Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill

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

As I outlined in the second reading of the bill, since the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) came into force over 30 years ago, 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. The Act was adopted in 1986, when 75 percent of New Zealanders lived in owner-occupied dwellings and renting was understood as a predominantly short-term arrangement for people without children, with renters moving frequently rather than settling down in their communities. Homeownership is now at a 60-year low, and nearly a third of all households, or approximately 600,000, now live in a rented property.

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 for both tenants and for landlords. The changes in the bill will improve tenants’ security and stability, while continuing to protect landlords’ interests in their property. Improving security of tenure means that tenants who are meeting their obligations will feel confident that they can remain in their homes. Insecure tenure can have a negative impact on health, education, and employment outcomes.

This bill will improve tenants’ security by removing no-cause terminations. It’s simply not appropriate in 2020 for a person to be required to leave their home without knowing why.

Landlords will only be able to end a tenancy if one of the specific reasons in the legislation applies, or by order from the Tenancy Tribunal. Landlords will be able to terminate tenancies for a range of fair and justified reasons, such as antisocial behaviour, or someone who is repeatedly behind in their rent. In addition, if a tenant has been charged by the police with physical assault against their landlord or another relevant party, the landlord can serve a termination notice, and a tenant must then vacate within 14 days.

The bill mandates that fixed-term tenancy agreements must become periodic tenancy agreements upon expiry, unless both parties agree otherwise, or the justified reasons set out in the bill apply. This will flatten the inflated demand that is created in some regions by tenancies that all end at the same time.

The bill also enables a victim of family violence to withdraw from a fixed or periodic tenancy speedily, by giving their landlord two days’ notice, along with evidence of the family violence while on the premises. After the termination date, the tenant will not be liable for any further rent. These changes mean that victims have fewer barriers to exiting tenancies quickly in order to seek safety.

Tenants should be able to feel at home in their rental property. To this end, the bill makes rental properties safer and more livable by setting out clear processes for tenants to make minor changes to their rental accommodation, such as earthquake-proofing or baby-proofing a property. Landlords will be able to set reasonable conditions when agreeing to these minor changes, and tenants must reverse them when they leave the tenancy.

The bill also makes changes to ensure that a growing proportion of New Zealand renters have similar opportunities to access fibre broadband services as owner-occupiers. Access to fibre broadband is important for education, employment, and social outcomes.

The bill prohibits the solicitation of rental bids by landlords. It also includes a requirement that landlords must specify a rent amount when advertising a rental property. Rental bidding can exploit vulnerable tenants and drive up rental costs, especially in a tight rental market, and the bill also limits rent increases to once every 12 months, instead of the current provisions of six months in the Residential Tenancies Act as it stands.

The bill provides the regulator, which is the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in this case, with a suite of new tools to take direct action against parties who are not meeting their obligations. The bill also increases the existing financial penalties in the Residential Tenancies Act. This package of amendments will improve compliance with the law.

I’m also aware of situations where tenants are reluctant to go to the Tenancy Tribunal as they fear being blacklisted by future landlords. For the tenancy system to work, people should feel confident that the Tenancy Tribunal can be used without disadvantaging them in the future. The bill clarifies the situations where names and identifying details can be anonymised. This includes when a party has been wholly or substantially successful in taking a case to the tribunal and applies for suppression.

The bill also clarifies that the RTA does not apply to Government-funded transitional and emergency housing. Emergency and transitional housing is a short-term safe place to stay while longer-term accommodation can be found. The new exemption helps ensure that providers can continue to provide this valuable service to people who need a safe place to stay. To ensure that transitional housing clients still have adequate protections, a code of practice will be developed that sets out the Government’s expectations of providers.

The bill will also extend some provisions of the COVID-19 legislation. The RTA was amended to provide greater flexibility for the tribunal’s operation so that it could consider cases just on the evidence of documentation or by teleconference. 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 contents of this bill have been shaped through comprehensive public consultation. From August to October 2018, over 4,700 submissions were received following the publication of a discussion document. Over 1,400 submissions on the bill were received through the select committee from February to July of this year.

I would like to take a moment to thank all of the submitters—landlords, tenants, interest groups, and others—who have been involved in the various stages of the project. I’d also like to thank the Social Services and Community Committee for its consideration of the bill and for its excellent management of the challenges arising from meeting and holding hearings over the lockdown. The committee recommended several valuable changes to the bill, which the Government took up.

I’d also like to thank the officials who have worked on the policy and legislation process, and our coalition partners—New Zealand First and the Green Party—for supporting this work. On that note, I want to mention Ron Mark and Marama Davidson, who have been central to getting this bill through the House.

Lastly, I’d like to thank the committee of the whole House for their consideration of the bill. The bill will ensure that renters in New Zealand can have a place to call home and set down roots in their communities. I commend the bill to the House.

I’m sure the Minister the Hon Kris Faafoi is as thrilled as I that such a crowd has turned out, and I’d probably like to—looking at the crowd—reassure the Minister that it’s not a group of militant landlords, but be careful when you leave afterwards. We’re also very relieved to see that Jian Yang has actually made the House, with five minutes to spare. My final gift to my friend and colleague is that I will conclude at 10 past 5.

National continues to oppose this bill. That, Minister, will be no surprise to you. We remain disappointed that, less than two hours ago, the Supplementary Order Paper was tabled, of which—in effect—the Parliament’s had very little, if any, time to properly consider. I think, unfortunately, it is reflective of how this whole bill has gone. Minister, our objections to this bill remain. Well, fundamentally, the Minister’s drawn attention to “so few bad behaving landlords or tenants”, and that’s right. But this bill, effectively, will touch on and affect every landlord and every tenant. In order to address the issues of a few, this bill is going to cause problems for all.

As I’ve noted in previous speeches—which is why I don’t want to keep repeating things—in principle, the National Party is one of private property rights. Landlords are not a social service; if they choose to be, then all well and good, but it should not be legislated. But, practically, the issue, Minister, is that in trying to help the tenants, this bill is going to make their life a lot, lot worse. As I’ve said, I’ve explored this before—by reducing some of their freedoms, which this bill is doing, landlords will exit the market. They have, as I’ve said, mentioned to us in droves—even the New Zealand First Party acknowledged in their speech; I suspect they’ve had to swallow somewhat of a dead rat to vote for this. Landlords will leave the market. That will ultimately see rents increase. The idea that, somehow, purely limiting the landlords’ increase to every 12 months won’t cut it; they will simply double, or take it even steeper, as they so choose.

The bill, too, doesn’t go anywhere near to addressing antisocial behaviour. This side of the House, Minister, completely understands it’s a small number of people, but those who are landlords know that that action—those antisocial behaviours—is incredibly destructive. The idea that there should be three warnings over 90 days before one goes to a tenancy tribunal is completely unacceptable, and that’s before we’ve even gone into debates like methamphetamine and the rest.

This is a badly construed bill. This is a bill that, I would suggest, is simply academic. It looks fantastic on paper, I’m sure some tenants’ groups think it’s fantastic because it attempts to—or perhaps looks like it’s going to—tilt things terribly in their favour. It will not. National, therefore, cannot support this. We are worried and concerned that, as the weeks and months go by, we will see fewer people in that private housing market. It’s a problem the Government can ill afford—18,000 families are already on the State house waiting list, 18,000 families. I fear—I fear—there’ll be more.

So, ultimately, the National Party opposes this. We will look to address this if we have the privilege of being in Government. I think, fundamentally, the message I want to end on is that this side of the House does hear the voice of tenants, and we do hear the voice of landlords. We would be the party to put forward legislation which echoes those voices, and not ideologies which ultimately harm the very people the Government claims they want to help.

I just rise to put on the record New Zealand First’s continued support of this legislation through its third reading, and I want to thank Mr Faafoi for the amount of time that he’s spent. Clearly, there are challenges that present when parties that have differing philosophical views approach problems such as this. New Zealand First has noted in its speeches the concerns of landlords around the removal of the 90-day no-cause eviction notice. We are mindful, though, that it’s only really been used on 3 percent of occasions, and therefore wonder if the protestations are that much of an issue. That said, we have put on the record that the people who will pick up those tenants who are not taken up by landlords are worried about the risk that they will be presented with. Those tenants will fall to the Government, and we just want to acknowledge that that will put even more emphasis on Housing New Zealand in that respect. We support the bill.

Debate interrupted.

Before I call the next member, I’ll indicate that this order of the day is set down for a resumption following the break.

Members, it’s my intention to indicate that at the conclusion of the Rt Hon David Carter’s valedictory speech, the House will be suspended until 7 p.m. I’m giving notice of this now so I don’t have to interrupt the celebrations which will be occurring at that time. I call on Dr Jian Yang to make his valedictory statement.