Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill

I move, That the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider the bill. I want to make three points in this contribution. The first is that we have a major problem in New Zealand with cold, damp homes, and it is causing our children in this country to be hospitalised at Third World rates for infectious and respiratory diseases. The second point I want to make is that current approaches are simply not working, and the problem of cold, damp, unhealthy homes and the public health impact that they have on our people is not being helped by current policies and regulations. The third point is that I want to talk about my bill and what it would do to solve this problem. If I have time, I would also like to address some of the objections and criticisms that have been levelled at my bill over the last year or so.

I want to start by quoting Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman of Otago University. Professor Howden-Chapman is the winner of this year’s Prime Minister’s Science Prize. She said that houses “get damp and cold and mouldy, but it also damages the people living in them, particularly babies, children, and older people. It damages their lungs. If they have heart problems, it is harder for their circulatory system to work. And so people who live in cold houses, it’s likely to aggravate their heart conditions, but for children, we get this terrible, terrible battery of respiratory infections and close contact infections because people have to crowd together in one room. So it’s pretty shocking in a country that is as wealthy as we are; we can’t make our houses warm enough for people to live in.” That, I think, is a very good summary by Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman of the problem that we are trying to deal with here.

I now want to quote from a story that ran in the Nelson Mail last year. It told a story of a family—Jared Haruru and his partner, Grace Rāpata—who live in Victory in Nelson. They have got three children under 4 years. Both parents are working, earning the minimum wage. They told the Nelson Mail that keeping their house warm in winter is a huge problem. All three children, they said, have asthma, so keeping them warm is crucial to their health. They said: “It’s a damp house. In the winter we all sleep in the same room because it’s too cold. Or we sleep in the lounge with the heat pump on, but the heat pump is not a cheap thing to run. … We have to wipe down the house all the time for mould because it’s quite damp.” That is a story that has been played out in every town, city, and neighbourhood around New Zealand. There are people, particularly kids and the elderly, getting sick unnecessarily because of cold, damp homes.

In fact, the problem is so bad that a few years ago the Child Poverty Monitor estimated that in New Zealand we are hospitalising 40,000 young children every year for poverty-related diseases. That is 40,000 kids every year in hospital for preventable diseases, and many of those diseases are related to cold, damp homes. I think everybody knows that the quality of New Zealand’s housing stock is very poor. The Building Research Association of New Zealand, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, and other Government agencies have made it very clear. In a 2010 survey the Building Research Association of New Zealand found that 22 percent—only 22 percent—of rental properties were in a good condition, but that twice as many were in a poor condition.

The students at the Wellington medical school did a study a few years ago. They interviewed the families of 150 acutely ill children who were admitted to Wellington Regional Hospital during 2 weeks in winter in 2012. What they found was that the prevalence of exposure to cold, damp, and overcrowded houses was striking in all of those families where kids had been admitted to hospital—34 percent, a full third of the admissions, were for respiratory diseases associated with the cold and damp. That is the problem, but the solutions that this Government has in place are not working. There has been a generous subsidy scheme in place to encourage people to insulate their homes. Going back to the last Labour Government, and to give credit to the current Government and the Green Party, those policies have continued on for a number of years.

More than a quarter of a million houses have been insulated with the help of those taxpayer subsidies. But the striking thing is that a tiny proportion of those houses that have been insulated were private. Only 14 percent of all of those insulated houses were private rentals. Only 5 percent of private rental houses in this country have been insulated, according to the best statistics we have, so it is very clear that private landlords have had no economic incentive to take advantage of those subsidies. What we do know is that half the children in this country who are growing up below the poverty line are living in private rentals. The very poorest people are living in private rentals. Those kids are growing up in cold, damp homes, they are getting sick unnecessarily, and that is locking them into a cycle of disadvantage. To make that worse, National drastically cut the subsidy—it cut the subsidy back by two-thirds. Treasury told it that, actually, the current funding for that subsidy is enough to insulate only one in six of the houses that are in need of it.

The other initiative or policy of this Government that falls well short of what is needed in this area is the trial warrants of fitness for State houses that Nick Smith announced a couple of years ago. We do not need warrants of fitness for State houses. If the Minister Paula Bennett wants State houses to be insulated and retrofitted with modern heating, she only needs to pick up the phone and tell the chief executive of Housing New Zealand to do that. We need warrants of fitness or minimum standards for private rentals across the whole market.

My bill offers a simple, practical, affordable, and pragmatic solution to this problem, and I urge members to vote for it tonight. What it will do is direct the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority to set standards for insulation and heating. It will require landlords, every time they post a new tenancy agreement, to make a declaration that they meet those standards. There is no big, heavy compliance mechanism involved—it is simple, it will do the trick, and it will make sure that every rental property in this country is warm and dry. And that is what we want to achieve.

There are three reasons to consider voting for this bill this evening. The first is that it is the right thing to do. We cannot go on in this country hospitalising our children for Third World diseases because our homes are too cold and damp. Secondly, it is a practical solution. I want to quote Andrew King from the New Zealand Property Investors Federation, who said that my healthy homes bill is sensible and pragmatic. This is the head of the landlords’ federation, the Property Investors Federation of New Zealand, who said that this bill that we are debating tonight is a sensible and pragmatic solution, that it tackles the two biggest problems—the cold and the damp—and that it should not incur large compliance costs. Thirdly, it makes good economic sense. What we know is that—and this is based on highly credible New Zealand - based public health research—for every dollar invested in retrofitting our homes with insulation and efficient heating we save $5 in public health expenditure. That is a no-brainer. This bill makes sound economic sense.

My final point is that we do not allow cars on the road if they do not have a decent warrant of fitness—if they are not safe and fit for purpose. We do not allow a restaurant to operate unless it has a permit to say that it is hygienic and that it meets all the necessary standards for food preparation and food hygiene. But, somehow, in New Zealand today, in the 21st century, it is OK for landlords to rent out homes that are a threat to the health of the people living in them, and I do not believe that that is acceptable any more. I say that publicly this argument has already been won. The public is behind this bill. They want to see a warrant of fitness implemented. They want to see minimum standards that make our homes healthy. They do not want to see our kids hospitalised in the numbers that they are because of cold, damp homes. It is time for this bill to be passed.

I rise to speak to this first reading of the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill, a bill that the Government will not be supporting. I acknowledge the sponsor, Phil Twyford, and congratulate him on his member’s bill being selected from the ballot. As a new MP I do look forward to that opportunity myself. Mr Twyford raises some good points, I think. Reducing the number of admissions for the vulnerable, be they young or old, to the health care system—I agree with that. Reducing the cost and more preventative intervention for the health care system—I agree with that. But I suppose what I do not agree on, and I will be raising these three points over the course of my talking tonight, is the unintended risk to housing supply for this bill, the unintended increased rents that this bill might cause, and very much the unclear level of standards that this bill will set.

Just looking at this bill—I must admit that I have not had a lot of time to look at it tonight—it is intended to ensure that every rental home, social or private, in New Zealand meets minimum standards for heating, insulation, indoor temperatures, ventilation, draft stopping, and drainage. Mr Twyford is right about the health effects of cold, damp, and leaky homes. As someone who has had a career in health, specifically mental health, I understand how this can manifest into health conditions such as bronchitis and asthma, and also how it manifests into mental health issues for people who are stressed and how it causes depression and anxiety. I suppose that is why this National Government has invested in insulating every State house that can be insulated, as well as trialling minimum quality standards on Housing New Zealand houses.

The Government, though, is yet to make a decision on minimum quality standards to other social housing providers and to the private rental market. As I say, this bill does pose an unintended consequence or threat to housing supply. The advice is that thousands of houses will never be able to be insulated and will never meet the standards required. I suppose as someone who represents an electorate that was severely hit by the first earthquake and, consequently, the second earthquake, and the lack of housing in Canterbury, we need to make sure we use all the housing stock we have. “Waimak” has the third-largest population growth of all the electorates, and we need to ensure and sustain the housing stock we have and not do anything to incur any further shortage that, unfortunately, a disaster like the earthquakes has caused. We have seen a significant population shift in Canterbury, and the housing market is responding to that.

Could I also share some experiences of mine of the way social providers and also community providers are responding to this very important need to make our houses in New Zealand drier and warmer. Last Friday I went and met with the Community Energy Action group in Canterbury, a great, fantastic organisation funded by the Government and also voluntary funding. It sends its assessors out to assess houses in order to understand how it can warm them up and make them healthier to live in. It has various means for that. One is the Curtain Bank where it takes donations of curtains, puts lining in them, and provides these free of charge to any houses that might like them.

It also provides advice on insulation, whether that be in the floors, in the walls, or in the ceilings. We do have a problem with modern design and the downlights in the ceiling. We find that the insulation has been cut away around those downlights, so the group has very ingeniously developed a plastic dome that sits on top of that so the insulation can go over the top. It also gives advice on how to use a woodburner more effectively, and how to use plastic strips across single windows, as well. So that very much gives an example and a flavour of organisations already out there supporting the need and demand of making houses drier and warmer.

On Monday I also went and met the Comcare Trust, which has recently been announced to provide social housing and emergency housing in Canterbury with the VisionWest Community Trust. It is a very much needed housing supply for 8 weeks for singles and families. It was very interesting understanding their sense of definitions of homelessness. They talked about street homelessness, people who are very problematic in housing, as well as people who are waiting on the Ministry of Social Development wait-lists, and waiting for housing to come up. They were very much talking about building new social housing that will be dry, warm, and insulated.

Just to summarise, I am not supporting this bill because of those three things. I am very much concerned about this bill—the unintended risk to housing supply, whether this means that once the bill comes in tenancies will have to be cancelled and people will have to be put out on the street; and also the unintended consequence of increased rents. Will this force very vulnerable people in the rental market to seek further overcrowded housing as this level of rentals is taken off the market? And I am very much unclear about the level of standards that this bill will be set at. It would be interesting to hear further information about what the levels of standards of this bill will be. This is the reason that I do not support this bill.

I seek leave for the House to adjourn at the conclusion of the first reading debate on the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill until the next sitting day.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

A few months ago I had my colleague Phil Twyford attend a meeting of people who are interested in housing issues in Christchurch. There were a few very knowledgable who spoke at that meeting. Two of them, I have to say, quoted John A Lee. Those on this side of the House know John A Lee’s legacy was really around the construction of State homes in the 1930s. His quote is: “It is well to remember that good housing is essential for a good community.” We all know that. The speakers who have spoken already, and who will speak after, will know the implications of good, warm, dry, and affordable housing. In those days, harking back to John A Lee, they knew about housing. Housing New Zealand homes were the gold standard. Everybody wanted to have a State house because they were so well constructed. They were the real basis, they were the building blocks, for our communities.

Decent housing does more than just provide a roof over people’s heads; it actually does many things including, it is well-known, leading to improving or stabilising good health outcomes for our community. But it does something else as well. Sustainable housing is one of the major ways to build strong communities. Families are able to stay in their houses, put down roots, form connections into the community, the kids go to the same school, they have friends, the parents also are able to get support from the wider community, and it is really important that we do everything we can to ensure that people are not only in decent housing but in sustainable housing.

Just to quote from something that I was reading today: “Every child deserves to grow up in a warm, dry house.” I do not think anybody on either side of the House would argue with that. It is absolutely important to all of us that our families grow up in warm, dry houses. But I want to tell you about a visit that I made during winter of last year to a constituent of mine who lives in a Housing New Zealand home. I guess in a sense it challenges what Matt Doocey said about Housing New Zealand and its maintenance programme. This was a mother of either three children or four children. As I recall, they were living in a three-bedroom home. The home was not well insulated. They had a heat pump in the lounge and everyone crowded into the lounge. It was the only room that was able to be heated. There was a problem with mould in one of the children’s bedrooms, and of course we know mould is a real symptom of a sick house. A sick house, a poorly insulated house, leads to sick children.

We visited during the day—it was about lunchtime. We walked through the house, and as we walked through the house the condensation could be seen coming out of our mouths. This was a Housing New Zealand home, provided for a family to grow up in. This particular woman was asking for my assistance to help her to transfer out of this house, which was absolutely not appropriate for her children to be living in. They were sick. She had an infant as well as some toddlers in the house, and it was totally inappropriate.

If the Government cannot meet a standard that is fit for our communities, how can it tell us that this bill is not appropriate? Landlords in this country should not be allowed to get away with the housing conditions that many of our families currently endure, and pay good money for as well. I do not see the point in this Government supporting landlords to behave in this way. They had plenty of opportunity to bring their homes up to standard when the subsidised insulation programme was put in place and they have not taken advantage of it. Now it is time for us to set the standards. I really support this bill to the select committee. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill in the name of Phil Twyford. We do not support this bill. This bill is to amend two Acts. It amends the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act 2000 to require the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority to set standards for heating and insulation in residential rental properties. It also amends the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 to require all landlords to then meet those standards that will be set by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority.

We believe that our first duty is to ensure that our own houses—that means our State houses—are in order, which means our first step is to make sure that these houses are insulated, and that is what we are doing. We are insulating every State house that can be insulated. The Government is taking a practical approach to this issue, and for that we are developing a practical minimum quality standard. This standard will be applied to all State houses. This minimum quality standard has been already trialled on 500 Housing New Zealand houses. The National Government is committed to providing drier, healthier, and warmer homes. That is why we are focusing on getting State houses insulated first.

About this member’s bill—there are a few issues in this bill that are not clear. The first, and most important, one is that it does not say when it would come into effect. It just says that it will be illegal to enter into a tenancy agreement from 7 days after the regulation takes effect for homes that do not meet the imposed standard. This will actually create a big commotion in the residential rental market, because people will not get time to make sure that they have got their properties inspected and that the properties are compliant with the standards that will be set. So as a result, landlords will be pulling out their properties from the market because they do not want to face those legal actions that are prescribed in this bill. If you look at the number of tenancy agreements that are entered into each day, that number is around 1,400. That tells us the magnitude of the problem that this bill could create.

Secondly, insulation does not mean better quality. The National Government is focusing on the overall quality of houses, and that is why we are working on minimum quality standards. Minimum quality standards cover more than just insulation.

The third issue is about standards. It is not very clear about the standards that will be set for these rental properties, because if the standards are set low, then those standards will not meet the purpose of this bill because those houses will not be drier and warmer. But if the standards are set high, then it will have some indirect consequences. These consequences can be that some houses are such that they will not be able to meet those standards and will be out of the market. That will push the rent up. In the private sector, if there are more rules, more regulations, and more restrictions, that is going to push rents up.

Another issue with these standards is that this bill puts the whole responsibility of meeting these standards on the landlord. This is not practically possible, because in maintaining indoor temperature and ventilation there should be some kind of arrangement with the person who is living in the house as well, and because some houses are designed such that there will be restrictions, as per the design, as to what can be modified.

The final issue that I would like to talk about is that, as per this bill, it appears that landlords with new tenancies would not be given any period of notice to upgrade their property. This lack of notice is not workable or practical. With the way this bill is currently drafted, it looks like this bill is going to create more social problems and more health problems, and this will be a big risk to housing supply.

Due to these reasons that I have listed, I do not see any value in this bill. Instead, I see numerous complications in the housing market due to this bill. The National Government is committed to helping families live in drier, warmer, healthier, and affordable homes, and providing drier, warmer, healthier, and affordable homes is a much wider issue than what is covered in this bill. That is why I do not support this bill. Thank you.

It must be hell on earth to be a backbencher in National, after listening to today’s contributions. I have heard such rubbish from the backbench of National, and that last one really did take the cake. I am going to be generous, though, and say that it is hard when you are new, and it is hard when you get this huge amount of information from Steven Joyce’s—somewhat defunct now because they are all up in Northland—research unit that is giving you all this rubbish to say and you have got no other choice but to say it. So I have some sympathy, but it must just be impossible to walk out of this House feeling like you have made any kind of useful contribution if you have to spout that kind of rubbish.

We have heard all sorts of alarmist, extremist claims about why New Zealanders are not entitled to have a decent standard of housing, because that is all that this bill—Phil Twyford’s bill—does. It simply respects the fact that New Zealanders are entitled to a decent standard of housing—and in the rental market, of course, they are paying good money. People pay good money for the houses that they rent, but the standards are so low that, frankly, toasters have more regulatory controls for safety than New Zealand houses do. This bill is one attempt to try to fix that, to provide some guidance and some criteria so that if landlords want to be in the profit-making business by renting out this particular piece of property, there are some standards that they should meet because the consequences of no standards are so obvious for everyone to see: severe health consequences for our kids, severe health consequences for older New Zealanders, and increased energy costs for families and for older New Zealanders.

We know, from the report that was done on the home insulation scheme that the Green Party and Labour first worked to implement and the Green Party and National then worked to implement, that one of the major advantages of the early years of the home insulation scheme was that lives were saved. Primarily, it was the lives of older people in this country, because they were the ones who were struggling, particularly those living on their own, to pay power bills and who were suffering severe health consequences as a result of living in cold, damp homes, and it led to early death. These are the reports from the Government’s own agencies about the benefits of decent standards in New Zealand housing. So I ask New Zealanders: please, just do not listen to National members—I really do not even know why they are even here if they are going to make ridiculous arguments like that—and instead look at the evidence.

A million New Zealanders rent in this country and 400,000 children live in rental accommodation. It is a business. Rental accommodation is a business, and a business needs to be decently regulated. I will just also remind the country that National was the party of the leaky homes, right? It was the party that deregulated the building industry so that it was perfectly legal and legit for your house to be built and then rot around you, and nothing could be done.

💬 Hon David Parker: Maurice Williamson.

Maurice Williamson is still in the National Party backbenches. How he has managed to survive that long back there, I do not know, especially after that debacle. So when New Zealanders are listening to National talking about housing, just remember that the leaky homes debacle, which New Zealanders are still paying for and still struggling with, is a result of deregulation and a reduction in the standards that existed even then.

Now we have an opportunity to improve the circumstances of New Zealanders’ housing for families, for kids, and for older people to make sure that they can actually get the value of the power bills that they are paying, and National is yet again saying no to New Zealanders: “Your standard of living, your health, and your well-being are not our concern.” What is the point of National? It really does beg the question.

I do want to acknowledge Jeanette Fitzsimons in the implementation of what was then the Heat Smart programme and the home insulation programme and others who worked with her on that in the years since. We can still continue to build on that. National might want to vote down this bill but Labour and the Greens will continue to push for and promote increased standards for rental housing. We know that it is so important to our kids and our people. Labour, the Greens, and other parties in the Opposition will stand up for families and New Zealanders. Thank you.

I would just like to comment on the previous contribution and remind the member Metiria Turei that the worst day in Government is better than the best day in Opposition. I suspect that the member had something for dinner that did not agree with her.

It is a pleasure to make a contribution on the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill, in the name of Phil Twyford. I commend the member for having a go and getting it through the ballot, which seems to be quite difficult. I understand that many members who have been here for many years have not had a bill drawn from the ballot, so I look forward to having one drawn out myself.

In 1937 Michael Joseph Savage carried a table into the very first State home in New Zealand. They were cold and damp then, and they are cold and damp today. Nothing has changed with that, but what has changed is that National has actually gone out there and insulated every State house that it could—every single State house that it could. That costs a lot of money and it is not practical in some cases.

I would like to take it back to a person experience. I lived in a cold house for quite some time when I was starting out. It was cold and it was damp. We used to get ice on the windows, but not on the outside; we got ice on the inside. It was pretty cold. In fact, when my brother stayed with me one time in the winter we ended up with a bottle of beer freezing under the bed, so it was pretty cold, but we got through it all right. That is what it is like to live in the country in rural Canterbury. That is what happens in the winter—it gets cold. We looked at insulating that house but we could not. To put insulation under the floor was impossible. To put insulation in the walls became just undoable. It was too expensive. So what we would have, if this bill was to go through, would be a situation where the people at the very bottom, who are living in those houses in the worst places in New Zealand, would be priced out of the market. It is the law of unintended consequences.

This issue really is something that has to have a lot of thought put into it. If you are going to bring in standards, it has to be done in a way that is actually practical. It is great to have good ideas, and I commend the member for that, but a little bit of practicality every now and again would be quite helpful. There are lots of health issues, as we have heard, with all these sorts of things, but the amendments proposed for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act 2000 and the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 simply will not do what we want, which is to make houses better for New Zealanders.

As I have said, we have insulted every State house that can be insulated, and now we are trying to get rid of those houses, but we cannot. The Opposition is really kicking up a stink about it. We are trying to do the right thing for those people who are living in those houses, and we are not really getting any support. What is the endgame here?

💬 Hon David Parker: Jeanette Fitzsimons.

I beg your pardon?

💬 Hon David Parker: It was Jeanette Fitzsimons. Give credit where it’s due. It was her Budget bid.

No, she did not hold the purse strings there. The one reason why it is so difficult to actually get all these houses up to standard is that these designs have changed so much over the time since they were designed and built that there is no one standard that will easily fix that problem. So I am not going to support this bill. We are not supporting the bill. I do commend the member for having a go, but, really, he just needs to go back and have another think about it. Thank you.

First of all, I want to congratulate Phil Twyford on having this very good bill selected from the ballot. I wish that I could be as lucky. However, it is great to be able to stand up and support a bill of this quality. And I might say, at the beginning, that I think that the contributions from the members opposite have been utterly pathetic, nothing more than a litany of excuses to do nothing, completely lacking any logic at all and, most of all, lacking compassion for people who are, these days, still, in this day and age, required to live in unhealthy homes because they are not properly insulated and not properly heated. Some of them have talked nonsense about unintended consequences when, if they bothered to read the bill at all, they would have found that there is a 5-year phase-in period, which gives landlords plenty of time to make preparations, and the landlords association itself actually agrees with this bill. So why do those members opposite not actually listen to those people? Because they do know what they are talking about.

There is no doubt that home insulation and home heating are the foremost issues for healthy homes in this country—and that means all homes—but this bill deals with only rental homes, and they, of course, are the homes usually in most need of it. New Zealand First agrees that every rental home in New Zealand must meet minimum standards for heating and insulation. That does require legislation, and this is that legislation. It is the sort of legislation that the Government itself should be bringing forward, if it had any wit, but it does not. The bill will require the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority to set the standards—the bill actually says 1 April 2014, but clearly that will be amended. The important thing is that it will make it mandatory for landlords to meet those standards. I can say this: most good landlords actually do want that because they know it will create a level playing field, and that is good for the market. One of those members opposite—I cannot remember her name—talked a load of nonsense about people being thrown out of homes, about the market not being able to cope, and so on. Well, a properly regulated market actually works better, and this market would, too.

The bill also amends the Residential Tenancies Act 1986, and it talks about requiring every tenancy agreement to require that the standards to be set would be met. That actually gives the tenants a way of enforcing good standards, and so they should be able to. They are the ones best in a position to do it. This should have been done a long, long time ago, and it is good to see that it could be done now, if only the National Government would think a little more clearly about the whole issue.

My experience in dealing with tenants, homeowners, and housing problems in Christchurch has come to a head—I suppose I should say—because of the earthquakes in Christchurch. Like other Christchurch MPs, I have dealt with a whole list of people with all sorts of different problems about that. What that means is, actually, this bill is only the beginning. A lot more really needs to be done. This bill takes a strictly regulatory approach, and that is fine, but if I were to list some of the other things that need to be done, you will see what I mean. For example, earthquake resistance is another issue that really should be dealt with in a bill like this, and which the Government should be doing something about. There is a lot of information about that now, and it can be done without huge expense. Another lesson we have learned is about flood protection. Remember the people in the Flockton basin in Christchurch? That is another big issue that really needs to be dealt with, too. Then there are other things as well. Another example would be—and somebody else has already mentioned this—the huge problem of leaky homes. We still do not really understand the magnitude of that.

So there is a lot more to be done, but this bill is a very solid and important step in the right direction, and we should all, in this House, be supporting it.

Contrary to what we have heard from some of the other speakers so far in this debate, we on this side of the House do believe that New Zealanders should live in warm and cosy homes, whether they are in a cottage or a villa in town or an apartment, or whether they are Green or New Zealand First Party supporters and live in an igloo, a yurt, a tepee, or a mud hut. They deserve to have a warm and healthy home to live in.

This member, Mr Twyford, starts from a reasonably sensible position; I will concede that. Unfortunately, the bill soon degenerates into an absolute mess and will achieve, in some cases, quite the opposite, I think, of what that member sets out to achieve. This is typical of a smug, know-it-all, and Stalinist heavy-handed approach, insisting that landlords meet standards that are actually beyond their control. It is one thing to require a level of insulation; it is quite another to determine what the interior temperature of a home must be, given that a number of things that tenants themselves do, from opening the window to switching a heater on, will regulate that temperature. So I think that is an example of the confused and muddled drafting that Mr Twyford has unfortunately fallen victim to here in this bill.

A point that he raised was that this will not actually come into force immediately for existing tenancies—well, that is all very well and good, but there are 1,400 new tenancies signed every week. So from day one of this bill taking effect, as it is currently drafted, landlords would be required to meet the new conditions, as set by Mr Twyford, with no time in order to install insulation.

As the bill is currently drafted there is also a huge degree of unintended consequences that we just do not know about. We have heard comments from some of the parties opposite about notes being drafted by our research unit. Well, unlike the Opposition, as a Government we also have the advantage of having officials, hard-working public servants here in Wellington, at ministries such as the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment who do give good advice—far better-considered advice than, clearly, Opposition parties have access to. If significant upgrades are required, there is only one logical consequence that will flow from that, and that is rent increases, often for the most vulnerable in society. So this bill, coming with good intentions as it does, still manages to achieve quite the opposite, I think, of Mr Twyford’s original intentions.

This Government is focused on providing good quality housing for New Zealanders. An example of this is the Tāmaki Redevelopment Co. in Auckland, which is aiming to build 6,000 new homes—social housing with integrated community facilities. This is an excellent example of the direction that we are heading in, working and partnering with community groups and not taking a statist and Stalinist approach, as members opposite seem to want to do. I will not be supporting this bill past this reading.

Earlier this evening my colleague Catherine Delahunty referred to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which, of course, is a way of thinking about basic human needs that need to be met in order for a human being to achieve their potential. What we have seen from the Government members this evening is also an approach based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We have seen them defeat the “Feed the Kids Bill” and then David Shearer’s alternative solution to the same problem. The right to food—the need for food—is one of those basic rights.

Another of those basic rights is the right—the need—for warmth and shelter, and it seems that the Government is intending to vote against this, as well. So it appears that, rather than approaching those basic needs on the basis of trying to progressively meet them all, which actually is kind of the purpose of government, the Government is instead intent on destroying all of those needs and ensuring that they are not met. If I were Matt Doocey, I would be embarrassed. The man has come from a health background and, therefore, he must know that health status is driven by environment—by the environment that people in communities find themselves in—and there is no more direct kind of environment than the housing that we live in.

The evidence is abundant—Phil Twyford captured a small summary of that in his opening contribution—that housing in New Zealand is one of the major drivers of ill health in this country, in two ways. First of all, it is through overcrowding. The Government’s failure to ensure an adequate supply of housing is condemning New Zealanders to live in overcrowded conditions that feed respiratory and skin infections and that feed rheumatic fever, and even more serious conditions. The second way in which poor-quality housing drives ill health is through that housing being cold or damp or drafty or mouldy. That is the condition that this bill sets out to address. Both of those problems are getting worse—overcrowding because of the shortage of supply and because, in particular, of the decreasing affordability of housing in this country—but the poor-quality housing is getting worse because it acts as a safety valve for the Government’s failure to provide affordable housing. That is right, and Matt Doocey’s opening contribution, in fact, pretty much said that. It said that the Government is worried that this would force up rental costs.

💬 Denis O’Rourke: It won’t.

As Denis O’Rourke has said, you know, it is unlikely to result. What that means is that the Government has a balanced solution, from its point of view. It enables landlords to provide poor-quality, shoddy housing and that enables it to get away with, in fact, not ensuring that there is affordable housing available to New Zealanders. It is a disgrace. The Green Party, as Metiria Turei has commented already this evening, has worked for many years on this issue of the quality of housing. In particular, Jeanette Fitzsimons was an absolute battler for ensuring that houses were as well insulated and energy-efficient as they could be, working first with Labour and then with National to ensure that our insulation schemes were progressed.

We have our own bill. It takes a different approach from Mr Twyford’s. That is in the ballot, but we will be supporting his bill tonight. Any of the problems that the Government members have addressed in their contributions tonight could and should be addressed by the select committee. That is the proper process for legislation. It seems to me that it is an unusual state of affairs when we have tenants, we have landlords—and I notice that the Property Investors Federation speaks to Mr Twyford and me; it is a bit of a worry that it is not speaking to the Government—and we have the health professionals all saying that this is what we need to do. So why will the Government not do it or allow it to be done?

It is just quite incredible to hear that from the previous speaker, Kevin Hague—a man who aspires to be a party leader but who does not even know the economic growth rate of the last quarter or year criticises the arguments of a speaker on this side of the House. That is rich indeed, although it is not surprising because that member has been fixated on rich for all the months of this 51st Parliament. I rise in opposition to this member’s bill. It is ill-defined and poorly targeted. In fact, it is not targeted at all. It is a one-size-fits-all approach and, as we on this side know, one size does not fit all. It is also a solution by decree. It has no specifications. It has no fundamental standard details. It merely says: “We’ll make a couple of changes and the job’s done.” Some would say that is the typical approach of the Labour Party—in fact, some might describe it as its policy methodology.

What does the bill do? It does seek to set a single standard across all rentals. It takes into no consideration at all the challenges from different builds, different types, and different previous standards. It merely says that everyone can comply with this one set standard. It does not understand and takes no cognisance at all of some of the challenges, as we have heard from a previous speaker on this side of the House. Some of the challenges are simply insurmountable, given current insulation. Others are challenging but could be addressed. However, they could be addressed only at major cost. What we on this side of the House understand but, clearly, is not understood on the other side of the House or on the cross benches, is that an increase in costs to the landlord is going to be borne by the tenant, if not in the short term then certainly in the long run. So what we have is a bill that is going to propose what amounts to an increase in cost to tenants and that the Opposition members think is somehow going to solve an affordability problem and a housing problem. It simply will not.

Let us have a look at the standards that are specified in the bill. Well, the answer is that there are none, really. We simply do not know whether the standards that will come into force will be so high that they will compromise supply of rental stock because landlords cannot afford to do it or whether they will simply compromise the cost that tenants have to pay. Of course, the other possibility is that the standards will shoot too low, in which case they will not improve the warmth or dryness of the rental stock either. At the moment, in the bill that is being introduced, we simply do not know. There is the rub and the heart of the problems that this bill will create or exacerbate. It will simply force properties out of supply or it will force significant costs on landlords, which in the reality of this market environment, which the members opposite have spoken about, will simply force greater costs on to tenants.

It proposes a measurement that would make the person legally responsible for something they cannot control. It is the internal temperature and ventilation. That is something that is drivel. It is highly dependent on the tenant’s behaviour, and yet they would seek to make the landlord responsible. That is incredible, absolutely incredible. What the National Party is doing is that we are very clear that housing affordability is driven by supply challenges and we are addressing those through strong, pragmatic means to open up land supply, to reduce regulatory costs, and to reduce materials’ costs, and by tackling problems head-on. We are taking on the real problems for vulnerable renters by addressing insulation in State houses—something we have already done. We have grabbed the bull by the horns and have actually solved that particular problem.

The next step in that plan is developing a practical minimum quality standard and applying that to our State housing stock—the stock, as I have said, where the most vulnerable low-income earners are likely to reside. So we have tackled the problem pragmatically, using measures that will work and that have been proven to work. The Opposition is simply proposing a decree and a one size fits all that will not. I cannot support that and I will not. Thank you.

I call Phil Twyford—5 minutes in reply.

Let me address the three objections that I heard from the members opposite. The first is that somehow my bill would result in the unintended consequence of putting housing supply at risk and causing large numbers of rental properties to suddenly no longer be able to be rented. Well, if the members opposite had actually taken the trouble to read the bill, they would understand that there is a 5-year phase-in period. Every time a new tenancy agreement is signed, a landlord is required to meet the new prescribed standards. On average a tenancy agreement lasts 15 months, so over that period of 5 years it is easy to see—I think most normal people would understand—that all of the rental properties would then be brought up to scratch.

The second objection I heard from members opposite was that somehow this bill was going to result in rents going up. I ask those members to think about this. The estimated cost of retrofitting a standard three-bedroom New Zealand home with heat pumps and insulation would be about $5,000, according to the experts. That is a $5,000 cost that would have a 15-year lifetime—all right? Let us consider that the median rent in New Zealand is about $360 a week—that rental property, a median New Zealand rental property, would generate a gross revenue stream over those 15 years of more than $280,000. So that is a $5,000 outlay to bring the house up to minimum standards, to ensure it is not a health hazard for the people living in it, as compared with a gross revenue stream, over the same time period, of more than $280,000. On top of that, we all know that what sets rents is supply and demand—all right? That is why over the last decade rents have been relatively static in most New Zealand markets—because there is a decent supply of rental properties. So supply and demand is going to mean—

💬 Brett Hudson: Rents are going to go up.

—that rents will not necessarily go up, and the member cannot predict that with any confidence. It is not at all true to suggest that this bill will put rents up.

Government members also tried to say that the bill has unclear standards, but what the bill says is that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority will be mandated to set standards, taking into account the economic and social reality of the day, and it will be required to update those standards regularly to ensure that they have a positive effect. So the arguments put up by the Government members simply do not stack up.

So why does National oppose this bill? I think, actually, that Pattrick Smellie, the journalist, had a very interesting theory about why National does not support this bill. What he said was that National’s electoral base tends to include large numbers of small, non-professional landlords, and National believes it would be politically unpalatable for it to be associated with regulating landlords. What the members opposite seem to be completely oblivious to is that the New Zealand Property Investors Federation has said that this bill is a sensible and pragmatic measure. It supports it. So what is National doing by voting against this bill? It is standing on the side of the worst, bottom-of-the-barrel, ratbag landlords, who are content to compete against other landlords by renting out slums—cold damp housing that is not fit for people to live in. National stands with those people.

Labour and the Opposition parties on this side of the House stand with professional landlords who want to rent out good quality houses. We stand on the side of the one-third of New Zealanders who rent. One-third of the New Zealand people live in rental properties. They need warm, dry homes for their kids to grow up in, but National members do not understand that. They are happy to stand on the side of slum landlords and against ordinary New Zealanders who want their kids to grow up in warm, dry homes.