Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2)

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a great pleasure to stand in the Chamber today for the beginning of the committee stage of the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2). Labour is very proud to be bringing this bill to the committee. It is a bill that has been making its way through the parliamentary system for some time. It had its start in life as a member’s bill that I was proud to bring to this House. It didn’t make it all the way through three stages, and it found new life under the sponsorship of the now Hon Andrew Little, and we have, since taking Government, made what was a member’s bill, which passed its second reading at the end of the last parliamentary term, a Government bill.

This Government is committed to making life better for renters, and there are some very important reasons for that. Given the falling rate of homeownership now, more than half of all New Zealanders rent, and yet we have some of the most archaic tenancy laws in the Western World. One of the most damaging things that face renters in this country is the appalling quality of much of the housing stock—the poor quality of that housing stock. The fact that more than half of our population are more than likely to be living in cold and damp homes is responsible for the fact that in this country some 1,600 mostly older New Zealanders die premature deaths every winter. The reason? Cold, damp homes and the fact that so many of them simply cannot afford to heat their homes.

Every year, more than 40,000 children in this country are packed off to hospital, hospitalised with respiratory and infectious diseases that leave them, in many cases, with permanent lung damage, shortened life expectancy, and a lifelong tendency towards respiratory illness. It’s time that we dragged the housing stock in this country kicking and screaming into the 21st century. The passage of this bill, when it becomes law and we set clear, enforceable minimum standards that will ensure that rental properties in this country are warm and dry, will amount to, I believe, the single most important public health reform we can make in this country at this time.

I want to acknowledge the fact that every new Government, often in many cases, builds on the work that was done by previous Governments, and I, perhaps more than anyone, have criticised in this House the record of the past National Government when it came to housing policy. But I want to acknowledge that under the tenure of the Hon Dr Nick Smith efforts were made in this area. After years and years of campaigning, advocacy, some of the finest public health research done by the University of Otago’s healthy homes team, and a tidal shift in public awareness and thinking about the importance of warm, dry homes, the former National Government did actually move. They passed an amendment to the 1986 Residential Tenancies Act last year that put in place some standards that required a level of insulation in rental properties and a requirement for smoke alarms in rental properties and, importantly, established an enforcement mechanism that would give the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) the responsibility to enforce those standards.

We criticised it at the time because it did not go far enough, and we stand by that. I think probably it was about 30 percent of the job done. What this bill does—the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2)—is it finishes the job. It does a decent job, because rather than just setting standards for insulation, it sets standards also for ventilation, drainage, dampness, and moisture. All of those things are critical, because I think everybody realises it’s not enough just to insulate a home. If you insulate a cold home, it’s still a cold home. If you insulate a damp home, it’s still a damp home, and that’s the critical thing. We have to take into account those other factors, because ventilation, draught stopping, moisture, drainage—these are all critical factors, but the most important factor, other than insulation, is to have a fixed, modern, efficient, and affordable heating source. That’s one of the things that this bill will achieve.

Now, the mechanism in this bill is that the bill when passed into law will give the Government of the day the power to make regulations by Order in Council—to set standards. We don’t want the politicians having to pass a law every time the standards need to be updated, but the legislation gives a clear direction that standards for insulation, heating, moisture control, drainage, and ventilation will be set by the Government of the day and regularly updated. The second key thing is that we build on the enforcement mechanism that currently sits in the Residential Tenancies Act, but we give the chief executive of MBIE—the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—the mandate to undertake proactive investigations and risk-based auditing, to ensure that the standards are being met in rental properties.

There were many submitters at the select committee who came to us and said a complaint-based system is simply not realistic. Given the nature of the rental market, especially when you have a tight rental market like we have now, most tenants simply will not complain, because they’re scared of being moved on down the road. So we have to have a system that goes further than just being based on the complaints of tenants and actually provides Government with the mandate—not the opportunity; it doesn’t allow them to do it. It mandates risk-based auditing and investigations by a team within MBIE to make sure that the standards are being met.

Under this legislation there is an 18-month commencement period, so the regulations will take effect from 1 July 2019. There is the opportunity in the regulation-making process for a further grace period, if it’s deemed that landlords or certain groups within the landlord community may require an additional period, once the regulations have been published, to prepare themselves for compliance. Then, the way it works is that from that point on, once the regulations themselves take effect, every new tenancy agreement will have to contain a certification by the landlord that this property meets the standards of the regulations contained in association with the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act.

We know that tenancies turn over very quickly in this country. We know that the average tenancy is less than a year, but we have allowed a full five-year implementation period so that any tenancy agreement that hasn’t turned over within that five-year period will have to comply at the end of five years. But we expect, probably at the end of two years, probably two-thirds or three-quarters of all tenancies will have to have complied.

I look forward to this debate. I’m looking forward to hearing the questions and the comments from Opposition members. I think this is a bill that the whole Parliament can be proud of. This, as I said, will amount to the single most important public health reform that we can make in this country and, alongside the other elements of Labour’s housing reform programme, this will transform housing policy in this country. And next year, when we review the Residential Tenancies Act to deliver more security of tenure to renters, alongside this bill, which will overhaul the quality of rental housing in this country, it will amount to a very significant improvement in the lives of renters.

Thank you Madam Chairperson Tolley. It’s my pleasure to open the batting on behalf of the Opposition on the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2), and I will be begging your indulgence: it will probably take me more than one call just to lay out the Opposition’s position. It’s appropriate that that be done in the clause related to the title, because I think the title is aspirational, progressive, and everything Labour stands for.

In my research into the genesis of this bill and the journey that it has been on, I have been looking at the Hansard of the first and second readings of the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) and also the Hansard of the previous Government’s Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill (No 2), passaged last year by the Hon Nick Smith. And it rather saddened me, I have to say, with the amount of venom and hyperbole that was injected into the discussion by the then Opposition that somehow, if one did not support this bill—which was then in the name of Andrew Little—those parties did not care for the 42,000 children suffering every year from preventable illnesses as a consequence of cold, damp homes, and the 15 children who die of preventable diseases who also live in those cold, damp homes.

So I want to put on the record two things: one, my absolute agreement, and my party’s absolute agreement, that it is not acceptable for children—for anybody—to live in those conditions, and that we as a Parliament should do everything that’s practically possible to improve their lot and to prevent that situation from occurring; and, secondly, to express a hope that in this committee of the whole House we can have a detailed, analytical, technical examination of this bill and what it will do, without that sort of rhetoric. I don’t think it’s helpful, and I think we’re better than that. The Prime Minister has talked about a kinder Parliament, and it will be robust, but it serves no purpose for us to politicise poverty and cold, damp homes.

So it was with that in mind that I looked to this legislation and whether or not we could support it to the degree that it improves the lives of New Zealanders, particularly those vulnerable New Zealanders. In clause 1, we have the title, and it is a lofty aspiration: a healthy homes guarantee. There are two very strong words in there: “Healthy” and “Guarantee.”

💬 Hon Andrew Little: “Homes” is pretty strong.

Well, they’re all homes. They’ve got people in them.

💬 Dr Deborah Russell: Cars have people in them.

Well, is the Government so lacking in ambition that they want a healthy cars guarantee? I thought it was their ambition to get people out of cars? So we’ll get to that in a minute.

But it is for a healthy home, and it’s guaranteed, according to the title—lofty. So I looked to the bill to decide, to determine, the degree to which it is going to achieve that goal, and I am disappointed to note that there isn’t a single thing in it that will do a single thing to achieve that goal. And, worse than that, Legislation 101 says that if you are going to bring a bill to the House, primary legislation that gives the Government the power to amend secondary legislation, or introduce secondary legislation, that comes with a responsibility.

It is a responsibility to at least inform the House, at the committee of the whole House, what that regulation might look like. It was what the previous Government did when we introduced the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill and the Hon Nick Smith brought details of the draft regulation that would be brought, which then became the Residential Tenancies (Smoke Alarms and Insulation) Regulations. We were able to determine how effective the legislation change was because we knew what the regulation would look like.

The Health and Safety at Work Bill, the bill that I was famously lampooned for because of worm farms and lavender growing, that came out of my efforts to inform the committee of the whole House as to what those regulations would look like. A good thing, some would say; we made it better as a consequence. I say that not for self-denigration, although it probably has achieved that goal, but simply to point out that it is vital that this House, this committee, understand what on earth we’re doing. And, the reality is we have no idea. We had no idea when the bill was first introduced—that was the advice the officials gave to Mr Little—we are none the wiser, given the fact that the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) in the Minister’s name, which has completely rewritten the bill and has taken out some of the sillier things that were in it when it started, thanks to the advice of the officials—and I have to acknowledge the Minister has made the bill somewhat better in form because of taking the advice of his officials, but no better in substance, and we are none the wiser about what this will do.

Now I draw the committee’s attention to the departmental disclosure statement, which contains a regulatory impact analysis, and a very important question is asked in this. It says: “Were any regulatory impact statements provided to inform the policy decisions that led to this Bill?” And the answer is no: “a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) was not provided at the time the Government decided to adopt the Bill.” To the extent that the impact analysis is available”, it says at 2.4: “MBIE prepared some analysis of the Bill’s potential impact, after it was adopted as a Government Bill. See heating and … standards for residential rental properties, MBIE, 10 November 2017, (accessible at: … [the following URL]).” Well, I’ve got a message for the committee and for the Minister: this is what you get when you go to that URL [Holds up printed sheet of paper]—“We’re sorry, but that page does not exist.” There is nothing.

The very minimal thing that they could have done is point to the URL that creates a link to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) website, and the page doesn’t exist. We are no more informed—in fact, we are less informed—about what on earth we’re doing here. I would love to be able to guarantee that homes were healthy. And when I asked the Minister in question time yesterday whether he intended to inform the committee—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. The Opposition refused the opportunity to debate this as a whole and are debating it clause by clause. It sounds very much as if—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): The point of order will be heard in silence.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: —this speaker is speaking to clause 6 rather than the one that’s before the committee at the moment.

Speaking to the point of order—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I don’t need any help, thank you. I thank the member for that point of order; however, I did consider it while the Minister was speaking, and he spoke for quite some time in his first call—in fact, over four minutes—in quite a general way before he came to the details of the bill, so I felt that, in fairness, I had to give that same opportunity. But I can assure the member that when we come to the actual clauses, they are very tight and very narrow, but perhaps the opportunity on the title is there to be a little bit broader.

I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. The chief Government whip has just indicated that leave was sought and denied.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: No, I didn’t.

That’s exactly what she said when she got up.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): She said, “the offer.”

I was at least misled.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: I did not say that leave was sought. I said they declined the opportunity. I had a conversation with the senior whip, made that offer, and he said no.

I will continue to speak to the title, because I think this is fundamental to what we’re doing here. What the Opposition want to do is determine whether or not we are guaranteeing healthy homes. I restate: not only are we none the wiser, we are less well informed now than we were when the bill was introduced two years ago, because what we don’t know is how this intersects with current legislation and regulation.

I am really very keen to get from the Minister in the chair, Phil Twyford, what we are doing here. How are we going to guarantee healthy homes? What is the regulation going to have in it? We know the titles, and, indeed, it doesn’t give us any clear steer about what those sections are going to do in order to achieve our goal of healthy homes, because all six of the criteria that are laid out in the bill—which were deleted and then reinstated at heating, insulation, ventilation, moisture ingress, draught stopping, drainage, and then any other thing—already exist in regulations formed under the Residential Tenancies Act 1986.

We can debate the merits or otherwise of a strengthening of the insulation standards, for example—and I remind the committee of a certain Opposition spokesman on housing, Phil Twyford, running around this House and into the press gallery with pieces of insulation saying that the bill that the Government was passing last year was simply not good enough and that this is what we should be requiring. Well, I ask the Minister in the chair: is that what we’re debating here? Because we cannot tell. We cannot tell if this bill does nothing—in which case, we will oppose it—or is a Draconian imposition on landlords that could drive rents up, in which case, we will oppose it.

So I do tell the Minister that the Opposition has not changed its position, but we would really benefit from an explanation about which part of this we argue. Is it irrelevant, innocuous, and do-nothing or is it a Draconian imposition on the landlords? Please advise.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to rise in this very important stage of this very important bill, one with which I have an intimate acquaintance, since I originally sponsored it. The question that the honourable list member who’s just spoken, Michael Woodhouse, raises, given that we’re on clause 1 and talking about the title, is: can the content of the bill provide the guarantee that he seems to be looking for of warm and safe and healthy homes—or, at the very least, healthy homes, because that’s the other word in the title of the bill? Not just homes, and, of course, not just healthy, but a guarantee—I want to engage him on that point.

It is pretty clear in this bill what it is all about. It is about upgrading the landlord’s responsibility to tenants through the tenancy agreement to meet these elevated but, actually, vitally important obligations. You see, if they were there already, or if landlords were already observing these very simple obligations, then we would not have this bill and, more importantly, we wouldn’t have 42,000 children turning up to hospital each year with respiratory conditions—avoidable respiratory conditions. We wouldn’t have people with cold damp homes with black mould running up them, homes that are not properly ventilated, or homes that are not properly insulated.

If the current regulations and the current legislation provided for those things, then this bill would not be necessary. But it is, because those problems exist. There is a problem for which this is a remedy, and it is the failure of far too many rental homes and the landlords who own them to provide a safe and healthy environment for their tenants.

When you look at the specific guarantees that this legislation will provide, a requirement that things must be specified in a tenancy agreement—and what are those things? Madam Chair, I’m not departing from clause 1 in talking about it. I am talking about what the guarantee is that’s referred to in clause 1, and the aspects that will be guaranteed are there, laid out, in replacement section 138B, in clause 6, on Supplementary Order Paper 1. So there will be requirements under regulations for heating, for insulation, for ventilation, for moisture ingress, for draught stopping, for drainage, and for any other material thing. Look, if it was any more specific, it would be requiring landlords to put the telly in one corner and the couch opposite it. We haven’t gone that far, because we’re not into nanny State; we’re into allowing people to make their own choices about how they furnish their homes and where they put the furniture. But when it comes to minimum standards of health and safety, in the 21st century, this is the least we could do, and we have to do it because it’s not being done now.

When this bill talks about the “Healthy Homes Guarantee”, it is very clear about setting up very specific obligations, allowing for regulations to make very specific obligations, referred to in the tenancy agreement, that will lift the quality and the standard of the homes that are falling short right now. It is about that guarantee, and it is about making them healthy, and, above all, it is about ensuring that people, when they go to the place that they call their home, can call it a home—their place of sanctuary and their place of safety—in a way that too many cannot do right now. That’s the guarantee—that’s what it’s guaranteeing.

Is it too much to ask in this day and age for the growing number of people—young people, couples, and families—who are dependent on rental accommodation to at least be assured that they will have minimum standards observed, and is it too much to ask for this House, discharging its responsible duty to the citizens of New Zealand, to require rental housing to meet that minimum standard and for this House to give permission to the executive to create regulations to ensure that that’s going to happen? That’s what the bill is about—short and simple, clear on its face. That is the guarantee. New Zealanders want it, because they’ve voted for it, and now they’ll have a chance to get it.

The problem is the gaping hole between the rhetoric that we’ve just heard from Mr Little and the reality of the bill. You see, it’s an issue about spin versus substance, about rhetoric versus reality. Let’s, firstly, remind the Parliament that a residential amendment Act was passed by this Parliament—a residential amendment Act; don’t dress it up in spin. Just say what it is; none of this “Healthy Homes Guarantee”.

It reminds me of what the Government has done over the vigorous objection to the evil of the Trans-Pacific Partnership! Now that we put the words that it’s a “comprehensive, progressive” Trans-Pacific Partnership, suddenly it’s a beautiful international agreement that the Government is now going to adopt. The relevance is that it is the same with the title of this bill: there is nothing in a guarantee of healthy homes in this bill. Next minute, we’re going to get the “Eradication of Poverty Bill”. We’ll get another bill that says it’s the “Prosperity for Everybody Bill”. Somehow, if you pass a bill with a fancy title, you magically fix the challenging issues that our country faces!

Let’s, firstly, be clear about the record. The previous Government insulated 340,000 homes and invested half a billion dollars in doing so. Let me just compare that. When you compare that, 340,000 homes under nine years of a National Government—this issue of cold, draughty homes didn’t arrive yesterday; I wonder how many the Clark Government did?

💬 Hon Member: How many? Tell us.

35,000. We did 340,000, and they do 35,000, and Mr Little thinks he can give us a lecture about caring for children and about healthy homes. Then—here’s the extraordinary part—every single operational clause of Mr Little’s bill is being deleted by the member’s Supplementary Order Paper 1. There isn’t a single provision in the bill that is retained. What a dog. Why not be honest and just introduce a new bill, and not put up this facade? I know there are hurt feelings, with Mr Little being dumped a few weeks before the election, but that is no reason to play with this Parliament about such an important issue.

Then there is this: the member Mr Little claims that this bill elevates the standard required for the standard of our rental accommodation.

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: And he’s right.

I say to Mr Faafoi: where in the bill does it raise that standard? Let me take him through it. Number one, we passed legislation—and I have in front of me 20 pages of regulations—around what’s required to insulate homes in New Zealand by 1 July 2019. Can Mr Faafoi answer: how will this bill make this change?

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Better insulation.

No, there’s nothing in this bill—nothing in this bill at all tells me anything about what the new insulation standard will be.

Then let’s go through the other issues. I have in front of me the housing regulations passed under existing law. They set down and say that houses shall not be damp, houses shall have appropriate heating, housing will have appropriate electrical safety, houses will have appropriate issues around security, and all those issues. They’re all in the regulations.

So the claim by Mr Little that somehow this bill is actually going to elevate the standards of homes and guarantee healthy homes is a load of wash. It is a load of spin. There is nothing in this bill that actually delivers on the highly moded, the highly sort of spin-doctored claim that, somehow, if you pass a bill through this Parliament that is called the healthy homes guarantee, magically, homes are somehow insulated and made healthy.

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: Why are your colleagues blaming you, Nick?

Oh, they’re not, at all. In fact, we are incredibly proud of our record, because here’s what we know. We know that the standard of homes was improved by a greater level—[Time expired]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think in that exchange between Messrs Little and Dr Smith, we have now come to the nub of the question of whether the title “Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2)” is accurate, or whether it should be given another title. In two interjections by Mr Little on Dr Smith’s speech, Mr Little described the 1978 regulations insulation standards as being inadequate—I’m paraphrasing. I hope I caught the essence of what he has said. He then said that what the regulation will do is provide for “Better insulation.” It’s very important that I accurately characterise what he said, because my question to the Minister is this, and it is fundamental to our consideration of this bill. I implore him to provide the committee with an answer.

Under the regulations, when they are passed, will houses currently legally insulated to the 1978 standard be required to upgrade to the 2008 standard? Will houses that are just 10 years old but that were insulated under the 2001 standard of 87 percent of the maximum thermal properties be required under the regulation to upgrade to the 2008 standard?

Unless we know the answer to that question, we are flying blind. We are asking for a virtual blank cheque from landlords—and bear in mind that the Government is the largest landlord in the country—and a detailed regulatory impact assessment should have advised the Government, and Mr Robertson, who is already $13 billion in a hole, how much Housing New Zealand—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Keep digging, Michael.

Oh, we’re digging deeply into the costs that are being incurred on that side, and this could be one of them. This could be a massive cost on Housing New Zealand, because the Government should set an example. I’m sure it’s not the Government’s expectation that they set one law for private landlords and a lower standard for Housing New Zealand. So what I want to know is (a) will those regulations, when they’re passed, require those legal homes to be insulated under the 1978 and 2001 standards, but not to the lofty standard that Mr Twyford had last year—when he paraded around Parliament with insulation material—or not? That is going to determine whether or not this bill truly is a healthy homes guarantee. I would contest that anyway, and the reason is that, despite not being the absolute gold standard in insulation, in fact, both the 1978 standards and the 2001 standards are still very, very good.

Now, Dr Woods came in and talked about growing up in the 1970s in cold houses. Well, I can probably guess at Dr Woods’ age. My guess is that she lived in a house—like I did—that had the pre-1978 insulation standard, which was virtually none at all. So to ask landlords to upgrade at a cost of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to go from the 1978 and 2001 standards to 2008 is the heart of the question that we have to answer tonight.

I do hope that the Minister in the chair, Phil Twyford, when the opportunity arises—and it’s not actually in clause 1, so I’ll give him time to think about whether or not he is going to give us, when we come to the appropriate clause on the contents of the regulation—I think it is clause 4 or 5. I’ll need to go back and have a look. It has the six categories, which are without exception already contained in the Residential Tenancies (Smoke Alarms and Insulation) Regulations or the Housing Improvement Regulations. We need to know: is all we’re doing asking landlords to certify that they are complying with the law—in which case this bill does less than nothing; it wastes the House’s time—or is it going to set a higher standard, in which case we should be able to have a cogent, coherent discussion about the costs and benefits of those higher standards?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to speak on the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2)—and it’s actually a number 2 bill because there was a first bill. In fact, the Minister Phil Twyford himself sponsored that bill as a member’s bill, which was defeated, and now this is bill number 2. When I heard that, I thought of number 2, or Mark II, and actually, the Mark II Zephyr. I don’t know why that came into my mind, but it was probably because when I was playing rugby, our coach had a Mark II Zephyr. We had many fond memories of the Mark II Zephyr. I know the member Ron Mark will remember those days. They came in a four-cylinder and a six-cylinder model.

Getting to the point, though, what I am trying to say about the bill is this. It is Mark II, and I think about the Mark II Zephyr, but the word “zephyr” actually means a soft, gentle breeze. I have to say that when I look at this bill, it’s nothing but a soft, gentle breeze in regards to the thundering and the strong advocacy that we heard from the then Opposition to the bills around the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill when they were coming through.

I remember those days in the House. In fact, Mr Faafoi was there. He used the props that the Minister was using at the time, where they had these forms of insulation that was there. They were saying this: “If we truly want a guarantee that these homes are warm and dry for the families of those who are vulnerable, then we’ve got to make a difference, first of all, to the insulation that we have in our houses.”

Now, the 1978 insulation regulations—and it’s the R-value rating that’s used. So 1.9 is the R rating for insulation, and that was back in 1978. Then it was amended again in 2001, and so what we had from 1978 to 2008 was that the R rating went up by 1 percent. So it’s actually at R2.9.

When we had submissions in regard to the healthy homes bill, those who were retrofitting insulation simply said to us this: there is no difference in regards to the way they measure. The way they measure that is by looking at the amount of heat loss that comes from that insulation. So with the insulation of 1978, the maximum amount of heat it contains is about 83 percent. Seventeen percent gets lost. When you go up to 2008, it’s about 92 percent. Here is what they said to us: so, really, realistically, there is not going to be any difference if you go from 1978 to 2008.

Hence the reason why the Residential Tenancies Act said this: for those who have the standard at 1978, those can remain—there needs to be no change to that. But, then, those who don’t have insulation need to bring it up to the code of standard for 2008. But what we heard on the other side, from the Minister himself, and when we had the props—they said, “Here’s the difference: 70 millimetres is what it was in 1978.”, and then they didn’t know what the other was, but it was probably about 140 centimetres. This is the difference that they advocated for. In fact, they told us that’s what it should be. They said it should double the amount of insulation.

I suppose the point that I’m trying to make that goes to my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse is that on the other side they talked about the regulations. They knew what the measurements were. They knew what the insulation should be, and yet when we come to this what do we see? A zephyr—a soft gentle breeze. There is no regulation here. There is no standard.

In fact, inside the Hansard that’s clearly what it states. It states there, from the honourable Minister in the chair, Phil Twyford, that we should have minimal standards. Now, that member, here in the Hansard, talked about the fact that it should be double; that 1978 shouldn’t stand. In fact, what it should be is we should bring everything up and retrofit it to the 2008 standard, and yet here we have the Minister almost backtracking.

We’re not having any indication about whether he’s going to retrofit to the 2008 standard that we think he’s been trying to advocate for. So, again, I plead to the Minister that he will rise and actually give us an answer to that question: will he advocate just as strongly as he advocated when he was on this side of the House, when he had his props, when he talked about the fact that the minimum standard should be at 2.9—1978 won’t count? In other words, then, he’ll have to answer the other question: what will be the cost? What will be the cost to the landlord, who will need to do that? What’s the subsidy that they will give? He hasn’t done that. And if he’s costed that, what will that look like? Those are critical questions that we want to ask on this side as well.

I think what’s also really important—when we talk about the comparison with the existing legislation and where the bill is—is that in the signed agreements that we have in the initial bill it was 12 months after the Royal assent. The amendment bill is July 2019. We don’t see any difference here. We’re trying to get a sense that, again, what we’re sort of seeing—there is an underpinning of when it will be passed and how could this actually apply to those who don’t meet that standard.

I just want to make that point. There are other points to be made, but I hope that the Minister in the chair will be able to answer those questions being put forward.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m really pleased to rise and speak in this committee stage on the title clause, because it is somewhat of a mystery. As I have listened to my colleagues’ contributions in this debate—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: You’re listening to the wrong people.

—actually, it gets murkier and murkier and murkier as the debate continues. As that member that just interjected, Andrew Little—actually, if I was him, I would be deeply, deeply embarrassed. I’d be deeply, deeply embarrassed about a bill that is entitled the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2)—and my learned colleague has explained the reason for the number 2—but, actually, it should be a big fat zero, because at the end of the day, this bill does zero. So I’m just a little confused about why they would bother calling it the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2).

They could have renamed it the “Residential Tenancies Amendment Act is So Great We’ve Got Nothing to Add Bill”, because that, in reality, is what it is. Or the title could’ve been the “Healthy Homes Guarantee Act (No 2) That Doesn’t Really Exist But it Sounds Good Bill”, because that’s exactly all this is attempting to do. So, as my colleagues have said, this is just an exercise in spin. It’s a bit sad for a new Government not to have legislation to put into the House—real, meaningful Government legislation. They’re so desperate they have to pick up members’ bills that have been languishing in the ballot, that have been absolutely stripped bare. I don’t even know, actually, how you can call this bill the same, given that the Supplementary Order Paper 1 that’s been put forward strips out anything meaningful that happened to be in the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2).

So, in terms of the title, it is somewhat of a mystery. It’s a mystery to the members in the Opposition. Clearly we had, in our time in Government, a huge commitment to ensuring and improving the quality of rental homes that New Zealanders live in. As my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith talked about, the reality is that the number of the homes that our Government ensured were insulated over our period of time, I think, is extraordinary.

I will actually take you back to the early days. Some of that was with the agreement of the Greens. The Green Party actually should be quite embarrassed today. They should be quite embarrassed at a bill that is called the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) that actually does nothing. It’s actually probably a step backwards from what we agreed with them when we were in Government in 2008 and actually produced tangible, real results for New Zealanders and those that are renting. We have agreed that we wanted to see the standard of the homes that people were renting improve, and that was absolutely delivered, and actually comes into effect kind of on the same date as this one is proposed, which is another reason why we’re not sure why you’d even bother with this piece of legislation that does absolutely nothing, other than to just say you can turn up to the House and have a piece of legislation that you’re debating.

So another name could be, instead of the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2), “Fill the Order Paper with Something Because We’ve Got Nothing Else To Debate Bill”.

💬 Matt Doocey: That’s right—(No 2).

That would be (No 2). They might actually get to (No 3) or (No 4) or (No 5). So it is absolutely, just as my colleague has suggested, an exercise in window dressing, because there is absolutely no substance in this bill. I would ask the Minister in the chair, Phil Twyford, to actually go into a bit more detail in terms of why this is the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2), because there is absolutely nothing in here that qualifies any one of those three main words. About “Healthy”—how is that described? What is the standard? Where would you find it? “Homes”—I think, you know, most of us could kind of figure out what that is. But, actually, given the lack of depth or anything of substance in this bill, one could apply it to just about anything. In terms of a “Guarantee”, I think that is totally and absolutely overpromising, and I know that this Government—[Time expired]

I move, That the question be now put.