Justice still a daydream eight years on

Leaky home owners are the forgotten people, the people whose lives and futures have been stripped away from them, described as the "walking dead" by a man who has had more to do with them at ground level than most.

We have been fighting for justice for over eight years now and have seen callousness, carelessness and morally reprehensible denial of responsibility rife throughout the ambulance-at-the-bottom-of-the-cliff solution that the Labour Government put in place after the National Government deregulated the building industry, thus removing the fence at the top of the cliff.

The icing on the cake comes in a letter to us written by Maurice Williamson. "Please be assured the Government is committed to resolving the issue of leaky homes, bearing in mind the unfortunate experience you and others have had," he says.

Unfortunate experience? We are close to bankrupt. Our health is gone. We have no prospect of ever recovering the value of the house we poured our lifetime of work and savings into.

We cannot so much as drink a cup of coffee in our kitchen without looking straight at the cause of our ruin and this is an unfortunate experience? What would the minister call a death in the family? A small blip on the radar?

After eight years of the toothless dithering that formed the "effective action" of the Government's Weathertightness Tribunal, we finally had to lodge a claim at adjudication of $475,000, without which we don't stand a chance of fixing our home to the standard we were guaranteed it was at when we bought it. In terms of this solution, the Government which brought about the situation would need to provide us with just $47,500 (possibly a loan), the council that neglected its inspection regime and falsified its code compliance certificate would need to find just $123,500, the dishonest developers who knowingly sold us a dangerous pile would wander off scot-free and we, near bankrupt, exhausted and disillusioned, would need to provide the remaining $304,000.

How? Immigration in our case has proved to be indenture.

Let the buyer indeed beware.

In August, Mayor John Banks said he was in "helpful discussions" with Mr Williamson to bring an end to leaky building disputes going to court.

And now Mr Williamson has come up with the solution.

We have learnt a big lesson and we must move on. Oh and the most important bit: let's forget our responsibilities. I think this Government did that years ago.