Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill (No 2)

This part goes to an issue which reared its ugly head in late 2017 and 2018, in which, as the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, I also had some oversight over, around the standard around contamination of methamphetamine in residential properties. What we saw by the previous Government was the reliance and, in some cases, the—what’s the word I would like to use?—beating up of that standard to effect, I think it was, 800 Housing New Zealand tenants evicted from their homes. That has had an enormous effect on those families, to the point—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but it’s come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

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

Just before the break for dinner, I was just working myself to a point where I was describing the negative experience that roughly 800 Housing New Zealand tenants had under the previous Government, having been evicted from their properties because of what can only be called dodgy standards around meth contamination. I was working myself into an angry state, potentially because it was just before the dinner break and “hangry Kris” may have been coming into force, but the dinner break has addressed that, so I think I should probably spend the rest of my time addressing some of the substance of the changes in Part 2.

Part 2 establishes a regime for dealing with contaminants such as methamphetamine in rental properties. As a result of the experience under the previous Government and the standard at the time, there was and is a lot of uncertainty among landlords about how to deal with contamination of the likes of methamphetamine. Part 2 of this bill will provide for a more practical regime which is flexible enough to address health risks of not just methamphetamine but any harmful substance in rental properties.

As I mentioned, at the end of 2017 and at the beginning of 2018, this Government asked the then Prime Minister’s Chief Science Adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman, to look into the issue of methamphetamine contamination in rental properties and found that remediation—according to New Zealand standard 8510:2017; whether it was appropriate—was only appropriate for identified former meth labs in properties where heavy meth use had been determined; so not where, potentially, just low-level use was but, certainly, that standard was appropriate only where production and heavy meth use had been determined. Because of the way that the previous regime had worked, there’d been a previously widely held perception that the presence of even low levels of methamphetamine contamination or residue in properties posed serious health risks, and, as a result, remediation to eliminate that kind of contamination has been an extremely costly business for landlords and, in many, many cases—and, unfortunately, far too many in terms of Housing New Zealand tenants—has been an upheaval for tenants who were evicted at short notice.

The bill inserts definitions of “contaminant”, “methamphetamine”, and “contaminated”, and methamphetamine is defined as a contaminant. The bill also inserts new obligations for landlords, and I might just take some time to go through those new obligations, if it’s OK, Mr Chair. First is that landlords have to comply with all requirements in respect of contaminants imposed by regulations; secondly, landlords are not to provide premises to a tenant, if the landlord knows that the premises are contaminated, until they have been decontaminated; and, thirdly, to not continue to provide rental premises to a tenant, if the landlord knows that the premises are contaminated, unless they are being decontaminated. These obligations do not oblige the landlord to repair or provide compensation arising from contamination damage if the contamination was caused by the tenant.

I might leave some room for others to get into the debate, but I think that Part 2 will take care of a lot of the ills around meth contamination.

Thank you, Mr Chair—pleased to take a call at this committee stage. I am a little bit surprised at the number of Ministers in the House, effectively, trying to stretch it out.

💬 Andrew Bayly: Very nice to see them all.

I mean, it is nice to see them all. I think it’s unusual to have a Government filibustering its own bills.

💬 Andrew Bayly: How many have we got? One, two, three, four, five, six—six of them, Mr O’Connor. Seven—seven, Mr O’Connor.

The second thing I need to—OK, we’re up to seven. This feels like Sesame Street as we’re counting things out. The second element is the Minister referred to the 800 people within Housing New Zealand houses that were moved on, claiming that that was a dodgy decision. If it were a dodgy decision to move 800 people out, it’s equally as dodgy to be just compensating all 800 people as if they were all innocent users of meth in houses. One doesn’t need much of a degree in statistics to understand that of those 800 people, a number of those will have been high-level meth users and dealers, and not only have they been, in a sense, exonerated but paid out.

Look, my biggest issue in Part 2 is around the meth contamination. What is problematic about this bill is we’re about to pass, in this primary legislation, powers of regulation making to the Government, to the Minister, without knowing what those regulations are, and when it comes to meth contamination, we do not even have an indication from the Minister what those levels are going to be. Whether that was an acceptable standard—we might be a bit more comfortable here, but what we do know is that there are major challenges when it comes to meth standards. The department of health, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—in fact, Standards New Zealand had previously set meth standards, in this case at 1.5 micrograms per hundred square metres.

We then have a report from Sir Peter Gluckman around third-hand use—I think that’s an important distinction to make—that now says 15 micrograms is perfectly acceptable. We also have a report by Mark Daglish which the Minister is not allowing to be released to the public, which we on this side of the House begin to wonder—there’s a whole array of views of what should be the right levels. What I think demonstrates the oddity of this entire situation is that there’s a lot of talk, and we’re going to set the new meth standards at 15—or it’s assumed it’s going to be at 15—micrograms per hundred square metres, but, strangely, if someone’s house is found to be over 15, the suggested regulation is that someone has to reduce the meth contamination to under 1.5. Why is that, Minister? Why, if 15 as a meth contamination level is acceptable, if they have to decontaminate the house can they not just bring it back to, say, 14.9, because according to some experts, that is perfectly safe. Instead, what’s been suggested somewhat is we’re going to have to reduce that all the way back down to under 1.5.

So we’ve got inherent contradictions coming through. We’ve got clashes between different respected—I would say—authorities in New Zealand, including Standards New Zealand, and we have not got clear answers around that. So I for one am not particularly happy with this Supplementary Order Paper—not that we’re setting standards; standards must be set, but what we’re doing here is, effectively, giving a blank cheque to the Government to go and write the regulations as they see fit, and that is not a prudent way to step things forward.

So that’s my primary contribution tonight. I really just ask the Minister perhaps to address how he is dealing with the variety of expert approaches on meth standards. How is he engaging with the industry, who have opinions on this? Why is he not releasing some of the information under the Official Information Act that’s been requested, and will he give any surety to the House tonight of what these new standards will be before we give him a blank cheque?

I thought I’d spectate for some time, but given that contribution I think it’s only fair that we respond almost instantly. I know the Ministers in the chair are not meant to ask questions of members who are making contributions, but I might, just to ask Mr O’Connor: where was his concern around some of these issues when his party was in Government? If we’re going to talk about whose experts you’re going to trust, then we asked the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman, to look into the issue; not someone that we appointed but someone who is independent and looked at the issue and used science as a basis—funny that—and used evidence as a basis to look into this issue.

What I find ever so slightly galling—that we are being asked questions of the type that Mr O’Connor is asking—is that his party used, even as his own leader has said, “dud advice”. He said it in June 2018. Simon Bridges said that his party had got dud advice from officials around the methamphetamine levels which were safe in these houses to base its entire attitude towards Housing New Zealand tenants and whether they were fit or not to maintain their tenancies. As I say, on the dud advice that the previous Government relied on, they evicted 800 tenants. So even Mr O’Connor’s leader said the dud advice was dud advice, but then again, because we’ve found that the Leader of the Opposition barks at every car going, about three months after he said, “Well, it might have been dud advice, but you shouldn’t be compensating meth cooks.”, when this Government wasn’t. So the previous Government, at every opportunity, has been desperate to try and make sure it can turn around the truth of the fact that they relied on dud advice—and probably ignored solid advice when they were in Government—to turf 800 of the most vulnerable tenants in our country out of their properties.

So we have gone on to a journey to make sure that we can have sound, solid, science-based standards to make sure not just that that level of methamphetamine contamination is known to tenants but that there’s also some certainty for landlords about what is safe and what is not safe. So they can sit over that side of the Chamber and point fingers, and claim that meth cooks are being compensated, when they know that’s a lie—they know that’s a lie—but what we know on this side is that this is another one of the previous Government’s messes that we are being forced to clean up. That is the absolute truth. So they should hang their heads in shame about asking for some accountability when this is a mess that they created, and which we are fixing, and which we’re happy to fix because we need to make sure that landlords and tenants have some certainty in this area.

Mr O’Connor is a member that I very much respect, but I think he has fallen for the old trick of being first into the Chamber, and being first to have to make a contribution from notes that someone has written between 6 and 7.30, because all the points that he made lack credibility—if you only want to go back to the cold, hard fact that the Prime Minister’s science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman, shot the science out of water that they relied on, and which they used politically to evict 800 tenants out of their homes. I think they should hang their heads in shame for that—for the fact that they now ask for some accountability for the fact that that’s what they relied on.

So what this Part 2 does is it puts in train the journey to make sure we know what the contaminants are, what the levels are, and what the rights of the tenants or the rights of the landlords are. To be perfectly honest, it was a mess that we inherited. So I would love to hear another contribution from the other side of the Chamber to talk about their shameful history in this area. I don’t think I will, but I impress upon the members on that side of the Chamber to relive this beautiful part of the history of the last National Government.

I’m proud to be part of a Government who are taking a lead on this issue around meth. Unfortunately, we do have meth in our society—methamphetamine—around 31,000 people per year, which is 0.8 percent of our population, which is certainly very concerning. The Government passed a bill recently—a customs bill—which aims to stop methamphetamine coming into the country. I’m very pleased with the work that was done there, supported across the House, but the reality is we have methamphetamine in New Zealand. It’s important that we work out how we’re going to deal with this issue, and, particularly tonight, we’re talking about when it relates to housing. There’s certainly been a lot of uncertainty among landlords about how to deal with methamphetamine contamination. I’m pleased that this bill provides a practical regime that’s flexible enough to address some of these health risks.

It is an area that can be fraught at times. I recently had an apartment that I was selling, and the person who was planning to buy it asked for a meth test. The meth test was done. It came back saying there was meth in the bathroom.

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Explain that, Mr Strange!

I don’t know. I’m not passing any comment, but it came back that way. Now, we got a second test done. The second test came back negative. So which company is to be believed? Unfortunately, landlords have been caught up in this aspect, because there are, I believe, a few cowboys in the meth industry. In a way, they’re fleecing the landlords, because they’re doing a test and they’re saying the landlords then have to rip off all of the Gib from the building when, in reality, they may not have to.

So it’s important that there’s some certainty here for landlords, because it’s an asset that the landlords have. I’ve mentioned previously that I’ve been a landlord myself. As landlords, we want to look after that asset. As tenants, tenants deserve to live in a house or an apartment that is healthy and that doesn’t have methamphetamine in there. So it’s important that this bill is before the committee tonight to bring that certainty.

I do have a question for Minister Faafoi which is about the regulation of these meth tests. How do we know which companies are to be trusted and which aren’t, and what’s happening in that space, or what maybe has happened in that space in order to bring about that certainty there? Because there is no doubt that some landlords have been fleeced in this area.

This is a bill that we are taking very seriously. In fact, there are, I believe, six Ministers in the House tonight, and that’s just a sign of—

💬 Andrew Bayly: Seven.

Oh, seven Ministers. That’s a sign of how important we’re taking this bill, because methamphetamine is a blight on our society, and we are taking this bill seriously—[Interruption] I do wonder how many former Ministers are present. Any former Ministers? I’m not sure there are any, but we are taking this bill incredibly seriously tonight. And that’s just an example of that.

So the bill inserts definitions of contaminant methamphetamine, which is defined as a contaminant. There are just a couple of aspects there: that the landlord must comply with all requirements in respect of contaminants imposed by regulations. Here’s the key point: to not provide premises to the tenant, if the landlord knows that the premises are contaminated, until they have been decontaminated. For the Minister, just sort of following on from that question before: where is the certainty around and the regulation for landlords to know that the company that they use is a trusted company—that the results are genuine? There might be an example of what happened to me previously, where meth was recorded by one company and not recorded by another. So just adding that aspect to it; I’d just appreciate a comment from the Minister, because that certainly adds to that aspect of certainty, which is really what this bill is all about. I’m very proud that the Government are taking a stance on this issue of meth. Thank you.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 254 in the name of the Hon Kris Faafoi to Part 2 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Schedule

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 254 in the name of the Hon Kris Faafoi to the Schedule be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Schedule as amended agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 254 in the name of the Hon Kris Faafoi to clause 2 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.