I could not be happier for the Bella Vista families. They are getting, we would hope, what they should have all along. The bit we still don't know is exactly how much.

One would hope from what we saw yesterday, it’s a fair and equitable amount of money whereby everyone walks away if not happy, at least feeling as though they have been dealt with as best they can be given the circumstances. And that is the part, that if nothing else is learned out of this whole catastrophe, that once and for all can we actually get our act together in terms of rules and regulations and do things a bit more professionally.

Because although the Tauranga Council did the right thing. And how could they not after hearing those stories yesterday? But although they have done the right thing, they, like all councils, have done it with other peoples' money and it's money they should never have had to spend given they should never have had to be in the position they have been in. And it's not just them. How many cases do we need?

We've got the billions the leaky homes scandal is costing us and all the way back to the Christchurch earthquake with buildings that collapsed that weren't appropriately ticked off. The sheer abdication of duty in all these cases is staggering. And once again we reiterate that although the council weren't alone in their failings. They have an over-arching system in which they insist in running us all through rings, hoops and red tape. Plus charging us a fortune for it. This all leads us to a potential alternative. Why, if we can’t do it properly, do we have these rules at all?

Why so much compliance when really in all reality it counts for nothing? Look at those families yesterday in Tauranga, their lives tipped upside down because of regulatory failure. A false confidence brought about by a system they had no choice in whether they participated in or not, charged full whack, made to wait a year to tick all the boxes. And for what? What the hell had been ticked off? What on Earth had been inspected and signed off as acceptable? Five year olds could have done a better job, you could have thrown darts at a board and had a better strike rate.

Just what was it you were paying for? When at the end of it all the land is crap, the house is crap and you’ve got paper saying it's all good to go because some muppet from the council stood there, inspected it and signed it off. And then charged you for the expertise! How do you defend a system that simply doesn’t work? But for now relief and I assume the goodwill and hope that a good proper deal will be done and they can all just get on with life.