Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call—not a long call, because I think there’s been a lot of debate that’s been had in this third reading around this bill. So, as I stated in the second reading, I rephrased and reframed the bill the “Residential Tenancies (I Hate Landlords) Bill”, and that’s really clear. Now, some may say that that’s a bit harsh, but when you look at the comments that have been made from a number of landlords, when you look at the comments in submissions—we had 1,436 submissions—a number were opposed to this bill. Even the tenants themselves talked about the 90-day removal notice around properties, and, in particular, the recent Real Estate Institute of New Zealand survey showed that 45.4 percent of tenants actually disagreed with, and were against, the removal of the 90-day notice, compared to 40 percent that were in support. So it’s quite clear that this is a bill that hasn’t had the full support of the whole entire sector and community, and so that’s the reason why we oppose this bill.

We also, too, want to put on record the fact that the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing), the Hon Kris Faafoi, introduced, five minutes into his speech, a 15-page Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) which, in effect, was talking about issues around family violence. We would have supported that provision if it was included in the process. The Minister cannot stand in this House and say that they have been working for a long time, when, in his PR, this bill came into the House on 17 November 2019. We’ve had almost 12 months in place to be able to do the work, and it hasn’t been done. Hence the point I made when we were in the committee of the whole House stage to the Minister, around clause 54 of the bill—the new clause that he’s put in there—that when there’s a tenant and it’s been requested that they be removed from the tenancy, within two days, they can be removed on the grounds of family violence. So we understood that there was a calculation that was put there, and what the calculation clearly showed was that discrepancy between the two-week period, the cost that would be incurred would be upon the landlord. Again, that furthers our point in the reasons why we believe that this bill is unfair in regards to the pendulum of responsibility for the landlord.

Now, I know that Marama Davidson spoke in the House on this bill. She talked about equalling the opportunities. But, actually, if she looked at the facts only 18 percent of tenants have been removed from properties in regards to those tenancies—only 18 percent in a period of over three years. We know there are bad landlords, we know there are those that have not acted appropriately in certain cases, but it is not the case right across the board. We have good landlords, we have good tenants who have been operating. But this tool is a blunt tool that will impact and affect a whole lot of other landlords and tenants that are inside of our communities as well.

So we do oppose this bill. It is unfair. It is unfortunate that the Minister could not have, during the select committee process, introduced this earlier on so that we could, through the process, put this through a select committee, a robust process.

Another point that was made through the SOP was in regard to the fact that if there’s an assault upon the landlord by the tenant, then the landlord has grounds to dismiss the tenancy agreement with their tenant, but the tenant has 14 days—14 days. Now, for a tenant where there was family violence, they have two days in which they can be removed. But for a tenant who actually assaults a landlord, they’re given a 14-day period of grace. Where is the equity of opportunity for the landlord? There isn’t one. So landlords now are going to be threatened by tenants, in this situation, who’ve assaulted them, and, again, what has this Government afforded to them? They’ve afforded them 14 extra days to the tenant.

💬 Andrew Bayly: And you’ve got to still front up with the evidence.

And that’s the difficulty that we’re faced with as well.

So we have to say on this side that we have reframed this bill the “Residential Tenancies (I Hate Landlords) Bill” for good reason. The evidence shows it in the submissions that are there, and we’ve seen this happen time and time again. I look forward to some of the speeches—I may not be here to hear it—but we oppose this bill in the House.

Mr Speaker, I think history will record that, for those members that vote in favour of this bill tonight, we are on the right side of history. It only takes a very quick walk down into any one of our communities that is of a lower socioeconomic circumstance to see the absolute strife that families are in. It’s no longer 30 years ago, when 60 percent of all adults owned their own homes, and this and that—the Residential Tenancies Act was created in another time, another place.

The reality is that, for most of us who walked the streets alongside those in our community, we know the trauma of what it is like to lose your home. We know that those kids that are growing up in those homes, without that certainty of having a roof over their heads, are going to go from school to school to school. We know that they’ll come from some of the most vulnerable backgrounds and some of the hardest backgrounds. And perhaps not all of us within this House have intimate knowledge of what it’s like to walk in those shoes.

But I can tell you, those of us who cast our vote to amend—fundamentally amend—the Residential Tenancies Act tonight see—that when our children look back and see what we’ve done, I don’t think that there’s going to be future generations of landlords that will storm this House and go, “Hey! You took away my landlord rights.” Because they would have taken that cash and put it somewhere else. But for those folks that are very much dependent on having a decent landlord—I was with a friend in the weekend; he didn’t know I would use this, but he’s a landlord, and he said, “Oh no, I’m going to have to kick the tenants out if you guys rush through this bill, it’s very anti-landlord.” My mate, he was the chief financial officer of a big company, and he lived in one of the wealthiest places in the area I live in. We only have two really wealthy areas in my entire electorate—he lived in one. The lifestyle that he can live is a wonderful lifestyle, it’s absolutely fantastic.

💬 Andrew Bayly: What’s that got to do with it?

That’s got everything to do with it.

💬 Andrew Bayly: What? That he lives in a big house?

Fantastic for him. But he also chose to put his capital into housing others. He didn’t want to upgrade those homes. He didn’t care that he needed to upgrade those homes to make them of a minimum healthy standard. And I said that to my mate—

💬 Andrew Bayly: Did he say that? Did he specifically say that he’s not going to meet the health standards?

Course we did. Of course, we say that. And I hope you’d say those same things to your friends, too. Of course we hold each other to account. We had a good old yarn about it.

💬 Andrew Bayly: I don’t believe it.

Of course you do—if you don’t believe that, what’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you having those conversations in your communities, with your mates who are the most privileged in our country? They can buy multiple houses and not bring them up to a minimum healthy standard for families that rely—

💬 Jonathan Young: How do you know?

Because you guys are saying it to me right now. I’m just listening to you guys. I’m just responding to you. For those of us in this House who aren’t afraid to have those challenging yarns with our mates—and we all carry a bit of privilege here in this House. Well, I hope that we are having those yarns. I hope that if we’ve got mates that are rich enough to be able to invest in owning multiple houses, we can give them all a bit of a kick up the bum and say, “Hey, actually, the obligation is on us to be able to lift the standard on those homes, make sure that they’re of a healthy standard, make sure that we are proud to do that—if that’s where we choose to invest our capital.” And this will be a fundamental disagreement—and we’re going to hear some vitriol in the course of the speeches this afternoon, and I say “Shame!” Shame on that side of the House for that position, that you don’t mind giving a boot to those families that are dependent on us that do own homes.

We’ve got the capital invested in those homes. Get them up to a decent standard. And I am so incredibly proud of all of those that have invested their time into ensuring that our friends that are dependent on landlords are going to get those houses up to a blooming good nick. So I commend this bill to the House. And thank goodness we have the numbers to do that.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and kia orana in Cook Islands Language Week. Kiritapu Allan, the member who’s just resumed her seat, suggested she was going to hear some vitriol. Well, I spoke in the second reading and the committee stage, and now I’m taking my call in the third reading of this debate, all of which have happened this afternoon. We should not be dealing with this bill under urgency. But I say that as a matter of fact; I don’t believe it’s vitriol. She began her speech by saying this bill will put her on the right side of history and those on the Government benches who agree with her. It will not, but, in saying that, I’m not spouting vitriol. I am simply stating reality.

In particular, as she made the comment, because she resorted very quickly to the “old rich mates” mantra, which showed the real vitriol, the real prejudice, that comes from the other side of the House. I would like to invite Kiri Allan and any other member from the House to come to my electorate of Hamilton West and to meet, with me, landlords.

💬 Kiritapu Allan: I will take you up on that honour.

I’m delighted that Kiri has taken me up on that offer to meet with me the average mum and dad investor, small investor, landlord who I think is providing a vital service and, in my experience, works incredibly hard to ensure that there’s a good relationship between the landlord and the tenant. I also acknowledge that the vast majority of tenants are good people who respect the privilege they’ve been given of renting somebody else’s home and looking after it. We need to acknowledge that. But this particular bill that we are enacting tonight fundamentally shifts the balance, which should be struck evenly between landlords and tenants, firmly in favour of tenants and, unfortunately, in favour of some bad tenants.

Now, the Government has clearly stopped listening to us because they’re rushing this through under urgency. So I’m going to ask them to listen to the New Zealanders who are providing accommodation. I’m going to begin with a tertiary education accommodation provider and facilitator in my electorate of Hamilton West, who wrote to me to say, “We are very concerned at the proposed change to clause 60A of the Residential Tenancies Act, as it will have significant unintended consequences for tertiary education across New Zealand.”

We haven’t heard much tonight about students, we’ve been mainly hearing about families in houses, but think of how many tertiary students need to rent accommodation. Probably most of us who attended tertiary institutions during our younger days did that. I certainly did and so have my children. This particular person in my electorate said, “As well as operating halls of residence, we also work with landlords who rent their flats and houses to students. The universal feedback we have received from landlords is that they are unlikely to continue providing rental accommodation to tertiary students if the proposed change to clause 60A became law.”

Now, that isn’t an isolated case. We have heard that from several people who are providing accommodation to students. I feel desperately for prospective students of the future who might find that they miss out on the opportunity to study by not being able to find accommodation because of this issue.

The writer concluded by saying, “As most tertiary students across New Zealand, both domestic and international”—not so many at the moment here because of COVID-19, but they will come back—“live in rental accommodation while studying, the lack of availability of rentals for students will have a serious impact on many students’ ability to study away from home.” I say to the Government members: please listen to that person.

Here is the view of one of my constituents in Hamilton West who is the administrator for a property management company in Hamilton, my city—and this is a big operator: “We manage over 1,000 properties and represent more than 800 landlords. I believe this bill will end up having a very negative impact on the very people the Government feel they will be helping. We will be in a position that we will not give a chance to anyone who we deem slightly marginal.”

This is a very big concern, due to the high number of people we see in this category—and to those who are listening, I want to point out that the Green members are currently laughing as if this is a laughing matter. It is not. It is a serious issue for prospective tenants of the future.

💬 Marama Davidson: Oh, what?

Oh, and now, yes, we’re getting more. “We currently can allow people the opportunity to have a second chance”—if they would stop squawking and actually listen. They should pay respect. These are not my words. These are the words of the providers who they are determined to force out of business: “Without the ability to give them a 90-day notice, unfortunately, we will be forced to stop giving these people a chance due to the risk this will have on the owners of the investment properties we manage. Only tenants with squeaky clean tenancy records and credit will be placed.” Again, this person also said, “This will also have a huge impact on students. Without fixed-term tenancies, students will be in the higher risk category as the risk of vacancy over the student holiday period will be very high.” The writer is pleading with MPs not to proceed with this bill, and National MPs have made it very clear that we share these concerns.

We are the ones, here in the National Party, showing genuine concern for current and prospective tenants by opposing this bill. But are Government’s MPs listening? Are they moved by this? No, they’re being insulting to the people who have sent these emails to us at the moment. Are they so ignorant of social and commercial realities that they will allow their dogma to prevail over evidence and common sense? Sadly, it appears that they are, and I have to ask them: what happened to kindness? Because their support for this bill is cruel and inhumane.

Unfortunately, I haven’t got time to read all of them, but I’ll go for another one and hope that they’re listening. This is, again, somebody from my Waikato region. “I am very dismayed that my submissions and the thousands of like-minded submissions opposing the changes to the Residential Tenancies Act have been ignored by this Labour Government, and they are now trying to pass these changes under urgency. I am an experienced landlord”—now, I know the writer of this letter. She is not a wealthy person. She is a decent, socially minded person with a heart for our community, and she says, “I’m an experienced landlord who is seriously considering removing my properties from the rental market due to the implications of the proposed changes. Along with many other residential property landlords, my submission to the changes appears to have gone unheard, and I simply cannot see how these changes give any balance of fairness to the property owner, landlord, as it appears to be weighted heavily in favour of the tenant. My tenants have been great,” she says, “and I am a good landlord”—and I know that that is true—“but these changes will not be fair to me. Many tenants are excellent, some are mediocre, and some are downright appalling.”

All electorate MPs have, unfortunately, met some of the appalling ones because we’ve had to help to try to resolve the issues that occur when bad tenants damage property and cause a social nuisance in their communities, and it’s very, very challenging and difficult to fix. I think of some elderly couples in my neighbourhood who’ve been through hell in the last year, and we fought like mad to try to get them the justice they deserved. Unfortunately, the problems tonight will be compounded by this bill passing.

As I say, I have a huge number of these emails and letters. I could stand here and fill up the next two hours reading them to the House. Unfortunately, it is clear that Government members are not listening. I deliberately put these on the record because I don’t want them to listen to me, I want them to listen to the people who are providing the tenancies. They are not, they will ram this bill through, and I look forward to being part of a National Government that will repeal it.

Almost half of our population in this country are renting a home and do not own their own home. For Māori, that is well over 60 percent, and for Pacific Islanders, it is well over that again. Where is the care from the Opposition and the pleading from the Opposition for those people, many of whom struggle to find a secure place to live? Where are the pleas from the Opposition talking about the actual difficulty of not having a secure home?

If we are wanting to focus on challenges and difficulties in this House, then we have an obligation to do that for the least empowered, for those with the least resources, and for those who do not have the capacity to send in some emails to every single MP across this House. If we wanted to extract the voices and the emails of people who have been pleading and living with unfair power imbalance for generations and for decades, we would have been swamped with those voices. They may not be as coherently organised as property managers, but you can bet your life that those voices are many, they are strong, and they are spread throughout our entire country, and they are far too busy trying to sort the real difficulty, the daily challenge and reality of just stressing about even having a house to live in, let alone trying to write emails in an organised attempt to keep that power imbalance as the status quo.

That is the campaign that the National Party are supporting and that they are using and weaponising. They are weaponising a few tenants who need to be supported to be better tenants. They are weaponising the small minority in order to smear the entire population of tenants—of people who rent in this country—when we know that those tenants are trying to do their best. They are trying to do their best, but the status quo of power and the rules in the system have been working against them for generations and for decades.

So, yes, some people will be feeling some discomfort right now at the suggestion of fixing those unfair rules. Yes, I expect that as we start to correct the power imbalance in this country—oh yes—we will see some complaints. Yes, we will see some complaints from those who are wanting to protect that power imbalance, and the Opposition MPs from that side of the House are trying to hide behind the guise that this bill will make it worse for some people who rent. That is not why they are opposing this bill. They are not here to put on the floor of this House the voices of mums with children who have to shift schools several times in a year, or several times over a few years. They are not here, reading out those stories in this House. They are using this legislation and trying to say that it is going to make it worse.

They’re trying to say, “Let’s not change it because it’s only going to result in some players pulling out of the market.” If people using housing as a business are not able to run a business in a way that is fit for human decency, then that is up to them to choose some other way to run a business—to choose some other pathway to make wealth. That choice is up to them.

We know that for the most part, property owners and landlords can actually abide by rules of human decency. We know that using this legislation as a weapon against rewriting those tenancy rules is an excuse to uphold the current imbalance of power.

The Greens are proud to support the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. We know that renting in this country needs to be a dignified choice and that renting in this country still needs to provide a secure, valuable, dignified life for anybody who chooses to rent or who is unable to own a home.

I want this House, despite the fact that there is literally only a handful of MPs who do not own a single property—only a handful of MPs in this House do not own their own property, and, yes, I am one of them. Regardless of what properties and portfolios of properties we might own across this House, I want this House to represent at least half of the population—and more if you’re Māori and Pacific and low-income—who need a voice in this House. Just because MPs are mainly not renting, that does not mean that people who rent do not deserve a voice in this House. So I am very proud of this essential start to correcting the unfair system. I will not budge and the Green Party will not budge from continuing on this start.

There is more to do. We know that alongside fixing the rental rules and helping mitigate against any people pulling out from running a house as a business—which, by the way, still leaves behind a house. It’s still there.

I know that ramping up public and community housing, which we are doing—and which this Government has done in a bigger quantity than any other since the 1970s—needs to happen alongside fixing our rental laws. It is unacceptable for this country to continue with that power imbalance. It is not acceptable that some people in our communities have to stress and do not know whether or not they will be moved on at any moment.

It is not acceptable that those at the back of rental application lines, who know that they have got almost zero chance of being preferred tenants because the market is currently so skewed towards favouring particular tenants—I know that we need to stop the ability to do rental bidding, because those very groups think that the only way that they can get a foot in the door is to bid higher than what is being advertised and to even bid outside of what they know that they can afford. But they are that desperate—they are that desperate—to bid a higher rent and to offer a higher weekly rent, because they know no one else will look at them.

They know that they are good tenants. They are good tenants and they just want to put down roots. They just want to be able to form support networks in their communities. They just want to be able to enable their children to attend the same school, to make sure that they can provide a network of support in their own neighbourhood.

We are proud to support this start to the change of legislation. We will continue to work to make more changes so that we can truly correct the power imbalance. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to start my contribution on the third reading by acknowledging the voices that did come out, and they did through the Zoom platform during lockdown, a difficult period for all of us but also for these submitters who wanted to contribute but under such stressful circumstances. I acknowledge their voices, and I am only sorry that their concerns that they raised—very well, and actually, if members took the chance to actually come in and sit in on those submissions, they would see that actually the landlords, the mum and dad landlords, the property owners, the property managers, the submitters actually don’t have horns sticking out of their head. They’re actually New Zealanders working hard, mums and dads, many of them with just one property, and they work really hard to do what they do for their family and to ensure—most of them are doing their best for the tenants in their homes.

The previous member that spoke just prior to me, Marama Davidson—how rich to speak about this power imbalance, this so-called power imbalance. And, of course, the member does have to create this burning platform—this burning platform—to try and create this burning platform so that you can pit one group of New Zealanders against another. It’s an important relationship, that relationship between people who have property that they can rent and New Zealanders who want properties to rent. It’s an intimate relationship and, by and large, mostly it works well.

For the Government to think that they’re so clever that they can change the levers on this relationship, they can move the levers around and effect a change that they think will make it better for the renters and New Zealanders, is absolutely wrong. Yes, they may not have taken into account the submitters during the select committee process, their concerns raised, the fact that it will become highly untenable for them to want to stay and be a landlord. Why would you want to if it doesn’t work out for you? That’s fine; they can sell up, but don’t think that that means it’s going to open up the market for first-home buyers. The evidence is not there that that happens. We need the private rental market in New Zealand because, clearly, the Government cannot provide housing. So we need to be able to support that market and support the relationship and not pit one group of New Zealanders against another.

We have the unintended consequences, but they’re actually not unintended consequences, because these are consequences that were laid out very well by many of the submitters. One of those consequences, as has been mentioned in this House a lot already, is that rent has gone up. It has already gone up. Where was that speaker who spoke before me? Where was her voice? Because I am in my community in South Auckland, and I know rents have gone up. It is getting harder and harder to get into rental properties. This bill is not going to fix that. It’s going to make it worse. The power imbalance is actually the power imbalance in the way this bill has been treated in this House—the power imbalance of this Government taking no heed of the many submitters who submitted on this, through this process, and thinking that they know better how to fix the situation. The consequences are that, actually, it is not going to fix housing; it is not going to provide more affordable housing for New Zealanders. It is going to be tougher for those families on the margins to get into property and to have something for themselves for their families, to have a rental home, because there’s going to be less on the market. The prices will go up because, as it gets harder for landlords, that will be reflected in the prices. The prices will go up, and so the opposite will happen. I do not support this bill.

This is a split call. I call—somebody?

E Te Māngai o Te Whare nei, tēnā koe. Otirā, e ngā mema katoa, tēnā tātou katoa. I’m really pleased to take a call on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. I listened with great interest to the contributions from members in the House. Can I just share, as members across the way have talked about, mums and dads investors in the property market, and can I also talk about the tenants that I deal with who’re actually fair law-abiding tenants. There’s been some debate here around rebalance, and my experience is actually I’ve come up against tenants who have been in properties for 10, 15, 17, 20-plus years suddenly getting notice that they’ve got to move out. I understand and accept that that’s the prerogative of the homeowner, but when you constantly hear these stores being fed back through our electoral offices, you’ve got to beg the question—in a country, unfortunately, where we’re tenants in our own land, then we have a problem.

So this bill is attempting—and I have taken time to read the committee’s report; this is the select committee that investigated this bill. I particularly drew my attention to the National’s minority view, and they themselves, in their own minority view in the select committee report, talked about the biggest hurdle for them in this bill being, actually, the abatement of the 90 days’ notice. But in the same section of the select committee report in which the National Party put their minority view, they said “except for very limited reasons”. So we’re not completely dismissing the 90-day notice. We’re just ensuring that it’s a fair process.

I too have friends that have multiple rental properties in my home of Hastings, and they never ever mention that they have bad tenants. I’m not saying they don’t have bad tenants, but their biggest issue is about ensuring that they actually dialogue and have a relationship with their tenants. So here may rest an idea that property owners, particularly mums or dads or those that use property managers—we’ve all probably as MPs in this House come to Wellington and had to find our own accommodation. Some, we deal directly with the landlords; some, we deal with property managers, and we’ve had varying degrees of relationships with them. But the key here is, in response to the National Party’s minority view about removing the 90-day notice, that actually it’s still there; ensuring that the bar is lifted so tenants are getting a fair deal. I commend the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the third reading of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. It could well be—you never know in this day and age—the last time I stand to speak in this House. Who knows what’ll happen? I just wanted to make a point before I got through it, because the Hon Nathan Guy today gave me a sheepskin. He’s optimistic that I’ll come back, so I just hope I do and don’t have to leave that sheepskin here for someone else to use.

I’ve listened to the speeches from the other side of the House with interest, actually, and I just want to remind Kiritapu Allan that you’re only on the right side of history in this House when you’re on the right side of the House. The great thing about this House is that other than conscience vote bills, every piece of legislation that comes through this House seems to get changed. I’ve never seen a conscience vote topic changed in my knowledge, or reversed, I guess, in my knowledge, but everything else does. So you only have a place in history for a short time.

But I do think that our opposition to this bill—and I didn’t sit through the select committee stage—is much more around the parameters of what it might do to the market than what it’s going to achieve for its landlords and its tenants. I think we all share the aspiration that tenants and landlords alike should be able to operate in circumstances that are equitable and that give both a fair go, I guess, for want of a better word. I think the risk of this piece of legislation is that it will result in perverse outcomes, particularly applying to the tenants. I think that we could end up with higher rents, because, as I said in my second reading speech, one of the first things that gets factored into these sorts of discussions is risk, and the moment you lift the risk on a landlord, it’s going to lift the risk ratio that they need to calculate with the rent. So I think it could well end up in higher rents.

The next thing I think that could force rents up is the fact that we’re taking the—and I agree with it, to some extent—rental bidding out of the system. What that’ll do, in my view, is put a higher initial rental price into the marketplace. So that’s got the potential to lift rent. I don’t know whether it’ll happen or not, but it’s one of those sorts of things you’ve got to assume could well happen. So I don’t know whether enough consideration was given to these issues in the course of the select committee process. I know the select committee process was fraught simply because we were getting used to a situation which, interestingly, I think has become established now, and from my perspective, I quite like the ability to operate the select committees remotely because it saves a lot of time. To use a David Seymour term, it stops us flying around the country a fair bit as well. So there are actually some advantages in it, but at the time this was going through the House, I think a lot of us had difficulty getting to grips with that process, and I always think that it’s quite nice if you can see someone on the other side of the House so you know what you’re looking for.

So I think it was put through the House in a rush, under difficulty. It’s being rushed through the House now, and I just want to comment briefly on the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), because I think a lot of the aspiration of that SOP that was put forward by the Associate Minister of Housing, even though it was put on the Table as the Minister spoke, and, consequently, our first speaker, Simon O’Connor, had no knowledge of it other than the little piece of information he gleaned from the Minister as he spoke, which I think’s a little bit odd and probably unfair. But, none the less, a lot of the things that were contained in the SOP I think are worthy causes. It’s how you put them together that’s the important bit. Whether they’ve been put together in a manner that’s sustainable, I’ve got my doubts, and the reason for that is that they were never considered by a select committee. I think that’s unfortunate. [Bell rung]

So there are a few things that—I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. How many minutes have I got?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Fifty seconds—49 seconds; still going.

Oh, I apologise, Mr Speaker—I thought I had a full call.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No, this is call No. 9—a split call.

I’ll have to accept the fact that I’ve only got another 36 seconds, Mr Speaker. Given that—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’ll give you an extra 20 seconds because I’ve used up a bit of time.

So we’ve had three—I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We’ve actually had three five-minute calls in a row.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No—no, we haven’t.

OK, thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll accept your ruling. With that, I will just reiterate the fact that we can’t support this bill, and I’ll sit down.

💬 Kiritapu Allan: We don’t mind giving him another couple of minutes, at your discretion.

Are you taking a point of order?

💬 Kiritapu Allan: Nah, not really. Let him finish his speech.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a brief call on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. What we know is that over 30 years homeownership has decreased, and we know that more and more people are renting. I kind of want to flip this a little bit on its head, because I feel like there have been a lot of the more negative aspects of “What if. This might cause that. This might cause whatever.” I have myself been a landlord. I don’t consider myself to be—

💬 Andrew Bayly: You must be rich then, according to some of your colleagues.

No, I don’t consider myself to be rich; I consider myself to be a mum and dad landlord. But what I do want to bring to this debate is the fact that I want my tenant to believe that that house is their home. I want the security of a long-term tenant. I want them to be able to hang a picture on the wall without having to come and seek permission. So I want them to have it as their home, because in turn, as a landlord, it gives me security in the fact that I know I’ll potentially have a really long-term tenant here and that they will in turn also look after the property.

I also just want to briefly mention the fact that when I think about this piece of legislation—what it will mean for our elderly. A lot of our elderly people, senior citizens, are renters. I think it’s really important that we give them the security of long-term tenancy, whereby we can’t have a landlord suddenly say, “Look, I’ve got family coming from X, Y, Z, and I want to rent the home to them now.” I hear the different arguments across the House, across people’s opinions, but I do think we need to think about that positive side of things as well. So I commend this bill to the House.

I thought that was a very thoughtful speech, actually, from that member, Jo Luxton. And I think she would have actually—the member—would have received many emails, as we have. I can’t believe that the members from the Government side haven’t been inundated in their email boxes. You must have. You must have been. Is that right, Mr Henare? No, none at all. Any from any of you guys—no emails at all?

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: Emails are old school.

Old school? OK. Well, I think I’d be very surprised that you haven’t had that contact, because your electorates will be made up of many different types of people—some perceived to be wealthy as one of the members spoke about before, or actually a lot of people who are renting. And, of course, we have a lot of renters in New Zealand. We have about 600,000 homes that are rented in New Zealand—600,000 homes. The vast majority of these—Mr Speaker, I know you’re very, very attentive about this—are owned by very ordinary mums and dads who have chosen not to invest in the share market, but have looked for a valid alternative investment which they can see, they can manage, and also is an investment they can understand. Those 600,000 mums and dads, in the main, that own these types of rental properties are people like you and us—all of us. No different from anyone in Parliament. In fact—

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: Shall we check the pecuniary interests register?

Although we probably—so some of us will own lots of properties, Mr Henare. But they are—in the main—good, ordinary, decent New Zealanders who’ve chosen to put their money into a house and to provide rental accommodation for people. What is so pernicious about this bill, what is so assaulting about this bill, is that it almost assumes that every landlord is going to be a bad landlord. I just think that’s a fundamentally wrong premise to start with. We all know there are many good landlords—or everyone in this House knows that, in the main, landlords are good people. There are always examples of poor landlords as there are many examples of poor tenants.

But this bill just cuts across that. What this does is make a basic premise, which is that we need to protect all tenants and we are going to change the rules so that we are going to put the onus in the hands of the tenant. I think that is wrong, I really do. The rules that keep working away through this bill, about the 90-day clause—and many of the speakers have talked about this—is the requirement now for any landlord to prove what they’re going to do. They have to prove that they’re going to have put in a family member. They have to prove that they’re going to upgrade the premises, by either going to get a consent, or paying money for getting professional people to do it. All of this is just restricting their ability to be flexible in the ordinary course of business—and it is a business for many—of providing a good, high-quality standard of living for people.

💬 Hon Peeni Henare: I thought you said mum and dad investors?

And they are. It is a business for them. But many of us in this House, and our party, supported many measures to make sure that landlords are meeting the requirements and providing adequate standard of living for those tenants. We agree with that, we have no problems with that. We insulated about 300,000 under the John Key Government. I know that the Labour Government and the Greens also say they’ve done it—it doesn’t matter; as a Parliament we all accept the premise that these houses should be brought up to a minimum standard, but this bill goes beyond that. This cuts across into the rights of landlords. And it just imposes such restrictions on them that many of these people, many of these landlords, these mums and dads I speak about, will have a choice and they will make a choice. They will stop renting their property.

We’ve seen that already. We’ve seen all the anecdotes. We’ve seen all the emails. And that is going to be even worse for tenants—that, over time, will reduce the supply of these houses, and that, in time, will push up the rental prices. The very thing that we do not want to achieve, the very thing we do not want to achieve—and that’s what this bill is going to do. It’s going to drive up prices of rents over time. Because you’re going to take the mums and dads out of this and they will take their money and do something worse—something different with it. And your people—that you talk about in this House, the dispossessed—unfortunately, will be even worse off. And no one wants that in Government. No one in Parliament wants that. But this will be the unintended consequence of this bill.

I’m delighted to speak in support of this bill as its last speaker on its third reading. This bill is over 30 years in the making. The existing Act is long overdue. We now have over 600,000 households across Aotearoa who are renters, far different from the situation that was the case back in the mid-1980s, when three-quarters of the households of Aotearoa were actually owner-occupied dwellings. So the shape of the abodes where whānau are living is changing, and the laws need to change with it.

What we’re doing with this bill is just ensuring that there is a better balance between the rights between the landlord and the tenant to provide greater stability and some security for tenants. But what we’ve heard in this debate so far is that it’s as if we’re stripping landlords of all their rights altogether and they’ll be totally helpless. You know, it’s as if their property will be taken off them and they’ll be forced to actually have people rent from them. It’s quite the opposite. This is all about protecting landlords’ rights as well, and landlords have their interests, which are secured in this legislation. They are able to terminate tenancies, but there must be fair and justified reasons for that. We need to eliminate—and this bill seeks to do this—no-cause terminations and the absolute heartache and damage that that can cause people when they’re actually just turfed out for no reason at all. I mean, those practices have perpetuated and grown in the current environment.

So that’s all this bill seeks to do. It’s not as if this bill has just come along in the last five minutes; it’s been consulted upon publicly for over the past three years. There have been thousands of opportunities for public submissions. There was a public consultation document on this, which has gone up and down the country. So this has long been in the making, and it addresses some longstanding issues—for instance, the issues around victims of domestic violence and having to get safety and be able to quickly deal with their tenancy situations. I mean, these are practical measures, which are very welcome, and they will make a huge difference to the situations that tenants find themselves in up and down the country.

So this is a welcome piece of legislation, and I commend Minister Faafoi for his excellent work on this. The sky is not going to fall in for landlords. The sun will come up in the morning. Tenants will still be, hopefully, safely nestled in their warm rented accommodation or homes—their homes—and the rent will keep flowing through to the landlords. If something is to go wrong, there are protections, there are powers, that naturally rest with the landlord and with the tenant. So I commend this bill, and I commend all the work that’s gone on. With that, I really want to just hasten its passage, and I commend it to the House. Kia ora.