Labour’s term.
Appalling. How is it such a young country has so many issues with its housing? Why is it we have such a huge issue with old damp homes or new leaky ones? Rhetorial…..I know the answer.
Question is, will anyone in government – past, present or future actually acknowledge it instead of just pointing the finger?
Banks: “Your being silly Sean, it is just silly to hold me to account for my previous actions… It might stop me from being Supermayor – don’t you see how silly that is..?”
Rebecca – interestingly it has taken two days for this blog to have ANY thread related tot he Leaky home announcement. A $4B+ spending announcement and Labour has NOTHING to say? It’s like the winebox, BOTH parties are culpable, and sadly it’s one reason we wont get to the bottom of the scandal any time soon because neither party is a credible analyst of it.
I know of a detailed submission to the select committee in 2002 which predicted all this, identified the cause, and suggested some solutions… ignored.
I should declare an interest in this topic
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10645717
Banks is either lying or has premature senility.
BTW, I thought Radio NZ did a good job yesterday covering what the govt announcement on leaky homes really means – and as a result exposing how totally inadequate it is.
Tracey – interesting article. Yes I remember in a previous post you discussing your own leaky home & how much research you had done on the issue. How awful – must be very stressful.
Yes I found it interesting it took a couple of days for Labour to post anything on this issue – I guess it must be quite tricky trying to come up with an attack on the current government for an issue that they were also responsible for.
Very interesting re the select committee too.
Why is it so hard for the people we vote to be in government to do the right thing?
This, the tax stuff and now the report on the handling of child abuse cases by the police leave me with nothing but disillusionment & disappointment.
This country is made up of people, why is it so hard for our MPs to put us first? How could they go to sleep knowing that there were some 80,000 homes or so that were leaking and had been left to leak for up to 10 years. Incredible.
I know what you are saying but you know, sadly the majority do seem to set the law as their maximum standard of behaviour, instead of minimum. if it’s legal it’s ok.
I truly believe when we have a society that is SO focused on money = success, success = money, we get a society that sees getting more of either as justifying how they do it.
I wasn’t actually around the Cabinet table at the time, but unlike these two tory con men I can recall why they did it. They both bought the idea that the free market would be better than the nanny state, and that a permissive rather than prescriptive building code was the way to grow the economy and create jobs and wealth. Well, we all know what a tragic train-wreck that was. And wouldn’t you know it, they’re doing it all again? No wonder they ‘can’t recall’.
Interestingly, Bernard Hickey had no shortage of pot-shots to fire, and he’s no raging socialist. If it’s anything to go by, he likens the whole thing to corporate welfare.
“The National government is clearly exposing itself as the party of property owners, particularly property owners in Auckland. This issue is white-hot among the strongest National Party supporters in the blue rinse seats of Eastern Auckland and the North Shore.
This the issue that MPs, Ministers and the Prime Minister will have been harangued about at every party meeting and dinner party for months. What the tragedy of a lack of affordable housing in South Auckland? What about the thousands of young New Zealanders who leave New Zealand because they can’t afford to buy a house on their salaries here?
Now the pressure from the Eastern Suburbs and the North Shore has told. But who is speaking up for the millions of renters or the millions of taxpayers outside of Auckland or who live in non-leaky houses? When will the finance company investors ask for a bailout too?
This is New Zealand’s own version of the debt shuffle that governments in Britain, Europe and the United States have been criticised for.
Private risk and losses have been socialised. This didn’t stop the capital gains from the property boom being privatised from 2002 to 2007, some of which was against the very houses that will now incur costs for taxpayers.
Debt is shuffled off the books of the banks and the home owners and shuffled onto the taxpayers, both now and in the future. This is no better than the bank bailouts in Britain or the United States or Ireland, or the sovereign debt bailout just unveiled in Europe.
This is simply not fair on most New Zealanders and it sets a dangerous precedent.
What happens if house prices were to collapse 20-30 per cent in the next four to five years because of government policies announced in the budget? Would the banks and the rest of New Zealand’s homeowners nursing big capital losses come asking for a bailout?
I feel another natural disaster in the wind.”
Hey Phil, maybe you can ask your own cabinet colleagues if they can recall why Helen ruled out any compensation package for leaky homes owners for years, and why it took a decade to deal to the problem. Perhaps if she hadn\’t told the media to stop \”banging on\” about leaky homes, Labour might be taken seriously on this matter.
@ Tracey, I’m not sure it’s fair to imply that Labour did nothing about leaky homes. They called for a report in 2002 then legilsated in 2004 and 2005 to reverse the tories’ crazy deregulation which caused it. Even Williamson says this stopped any more leaky homes from being built. What they didn’t do was toss the COA decision and Crown law advice in the trash and pay out on behalf of the building industry, which has run for cover from day one. This current bunch of tories, however, have no problem with socialising the private sector liability.
Banks sounded like a fool on Morning Report. Talk about going off his carefully worded script. No one can trust this man.
So you expect us to believe that Banks could remember something that happened 20 years ago. What nonsense.
Phil, I am so disappointed in Red Alert.
The government comes out with a proposal which (while not perfect and with details that need to be confirmed) actually looks like it will really help people and the only comment the Labour Party can make about it is to ask John Banks and Maurice Williamson what they said 15 (or so) years ago.
Who cares? Yes, they got it wrong but National have now come up with a solution to fix it. Labour totally failed in this area. I mean completely.
As a leaky home owner, this is the key issue on which I will vote and National seem to be the only party with an answer. At the very least you could be posting about how the government’s proposal could be improved. Labour really need to do better than this to have any chance of getting my vote.
Anyhow, what’s this deregulation thing? The Building Act 1991was regulation. It had 70-odd sections and about 6 schedules.
What’s deregulated about that?
@IMF: Who cares..? Who cares what actions politicians took 15 years ago which have now imposed $23,000,000,000 of costs on our economy including yourself..? And you want to vote for these people..?
And no one’s yet asked this, but what proportion of the leaky homes are McMansions in car-only suburbs?
@IMF: Bernard Hickey might have something to say about that.
This is about suburban America, but still relevant to us.
The Atlantic Monthly 3/2008: The Next Slum?
“This future is not likely to wear well on suburban housing. Many of the inner-city neighborhoods that began their decline in the 1960s consisted of sturdily built, turn-of-the-century row houses, tough enough to withstand being broken up into apartments, and requiring relatively little upkeep. By comparison, modern suburban houses, even high-end McMansions, are cheaply built. Hollow doors and wallboard are less durable than solid-oak doors and lath-and-plaster walls. The plywood floors that lurk under wood veneers or carpeting tend to break up and warp as the glue that holds the wood together dries out; asphalt-shingle roofs typically need replacing after 10 years. Many recently built houses take what structural integrity they have from drywall—their thin wooden frames are too flimsy to hold the houses up.”
IMF said:
I suppose that handing out our money to make up for their prior blunders, effectively helping out the private sector and others who would not dip into their own pockets to resolve the situation is indeed “an answer”.
More capital put to unproductive use in the property sector.
One thing is that this will go some ways to helping a lot of people caught out by this situation.
And lets a lot of Councils and property developers off the hook to a certain degree.
DeepRed, yeah I like the Atlantic, got a subscription to it.
Labour made steps to address the thorny problem which took time and processes. National had to do something after sitting on their hands. Their option has left the sharks rekatively free to swim and prey as usual.
So we pay for it in taxes and increased rates.
Another scandal like this is the asbestos used as a building material and particularly cladding. The extreme health danger of this stuff has been known since early 1800 but asbestos was inported by Fletchers and Hardie Industres up into the 1980s.
The terminal conditions caused by the deadly fibres for the most part go undiagnosed until an autopsy.
As the lag between exposure until symptoms appear can be from 10 years to 50 years we are seeing a dramatic increase in cases now and this is predicted to rise sharply.
In NZ One case successfully saw damages awarded to a victim but appeal stopped the payment and the victim died before that was heard. The manufacturers were then protected by National Govt changing legislation to prevent Hardies and Fletchers from being held responsible again.
Similarly in Australia Hardie has been protected. Recently a smart lawyer has found a way through and thousands of sufferers and families may well make their mark with some compensation for the misery and death caused by manufacturing known toxic products.
Big business gets protected in spite of what harm they create in the pursuit of profit.
Government has to do a better job of protecting the people.
We know the private sector is in the game for this quarters’ profits and this financial years’ profits. Consequences 10 or 20 years down the track = SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem).
IIRC the dioxin producing plant in New Plymouth was another example where the Govt let the side of the citizenry down for too long.
The very same Hardies that relocated its HQ to Amsterdam in a blatant attempt to shirk responsibility for the asbestos scandal.
@Swampy – I thought Banksie was too young for dementia
Sure National has a solution, but it excludes people affected before a certain date.
And it’s what like only a quarter of something a rather… 
It’s too early. 
“Even Williamson says this stopped any more leaky homes from being built.”
jennifer, Williamson is wrong, leaky homes are still be built, the Building Act changes “may” have slowed it, but it certainly hasnt stopped it. If you go to the Bernard Hickey article referred to above, you will see many posts from me explaining this.
Helen Clark, quite famously made a statement tot he effect this was a mountain out of a molehill. She was wrong.
The systemic rot in the entire building industry goes on, and we only have to look at the parties NOT being held accountable to see why homes will still be suseptible to leaks.
Both Labour and National have a responsibility, that’s why labour is so gosh darn quiet on this issue, Neither publicly supporting the concept nor deriding it. No Labour MPs commenting on this thread yet?
Swampy, given the amount of lobbying, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, and then the fall out, of course he remembers why they did it.
Gooner only a few sections of the 1991 Act matter, the ones that caved to the lobbying of manufacturers to increase THEIR profit by removing the requirement for treatment.
Councils have been hard hit by the last man standing rule, that is why this offer is tied to them. I think Govt and Council sharing 50% of the cost is a good offer.
People just have to understand that the majority of homes have remaining parties who have gone (financially) bankrupt, voluntary liquidation so 50% is all people will get from this deal in those circumstances. However, if they took a full claim through WHRS process, and win, against all named parties, and only the Council is solvent, the Councils have to pay 100% of the judgment.
I would like to see the Government allow class actions in this area, allow people to pool their money and take on the bIG battles, against the manufacturers and others with deep pockets and who are escaping liability at present (James Hardie chief amongst these).
Council has not joined any of the following parties to actions, Branz or manufacturers to mitigate its (council’s) costs… why not?
I can’t get over the fact that basically this whole issue and the costs involved were completely self inflicted by central and local Govt, and is now still sucking up public time and money.
The free market privateers saw the opportunity to make some extra dosh and then vanish, like they always do.
:rolleyes” at officials and politicians who continue to think that they can defy the laws of physics and chemistry with their piddly little pieces of paper and sign offs.
@ Gooner, so a law that says ‘anything goes’ and ‘you’re on your own’ is still nanny state? To quote John Banks, ‘you are being silly’.
@ swampy, of course he can remember why he supported the deregulation. He wasn’t asked what he had for breakfast that day, simply what convinced him to remove protections. Of course he can remember. He still supports it. He still rants on about ‘red tape’. His selective amnesia to get him out of a self-inflicted jam simply shows he cannot be trusted.
Disappearing memory like my disappearing comment.
I bet he lives in a nice dry house.
Can anyone explain to me why the only innocent party in the leaky homes is required to pay 50%, of the cost to rectify the damage? Those affected have already paid for the building. Why should they pay again? What is the govt doing to hold the present builders, developers, suppliers etc. to account for the leaky homes they are building now? Do they have insurance etc or will they just disappear again?
On the whole, after deregulation and the Govt going all hands-off, the bad guys made the money and got away with it; all of us are stumping up for that fact.
wow philg that’s a huge oversimplification, but if you really want the answer to your question, take a peek at the links and relationships between Councils, BRANZ, Manufacturers and government and the fascinating way they are all enclosed in a neat little web.
Better questions are why dont Councils join Manufacturers and Branz to the actions, because it, Council relied on both those organisations, so on behalf of ratepayers ought to join them to actions, but dont.
“What is the govt doing to hold the present builders, developers, suppliers etc. to account for the leaky homes they are building now?”
Mr Williamson claims that no homes built after 2005 leak. He bases this on there being no claims lodged which relate tot his time period. At the same time he is pending time and money regulating both Builders and designers, which is odd if he is right and no homes now have these defects.
They do, of course, and he knows it.
I know someone who can’t get compo for leaky home because of the restrictions the government put on it!
Spud, the details of the government contribution aren’t out yet, do you mean their house was built more than ten years ago?
Yes,
Interesting to read the Govt update earlier, and then the announced delay because of the need for new legislation. This whole process is one of delay. Particularly poignant because of the ten year limit people have on claims.
Funny how an earthquake, estimated to cost around 4 billion, can have instant legislation and action, but a leaky home crisis currently affecting over 120,000 homes has to wait years for legislation and action.
One a force of nature the other the negligence or worse of men and Governments.