Leary dignified as sun sets on her Bill — and gains unlikely fan
Taieri Labour MP Ingrid Leary is proud of her Dutch heritage.
On Wednesday she must have had a feeling akin to that which the Netherlands rugby team might have if it were ever to line up against the All Blacks ... knowing that you have to run out on the field but that you are going to get absolutely pummelled. At which point, you either fold up or fight your darndest — and Leary opted for the latter.
Back on July 16, during the most recent Members' Day, the House managed to sneak in the first couple of speeches on Leary's Property Law (Sunset Clauses) Amendment Bill.
This Bill, if passed (spoiler alert ... things did not go well for Leary) would have amended the Property Law Act so that house buyers would have to give their consent if vendors wanted to rescind their sale and purchase agreement under a sunset clause.
Despite it being a well-intentioned and arguably sensible layer of added protection for people buying homes off the plans, it become all too apparent that all three governing parties were going to vote against it.
But things were not all doom and gloom for Leary.
As well as the sunset clauses Bill, Leary also has the Retirement Villages (Fairer Repayments) Amendment Bill in the Members' Bill ballot, which — if drawn and enacted — would require retirement villages to greatly accelerate the timeframe to repay residents or their families any money owed to them if the resident moved to higher care levels or died.
This proposed law change is not a million miles away from what the government is eventually going to do in this space anyway ... and the reason why we know that the government is likely to enact a law like Leary's in the future is because last week someone leaked One News a recording of Tauranga National MP Sam Uffindell speaking at an unspecified time and place in a manner which seemed to endorse Leary's endeavours in this space.
"Ingrid Leary ... has quite cunningly put forward a members' Bill which would address some of this. And she's savvy enough to have garnered up a lot of attention around retirement villages," Uffindell said.
"And so that's in the pipeline as well. We need to arrest or take the key parts out of that [which] are workable and make sure we build that into something."
Uffindell then revealed — over pizza and Pepsi Max — that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had raised issues concerning retirement villages with a group of backbench MPs, including himself.
He further offered some electoral spice to the mix by adding: "Importantly, it needs to go through the House before the end of this term, because if it hasn't, we're going to have a whole bunch of disgruntled people and retirement villages who all vote and all talk to each other about it. Who will go, 'oh, National hasn't actually delivered and Labour was going to do this'."
Oh dear. And just to add hot sauce to an already piquant piece of audio, One News asked Uffindell, and the PM, about his backbencher's reckons the other Thursday, while Luxon was on a visit to Tauranga.
Back to this Wednesday, when a somewhat embarrassed government made little effort to defend itself for not backing Leary's sunset clauses Bill, National sending out first-term backbenchers Rima Nakhle and Hamish Campbell to take up 10 minutes of our lives that no-one is ever getting back in speaking on the Bill.
Nakhle did at least say that she understood that Leary was trying to protect consumers from bad-faith developers, before taking a wide tangent to extol the natural beauties of her Takanini electorate; but who knows what Campbell was on about in a, frankly, incoherent offering which had very little to do with Leary's Bill — or anything else.
Labour, knowing it was beat, opted to make the most of it and have some fun with the government's discomfiture on the subject of Leary's other Members' Bill.
"This Bill introduced by Ingrid Leary, who I want to actually acknowledge — she's doing tremendous work in this area," Labour Housing spokesman Kieran McAnulty extolled.
"She's doing tremendous work in the area of retirement villages. Sam Uffindell is a fan. Sam Uffindell recognises that Ingrid Leary is doing tremendous work.
"I think deep down, Sam Uffindell recognises that Ingrid Leary is doing tremendous work in the area of sunset causes. I have a suspicion that there are a few of them over there that deep down would actually quite like to support this Bill, but they've been whipped. They've been whipped and told that they cannot support this Bill."
When the fall is all that's left it matters a great deal how one falls, and in her concluding speech Leary's buried her Bill with dignity.
"It's been a real privilege to be able to have this reading on my Bill, and I want to acknowledge my late mother for her Leary luck in getting my Bill drawn. It's continuing even after her departure, so thanks very much, Mum," she said.
"I can feel the sun setting on my sunset clauses Bill ... it's such a shame that the government members won't support it in its first reading, because if they had, I think they would find, actually, there would be many property developers who would support this Bill because they do not want to be tarnished by the reputation of a few bad apples. That's certainly been the experience in Australia, where their equivalent Bill was overwhelmingly supported ... That's, I'm sure, what would have happened here, but, sadly, we won't get that chance."
Leary then put in a plug for her other Bill, stressing that yet again she was trying to protect the little guy or gal against the big players.
"I note that this legislation has worked very well in Australia. I am going to let the sun set on it now — it's the last gasp — but don't worry, we've got the Retirement Villages (Fairer Repayments) Amendment Bill and you still have a chance to support that, National Party members."
Well, at least Leary knows that she has one likely backer.
mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz
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