Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill

I move, That the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This bill is part of the Government’s programme of improving the quality of our older building stock. It is about making our homes warmer, our homes healthier, and it is about saving lives.

Just last night Parliament passed the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill, by 120 votes to one, to upgrade our buildings in respect of earthquake risk—legislation that is expected to save the lives of 300 New Zealanders over the course of the next century. This bill too is about improving New Zealand’s building stock, but is focused on our rental properties.

The first important change is the requirement for smoke alarms to be in all of our rental properties by 1 July this year. Seventy-five percent of fatal fires are in properties without a smoke alarm and most of those are rental properties. We currently are going into winter, with 120,000 properties that are without a smoke alarm. It is estimated that the provisions in this bill will save three lives a year. That is about the same as the earthquake-prone buildings legislation, although it is interesting to note that where that legislation will cost $800 million, this bill is expected to cost only $4 million—emphasising just what a no-brainer smoke alarms are in our homes. It comes with a cost benefit of over $17 for each dollar of cost.

The regulations to implement the smoke alarm requirement have been consulted on and are in the public arena. We are requiring all smoke alarms—the new ones—both where homes do not have them or where they are replacing existing smoke alarms, to be the new, long-life, 10-year smoke alarms, because there have been too many tragedies where batteries have not been replaced, with a consequent loss of life. We are requiring in those regulations that those smoke alarms be installed to the manufacturer’s requirements. We are requiring that the smoke alarms cover the different floors of houses, that they cover sleepouts, that they cover caravans, and that they require the spread through a home to be able to provide that protection. I would be very surprised if there was a single member of this House who would question that very practical requirement.

The second very important change is in respect of the insulation of houses and it needs to be seen in the context of how progressive our Government has been in making progress on this issue. The first thing we did when we came into Government was say that a Government needs to get its own house in order. We had 30,000 State houses that were not insulated, and in our first term we got on and got those insulated. The biggest single item of new Government expenditure in the term of this Government has been the hundreds of millions of dollars that we put into the Warm Up New Zealand programme of providing a subsidy to insulate houses, and I acknowledge the Green Party’s support for that programme. We have done 290,000 houses with those subsidies.

The next step addressed in this bill is a compulsory requirement for landlords to insulate those 180,000 homes that are not insulated. The combination of these initiatives comes to a total of over 500,000 homes. I do find a bit rich the comments from the likes of Mr Twyford that these measures are inadequate and too little, too late, when—let me compare the numbers. They are 500,000 homes insulated in programmes by this Government, and fewer than 50,000 under the previous 9 years of the last Labour Government—that is, this Government is doing 10 times as much in terms of getting our homes insulated, and those benefits are coming through. This bill requires all social housing—that is, where the Government is paying a high level of subsidy—to have these insulation requirements in place by 1 July this year, and it requires them to all be done by 1 July 2019.

I do find it ironic that only last week we debated a member’s bill from Mr Little. That member’s bill has a timetable that is 4 years slower than the requirement for homes to be insulated under this bill. There is a debate about the insulation standard and some misinformation, and I want to make it absolutely clear, because we have published and consulted on the regulations to support this law about the level of insulation, that every new home has to be insulated to the 2008 standard. Any home without insulation has to be insulated to the 2008 standard. Any home that is insulated but the insulation is no longer in a fit state has to be upgraded to the 2008 standard.

The debate is on those properties, the hundreds of thousands of properties that were built after 1978 that have insulation and it is in reasonable condition—should they have to upgrade to the 2008 standard? I want to put forward a logical case as to why that is not included in the bill. Firstly, it is this: delivering on having 180,000 homes insulated requires 60,000 per year. The advice from the insulation industry is that it is going to push them to limit to get that job done by 1 July 2019. Secondly—and let me specifically give you the numbers—a home insulated to the 1978 standard has an 84 percent reduction in heat loss, to the 2001 standard it is 87 percent, and to the 2008 standard it is 92 percent. In other words, when we take an uninsulated home and we insulate it, we get a 92 percent reduction in heat loss—a massive gain. Actually, requiring a home that was built in 2007 to be insulated gains only an extra 5 percent reduction in heat loss, and the cost-benefit analysis is absolutely clear that it does not stack up.

Members on this side of the House do not live in that world where, when we impose costs on a sector—whether it is the rental sector or any other—it is a free good, because it is not. It is a cost that is passed on. If we pass on costs, particularly to those who are families struggling with the rental cost, then we are passing that cost on in rentals. So it is absolutely proper that when making these regulatory decisions we do look at the cost-benefit analysis, and, frankly, requiring every home to be upgraded today to the 2008 standard does not stack up in a cost-benefit analysis. Actually, we are imposing more costs than benefits.

I would also point out to members opposite that this Government is also requiring, from 1 July this year, a disclosure requirement in every tenancy agreement around the level of insulation that is in the walls, in the ceiling, and under the floor, because it is our view that the rental market will function better as a consequence of having this level of insulation there.

The last point I want to make on this bill is about the three extra requirements that we are making in residential tenancies. The first of those is in respect of giving my ministry the practical powers to be able to enforce the existing standards. One of the nonsenses in this debate around levels of dampness, issues of ventilation, and the safety of electrical, plumbing, and other fittings is that all of those are currently covered—including heating—in the existing regulations. The issue is not the regulations; the issue is enforcement. The two provisions in this bill to enable my ministry to be able to prosecute those slum landlords and ensure those properties are brought up to standard is an important practical step, and so too are the provisions around retaliatory provisions to support tenants where a landlord takes a retaliatory action by giving them notice.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

I just want to conclude by saying this is a sensible, practical bill that will make our homes warmer, it will make them drier, and it will make them safer. It provides the tools to ensure that abandoned properties do not sit vacant for ages. It strengthens, for the first time, the powers of the ministry to be able to go after those slum landlords and deal with those issues that, rightly, concern this House and New Zealanders. It is a bill that is based on good evidence and is part of this Government’s broader programme of practical policies that will work for New Zealand families. I commend the bill to the House.

For the information of the House, I do want to seek leave to table a diagram provided by my ministry in respect of the relationship between the “R” rating of insulation and heat loss, which is core to the debate about the level of insulation, to support the comments I made in my speech.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

I was listening to the comments by the Hon Dr Nick Smith about what a great bill this is. Oh that it were so! The New Zealand Herald only a few days ago described this bill as yet another grudging half measure from the Hon Dr Nick Smith. It is hard to disagree with that verdict.

I will come back to Dr Nick Smith, but before I go any further, I want to quote the Children’s Commissioner, Dr Russell Wills, who is someone whose word I place great store by—he came to Parliament to submit on this bill—pointing out that New Zealand hospitalises around 42,000 children every year with preventable diseases of poverty. Many of those are directly related to cold, damp, and mouldy homes. Dr Wills told Parliament that the standards in Nick Smith’s bill, which we are debating tonight, are inadequate. He said: “Government made a promise to [New Zealand] children … we will make your houses healthy.” Three years on from that Budget promise this bill, Dr Wills said, will do little for children living in cold, damp, and mouldy housing. It is, the Children’s Commissioner said, a wasted opportunity and a broken promise to our children. So I invite the House to reflect on those words from Dr Russell Wills, the Children’s Commissioner.

Let us talk about the problem that this bill purports to solve: 42,000 hospitalisations every year. In fact, in the latest research from Otago University, the team under Professor Philippa Howde-Chapman, which has done world-acclaimed public health research on these issues, estimates, actually, that the latest figures indicate that the rate of hospitalisation is more like 50,000 per year. What is the consequence of that? Generations of young New Zealanders growing up with permanent health defects; bronchiectasis, a permanent hardening of the lung tissue that leaves the people who have it with lifelong respiratory disorders and premature death; epidemic rates of asthma and rheumatic fever—and I could go on. There is a host of conditions—respiratory and infectious diseases that we should never even see in New Zealand in the 21st century. Many countries in Europe have not seen these diseases since the Second World War, and so many of them are closely linked with poverty, overcrowding, and cold, damp, and mouldy houses.

So Nick Smith, after obfuscating, denying, and diverting for so many years, finally brought this bill to the Parliament. He obviously thinks that we should be celebrating in the streets tonight. Well, we are not because it is, as Russell Wills said, a missed opportunity.

There are two primary defects in this bill. One of them is that it has nothing to say about heating. It is the simplest thing for anybody to understand—that if you insulate a cold, damp house, it is still a cold, damp house. Although the insulation might make it cheaper to heat that house, that is not much comfort for people if there is simply no affordable, modern heating source in that house. We also know from the research that there is a big problem with low-income families relying on unflued gas heaters, which are a health hazard and are an expensive and inefficient form of heating. What commonly happens, actually, is that all the members of a family will crowd into one room in the winter to try to stay warm together and, to avoid the expense of heating the whole house, they will heat only one room. That room then becomes a Petri dish for infection. So that is the first defect. The bill has nothing to say about heating standards or ventilation, for that matter—the other really important thing in preventing mould.

The second big defect in Nick Smith’s bill, which the Social Services Committee, by majority, has failed to address—and I want to stress that the Labour, Greens, and New Zealand First members strongly argued that the loophole in Nick Smith’s legislation standards should be closed. The proposed standards exist in draft regulations that have been released alongside this bill. What they say is that if a house has been insulated to the 1978 building standard, which would be as thick as this insulation sample, then under Nick Smith’s bill it does not need to be upgraded to the modern 2008 standard, which is as thick as this other insulation sample. So this is Nick Smith’s 1978 standard that he is legislating with this bill, which will allow, in his own words, “hundreds of thousands of houses in New Zealand” that have insulation to this standard, which could be 20 years or 30 years old—they will not have to upgrade to the modern 2008 standard.

I find that unbelievable. I find it unbelievable that in a bill that purports to be about improving the quality of New Zealand housing, the Minister Nick Smith is legislating to allow hundreds of thousands of New Zealand houses to continue with this redundant, old-fashioned 1978 insulation standard. One submitter after another—public health organisations, paediatricians, community organisations, the insulators who do the retrofitting work all around New Zealand, and community energy groups—came along to the select committee and told us that that was the most ridiculous thing to do. Yet the National Party members, supported by their Minister, voted to keep this loophole in the bill. It is a real shame.

I want to talk about a matter that the Minister addressed in his speech where the record needs to be set straight. Nick Smith is fond of crowing that the National Government has insulated 300,000 houses as if this was National’s idea and its initiative. He likes to point out that the last Labour Government insulated 50,000 retrofits. The truth is that the whole idea of retrofitting houses and rental properties, providing subsidies, and insulating them and providing a modern heating source is something that was developed under the last Labour-led Government. I want to pay tribute to Jeanette Fitzsimons, the then Green Party co-leader, and David Parker, who was the Minister of Energy under the last Labour Government. They decided that not only was insulation important but a clean heating device was also important, and with the help of New Zealand First, Greens, and Labour they brought in under the emissions trading scheme legislation a $1 billion fund in the emissions trading scheme Act to be used over the period to 2024 for improved energy efficiency and clean-heat retrofits—$1 billion to be spent insulating houses in the period through to 2024. That was legislated for.

But what happened when National came in? It abolished those provisions. It gutted the emissions trading scheme. It backed wealthy farmers, who were responsible for producing 50 percent of the carbon emissions that this country is responsible for. It gutted the emissions trading scheme, it got rid of this provision, and then it had to scramble to get some money together to fund the subsidy programme. So what National did was it backed millionaire farmers. It chopped up the scheme that would have put hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders into warm dry homes. It repealed that fantastic scheme, and its inadequate substitute that we see here tonight in this bill does not include a clean heating device.

That is a travesty, and Nick Smith should stop rewriting history and acknowledge that if the emissions trading scheme had not been gutted and these provisions for clean-energy home retrofits had not been abolished, then far more New Zealand homes would have been retrofitted and far more children would have been spared the unnecessary hospitalisation and diseases that are caused by these housing conditions.

Research by the University of Otago showed recently that insulating to the 2008 standard would cut emissions by about 3,000 children. Under Nick Smith’s—

I am sorry to interrupt the member, but his time has expired.

It is a pleasure and an honour to rise in wholehearted support for the second reading of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. I am going to start my call tonight by just acknowledging our Minister for Building and Housing, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, for all his work that he does in this space, and the very credible work he does. I think he has brought a very credible bill to this House.

I would also like to acknowledge Alfred Ngaro, who is the chairperson of the Social Services Committee, which steered this bill through to this stage. I think it is fair to say there was lively discussion around the select committee table, and I think the slight and deft hand of Alfred Ngaro was able to administer this bill clearly to its second reading. I would also like to acknowledge the 715 submitters who took time to submit on this bill. We heard from 110 orally and, I must say, out of all the bills that I have sat on as a member of a select committee we had a very wide range of views and stakeholder groups, from landlords, tenants, low-income advocacy groups, and those with building interests around sustainability and environmental practices. I would just like to acknowledge all their time and say that they were heard, and their submissions have had input into this bill.

Most of all, I would like to acknowledge the advisers and the officials, because there is a lot of technicality about this bill. There is a lot of fact and data that we need to be informed by. This bill has become very emotive, and quite rightly. Let us be clear that where one person is injured, or where there is a fatality from fire, is one person too many. One person who rents a damp, cold house is definitely one person too many. But what we need to do—and I think the advisers and officials helped us through this—is come back and look objectively at the facts, and look at evidence-based policy and evidence-based legislation that will make a positive impact on low-income renters.

What we know is currently there is no requirement under the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 for insulation or smoke alarms, so it is quite right that we put this in. When we look at the about 270,000 private rentals that need insulation, 56 percent—or 150,000—of them are rented by low-income earners, and about 120,000 need smoke alarms. When you look at that, this is a much-needed bill. Base that on the history this Government has around retrofitting, spending hundreds of million dollars on rental properties already. There is some great work from organisations in my electorate—like Community Energy Action teaming up with the Canterbury District Health Board—working with rental property tenants who are presenting to accident and emergency around respiratory illness, and so forth. We know this method of insulating houses works and is making people safer.

The logical step now is to draw the next step, and that is around regulation. That is exactly what this bill will do. It will enact, from 1 July 2016, that all social housing income-related rents will be insulated, and private rentals by 1 July 2019. There was some question about why it was 3 years, but when we heard from the sector around scaling up to provide insulation for about 180,000 houses—about 60,000 houses a year—that very much fitted the capacity of the insulation sector.

I just want to focus, as well, around safety alarms, because that is where we need to look at the facts—just acknowledging the very hard-working volunteer firemen and women in my electorate, who are tirelessly out there advocating for free fire alarms and getting them into people’s houses. What we know is that with 120,000 houses, we have about one fire per every 400 houses and about 20 fatalities. Out of those 120,000 houses, by regulating for smoke alarms, that will save three lives every year—a potential of three lives saved every year. So it is great to see that will be brought in by 1 July 2016.

There are a couple of amendments that this bill has been brought back with. One is around increasing the penalty for unlawful acts. A lot of submitters quite rightly thought there was a power imbalance between tenants and landlords in asking for this requirement around insulation and smoke alarms. We felt that increasing the penalty from $3,000 to $4,000 was an effective tool in redressing that balance as well. We also realised, upon further exploration of this bill, there was a further amendment needed. Currently, landlords need to give 24 hours’ notice to come in and repair and provide maintenance. Now, under this amended bill, landlords will be able to come within 24 hours’ notice and fit smoke alarms as well.

I very much wholeheartedly support this bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.

I just want to reiterate what my colleague Phil Twyford said earlier. We are supporting this bill, but it is a wasted opportunity to set decent minimum standards that would ensure that all rental properties are warm and dry.

I really want to start with the Children’s Commissioner’s comments, and I really want to talk about what the Children’s Commissioner said at the Social Services Committee. Matt Doocey, the member who just spoke, is on that select committee. Phil Twyford and I are on that select committee. We heard what the Children’s Commissioner had to say. When submitting on this bill he mentioned that there are 42,000 hospital admissions and that 15 children die a year due to living in cold, mouldy, and damp houses. He argued that these standards are inadequate to resolve that. He said the “… Government made a promise to New Zealand children: We will make your house healthy. Three years on from that Budget promise, this bill will do little for children living in cold, damp, mouldy housing. It is a wasted opportunity and a broken promise to our children.”

I think that members on that side of the House should be ashamed of themselves to hear from the Children’s Commissioner that that is the case. We hear them talk about children with respiratory problems, we hear them talk about their attempts to resolve them, but I do not know whether or not they really understand the reality of the respiratory problems that our children are faced with. I do not know whether they have been into an emergency ward in the middle of a winter’s night. Some of us have, and I have to say that some of us are not actually living in poverty and are not living in overcrowded houses, but we have children whom we have had to take to the emergency ward in the middle of the night due to conditions like bronchiolitis. I am one of those parents who has had to do that, and I have to say that the house I was living in previously was half a leaky home and had problems, and, since moving into a house that has the adequate insulation that we need—the HRV system, the heat pump, and everything else—all of a sudden that child is not sick any more.

It is disheartening when not only do you have to take your own child into the emergency ward at 2 o’clock in the morning because you get told by Healthline that, actually, 60 breaths per minute is too much—they have listened to your child and they have said: “Get in the car and take them to the hospital straight away.” But also, when you get to that ward, it is not just your child but a room full of—and I am going to say this—predominantly Māori and Pacific children in that emergency ward at 2 o’clock in the morning in the middle of winter, with respiratory problems. There is no blame on their parents at all, but, for many of them, it is because of the conditions that they are living in and also because, for some reason, our children seem to be slightly more susceptible to these respiratory problems. But it is made worse by the fact that so many of them are living in housing conditions that are inadequate. That is what we are here to address today, and that is what the Government should have been addressing.

As many submitters told the select committee, insulation without heating does only half the job. Insulating a cold, damp home will not stop it being cold and damp. But, again, for so many of those members across the House, they do not even have any understanding of what that reality is like. We believe on this side of the House, and many of the general public believe, that in 2016 it is completely unacceptable that children are still dying in houses that are unfit to live in.

According to the Children’s Commissioner, at least 15 children per year are dying because of the fact that they are living in inadequate housing conditions, and yet we had the Minister for Building and Housing, Nick Smith, saying earlier tonight that the cost of doing what Labour is attempting to do through Andrew Little’s healthy homes bill is too expensive. Actually, Minister Nick Smith and the National Government, the hospitalisation of 42,000 children a year in New Zealand due to cold, damp, mouldy homes is too expensive for this country. The cost of 15 children’s lives every year because of cold, damp, mouldy homes is too expensive, Nick Smith and the National Government. This is the wrong place to try to make cost savings, Nick Smith and the National Government.

We believed during the select committee process—and to this day, now that we are debating it in the House again—that a standard for ventilation should be enforced, and we should require an affordable, modern, and fixed heating source. We also believe that the 3-year phase-in period is excessive. We need to contrast what the National Government is trying to do with what Andrew has proposed, which, fortunately, will now go through to the select committee with the support of the parties in the House that have some common sense, which does not include ACT and National. Andrew Little’s Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2)—

💬 Jono Naylor: What’s his phase-in period? What’s the phase-in period of Andrew’s bill?

—would provide that all new tenancies, after a year, would have to meet standards for (1) methods of heating, (2) methods of insulation, (3) indoor temperatures, (4) ventilation, (5) draught stopping, and (6) drainage.

All of these things are things that the National Government should be supporting, so when Jono Naylor is yelling out as if I am saying something outrageous, he really needs to reflect on his own set of beliefs and principles and on what he is willing to support. He probably needs to reflect on the fact that by joining National he has sold himself out. The Government’s standards, by allowing exceptions for houses insulated to old standards, leaves thousands of rentals not properly insulated. We believe that this is unjustifiable, and we think that all rental properties should be required to meet the modern standards.

Let us look at what the National Government is proposing. Insulation: it is proposing insulation like this. What is Andrew Little proposing? Andrew Little is proposing insulation like this. If we look at this, let us just reflect for a little while—42,000 children are admitted into hospital every year because of cold, damp, mouldy homes. Is it worth the cost to just go with this first type, or should we actually be paying for this second type? Fifteen children a year are dying because they do not have adequate housing, and the National Government still wants us to rely on this. It should be ashamed of itself.

The biggest issues coming through our office in west Auckland are about Work and Income and housing—usually housing is the major thing because of Housing New Zealand being situated at Work and Income. But we have people coming to us all the time with letters from their doctors, from their GPs, and from people at the hospital letting us know that they must be moved because of the housing conditions that they are in. Even when we are successful at rehousing these people so that they are no longer in those unhealthy homes, we know that another family, desperate for housing, is going to take up that same house that they have just moved out of because their children are sick. There is nothing we can do about it because of the demand for housing and the desperation that our people are experiencing. That is shameful.

I feel embarrassed as an MP that when we move this family out of that house because their children are getting sick and the hospital has provided them with a letter to say that that is the case, another family is going into that house—another family is going into that house—because of the fact that we have this housing shortage that has not been addressed by the National Government at all. We go round and round in circles talking about everything in the housing area—healthy homes, emergency housing, social housing, the cost of rentals, and the fact that people cannot afford to buy in this housing market—and all of it is interrelated. All of it the Government has an opportunity to influence, but it chooses not to, and it is shameful that it does not do anything to address it.

As I said, we have so many examples—I could write them up and publish them—of families who are in this situation. I just want to talk about one before I end, and it is a woman called Val, who contacted me to say they had just left the hospital to go back to their home after her daughter had been in hospital for over a week with respiratory problems. She wrote to me and she said: “I know we’re going to end up back in hospital because we’re back at the same house, and this house is making my daughter sick.” When we got in touch with Val, straight away she said to us: “I’m sorry, I’m back in the hospital.” That visit that we made to her, which was meant to be at her home, ended up being in Waitakere Hospital. It was the second time that her daughter had been admitted into that same hospital in 2 weeks because of the unhealthy home that they were living in.

We have no choice but to support this bill, because it does something—it does something. But it is far from enough, and, actually, what we need the Government to do is to support Andrew Little’s healthy homes bill, because that will actually make a dent—

I am sorry to interrupt the member, but her time has expired. [Interruption] Just stop a little earlier when I am on my feet, please.

I am not even sure where to start with that talk. I am almost tempted not to bother. I will just challenge that particular member, Carmel Sepuloni: I am more than happy to double down on my experience in the social and community service with hers any day, in actually working and serving—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Oh, really? Yeah?

Absolutely—absolutely. It does not matter whether it has been homeless shelters or drug addiction, the military, vocational training centres, prisons. Where else could we—homeless shelters. I think I have mentioned those. Hospitals, and just working with the people on the street, particularly around Hopetoun Street, and, actually, the homeless community within the likes of Auckland, and Brooklyn, New York. We might even mention Fiji.

Why I mention all of that is because we get constant accusations on this side that we do not care. Even worse are the accusations that we do not know what we are talking about. I somewhat take offence at that because, actually, as someone who has worked hard in this area, I know two things. One is that I actually have experience, and from that experience, including in areas like this, I know that there is still stuff that I can learn from. I am not presumptuous enough or arrogant enough to start preaching in this House that we know better. Furthermore, to fall into the sort of fallacious argument that all we have to do is more—“Oh, well, you know, it is great that we have got insulation, but then if we had even more fluff, it would just make the biggest difference. Oh, if we just put more smoke alarms in and if we spent more money, it will all fix things.” Actually, that is not the core of the argument.

The Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill is a good bill. It is a step in completely the right direction. It fits perfectly with National policy, which is to actually balance the range of needs. You know, having worked in the social sector, I know that if you all of a sudden impose a whole lot of extra costs on landlords, there are going to be consequences for the very people you want to help. So, all of a sudden, all this talk about all this other extra stuff we should do will actually do far more harm. But we know, and I know from my own electorate work, where constituents do come in, that, actually, the idea of having insulation—up to New Zealand standards, importantly—will make a difference, and one of the great things has already been illustrated by the work that the Government has done with State homes.

The other thing is around smoke alarms. I mean, it is so basic. It is tragic, in a way, that we have not done that already, but it is great that it is now being addressed. It makes a lot of sense, and I am sure we will hear from other colleagues—you know, 75 percent of deaths in homes could have been prevented by the use of smoke alarms.

So this is a good bill. It is a proportionate bill. I do not think that having barbs and insults being hurled across the House that neither side knows what it is talking about is of much help at all. I think this is a bill that should be, rightly, supported by all sides of the House. I have certainly heard that Labour is going to do so, so kudos that those members are doing that, and I will be interested to hear later on what the other parties are doing. This is a good bill. It is a responsible bill. It is the proportionate thinking that is good for all New Zealanders and, in particular, for those who are renting. Thanks very much.

The problem, Simon O’Connor, is that the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill is a useless bill, and if it was effective, then we would be having a very different debate. I do want to say that the Green Party really wanted to be able to support this bill. We supported it at its first reading. We were looking forward to the Government, in particular, seeing the evidence laid out before it that would show that a more comprehensive bill—maybe not exactly what I want, but something better—would mean that children’s lives would be saved and families would do better. I am not a Pollyanna, as Parliament knows, but I always live in hope that Parliament will act courageously for New Zealand, because it does happen some days in this place. We do do courageous and amazing things some days in this place, but, clearly, today is not one of those days.

Last week, in the debate on Andrew Little’s healthy homes insulation bill, I set out the ethical argument and the moral pathway that we can take, and should be taking, to improve the quality of New Zealand’s rental homes for children and families. That kōrero from last week was a popular one, and it came from a very deep frustration that I have felt in dealing with this Government bill on rental homes through the select committee process.

I was on the Social Services Committee, and Marama Davidson also heard some of those submissions. We—MPs from across this House—sat together over quite a few days and we listened as person after person, organisations, health centres, and child advocates came to tell us how we could make a real difference in people’s lives and how we could save lives. This was not by grandiose, expensive gestures, not by sweeping economic reforms that would take capitalism by its short and curlies and wrestle it to the ground, and not by banning some social evil or by spending billions and billions of dollars on some social good. We could save lives by simply saying that we want our families to live in homes that are built for the 21st century, not for 1978. That is simple—that is it. That is all that we need to do. Genuinely, it is all that we need to do.

We want our friends and our families and our communities to live in warm, dry, safe homes built for the 21st century, not 1978, and we can have that. That is right. We can have that for everyone if we make a very small change to this law to say that our homes should have an insulation standard for today, not for 1978.

The year 1978 was a long time ago, but I am sure you remember at least some of it. So what was happening in 1978? Well, I was 8 years old. Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure you were not much older. I was 8 years old. Rob Muldoon was Prime Minister in 1978. Precious McKenzie—do you remember him? He won gold at the Commonwealth Games in 1978. Iain Lees-Galloway was born in 1978. It was a great year—a great year.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: 1977 was better.

Ha, ha! What were the standards that applied to New Zealand in 1978? What were the laws and regulations that applied in 1978? Well, you could sell smokes to children in 1978—not just to teenagers, but to little kids. They could go to the dairy and buy lollies and milk and smokes for mum and dad in 1978. Children under 8 years did not have to wear a seatbelt. Everybody else did, but not little children under 8. They did not have to wear a seatbelt in 1978. In 1978 you could smoke anywhere you wanted to—in bars, in shops, on aeroplanes. No one cared, and few really knew about second-hand smoke and its effects then.

In 1978 you could divorce only because of adultery, desertion, or habitual drunkenness. You had to have criteria for divorce. Homosexuality was illegal in 1978. Corporal punishment was encouraged. The Māori All Blacks were still considered to be honorary whites when they toured South Africa. And in 1978 women were regularly refused mortgages unless their husband or their father signed the mortgage documents. In 1978 women could not get mortgages under their own name.

None of those standards apply today, do they? None of them would be considered the least bit acceptable today, like they were in—

💬 Denis O’Rourke: Is Iain Lees-Galloway acceptable today?

Well, OK, except for Iain Lees-Galloway—he is cool. None of those standards—what was OK in 1978 is not OK now when you are talking about quality regulation that is about improving the health of families, communities, and children. So why does Nick Smith insist on having a 1978 insulation standard for New Zealand homes? Why? Why does—

💬 Hon Member: We don’t.

Well, that is another part of the question. He does know that the 1978 standard will not save children from being sick, because he has in front of him research that proves it. According to Dr Lucy Telfar-Barnard from Otago University, having the modern standard of insulation in private rental accommodation reduces the number of children’s hospital stays by nearly 20 percent—by nearly 20 percent. Having the modern standard would save one in five of the children who have to go to hospital in a winter because their home is cold and damp. Having the 1978 standard will see thousands of New Zealand children still going in and out, and in and out, of hospital and getting sick, and for 15 of those families who see their children going in and out of hospital in a year, they will lose their child for good. Fifteen families will lose their child for good because—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: And they don’t care—they don’t care.

—those members do not care. They do not care.

The Children’s Commissioner said that this bill was a broken promise to New Zealand’s children. He came and said that to the select committee, to all the MPs there who were there to hear the evidence about how we could do better. The Children’s Commissioner said that it was a broken promise to children, and is that what the legacy of the National Government is to New Zealand? A litany of broken promises to children, some of whom will not live to see the year out—will not live to see the year out.

We can do much better than that. I will be putting forward Supplementary Order Paper 172 to this bill when it next comes back to the House for debate. This will show what New Zealand could achieve, if we wanted it to—what a comprehensive warrant of fitness would look like and how it can make homes warmer, drier, and safer for children and their families. Yes, it will certainly include glass visibility tape for glass doors—yes it will, my Supplementary Order Paper. Do you know why? Because 500 children a month are injured in this country by falling through windows and breaking through glass doors—500 children a month. Those are the statistics from ACC.

Those 500 kids—their lives matter. They deserve to live in a safe home. The 40,000-odd hospital admissions—those children all deserve to live in a warm, dry, safe home that does not make them sick. The 15 families who will lose a child in the next 12 months, they deserve to live in a warm, dry home that will not make their children sick or make them die. Every one of those kids’ lives matters. Let us make sure that their homes are warm and safe and dry. It is an easy thing for us to do. It is not going to cost the earth, so let us do it. Tonight let us just be a little more courageous for our kids and make no more broken promises. Thank you.

This bill moves only modestly to improve the quality of tenancies by requiring smoke alarms and insulation. But what about the other things? What about heating standards? What about leak-proofing, earthquake resistance, minimum size of accommodation, and so on? Metiria Turei’s Supplementary Order Paper 172 has a long list of other items to ensure a healthy home. I disagree with a few, but certainly agree with most of them, and I would add a few more, by the way. But the point is that there needs to be a discussion on a broad range of minimum standards for rental properties in New Zealand. We have not had that, and this bill certainly does not reflect that.

This bill, in fact, really does only three things. First of all, it requires smoke alarms, and they do have an excellent cost-benefit ratio of $1 for a return of $8.80 to $21.40. That is a superb return and it is well worth the cost. The bill also regulates for the technical needs for smoke alarms and insulation, and for the chief executive to take cases direct to the Tenancy Tribunal for persistent breaches of the legislation and to authorise a search of a property to get evidence where a breach may have occurred. The third thing that the bill does is it streamlines the process for the recovery of possession where a property has been abandoned. All of those are very good things. So New Zealand First does support the bill, warts and all, but we think it should have gone a lot further.

The Minister tonight, in this House, admitted that properties with 1978 insulation standards would never have to be upgraded to 2008 standards. Just think about that for a moment. They would never have to be upgraded to do that. I acknowledge the argument for not requiring the upgrading to 2008 insulation standards, with the argument being that the economic cost is unjustified for what appears to be an improvement of only 5 percent in performance, but it may be a great deal more—I acknowledge that. But that is not a good argument for leaving all of those properties for ever not upgraded to 2008 standards and for ever to have only those very—I think—substandard 1978 insulation standards.

I would accept the need for a fair phase-in period of, say, 3 years to enable landlords to bring those properties up to standard. But New Zealand First would never accept the total cop-out that this bill will enact for those properties that now have only the 1978 standards of insulation. Furthermore, we say in our policy that there could be at least a tax incentive to upgrade to 2008 standards by allowing landlords to expense, for tax purposes, the whole cost of doing the upgrade in the year the expense was incurred. That would be a very good incentive and would help to make the process affordable. That has been New Zealand First’s policy for the last 5 years, and it is one that the Government should adopt.

In addition, New Zealand First is not satisfied that the standards for heating are at all adequate. There is not much point insulating a property that is not properly heated and not properly ventilated—there is just no point. I think Mr Twyford made that point as well in his speech. This is the major flaw in this bill, which is not acknowledged by the Government and it should be. The Government should be doing a lot more about that. In fact, Andrew Little’s Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) does require the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to set minimum standards for both heating and insulation. That is what the Government, in this bill, has precisely failed to do. The concept in Mr Little’s bill is to require tenancy agreements to state that the 2008 minimum standards are met, with significant penalties if that is not true. That is the prescription, I think, that the Government should be adopting. It is a pity that the Government and the Labour Party cannot get together to put their proposals into one bill, because if they did that it would improve both pieces of proposed legislation.

The Social Services Committee has recommended some welcome changes to the bill. We support the increase in the penalties, especially for not complying with regulations for insulation. These are increased from $3,000 to $4,000. It is still a relatively modest amount, I think, but it is a welcome increase. But New Zealand First disagrees with the recommendation for an amendment to clause 6(3) allowing a landlord to state in a tenancy agreement that despite making reasonable efforts, they have not been able to satisfy themselves of the extent of insulation in a particular property. That, we think, would be a cop-out, too. It is too easy to do and too easy to claim, and it should not be in the bill. Houses without provable and adequate insulation should actually be excluded from the rental market, in this legislation. People have to understand that if they are going to put an important service—which is what a rental property is—on the market, then, like so many other things today, they have to meet minimum standards. If they do not, then it is not marketable and it should not be allowed. It is as simple as that. However, New Zealand First does agree with the suggested change to clause 38 to widen the scope of materials for insulation, as long as they would still meet the 2008 standard for insulation. So that is a welcome change.

For all of the reasons I have given, New Zealand First will continue to support the bill, but we think it is very disappointing indeed that it does not do a great deal more, as I have said. Most particularly, we believe in having heating standards. The bill’s failure to address that absolutely vital requirement is such a serious flaw that the bill is hardly worth having—it is that serious. Also, there is a long list of other items that need minimum standards in order to have healthy homes. As I have said, Metiria Turei has set out some of those in her Supplementary Order Paper, and I have mentioned some in this speech. New Zealand First will also support Andrew Little’s bill to take up some of the slack, as I have said, that this bill does not even address. But the point is this. New Zealand First would do a lot more than what this bill does and what Andrew Little’s bill would do. I have mentioned some of those things. Many of them should be addressed in this bill, right now. This is the opportunity; not at some later stage.

New Zealand First will vote in favour of this bill, but reluctantly. We expect that a lot more will be done in the future, no matter which Government might be in power in years to come.

I am taking this call to support the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill in its second reading. As a member of the Social Services Committee I want to thank all the submitters for taking the time to make their views heard. The select committee received 715 submissions, and 110 were heard. For some submissions, it was difficult to identify whether they were from tenants, landlords, or just individuals who were interested in the issue.

There was one comment running through all the submissions, and it was that everybody agreed that we are heading in the right direction. We all agreed that warmer houses are important for healthy families. When I was listening to those submissions, I was thinking that in New Zealand we are really fortunate because our weather is not that extreme. Summers are not too hot and winters are not too cold. I do acknowledge that, yes, houses do get cold in some months of winter. Timber, carpet, curtains—those things do help, but insulation plays a big role in keeping houses warm.

There were some submitters who wanted to add heating and ventilation to this bill. I hope they will understand that tenants should be able to afford the cost of heating and should be willing to use heating devices. The evidence shows that insulation makes a huge difference, instead of adding heating to insulated houses. This bill is based on evidence.

Members from the other side showed insulation of two types of thickness and members from that side talked about the 1978 standards and current standards, but they did not talk about the cost-benefit analysis, and Minister Nick Smith explained really well that there is minimal gain in that. This bill is not a cost-imposing exercise; this bill is about seeing that houses are warmer.

This is a great bill. This bill builds on the Government’s $500 million investment in insulating social housing and in the Warm Up New Zealand programme, which has helped to insulate 53,000 residential rental properties. It is a great bill. I support this bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.

A 5-minute call on behalf of the Green Party, Marama Davidson.

Mr Deputy Speaker, can I just ask whether there will be a bell at 1 minute?

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, there will.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am standing on behalf of the Green Party to support my co-leader Metiria Turei in our opposition to the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill because it is miserable. It is a miserable bill.

I am a renter, like many Māori. Māori are disproportionately represented as renters, as opposed to homeowners, so I have an interest in highlighting the unique impacts that rental legislation will have on Māori and Māori children and, of course, on lower-income people and families. They find it really difficult to live in warmer homes, drier homes, and safer homes.

The reason why this bill is miserable is that it gets right in the way of a more comprehensive warrant of fitness and minimum good standards. The Green Party is absolutely proud to support Andrew Little’s bill for healthy homes. Those are the sorts of standards that will make an actual difference to the lives of children, to the lives of our elderly, and to the lives of New Zealanders.

I sit here, listening to what is in this bill. I was also on the Social Services Committee, and I would have to challenge the statement of the previous speaker, Parmjeet Parmar, where she said that everybody agreed that this bill was going in the right direction. That is not at all what I heard at the select committee. There were many submitters who understood that this bill will do nothing to lower the impact on, especially, the load on our health system in lowering the illnesses that are directly related to poor and inadequate housing standards. I do not know why the previous speaker does not honour this House enough to be truthful about what she heard at the select committee—

💬 David Bennett: Sit down.

—no, I will not sit down—because that was not at all true. It was not true.

Many experts, many people who have worked with families for many years, and many social service advocates were very clear that this bill does not go far enough and will not rectify the cumulative impacts on people where they are not living in safe, dry homes. There are things that we can do, though. There are things that we can do that are not included in this bill. I note with pride Metiria Turei’s Supplementary Order Paper and the list of standards that she wishes to be maintained in rental properties, and how she and the Green Party have campaigned for many years to lift the standard of housing. I hope that this is the direction—this would strengthen the bill. Metiria’s Supplementary Order Paper would strengthen this bill and actually make it worthwhile and worth voting for.

I do not appreciate the fact that this legislation is being used to appease renters and to appease the public that the National Government is doing something. It is too important to appease renters—we need to get it right instead. We need to make sure the homes really are healthy and make sure the homes really are warm, because there is no cost more important than ensuring that all of our children and our elderly are not going to become sicker and are going to stay alive directly because of living in good homes. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on our opposition to the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill tonight, because it is miserable. Thank you.

A 5-minute call, Poto Williams.

It used to be that we as Kiwis had a dream of homeownership. We used to dream of homeownership, but it was actually achievable. It was achievable. We used to be able to afford to buy homes. My father, who came to this country in the late 1950s, was a labourer who could not read or write and he was actually able to afford to buy a home so that his family could grow up and live well. A decent home, decent living—that is what the Kiwi Dream used to be about.

We have gone, in one generation, from being a nation of homeowners to a nation of home-renters—in one generation. In one generation we have slipped that far. And who is it who rents? Who is it who rents? It is not people who earn in the top income levels; it is those who earn the least. In general, it is the lower-income families. Through legislation this Government has introduced, the rights and the power of renters have diminished and been eroded time and time and time again.

Who would want to be a tenant in this country when the power rests with the landlords? Do not get me wrong—there are some good landlords. There are some great landlords, who actually invest in their properties, maintain their properties, and want to hang on to good tenants by making sure that they have got decent properties. But there are some not-so-great landlords. There are some landlords, and we know of them in Canterbury—and my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson will back me up on this—who have taken their earthquake insurance money, have not fixed up their earthquake-damaged homes, and have put them on to the rental market. We have got this happening in hundreds and hundreds of places in Canterbury. So there are some good landlords, but, my goodness, there are some bad landlords.

What does the research tell us about homes that are not insulated properly and do not have a good heating source? It says that if we insulated our homes to the 2008 standard, we could reduce hospital admissions across the country by 6 percent. That is 3,000 children. That is evidence that the standard that is in this bill could cost the health of at least 3,000 children. That is not good enough.

Nick Smith says that it is too expensive to actually get landlords to upgrade their properties to the standard we have been talking about today—the 2008 standard. Most of the submitters—and we have heard a bit about the submitters today—have said that insulation without heating does only half the job. We know that in most of these homes where the children are impacted on by poor health outcomes it is not only because the insulation standards are poor but because the heating standards are poor too.

When you live in an environment like Auckland, where in the wintertime there is an awful lot of moisture in the air, that promotes the growth of mould. We all know what mould, particularly black mould, does to the lungs of small children—it is one of the biggest causes of respiratory conditions for children. That is in Auckland, where, as Parmjeet Parmar says, the sun shines all the time and the weather is fine. Try taking that further south, where we get much colder conditions, and you are in a situation where you have got some dire health conditions sitting on your doorstep.

I want to get back to the point that I made about the quality of homes, particularly in the Canterbury region, where we have got hundreds, if not thousands, of homes that have not been repaired and that have been pushed out on to the rental market. We have got a cohort of landlords in this country who do not care about anything except collecting their rent from people. They are taking advantage of New Zealand renters, and this Government is helping them do that.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. During the last minutes of my colleague’s speech, the member David Bennett made an offensive remark in relation to a comment that Poto Williams made, to which I took offence. It was about me. It was offensive. I took offence, and I ask you to require him now to withdraw and apologise.

I did not hear the comment. If the member made such comment, and obviously the Hon Ruth Dyson has taken offence, he should stand, withdraw, and apologise.

I withdraw and apologise.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just stand, withdraw, and apologise, please.

I did. I withdraw and apologise.

Thank you. Next call. [Interruption] Order! Let us see whether we can lift the level of debate.

I will do my best, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure for me to stand and talk to this Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill in its second reading. Although it was first discussed before my time as a member of the Social Services Committee, I am pleased to note the widespread support for this bill. There are two very basic reasons for that support: insulation and smoke alarm requirements.

The link between good health and a warm home is at the heart of this bill. This Government has taken a very practical view on the issue of insulation. The measures that are implemented will be transparent around the extent to which rental properties are insulated, and the emphasis will be on the landlords to insulate or reinsulate their properties that are currently occupied and are in a substandard form.

I would also like to touch briefly on the number of unsafe rental properties that are in breach of the current regulations and in need of addressing. I am pleased that this bill sets out to remedy this. The Hon Nick Smith’s policy of better enforcement, as opposed to having more rules, is a very practical way of addressing this issue. This ensures that the worst rental properties are brought into line with the 2008 building code. It will become the responsibility of landlords to meet their requirements under this legislation, and it will be enforced by new powers for the chief executive officer of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. He or she will be able to take direct action against those landlords who are in breach with those residential properties that are rented out in a substandard form.

This is a very good, sensible, and practical bill. It focuses on the 450,000 households that are in rental properties, which represents 30 percent of households in this country. We do care about those people in those rental properties. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you for this call on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill second reading. Minimum insulation standards and smoke alarms for private rental houses are a step in the right direction. However, this National Government can and should do more. This bill proposes a minimum insulation standard, but when you insulate a cold house and you do not require modern, efficient heating in that house, that will still leave our people, our families, and our children living in a house that is cold, and at high risk of respiratory diseases. The rental houses will not magically become warm, dry, safe, healthy homes without installation of modern, efficient heating.

This National Government does not stand up for the rights of ordinary New Zealanders. If this Government cared enough and wanted to do enough for our children—on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of families and, particularly, vulnerable children who live in both State houses and rental accommodation—we would see evidence of that care and we would see evidence of that commitment in this Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. We do not. This proposed bill makes some improvements for tenants living in rented accommodation, but it is not a comprehensive bill and it does not go far enough to address the issues for our families.

Emma-Lita Bourne—a name that we hear in this House a lot. A toddler from Ōtara, Manukau East, in my electorate, is an example of a toddler—an innocent child—who, unfortunately, passed away. She paid with her life because of the conditions of the house—a State house—that she lived in, which was freezing cold, mouldy, leaking, and unhealthy. The house that she lived in was not fit for a family—for humans—to live in.

I find it heartbreaking when I look back at this child. The information that we have got back from the Government told us that this particular family reached out many, many times—over 40 times—to Work and Income and to Housing New Zealand, basically saying: “This child is sick, and has been in and out of hospital with so many respiratory illnesses.” But the other heartbreaking thing is that if the processes of this Government worked, that family should have been moved out because her brother, who was 6 years old at the time, had rheumatic fever. Work and Income tells us that when kids have rheumatic fever as a condition, they will be moved to a healthy home. This family was not, and this child, Emma-Lita Bourne, paid for it with her life. It is something that should not have happened. But it is something that is still happening.

I give you another example, this time from a homeless family—a family that did not even live in my electorate because they were homeless. This child was a toddler too, about 12 months old. She had lived so much of her life—more than half her life—in hospital. She was in and out of hospital with all sorts of respiratory illnesses—bronchiolitis, pneumonia, you name it. This child, I am happy to report, is now living in a home. I visited this family last week and it was the first time that I actually saw the mother of this child, because I dealt with the father when they came into my office. The mother, this time—she was so emotional. She was so emotional because this child was discharged from hospital—from Middlemore Hospital, in my electorate—in March of this year, and that is the longest period of time that this child has spent outside the hospital. Why? Because the rental accommodation that this child had lived in before was not their own. They were homeless and living in someone else’s rental accommodation. But it was cold, mouldy, and unhealthy, and people in that house—they smoked. All of these conditions put together were the reasons why this child was in and out of hospital. So when I hear members on the opposite side say that it is too costly, that it is too expensive to do something to address this issue properly, I say that we are talking about children’s lives—children’s lives.

I would like to turn now to two submissions made to the Social Services Committee. I am not a member of this committee, but in just reading the submissions, I would like to talk about two, both from physicians. There were a lot of submissions from doctors but I would like to highlight two. The first is from the Children’s Commissioner Dr Russell Wills, someone whom I hold in high regard. Dr Wills stated that: “In Budget 2013, the Government committed to mitigate the negative health outcomes of poverty and poor housing.” Nice words. It would be nice if this Government, in this bill, actually addressed that promise. This is a bill that is full of broken promises.

In the Budget in May 2013—3 years ago—this promise was made. Have we seen that promise come to reality? No, and in fact, Dr Wills went even further. He said this bill is a shameful bill. It is shameful because it has not kept up that promise. It is shameful because, as my colleague Phil Twyford spoke about before, it has not ensured that we would even ensure that the insulation is to today’s standards—2016. We are talking about insulating homes to the standard of 1978. It is shameful that we think it is too costly to try to save children’s lives.

Dr Wills told us that at least 15 children’s lives are lost each year because they have pneumonia, bronchiolitis, and other respiratory diseases. We should do something in this House to ensure that we save children’s lives.

I would like to turn to the second submission, from another physician. She talked about how she was going around a children’s ward, a children’s ward that was full, mainly of poor children, Māori children, and Pacific preschool children. The mother of the first child that this physician saw was someone who was familiar to her. Why? Because she had served this mother, but with the older child, the year before. The older child had pneumonia; the child that she saw on this day also had pneumonia. The next child she saw was in a similar set of circumstances. She saw yet another mother whom she was familiar with because the child whom she was in hospital with had permanent lung scarring from too many infections, from too much pneumonia—from being admitted in and out of hospital too many times. She saw this mother and served her the year before, with her older child.

This is a bill that should be delivering on a promise to our children. What this legislation does, like much of the legislation that we discuss in this House, is it sends a message. In this case, it sends a message to our children. In the words of Dr Wills, he stated: “The message is: you are not important enough for us to set a standard for heating for your house and to check to make sure your house is healthy.”

Our children deserve more. As members of Parliament, we need to do more in this House so that our children live in warm, dry houses. The bill that Andrew Little has submitted, and which has passed its first reading, will deliver this. It is a much more comprehensive bill that would ensure that our houses are warm, dry, and healthy, and that we are saving children’s lives. Thank you.

As the last speaker in this debate, I feel it is beholden on me to actually get a little bit more truth out there and talk about what exactly this bill is going to achieve.

This bill will save lives. At the moment in New Zealand, 75 percent of house-fire deaths are as a result of houses not having smoke alarms. What we know is that a huge number of those places are rental properties, so we are going to save lives with this bill simply by the smoke alarm provisions alone.

The thing that has concerned me most, and what I have been hearing in terms of the rhetoric this evening from the other side of the House, has been this infatuation with saying that the Government is settling for 1978 standards of insulation. In fact, what the Opposition keeps forgetting is that if a house was built before 1978, it will have to be insulated up to the 2008 standard. If a house was built pre-1978, it will have to have 2008 standard insulation put in, which is going to increase the warmth of those older houses, particularly, and ensure that they are going to be healthier and warm.

Over the last few years I have lived in two different houses. One was built in 1982. Its insulation was adequate, but not necessarily that great. But I also lived in another house, which was built in 2006. With the kind of talk that has been going on here this evening, you would think that insulation has not changed at all between 1978 and 2008. What we do know is that in houses that have been built over that time, insulation has been improving over the years. What we have said in this bill is that the minimum standard is—if a house was built from 1978 onwards, its insulation is the minimum standard it can be. If it is older than that, it must be brought up to the 2008 standard.

This is a good bill. It is going to save lives, it is going to improve the health and well-being of people who are living in substandard rental accommodation across New Zealand, and I commend it to the House.

Amendments recommended by the Social Services Committee by majority agreed to.