Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill

I move, That the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Firstly, I want to thank the Social Services and Community Committee for its consideration of the 1,436 submissions on the bill from 1,246 submitters. Many of these were also supplemented by oral submissions, and I also want to thank submitters for their valuable contributions. Mr Speaker—or Madam Speaker; that was quick—the select committee held hearings during the alert level 4 lockdown via Zoom, and I appreciate submitters taking the time to be involved under these unusual circumstances.

Since the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) came into force over 30 years ago, our homeownership rates have declined and the proportion of households living in the rental market has increased significantly. More people, including families and older people, are renting for longer or for life. This bill aligns New Zealand’s rental laws with the present-day realities of renting in New Zealand. It ensures that there are appropriate protections in place both for tenants and for landlords. The changes in the bill will improve tenant security and stability while continuing to protect landlords’ interests in their property. The changes also balance the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords and modernise the legislation so that it can respond to the changing trends of the rental market.

The committee has by majority recommended the bill be reported back to the House with proposed amendments, and the Government has accepted these amendments. I will briefly outline these changes today, and I would again like to thank the select committee members for their productive and thoughtful contributions. Firstly, I want to outline an exemption that the committee has added to the Residential Tenancies Act so that it does not apply to transitional and emergency housing where this housing is funded either by a Government department or under a special needs grant programme. Emergency and transitional housing is a short-term safe place—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry to interrupt the—I’m finding it really difficult to hear the contribution from the Hon Kris Faafoi. Could members please have a conversation in the lobby. Thank you—sorry.

—thank you, Madam Speaker—to stay while longer-term accommodation can be found. There is an existing exemption in the RTA for temporary or transient housing, but the length of time that some clients are now remaining in these services make it unclear where the exemption does and does not apply. This change to the bill clarifies the legal position of emergency and transitional housing. The Residential Tenancies Act notice requirements do not align well with the purpose of transitional and emergency accommodation, where the intention is for clients to move to more permanent housing as soon as this can be arranged. The new exemption helps ensure that providers can continue to provide this valuable service to people who need a safe place to stay.

I also intend to address some further issues through a Supplementary Order Paper in my name. Some of the submitters to the select committee drew attention to family violence as an area where tenants’ rights could be further improved. The Government has listened to these concerns, and we intend to add further amendments to the bill to allow a victim of family violence to leave a tenancy quickly by providing the landlord with a family violence termination notice. As I’m sure everyone in this House will agree with, family violence in all its forms is unacceptable. I also intend to include further provision in the Supplementary Order Paper allowing landlords to issue termination notices where the tenant has committed physical assault on either the landlord, a family member of the landlord, or an agent of the landlord.

As part of a Supplementary Order Paper, I also intend to extend some provisions from the COVID-19 legislation. The RTA was amended to provide greater flexibility for the Tenancy Tribunal’s operations in recognition of the need to hold tribunal hearings by teleconference during alert levels 3 and 4. I intend to extend these provisions for a further six months from the current expiry date of 25 September in order to allow the tribunal to hold a greater number of hearings and therefore reduce waiting times.

The committee had also made some more minor technical amendments to the bill, and these optimise the bill and will ensure that it will be effective to achieve the outcomes we’re seeking in the rental market. Employers offering a serviced tenancy as part of an employment agreement will now be exempt from the obligation to state the amount of rent when advertising, and the requirement for a landlord to permit and facilitate the installation of fibre in certain circumstances has been improved through some minor technical changes. Some amendments have also been made to the provisions for termination by notice so that an action showing that the ground is being exercised must now occur within 90 days—one example of this is where a landlord wishes to terminate a tenancy to allow a family member to move in, that family member must move in within 90 days.

Provisions for termination and transfer in social housing tenancies have also been clarified and the ability to transfer a social housing tenant to another tenancy has been amended to align it with the Public and Community Housing Management Act of 1992. An amendment has also been made so that where the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment takes a case to the Tenancy Tribunal as the regulator on behalf of a party, that party’s name will automatically be anonymised. In some cases, tenants may not be aware that a case has been taken up on their behalf, and we would not wish them to be potentially disadvantaged for future tenancy applications.

The bill also provides that landlords with six or more tenancies would be subject to higher infringement fees and pecuniary penalties, and amendments to the bill will clarify who counts as an associated person and whose tenancies will therefore count towards the landlord’s number of tenancies. The amendments reflect submitters’ concerns that the original definition of an associated person in the bill was too wide. The Regulations Review Committee recommended that the bill should include guidelines as to the exercise or the regulation-making power to specify infringement notices, and the committee has therefore added a requirement that the Minister responsible for the Residential Tenancies Act consult with the Minister of Justice on any new proposed infringement offences before recommending any regulations.

This bill, along with the changes made by the committee, will improve security and wellbeing for approximately 600,000 households that live in rented homes in New Zealand. In conclusion, I recommend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party does not support the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. I’ll go into the reasons why, but I need to draw the House’s instant attention to the absolute disrespectful and shoddy approach—unfortunately, while I respect the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing) as an individual—of this Government to have literally tabled in the last 20 seconds, I kid you not—to those thousands of people who have submitted against this bill, be very clear, the Government in the last 30 seconds now has tabled an SOP of over 15 pages of which the Opposition has never laid eyes upon. In fact, it was only five minutes ago—five minutes ago—that the Minister announced that there was an SOP making substantial changes. Some, from what the Minister’s indicated, this side could accept; most probably not. But in terms of an absolute affront and an arrogance to this Parliament—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Under urgency.

—under urgency, as the shadow Leader of the House has rightly pointed out. I probably do need to take a slight step back, because I am somewhat indignant.

This House—this Parliament is under urgency. It is rushing this bill through all its remaining stages this afternoon, and an SOP has literally only just been tabled. Sorry, for the public at home, an SOP—or Supplementary Order Paper—is a series of amendments which are made to the primary legislation. These are 15 pages—15 pages of proposed changes—which the Government has known about, and I would suggest has deliberately withheld from the Opposition. We will have only a matter of a couple of hours, if that, to discuss, think, and debate before the Government rams it through. This is a complete affront to the democracy of this House, but I would like to suggest this is an absolute illustration of a Government that does not care about those they purport to—in fact, I might put it this way, because the other side likes to babble on with the “k” word, being “kindness”. This is not a very kind thing to do.

💬 Hon Tim Macindoe: It’s completely the opposite.

It is a complete—it’s absolutely absurd. We’ll have to come to that.

But, look, unfortunately this sits within the framework of the way that this entire bill has been handled, including through the Social Services and Community Committee. The select committee continued during the COVID lockdown. The meetings had to be conducted via Zoom. That’s not to take away from the committee members who worked hard on this bill, but this was pushed through at a stage that the country was not only distracted with COVID but members of this Parliament were coming to grips with a new way of working. The bill was rammed through, I would suggest, a committee process which ultimately leads to flawed situations. I need to remind the House: just about every piece of social legislation which this Government has put through has been flawed, conceptually and practically. We’ve had to return to this House multiple times to fix up errors which the Government has created by rushing the process.

I’m actually quite angry. As far as I do emotion, I’m actually quite angry that this has been foisted on us. The primary bill itself, the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill, is a bad bill, and I’ll come to the reasons why. But, again, the fact that literally at 2.56 p.m.—again, to the thousands of people who have written in to me and the Opposition, please take absolute note that not only has the Government ignored your—as in the public’s—view on this, but now they are dumping more amendments literally four minutes ago. That’s the affront, and that’s ultimately how much the Government cares about the views of other people: not a bit.

Why does National oppose the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill as it stood? It’s important to say that now—“as it stood”—because it’s about to change comprehensively. Why we oppose it is a matter of principle and a matter of pragmatism, if you will. In principle, National remains the party of private property rights. We expect that there’s a rightful balance between landlords and tenants, but the fundamental aspect is that the landlord owns the house. We’ve heard it several times from the other side that believe that, actually, housing needs to be a social service. The Government has said very clearly at times that private landlords are really acting as a social service. That is wrong. That is an affront to private property rights. It is up to the owner of the property to decide how they want to use their property, and not to be told by a Government of how to use it.

Now, that probably is a difference between the left and the right of politics. The left are very keen on telling people how to live their lives and how to run their homes. But why National’s pragmatically against this bill is not because it believes in a balance between tenants and landlords; it’s that this bill completely throws out of whack—for want of a better expression—the balance. It tilts it completely against the landlord—the owner of the home. But sadly the changes in this bill—and I’m happy to have it on Hansard—will harm tenants more. A big part of this is this is classic leftist behaviour which believes that a little bit of writing on paper and black and white ideals are just going to make major, major changes.

What we will see with these changes are fewer landlords operating in the market. How do we know that? The Minister will know this from going through the submissions. Landlord after landlord in the committee, and those that have been contacting certainly MPs on this side of the House are saying, “It’s no longer worth being a landlord; it’s time to get out.” Our constituents already write to us, email us, call us, and complain to us about all these ghost homes, these empty homes that sit around our towns and cities. That’s probably because landlords are already tired of all the extra requirements and costs which this Labour Government has foisted on them. This is probably going to be the final straw for many of them. Why that’s actually going to harm tenants—and it’s simple mathematics; it’s simple market dynamics—is fewer private rentals will see an increase in rents. Just remember, rents have already gone up about $50-$60 a week on average across the country—even higher in Auckland. Rents have already gone up under this Government; I would suggest, because of this Government, it’s going to get even worse.

But the Government, being a bunch of theoreticians, think that they can solve it by putting a clause in this bill which says you can only raise rents once every 12 months, because that will solve prices going up! Well, as I noted in a video last night, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a mathematician to work out that all landlords will do—those who remain in the market—is make a steeper increase every 12 months. If they’re not able to actively compete for who the tenants shall be, it’s not the tenant who’s going to benefit at the end of the day because some Minister or Government’s written a whole lot of words on a piece of paper; it will be the tenant who suffers as the landlord uses what they can to provide what they believe is the rightful rent.

Fundamentally, as I said at the start, it is the landlord, not the Government, that owns that property. It is the landlord, day after day, who is paying for the cost—be that a mortgage, you name it, they’re paying for it. They need to recoup their costs. The irony of the leftist thinking on being a social service is that the social service is meant to be there to serve the tenant, but there’s no social service, if you will, or support of the landlord who is attempting to provide something.

Fundamentally, we have a Government already—and we brought this up during the select committee process—that is failing in the housing of New Zealanders. The Minister knows this: 18,000 Kiwi families are currently waiting for a State house. There were about 5,000 under National when we left Government—that was 5,000 too many—but now it’s at 18,000. Why National opposes this so aggressively—why National opposes this so aggressively—is that number will get worse because of this bill. It’s a theoretician’s bill. It all looks wonderful on paper, and all the advocates who came in arguing for it from the pro-tenant’s side think that simple words and intentions are going to make a difference.

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: Is that all you’ve got?

But at the end of the day—oh, no, we’ve got more readings after this. The Minister’s saying is that all I’ve got? No, I’ve got a lot more. I’m actually pacing myself. As the Minister might remember, he and his Government are rushing all parts of this bill through this afternoon. To end where I started, not only are they rushing it through as they’ve rushed the entire bill through, they have literally dropped an amendment only a few moments ago, providing the Opposition and myself absolutely no chance to engage it. That’s exactly symbolic of what they think of landlords, and landlords will take note in the election.

Debate interrupted.