Residential Tenancies (Healthy Homes Standards) Amendment Bill

Members, we come now to our final debate, clauses 1 and 2. This is debate on clauses 1 and 2, “Title” and “Commencement”.

I guess, in the final remarks on this debate, the final little bit of scrutiny and the opportunity to question the Minister in the chair, Megan Woods, we’ve canvassed as much as we possibly can, I think, in the limited time frame that we’ve had to get across all of the documents and the Cabinet paper and the regulatory impact statement as released. Unfortunately, as the Minister herself has put, we haven’t had the opportunity to hear from members of the public, and, I will just reiterate, we also haven’t had the opportunity to hear from members of the public who the regulatory impact statement notes are going to be the most impacted by this legislation, that being tenants—renters; the 1.5 million New Zealanders who live in rental properties across this country, who were not consulted with.

This legislation, is, however, titled the Residential Tenancies (Healthy Homes Standards) Amendment Bill, and, I guess, just in my final contribution in this committee of the whole House stage, if I could proffer an alternative title, one that perhaps is a little bit more explicit about the fact that this is a piece of legislation that kicks the can down the road on the entitlement that all New Zealanders have to the right—the human right that Aotearoa New Zealand recognises—to an adequate home, that subsequent Governments have recognised, that this is an extension to compliance for landlords and for Kāinga Ora to tenants having that adequate housing recognised as a human right and fulfilled through the healthy homes standards. So, perhaps, a title that is all the more adequate: something along the lines of, perhaps, “Residential Tenancies (Delay of Healthy Home Standards) Amendment Bill”.

Oh, thank you, Mr Chair. It is an absolute pleasure to take a call on the clauses 1 and 2 part of the debate on the Residential Tenancies (Healthy Homes Standards) Amendment Bill.

I think a lot of landlords, up and down New Zealand, will be scratching their head wondering why it was that they were struggling and forking out thousands of dollars to make sure that their homes could get up to scratch within the deadlines that the Government had set for themselves. And yet the Government is here, tonight, passing a law to give themselves an extension under the guise that it’s for private landlords when it wasn’t. It’s for the Government’s own homes, not the private landlords, up and down New Zealand, who knew that they had deadlines coming up and they did the best that they could to reach them.

This is a bill that I believe should be named the “Residential Tenancies (Double Standards) Amendment Bill” because this bill is about the double standards that this Government puts through in Parliament—having one rule for a class of people that the Government quite often paints as villains, and having a different rule for themselves. You see, landlords do their best to open up their doors and their homes to other people in our communities every day and provide them a stable, warm, dry home. You know, lots of people do that. They give up their homes and open their doors so that people have a place to live, and I think that’s wonderful. And it’s wonderful that our communities are there to support each other and that we do have rental accommodation—private rental accommodation—where people are able to have individual contracts that work for both parties. It’s a community getting around each other to provide accommodation for each other.

But, on the other hand, we have a Government that says that they can do better—they know best!—and they can use our money, our taxpayer money, to build homes up and down New Zealand, and they think they can do it cheaper and faster, but it turns out that they can’t, and they’re wasting our money. But not only are they wasting our money, they are doing new laws and new extensions because they know that they can’t meet the same standards that they set for private landlords who are opening their own homes to other members of the community.

And so I put that we should change the Residential Tenancies (Healthy Homes Standards) Amendment Bill to be the “Double Standards Amendment Bill”, because that’s what this Government is putting through tonight. They’re putting it through without really consulting with the members of the public that they say that they’re advocating for—because we haven’t seen a select committee. We haven’t given landlords and people who will be affected by this bill the opportunity to come to Parliament and actually voice their own opinion about how this law affects them and how they may not actually wish to have an extension. They may actually wish to voice that they believe that this is a facade and that the Government is simply passing this law for themselves, not for them, not for the people it says that it’s advocating for. Unfortunately, they haven’t had that opportunity.

Instead, we’re rushing this through. We’re rushing through a change and an extension. All it really speaks to is the fact that, originally, when we passed this law, it was a double standard in the first place. And it’s a double standard now that’s being brushed over with a little bit of a façade saying that it’s for the private landlords, when we know it’s for the Government and it’s for Kāinga Ora, who can’t meet the high standards that it expects of everybody else.

So these double standards are throughout our legislation. They’re throughout the laws that this Government passes, especially when it comes to building houses and when it comes to renting houses in New Zealand. But this Government should try to do better. It should try to at least get to an adequate result, especially with the healthy homes standards that it expects of everybody else. And so we should change this bill to call it the “Double Standards Bill”, rather than the “Healthy Homes Standards Bill”.

Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Residential Tenancies (Healthy Homes Standards) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.