Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Housing: I present a legislative statement on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

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

The bill was introduced and referred to the Social Services and Community Committee in May this year. The bill proposes sensible, much-needed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 (RTA). It will increase flexibility and tautoko for landlords to end tenancies, aiming to remove barriers to increasing private rental housing supply, as well as introducing new provisions making it easier for tenants to keep pets, which I will refer to here on out as “mōkai” in this speech.

The bill makes a number of changes to tenancy termination provisions in the RTA, returning the law to what it was before changes were made in 2020. Firstly, the bill reintroduces 90-day no-cause terminations, which give landlords the ability to end a periodic tenancy with 90 days’ notice without providing a reason; returns the ability for a landlord to give notice to terminate a tenancy at the end of a fixed term without providing a reason; reduces landlord termination notice periods for periodic tenancies to 42 days where a reason for termination is provided; and reduces notice periods for tenants in periodic tenancies from 28 days to 21 days, which will increase flexibility and reduce costs for tenants looking to move. Secondly, the bill introduces mōkai-related amendments which will make it easier for tenants to keep mōkai in rental properties, balancing the interests of landlords and tenants.

The bill was reported back on 7 November and I would like to thank the committee for its careful consideration of the bill and the 1,655 submissions received from 1,634 submitters. I’d also like to thank and mihi out to those who have made oral and written submissions on the bill. Those submitters responded and represented a good cross-section of groups and individuals in the tenancy sector. The committee has considered the bill and recommends it be passed with amendments to a number of clauses, which I tautoko in full. The committee has not recommended any changes to the termination provisions. I commend this decision, as the bill, as drafted, reflects our intention and delivers on coalition agreement commitments.

We’ve heard from landlords that the changes made to tenancy terminations in 2020 increased risk and costs, and discouraged them from renting to tenants who, for example, do not have perfect references or a steady job. The changes in the bill will address the concerns of landlords and encourage landlords back into the market.

Now, turning to mōkai provisions—we know that mōkai are important members of many whānau. I have two myself: a three-legged tabby called Scout and a ranga called Haku. However, it is currently difficult to find mōkai-friendly properties. The bill makes changes to rental laws to make it easier for tenants with mōkai to find a home. The bill introduces the ability for landlords to charge a mōkai bond of up to two weeks’ rent. It also introduces a new mōkai consent system, which sets out how a tenant may obtain agreement or consent from a landlord for keeping a mōkai—and that’s not a Mōkai Pātea by the way, my whanaunga Shanan. Landlords will only be able to refuse a mōkai if they have reasonable grounds for doing so. The bill also changes the damage liability rules for mōkai damage, which means tenants will be liable for the cost of all mōkai-related damage that’s not fair wear and tear—my cats rip up our chairs every day. The bill excludes disability assist mōkai—kurī—as mōkai, so those disability assist dogs are excluded as pets. This means a tenant will not have to pay a mōkai bond or obtain consent from their landlord for these kurī.

Based on submissions, the committee has recommended some sensible changes to the bill to make the provisions more workable. Firstly, they recommended a couple of changes to the mōkai bond provisions to clarify that a landlord may only require one mōkai bond at any one time per tenancy, and a mōkai bond can be paid out during the tenancy, not just at the conclusion of the tenancy. These changes will allow tenants who have lost a mōkai to get their mōkai bond refunded during a tenancy. If, later during the tenancy, the tenant wanted to get another mōkai—maybe another cat, in my instance—the landlord will be able to request another mōkai bond to be paid.

Secondly, if a tenant keeps a mōkai without their landlord’s agreement or consent, that would be an unlawful act. Given there are four new unlawful acts for landlords in the bill, this new unlawful act provides for a more balanced set of obligations.

Thirdly, some amendments have been made to the reasonable grounds on which a landlord can refuse a tenant’s request to keep a mōkai—a couple of minor changes to make the grounds more workable, and two additional reasonable grounds for refusal of consent have been added to do with tenant non-compliance and the number of mōkai being requested.

Fourth, the bill now includes a non-exhaustive list of reasonable conditions which a landlord could attach to a mōkai consent. These are: a tenant agreeing to pay a mōkai bond, a requirement for a mōkai to be restrained while the landlord is on the premises, and a requirement for carpets to be cleaned to a professional standard if the mōkai is allowed inside.

Now, before members bring up the “why should a tenant have to pay a mōkai bond for a goldfish in a bowl”? example, I want to mention another very constructive change recommended by the committee. Any mōkai-keeping conditions will be subject to the proviso that they are reasonable, having regard to the nature of the premises and the type of the mōkai. This means landlords can only set mōkai conditions in terms of the particular circumstances—for example, the mōkai propensity to cause damage. It might not, for example, be reasonable to charge a mōkai bond or require the carpets to be professionally cleaned for a goldfish, for an ika. Finally, some tweaks have been made to the mōkai damage liability clause. As introduced, the bill made tenants liable for damage caused directly by a mōkai. The amendment makes a tenant liable for the cost of any damage caused as a result of keeping a mōkai.

Some minor and technical amendments and changes have been recommended to improve the clarity and efficiency of the law. The committee has recommended changes to clarify that a landlord may prohibit smoking inside the main premises. In other areas of the premises, a landlord will remain able to prohibit smoking where this would be consistent with a party’s broader rights and responsibilities provided by this Act. This will ensure landlords are able to prevent damage inside the main kāinga—the main home—while enabling a common-sense approach to other areas based on the specific circumstances.

In addition, in response to submitter suggestions, the committee recommended changes and clarifications related to strengthening the retaliatory termination provisions, which set out that it is unlawful to serve a termination notice in retaliation to a tenant enforcing their rights or making a complaint about the landlord. Currently, there are 28-working-day limitations for tenants applying to the Tenancy Tribunal seeking an order that the termination of their tenancy was retaliatory and therefore unlawful. Feedback considered by the komiti suggested that evidence that a termination was retaliatory may take time to emerge, and tenants may have other reasons for delaying an application to the tribunal. They also heard that landlords may serve retaliatory notices to tenants who exercise their rights under enactments other than the RTA. In response to this feedback, the komiti recommended the 28-working-day limitation to apply to the tribunal be removed. The default limit under the RTA—12 months following the end of the tenancy—will apply.

The bill has also been brought in to clarify that the landlord may not terminate a tenancy in retaliation to the exercise of any power or function conferred on any person by the RTA or by any other enactment. The bill proposes that the Tenancy Tribunal be allowed to make decisions on the papers—that referring only to documents provided by the parties, rather than through a hearing. Initially, this included a requirement that the tribunal seek parties’ views on this prior to scheduling a hearing.

The aim of this amendment is to improve efficiency for parties engaging with the tribunal, helping with wait times. However, the komiti had feedback that requiring parties to be consulted before a hearing is scheduled will slow the process down. As a result, the committee recommended that the bill is amended to remove the requirement to consult with parties before scheduling a hearing. Parties will have the ability to provide their whakaaro—their views—once the hearing has been scheduled.

In addition, technical amendments include enabling the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to approve methods of payments to it without needing to create regulations—hallelujah; changing the maximum duration of a Tenancy Tribunal order for rent reduction from six to 12 months; and updating the exclusion in the RTA relating to emergency housing—whare ohotata—following work by Te Manatū Whakahiato Ora, the Ministry of Social Development, to review the emergency housing programme.

In conclusion, colleagues, members of this House, I once again would like to thank the people who took the time to make a submission on this bill, and the committee for their consideration and recommendations. I’m very appreciative of your patience in listening to my kōrero and commentary, particularly about the mōkai—the pets. Madam Speaker, I recommend this bill to the Whare, this fine Whare Pāremata, and thank you for the opportunity. Kia ora tātou.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s always interesting at a second reading speech to take note of what the Minister emphasises in that speech. There’s a lot in this bill and a lot that the committee have reported back on. Now, members of the public who listened to that speech would think, and they’d be forgiven for doing so, that this bill was all about pets, because that’s all the Minister basically talked about, but if you look at the legislative statement that the Minister introduced to the House today, the primary purpose of this bill is to remove barriers to rental supply and incentivise landlords back into the market.

I’ll explore that a little bit more in a moment, but I’ll get right off the bat that the provisions that are in here around pets are worth a go. We’re not fully convinced that they will work, but in the absence of anything else, it’s definitely worth supporting. We do support that. The clarification around domestic violence provisions, that definitely has our support. Of course a landlord should be able to determine whether a tenant can or cannot smoke in their premises. That makes sense. Those things are not in dispute and if, as was presented, this bill was only about that, then it would have our support, but it’s not.

What this is about is making it easier for landlords to kick tenants out. It’s all outlined in the legislative statement and it’s outlined in the commentary from the select committee on this, the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. The rationale behind that, according to the Government, is that if Parliament makes it easier for landlords to kick tenants out, then more landlords would enter the market. That is a flawed rationale, and I’ll explain why. If we’re not building houses and increasing the housing supply—be it privately or through community housing providers and Kāinga Ora—and more landlords enter the market in the absence of the interest deductibility rules that were in place, there’s only one thing that will happen. There will be competition on existing stock from speculators and landlords and investors. That drives prices up.

There’s a few aspects here. If landlords are the ones purchasing homes, it would reverse the trend that we’ve seen over the last few years of first-home buyers entering the market, and if first-home buyers aren’t entering the market, they remain renters. And if, as we have seen, the Government has essentially paused 50 percent of Kāinga Ora builds—there were 5,000 built last year; there’s likely to be 2,500 built this year and significantly less the following years—and community housing providers have only been funded to 750 a year, that is a significant reduction in the number of houses available for people who don’t own their home and now, as a result of this, can’t buy a home. That’s increased competition on rentals. Rents go up. Yet this bill proposes that making it easier to kick tenants out is actually in the tenant’s interest, and that doesn’t add up.

What this bill will do is it will increase the uncertainty of a tenant. Knowing that it’s easier to be kicked out for no reason, no cause, when you have a significant increase in the number of people seeking rentals, that is an uncertain and unstable existence and likely to be unaffordable. If the Government took building homes seriously, perhaps they might have a point, but they don’t.

In the absence of building houses—and keep in mind that 12,000 construction workers have lost their jobs since this Government came in and many of those have gone to Australia. Houses are simply not being built and the Government has no grounds to claim that this bill is in tenants’ interests when we are going backwards in building houses privately and the numbers of social houses and community houses are falling through the floor. That is bad news for everybody. It’s bad news for tenants, it’s bad news for first-home buyers, and I think it is telling that the Minister chose to portray this bill as a bill about pets rather than as the bill that it actually is: a bill that will make it easier for landlords to kick tenants out.

Now, that has to be considered in the context of emergency housing, because if people can’t find a rental because there are more people seeking rentals, because they’re not entering the market, that means the only option available to them, in many instances, is emergency housing. But, as the Minister’s own advice says, the people that are leaving emergency housing are doing so for two reasons: they are finding a place in a social house funded and built by the previous Labour Government, or they are being kicked out of emergency housing or not being let in in the first place. That’s why the numbers are dropping.

If, as has been established by the Government’s own figures, the Government isn’t building social houses—not to anywhere near the extent that it has been—sooner or later the houses that are being used to put people from emergency housing into housing will dry up, because the numbers definitely don’t meet the demand. By the Minister’s own words, as quoted in the media, the Government doesn’t know where 20 percent of the people that have left emergency housing have gone. They can only account for some of them, and they are going into houses that were built and paid for by the previous Government.

Where this relates to the bill is that we will have higher levels of homelessness and higher levels of competition for rental markets. Rents have already gone up in the last 12 months at a record rate. If you look at the inflation figures produced by the Reserve Bank, there are three drivers of inflation: insurance, rates, and rent—record increases. This bill will only make that worse, and it will only make a tenant’s existence not only more expensive, possibly unaffordable, but more insecure.

How on earth does this bill live up to the promises that this Government made? They promised they would build more houses than the last Government; that’s already broken. They promised that rents would go down; that’s already broken. The only answer to those two challenges is to make it easier for landlords to kick tenants out. It’s shameful.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Today, I am going to be speaking on behalf of the Green Party and our views on these changes to our rental laws here in Aotearoa. It’s really important that this bill gets the attention that it needs, because, at the end of the day, it impacts more than a million people. There are an estimated 1.2 million renters in this country, and these changes are going to impact so deeply because it gets at the fundamental basis on which we all rely, which is the roof over our head. We all acknowledge that if you don’t have a solid roof over your head, if you can’t return back home to your home every single day and know that you are safe and secure, then how are you supposed to do literally anything else in your life? That is the one thing that all of us need to be provided, and that’s why it is provided for in international conventions that say human beings have a right to shelter, but, actually, we’re trying to go further than that to say human beings have a right to safe, warm, and affordable housing. These changes are massive.

The kind of overarching point that I want to make on this bill is that I feel and we feel that these changes have, actually, in a way, been paid for, because if you look at the levels of donations that different Government parties have had—and we’ve got those on the record—we see that from 2021 to 2023, the National Party received over $1.3 million in donations from the property industry, the ACT Party received over $830,000 worth of donations from the property industry, and New Zealand First received over $300,000 worth of donations from the property industry. My sincere belief, after going through the select committee process for this bill, is that the evidential basis for this bill is not there and the support for this bill is not there because 97 percent of submitters opposed this bill; 53 percent of landlords and property managers opposed this bill. Therefore, it does make you question—and I’m not making assumptions—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just be careful how one’s going to phrase this. I think the point’s been made and I think, probably, come back to the points in the bill.

Yes, will do, Madam Speaker. I just do want to highlight that it is reasonable for people to question how this bill came about when there isn’t an evidential basis for it and when the submissions are very clearly opposed to this bill. I wanted to make that point, because it is the belief of our party that these changes have been paid for. I’ll move on now.

💬 Hon Mark Patterson: Point of order, Madam Speaker. That’s a very serious allegation—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ah, yeah—

💬 Hon Mark Patterson: Could I just more fully formulate on that. We heard in the previous bill a speaker cast aspersions on political parties, as well, in terms of the motivation for bringing legislation forward, and I think that’s unbecoming of the House.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: On the first part of the point of order, the allegation was not actually made. I stopped the member before the member got to the point of making that allegation.

Just before, I imagine, Ingrid Leary was going to want to speak to the point of order, I also put this member back on the bill when she stood up on behalf of a colleague with some information that has been publicly debated in this House and then we went back to the bill. On that particular occasion, yes, the member did say some things but they had already been publicly debated in this House. I call Tamatha Paul to continue her speech. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m going to move on to the other parts. Thankfully, in this bill there are a lot of different areas that we can talk about. I’m happy to move beyond that one, but it did need to be said. Thank you, Madam Speaker for your understanding.

This bill has been couched in fluff—it’s been couched in fluff—to try and hide the fact that the biggest, most detrimental impact that this bill will have is no-cause evictions. The point was made by my colleague Kieran McAnulty that the Minister when he was promoting this bill talked a lot about the pet provisions, and they’re welcome. As a renter who has a dog, yeah, those are welcome changes because it is really hard to have a pet and to rent, but I actually wouldn’t want those additions if it meant that 1.2 million people will be potentially at risk of being kicked out of their homes for no good reason. All of these changes that are made to couch the real devastating impact and the devastating potential of this bill are simply not good enough. That’s why we won’t be supporting this bill.

Actually, my colleague Francisco Hernandez just made a really good comment—that the Government doesn’t want to stand on this bill and that they’re actually ashamed of what they’re doing, because they know that no-cause evictions are going to have a disastrous impact, as they have around the world. If you look at the UK, they’ve got this thing called “no-fault evictions”, which, I understand, is the leading cause of homelessness in the UK. That was no-fault evictions that did that, and now we’re trying to do the exact same thing. We’re not trying to do anything unique here. No-cause evictions is not unique. You look at developed countries around the world who have tried this out before and it has led to homelessness. That’s why we’ve been so staunch in our opposition against this bill, because we know what happens when things like no-cause evictions are introduced.

In reality, there are no tools for tenants to be able to fight it, because that is the insidious nature of no-cause evictions—they don’t need a reason to kick you out, and they will kick you out. It renders renters absolutely powerless, not to mention that we’re not even going to go to the Tenancy Tribunal in the first place, because what resources does your typical renter have against their landlord who has got money, who has got power, who has got the law on their side; and you’re just a renter who has nothing to fight against that? That is the insidious nature of the no-cause evictions. I do believe that the Government is ashamed of their own policies because that’s why they’ve tried to couch it in all the fluffy stuff.

I also want to talk briefly about the changes to domestic violence. I know that this is a really sensitive topic, so I will try to approach it as sensitively as I can. I want to say that these don’t go far enough when the result of no-cause evictions is that many people who are in extremely challenging situations in their living conditions will be put under further stress by no-cause evictions. If you don’t have housing security, and you are going through a difficult experience such as domestic violence, then you are not going to want to leave your home situation, because you will be scared to not be able to find another rental. Yes, the changes that this bill makes around domestic violence are important, but also just take a minute to think about how much more pressure you will be putting on people and their personal situations when they are constantly living on the edge and unsure of whether they will even be able to stay in their homes or not.

Now, I don’t want to just talk about the bad, because we have got a range of amendments and suggestions to make this bill better, because if there’s anything we can do to make this slightly better, we will do it. We will be bringing these amendments to the committee of the whole House stage. I would really ask that other parties would consider the merits of these suggestions, because we think they’re ones that could be accepted and that could get support around the House. Some of those suggestions are around clarifying the pet provisions a bit more, because it was clear through the select committee process that there was still a bit of confusion in the public—for example, whether disability dogs were classified within these provisions or not, and a whole range of other things that we explored in the select committee phase. I would really ask that people consider these amendments and these changes, because they are doable.

At the end of the day, it’s really hard to support this bill when the core aspect of it is so morally indefensible. Also, I think that the really frustrating thing with this bill is that the Government has really tried to feed the public a story that justifies this bill. We’ve been told that these changes will allow for property managers and landlords to take a chance on riskier tenants. There’s actually no evidence behind that. I was really disappointed in the analysis and the robustness of the advice that we received on the bill in relation to that assumption, because there wasn’t any evidence behind it.

This is not the first time that this Government has passed a housing bill that doesn’t have a strong evidential basis. With the interest deductibility work, we were told that this would drive downward pressure on rents; we are yet to see any of the evidence that backs that up. There was no evidence for that either. We’re being told all of these lines and marketed these beliefs that this is what we should accept, but if you actually look at the evidence, it doesn’t back up those assumptions that are being sold to the public, and that’s because this Government treats policy and lawmaking like a marketing strategy.

Briefly, I’ll touch on what our solutions would look like to actually transform the rental sector that we would like to see and that we would be willing to work with the Government on. We would love to see a rental warrant of fitness. This would drastically improve the quality of our rental housing, which we know, overwhelmingly, is damp, cold, and mouldy. We would like to see rent controls that actually limit the amount of times that landlords and property managers can increase the rent and how much they can increase it by, and we would like to see more regulation of the property manager world because we know that they are not regulated, they do not have rules, and we need to have those in place so that tenants’ rights are respected and upheld. That’s our contribution, Madam Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this bill. Firstly, I’d just like to thank the submitters and also the other members of the Social Services and Community Committee, which I am part of. Anyone would think, listening to the last couple of speeches, that we have these mega landlords, that every landlord in New Zealand owns multiple homes.

Ricardo Menéndez March: We do have mega landlords in this country.

Someone just said we do have mega landlords, but, as you are research-focused, I’m sure you know how many there are, and there is not an awful lot. Most of the landlords in this country are actually mum and dad landlords that own no more than one or two homes.

When we’re talking about the research around rentals and the fear that, actually, property owners have about renting their property, this is very real. When I talk to landlords or prospective landlords that have empty properties, one of their biggest fears is past tenants that they’ve been unable to evict for multiple reasons. No good landlord would get rid of a good tenant. Let’s make that really obvious. What is the justification for getting rid of a good tenant? There isn’t. You have to advertise your rental. You have to go out there and actually do a whole bunch of things in order to get your property rented. If a tenant is good, you want to keep them. That’s the whole point of renting your property—to make money, to have a good property, and to provide a home for others—so to turn around and say that this is not renter-focused I think is actually a big misjustice.

I heard from the Labour speaker who mentioned rental increases. Well, actually, rental increases have slowed for the first time in six years. What we are doing is having an effect, and I think it’s really important to note.

I’m not going to sugarcoat the 90-day no-cause evictions. I think it’s great, and I think it’s something we need in order to give a lot more landlords out there, or potential landlords, the opportunity to rent their properties, alongside the fact that we do need to build more houses. Everybody failed to mention the Resource Management Act (RMA). The RMA has basically been hindering, whether it’s the Government building houses or the private sector building houses. We’re also sorting that out. I think that would actually go a long way to fix it. But one of the key things I really wanted to talk about—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): If members could keep it down a bit—

It’s all right. I think we like the spicy debate around here.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): I’m having trouble listening to the member.

It’s early morning for this, but one of the things I do want to talk about, and I think it’s a huge win for us, is something that was a part of the ACT-National coalition, and it was the pet bonds. I think one of the main reasons around this—or the driver of people not being able to rent a home is because they have their pets. I know how this feels, because I’m actually one of them currently. My house is getting earthquake repairs—long overdue—and I need to try and find a short-term rental like an Airbnb. I’ve got a dog and three cats, and it is impossible, OK? I could not find anywhere. We have my dog—we’ve got her in the kennels and it’s stressful—so I understand how that feels, and what I would really like to see is people being able to take their pets to other homes.

This policy has come around and we’re hoping that it will make it easier, and we will see more, I feel, landlords saying, “Yep, you know what? There are some things here, the measures in place, for us to actually allow pets to be in our property.” If you are a landlord and you’re worried about what the provisions may be, there are actually good grounds for you to say, “No, actually, this property is not appropriate.” But what it does do is it sets up the environment for landlords to say, “Yes, because I’ve got the protections in place here.” They have the bonds that they’re able to take, and they’re also able to recover any costs that are beyond wear and tear.

Anyway, that’s all I’m going to say on this bill, but I commend it, and I would like, once again, to thank everybody who submitted on the bill. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. I was also on the Social Services and Community Committee, and I would like also to thank all of the submitters. There were a lot of submitters on this bill, for and against, so it was actually an interesting process for me to rehear what people felt and what people thought.

There are several changes in this bill, as already debated in the House, some of them to support the private rental market and to remove some of the barriers in rental supply, and also to try and incentivise landlords to get back into the market. I do know a lot of people who left the market in the last few years, and they do now feel encouraged that they are going to be able to come back into the market. They’ve had personal experience, not good experiences, and so they left the market, and now they are very happy to come into the market.

I will also talk a little bit about pets later on, but, firstly, I will just talk about reintroducing the 90-day no-cause terminations and why some of the people I spoke to, and some of the submissions that I heard, were in favour of this. They felt that it was going to be a balance now between the needs of the tenant and also what the landlords have been saying to them. It was interesting to hear both sides of the story, and I feel that we need to voice both sides of that story.

Now, I’m going to keep my contribution a little bit short, but I do want to talk about the fur babies, because I do have a lot of friends who look after fostered pets, and they’ve said to me that it’s so hard to find accommodation with pets, which is why we are getting so many on our hands at the moment. Over the last two or three years, with everyone being locked down, a lot of people really went out and got pets, and either they cannot now handle them or they just have too many, or they need to move and they can’t find accommodation. For a very brief period of time, my husband and I had to find a furnished property just for a few months, and because I have one cat, I could not find anything. The only thing that got me into the accommodation was to say, “Look, Thomas is blind. He’s got beautiful eyes, but they don’t work and he doesn’t see. Thomas wouldn’t even know what a curtain looks like to climb up.”

Those were the only conditions that got me into this rental accommodation. If it had been my other cat, Fergus, he would have wrecked everything, so I wouldn’t have done that to the landlord. I really saw how difficult it was for me to find a place when we needed it urgently and no one would let us in, so I really welcome these provisions. I welcome the detail of the provisions to do with pets, as well, and I look forward to going through the committee of the whole House to hear the amendments from the other side and then to finally see this bill through. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Mōrena tēnā tātou katoa. When the Minister first spoke this morning, and he used the term “mōkai”, so, I mean, it’s a—

💬 Arena Williams: I thought that too.

Yeah, exactly, right? I thought it was a kind of a—there’s a little bit of a play in there. Interestingly enough, “mōkai”, where I come from, means “slave”, and we’ll leave that there until I see the Minister again. Save to say that when our reo is used in a way that is meant to do good, in my view—there’s a play here, which unfortunately for the majority who do not have te reo Māori in their makeup and in their reo, that’s a shame because then it can be played. Those are the points I want to start with.

Too many renters, in my experience, need at least four or five months to get a blinking place. I’m in Kaitāia and I notice a māmā parked on the side of the road and I notice that her car is loaded with clothes in the back. Then I get closer and I see that she is stood outside and she’s got her baby and she’s feeding her baby and she’s sleeping in her blinking car. I realise that across the whole of the motu there will be many, many a story like this, but she is a māmā with a new baby, trying to feed her baby on her own, and she was just kicked out of her whare, her rental, by a reasonable person. When I hear comments like, “Well, you know, it’s just mums and dads that are landlords”, and then I hear the word “market”, that’s a very different concept and a different layer to understand landlords and what landlords can do.

In my experience, landlords make it tough, and I’ll use this expression “RWB”, which means “renting while brown”—that’s tough. White privilege is an issue for brown folk, and I want to make these statements, and I know they might disturb some in the House, but it has to be understood, because the reality of just trying to get a rental property is that you’ve got to ring up and put on your Pākehā voice. Now, many Pākehā may not actually get that, but it is true, and it is real. Unless you understand that, you’re going to stand and take a speech and talk about it like—because you are protected by the colour of your skin. Unless you understand that, you won’t think about it, you won’t understand it, and you will not describe it in the way in which it needs to be described.

To the bill: does this bill help any of that? Not in a single way. When the Minister talked about mōkai, in my view, I kept hearing, I kept acknowledging, the whole slave concept and thinking that he has used that word in the worst possible way—in the worst possible way. When the bill attempts to touch on and address our whānau that are being harmed, that violence is the issue, I don’t trust that. It is an issue, but I don’t trust that it is understood and appreciated in this bill in a real and genuine and enduring way.

I’ve written this whole speech, but I haven’t really referred to it much, so I’m just going to keep going.

💬 Tamatha Paul: It is the truth, though.

Yeah. It’s easier and simpler to just talk about the reality of this situation, because without it, then we are all “speeching” and therefore we don’t get to the heart of the matter. Renting while brown is true, right? Trying to buy a house, trying to buy your first house—how impossible is that when you’re just renting while brown, or working while brown, or driving while brown?

Anyway, these are my comments. I do hope that the House starts to appreciate—those who would not necessarily do so—the points that I’m making. White privilege is a thing. It’s something we have to work against all the time; though I love my brownness, just by the way. Kia ora tātou.

The Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill and the ability in this bill for landlords to evict tenants with basically no good reason just shows that this is a Government that treats housing as a game of Monopoly that allows people to make a huge profit and treat it like a game instead of treating housing as a human right, and for people to be able to put roots down in the communities that they belong to.

Let’s make no mistake: all the glibness and all the bumper stickers from the previous Government speakers hide the fact that this bill will actually lead to greater homelessness. It will lead to precarity for renters and hardship, and people being discriminated against for who they are when they’re simply trying to find a home to live in. Tamatha Paul already spoke about how this bill has no evidential basis, and I think it really says a lot about some of the previous speakers, who have no real connections serving our people who are on the street, living in cars, living in motels—they are turning their backs on them now that they get to these positions of power.

Some of us have directly worked with the communities affected by this bill. We have seen firsthand how people are being discriminated against, in real time—people who are trying to find a home, people who are afraid to raise legitimate issues with the landlords out of fear that they will be retaliated against, people who have lost their tenancies because of the policy that is being reintroduced from back in the day, with the intergenerational impacts that having no-cause evictions causes to them and their communities, and how it locks them into poverty because it pushes them into homelessness, it pushes them into emergency housing, and it pushes them into getting into debt, just because they were trying to find a home to live in.

It’s really clear when we hear the language that has been spoken from the Government members around tenants—talking about risky tenants but without actually explaining to us who those risky tenants are—that they have no regard for the communities that have been left behind. I think that when they’re saying, “risky tenants”, they mean people in poverty, they mean disabled people, they mean people who have ill mental health, they mean brown people—that is actually what they mean when they say, “risky tenants”. They mean people who have been left behind by successive Governments, the people whom we should actually be serving, the people who deserve a home.

This bill will actually not lead to greater housing access for people, especially when this Government is gutting Kāinga Ora’s build programme. This is a Government that is literally building less public housing than previous Governments. How are we to believe that this Government has any intent to provide housing for the people that they are calling “risky”, who they can’t even name because they’re too scared of actually acknowledging the communities that they’re turning their backs on? We know that this bill is part of a bigger picture to serve the property developers that they actually serve rather than the communities on the ground who are experiencing the housing crisis at a more disproportionate rate than most.

I don’t want to hear MPs coming up and speaking about their own experiences as a tenant while we’re on these privileged salaries, while we’re privileged and speaking in this place. How out of touch can these MPs be, trying to relate their experiences of renting as privileged MPs when they’re pushing a bill that will actually disempower and disenfranchise low-income communities? [Interruption] And their fake outrage over these comments won’t hide the fact that this is the truth: a privileged bunch of people who are serving property developers and making the housing crisis worse.

No-cause evictions will increase homelessness, no-cause evictions will lead to more people in emergency housing, no-cause evictions will widen the gap between Māori and the rest of us and will be a breach of Te Tiriti obligations by the Crown by failing to provide housing for people. Let’s make it clear: the market will not fix the housing crisis, and no amount of fairytales will make that true. We should have a Government that is committed to building enough public housing so that no one lives in motels. We should have a Government that doesn’t allow landlords to raise rents way above inflation, because rents are one of the driving factors when it comes to inflation; they’re one of the driving factors when it comes to the cost of living crisis, actually, and the inequality crisis, because the rich are getting richer and this Government is enabling the poor to get poorer by gutting benefit increases, by enabling people to more easily become homeless.

The Greens will continue fighting against this Government’s housing crisis agenda that will only serve property developers, and we will not buy any of this fake outrage as the Government and their friends benefit from the policies that will lead to more hardship.

I stand in support of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. The Government’s amendments, alongside the introduction of interest deductibility, are aimed at increasing housing supply in rental properties by giving landlords the confidence to enter or to re-enter the private rental market. The confidence is brought about by one part of the amendments which has to do with reintroducing landlords’ ability to give notice to end a fixed-term tenancy at the end of that fixed term. It also provides for a 90-day, no-cause termination for periodic tenancies, where the landlord is not required to provide an explanation or reasons for that termination.

This part of the amendment bill is a part of the puzzle for New Zealand to have increased housing supply and increased affordability. Another part of that puzzle is the fast-track consenting process. There are many parts to the puzzle that we all have to deal with, which is to make housing more affordable and more available to everyone, and which is, I think, in everyone’s interests and desire to do.

There has been a big mention about the assumption that landlords are going to kick tenants out for no good reason. I think that we, as members of this House, bear a big responsibility as to how we send a message to the public who are out there and who hear us and listen to us speak, and if they hear the words “landlords will start kicking tenants out for no good reason”, I think that poses a very large—it inflames fear needlessly. I would like to just say that as much as there may be bad landlords, for sure—

💬 Hon Carmel Sepuloni: There are.

—yes; I’m not saying that there aren’t—there are surely, as everyone would agree, bad tenants, as well. We cannot look at the puzzle as just landlords being the evil side of this housing equation. The fact is that landlords who have good tenants will hold on and care for those tenants for as long as they can; in fact, that’s a real challenge anywhere in the world. I just wanted to be able to present that aspect of this debate, because I think that sometimes there can be a tendency to just roll over the good things, as well.

I’d also just highlight the point that regarding the pets portion of this bill, Women’s Refuge at some point had a research study done that showed that the fear of losing pets and not being able to find an alternative rental for, mostly, women who are in troubled and violent family situations is a real thing that prevents them from making the move to leave. The pet provisions aren’t just “fluff”. I think that the pet provisions are there specifically to address a portion where Kiwis who have learnt to love their pets as part of their families have a better chance at finding a different place to live. I commend this bill to the House.

We’ve heard from the Government MPs. We’ve learnt a lot about their pets today. I think Laura McClure has two cats and one dog, Tanya Unkovich has a blind cat, and Tama Potaka has a cat with three legs, but we did not hear much from the Government MPs about the tenants and the impact of this legislation on the tenants. I think the point was well made by Green MP Tamatha Paul that over a million New Zealanders are renting and this legislation has a huge impact and huge implications for them.

The other point made by Tamatha, which I think is a point fairly made, is that many outside of this House are questioning the motivation for the Government to push through with this legislation and whether or not there is any correlation between them being so willing to put this bill on the Table and the place from which some of the political donations came. Now, I’m questioning that, but certainly people on the outside of this House are.

💬 Hon Mark Patterson: Point of order, Mr Speaker. This was traversed when the previous Speaker was in the Chair early in this debate. There were some allegations of impropriety on this side of the House which we take offence to. The member has skirted around it a little bit but she’s been very clear on what she’s implied, and we do take offence to that.

Mr Speaker, there are some areas of this bill that we do support, and that has been traversed by the previous Labour speaker, Kieran McAnulty, but fundamentally there is no way that we can support this bill when this bill is reintroducing the 90-day, no-cause termination of tenancy provision. Those that are on the select committee know that the vast majority of submitters were opposed to this bill and that that particular provision was brought up time and time again.

The Government has said that this will enable or encourage there to be more of a supply of rental properties. That’s simply not the case. The Government has been told what the risks are to reintroducing this provision and has chosen to ignore the risks that have been laid out in front of them. I’m going to remind the Government so that they know that when they vote for this bill again, they are voting for it despite the areas of concern that have been raised by credible organisations and individuals, people like the Salvation Army, the Wellington Coalition for Housing and others. People like that have brought these issues to the attention of the Government and when they vote for it, they have to know that they are ignoring all of that.

It was raised that there are natural justice issues with having the 90-day, no-cause termination of tenancy provision. A tenant with their family—maybe they’re an individual; they may have kids and they’re living in a house and then all of a sudden, with no reason, “You need to get out.” What concerns me is that I was asking officials whether or not they had any information to provide to the select committee on how long it actually takes to get another rental property, particularly in the major centres around the country. Would they even be able to secure another rental property within three months? There was no information available to be given to the select committee, so we don’t even know whether or not that is a fair or reasonable period of time for people to be able to find alternative accommodation.

I’ve been an electorate MP for the better part of 16 years, and I have had people from my electorate come into the office freaking out, literally, because their tenancy has ended and they cannot find another rental property. I have had constituents come into my office who had ended up in emergency accommodation because they could not find an alternative rental property, and now here we are reintroducing this provision which does not provide the security of housing that we as parliamentarians and politicians should be providing to our constituents.

There was concern raised by a number of submitters about the possibility of abuse by landlords here, and I’m going to add to what Paulo Garcia said. Actually, the vast majority of landlords are good landlords. There are some that are not. The Property Investors Federation, who actually were supportive of this bill, said during their submission, or acknowledged, that the vast majority of tenants are good tenants. Then there are a few that are not. What we’re concerned about is the possibility that this particular provision could lead to abuse of power.

My concern, which was reiterated by submitters, is that vulnerable families or individuals living in rental properties who perhaps are not system savvy, or don’t have the confidence to be able to take up the retaliatory provision in this bill and to go head to head against their landlord by taking them to the tribunal, are at risk. What if their home does not meet the Healthy Homes Standards and they complain to their landlord and then the landlord just decides the tenant is too hard work, and so they just utilise the provision of the 90-day, no-cause termination clause? Is that tenant necessarily going to take that landlord to Tenancy Tribunal because they deem that to be retaliatory? Well, actually, if I think about my Pacific community, the vast majority would not, and that puts them at risk.

I think the other thing that that side of the House failed to recognise is the impact that insecure housing—and the potential that this bill will lead to that—has on social stability overall. When you do not have secure housing, then you are more likely to have precarious employment.

When you do not have secure housing, then you are more likely to have insecure, unstable education. I thought that side of the House cared about kids showing up to school, but it seems they don’t. When you don’t have secure housing, then that has an impact on the stability of the family and the lifestyle and everything that goes around that. So we have fundamentally made very clear, as have the submitters, that we can’t support the bill, in particular because of this particular provision.

There were some things we could agree on with some of the submitters who actually supported this bill. One of those things was the need for the Tenancy Tribunal to be bolstered and supported to work faster, to be able to work more effectively and at pace to the benefit of both the landlord and the tenant. That is currently not the case. In many ways, I wonder whether that has led to this particular provision.

If the Tenancy Tribunal was resourced effectively and was able to be responsive and work at pace, then would we be here? I’m not entirely sure that we would, and so I think that the Government, whilst they’re in office—which, hopefully, isn’t for too much longer—need to look at that and take that seriously as an area that could actually benefit both landlords and tenants.

I want to go back to the fact that this bill is supposed to lead towards a greater supply of rental housing, and I’m just going to reiterate and make sure it’s on record that this bill will not lead to that, nor will any of the other actions that the Government are taking. We’re not going to end up with more housing when the Government makes the decision to pause the build of Kāinga Ora housing. We’re not going to end up with more housing when we’ve lost 10,000 jobs in the building and construction industry, given that infrastructure and building projects has been cancelled and we’ve got a whole lot of New Zealanders that we invested in and we trained up to be tradies that are travelling over to Australia to use their skills now because this Government have not created the environment in which they can work here. We are not going to end up with more housing when the Government decides to cut $1.5 billion from Kāinga Ora but puts $2.9 billion into tax breaks for landlords.

Primarily, of course we can’t support this bill. The bigger picture and the bigger issue is we have major concerns about this Government’s policy agenda and programme when it comes to housing and ensuring that New Zealanders are housed, and their track record to date is absolutely abysmal.

Just for the awareness of the House around the point of order raised by the Hon Mark Patterson, if I can bring members’ attention to Speakers’ ruling 55/4 and 55/5. I’ll be listening carefully, but if there are other concerns that are raised in that nature, I would ask members to reflect on those two Speakers’ rulings before taking a point of order.

Mr Speaker, thank you for that ruling. We just have to ask ourselves why they are throwing the dirt over this side of the House, given their track record. What was their track record? Let me remind you—let me remind you—that their track record was $180 rent increases across the country during the last term of the Labour Government; $180 rent increases, per week. That’s how much rents went up. How much did interest rates go up? I think they went from somewhere like 2.5 percent to about 7 percent, and I think they kept going up. The official cash rate went up about 12 times—bang, bang, bang—and they have the temerity to turn up and lecture us about them supposedly being the champion of tenants, when tenants had to endure some of the steepest—steepest—rent increases in the history of this country, under their tenure; interest rates and the impact that that had on homeowners as well.

We’ve heard today that they’ve tried to say there is a fallacy that the National Party and ACT and New Zealand First are trying to perpetuate that we’re a country of mum and dad landlords—you know, that’s a made up National Party kind of marketing strategy, I think someone said. Well, guess what? We are a country of mum and dad landlords. And how do we know that? The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, a Government department, during their tenure, came out with the data, only a couple of years ago, that said 80 percent of landlords own just one property—80 percent of landlords own just one property in New Zealand. We are a country of mum and dad landlords, and don’t we want to keep mum and dad landlords? Aren’t they the best landlords? And don’t they want to keep their tenants—don’t they want to keep their tenants?

This is about encouraging the mum and dad landlords, the nanas and pops, to stay in the market. Don’t keep your money in the bank, don’t put your money in the sharemarket, don’t put your money in a commercial property syndication; put it into residential housing and support New Zealanders getting into housing. That’s what we want to do. We also want tenants to have the opportunity to turn up to an interview and get that property, and that will only happen, in many cases, if the landlords have the comfort that they can have that tenant in and know that a good tenant will be rewarded but a bad tenant—a bad, bad, bad tenant—will have to go through a long-lived policy that was under the Labour Government previously, under successive Labour Governments, with the 90-day no-cause termination fee. This is not something we’re inventing; we’re bringing it back—these guys were defending it only two or three years ago.

This is about us shoring up the property market, and, man, have we got a track record in this already—brightline test: reducing the brightline test from 10 years to two. Haven’t we got the mortgage interest deductibility—haven’t we returned that? That goes back to 100 percent in the financial year 2025-26. Fast-tracking: how many houses are we building in the fast-tracking schedule? Fifty-five thousand, was it? Fifty-five thousand on the schedule. Interest rates falling, and what will happen on 27 November—what will happen on 27 November? We don’t know; we don’t know, but we know it’s heading in the right direction—we know it’s heading in the right direction—and the introduction of pet bonds.

This is a great day for renters. This is a Government that is pro-tenant, pro-renters. This is a Government that is giving renters, who might not have had a chance because their landlords were a bit scared to take them on, the chance to get into that first rental property, that second rental property. This is keeping the nanas and pops, the mums and dads in the market. They’re our best landlords, and this will attract others to put their capital into the residential property scene instead of in the bank, instead of in property syndications, and instead of the sharemarket. This is a great day—this is a great day—for the property sector, this is a great day for the tenant, this is a great day for small business, and this is a great day for this Government. I commend the bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Housing security is under threat when National is in Government. New Zealand’s 1.7 million renters are the losers out of this bill; mega landlords are the winners. If that member Cameron Brewer was to be believed, then National’s economic plan depends on property speculation alone. The only plan that we’ve heard in this debate for the housing market is to heat it right on up so that landlords can make their gains on property. There is no plan for extra houses to be built, no additional homes for the families who need them—just pump those prices higher.

Chris Bishop also has been claiming in this debate that no-cause evictions were a pro-tenant move, but we all remember him being called out on that in the reporting, which found that when he said that front-line workers were calling for this when they were working with homeless communities, that wasn’t actually true and those claims hadn’t been made by people. This was, in fact, an ideological stunt from the National Party to message straight to the landlords who support them that they are on their side, and under them, tenants will get a harder, rougher ride.

This bill brings in changes that bring back 90-day no-cause evictions. We all know that it will be harder for tenants to request that fix-up to the shower. It will be harder for the tenants who are parents to make sure that the kids have repairs to their windows and important things like insulation for their roofs. And it will be harder for those people who are locked into cycles of intergenerational renting now. This Government’s policies will not help those families. It will not help the most vulnerable people in New Zealand who now will never ever realise the dream of homeownership that all Kiwis should be entitled to. This bill is a shame.

This change means that renters can be evicted now and not even know why. They will never be told by their landlords what has gone wrong in those 90-day periods. They will never be able to dispute it. They will never be able to claim back the extra costs that it costs to move. They will never be able to claim back for the time it takes to find another home. They will never be able to not bear the costs of trying to find their children a new school and new sports arrangements for Saturday mornings—for the loss that it costs to families who relocate from a community they have invested in. This not only costs renters but it costs the entire community, because it means that we have another generation of people who face a level of precariousness that this country should never accept.

In communities like the one I represent in Manurewa, transience is the game. We have entire neighbourhoods of people who have not lived there for more than six months. That feels hard. It feels hard to walk around streets where people don’t know each other, where they don’t have a connection to the place or to each other, where relatives live far away from them, and where their support networks are not there and the support services that are in those communities are stretched to breaking point.

I want to talk about the effect that this will have on tenants in the long term, because we know that reporting has unpicked the claims that the Government has made about flexibility in the market and that, in fact, this will have a chilling effect on tenants who want to get things fixed. There are already wet, unsafe homes for families, and 12,000 building and construction jobs since election day have gone. If you were trying to get something fixed up in this market, you certainly won’t be able to now, even if you’re a tenant with a landlord who wants to help you get it fixed. Because it is up to them if they want to help you.

When the Minister Tama Potaka introduced this bill, he talked about mōkai. As Mariameno Kapa-Kingi said, the meaning of “mōkai” is not just “pet”. The best translation for it is “serf”—someone indentured who lives on their lord’s land. Is this the kind of future that we are creating for renters in this country, where they are dependent on someone so high above them who will always own the land and always own the homes, and they will never be able to enjoy not only the wealth but the security that comes with owning your own home?

We are telling parents that they are going to be locked out of homeownership and will never ever be able to have the kind of security that we wanted for them a generation ago. I say “we” because both major parties in this House, until now, have been committed to Kiwis getting into their own homes. We heard from that member who has just resumed his seat that he is for the party of mum and dad landlords. Now, that’s the rhetoric. It’s not about homeownership in this country any more, and it couldn’t be clearer with this bill. National will prioritise the rights of landlords over renters and over ordinary homeowners. I cannot commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call in this debate and to actually correct some of the fallacies that we’ve been hearing from the other side of the House, because we’ve heard crocodile tears across the board. I understand that it’s hard, when you’ve been in Government and you’ve seen your policies being repealed—you put policies in place that you thought were the right, the best, solution. Clearly, though, all we need to do, despite the most brilliant speech you might hear from the other side of the House, is look at the facts, and the facts quite clearly show us that while the Labour Party was in Government, the average rental increase per week was $170 over that period—$170. Hard-working Kiwis were having to pay that much extra out of their pay cheque every week to cover the cost increase.

Alongside that, those Opposition members, when in Government, made many changes to the residential tenancy requirements. We just heard from the last speaker, Arena Williams, about wet, damp homes. Well, they brought in the healthy homes legislation, so those issues should have been addressed. Clearly, that hasn’t been effective. We saw the changes around the 90-day notice periods and the fixed tenancy periods, and yet we look at the social housing wait-list and you can see that was an utter failure. That social housing wait-list quadrupled while Labour was in Government. How can anyone on that side say that their residential tenancy policies were a success? They clearly failed.

I know that can be hard to accept but it would be, I think, a measure of the Opposition if someone was to stand up over there and say, “Look, we didn’t quite get it right. We’re not sure if you will have it right, but we’re going to support trying something different, because what we did did not work.” Yet I haven’t heard that from a single member of the Opposition. We’ve heard all sorts of outrageous claims about how terrible this will be and what might go wrong, but the reality is, looking at those simple statistics, that we saw thousands more Kiwis in emergency housing, 20,000 extra Kiwis on the social housing wait-list, from 7,000 to 27,000—a quadrupling over their time in Government. [Interruption] And we’re hearing all this interjection right now. The truth can be hard to accept.

We need to put Kiwis first and that is what this Government is doing with these changes to enable tenants to have an opportunity to get into a property they might not otherwise get if the landlord was not prepared to take a risk. We see landlords now that will come back into the market and will be prepared to put their asset up for rent—an asset that they have worked hard to earn their whole life, to finally buy a rental property to try and get a bit of extra investment, and put that back into the market now with these changes. Despite all the rhetoric from the other side, their attempts simply failed. This bill, I am confident, will improve the situation here in New Zealand and I am very much pleased to see it progressing through the House. I think it is a great day for tenants and landlords in New Zealand. Thank you.

Toitū te Tiriti. It’s amazing what you hear from the Government members in this Chamber this morning—a Government and a National Party that brought New Zealand to have the worst housing record in New Zealand history, a housing crisis that we still experience today, with the number of houses that they didn’t build. And they’re doing it again. They are taking this country backwards on housing. They haven’t built any houses.

Under Labour, we saw the largest public-housing build programme that this country has seen since the 1960s. I stand by that record. I stand by that record, because, on their record, not only did they not build houses, they sold off New Zealand State housing stock. They are shameless, and today they stand here wanting to be empathetic to renters. They want to be empathetic to renters. The truth is that all the National Party and this Government cares about is giving landlords a $2.9 billion tax break, looking after their mates, and looking after Philip Morris.

Let’s get real. Let’s look at the housing programme in Auckland. Let’s look at what Minister Potaka has done. I look across to the Government members from Auckland and I look at the Massey programme housing build that’s been put on hold. Why is that not being built any more? I look at Takanini. Those numbers of houses are in the dozens, my friend—that has been stopped. That is on your watch—that is on your Government’s watch. What about the houses that aren’t being built any more in Mount Roskill?

💬 Rima Nakhle: What do you mean? They’re all building.

They’re not all built. Fifty-two projects, 1,727 units, have been put under assessment under this Government—1,727 houses in Tāmaki-makau-rau, Auckland. I raise this because when we talk about this particular piece of legislation today, I just wonder what the heck National’s housing plan is, because all this is going to do is boot tenants out the door without any explanation. It’s going to increase the homelessness that we experience in our largest city in this country, that we’re already struggling with. What we need to do is build more homes.

The thing is, the member across the way talked about how many houses that fast track will build. Well, zero at the moment. They’ve stopped 1,700 in Auckland alone. How does that make sense—how does that make sense? The reality is, under this Government, they’re just looking after landlords. They actually don’t care about tenants—they don’t care about tenants. You know, it’s very clear, under this Government. The reality is that almost half of the people that need these homes—we’re still short 22,000 houses in this country—are Māori; 48 percent of people in need of housing in this country are Māori, and, under this Government, work has stopped.

They’ve sent all of those thousands of construction workers off to Australia—all of those construction workers—so how are we going to build houses in this country? This particular piece of legislation just makes it worse. It just takes us backwards on getting to where we need, which is building more houses; putting more people in warm, dry homes. This is an absolute shocker—absolute shocker—and I do not support this bill.

Thanks, Mr Speaker. Look, it is a pleasure, actually, to stand in support of the second reading of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. There’s a couple of reasons in particular why it’s a pleasure for me today, even though I don’t have the pleasure of having been on the Social Services and Community Committee, which listened to the submissions on this bill. The reason is this. I’m not going to talk about pets. We’ve heard about that a lot, and I’m one of the people that don’t have a pet and don’t really—

💬 Hon Member: Aw!

Yes, we won’t get into that. What I am going to talk about is this. I’m going to talk about what Labour and the Opposition members are saying is the reason why they don’t support this bill—despite the really good points that this bill is raising—which is because of the 90-day, no-clause notice.

Now, I want to ask the House: what’s wrong with having a balance—what’s wrong with finding the balance between rights of the tenant and rights of the landlord? Do you know what? Absolutely, we need to make sure that we get the power balance right, because there can be an imbalance—I agree 100 percent. But, if we think about 90 days’ notice, let’s just say that I am a landlord and I say to someone on 7 April, “You’ve got 90 days’ notice.” From 7 April, we go to May, June, and July—that’s 90 days, from 7 April to 7 July. We’re not saying, “You’ve got two weeks.”; we’re not saying, “You’ve got one day.” There is a balance we’re trying to strike here.

There’s something that the Opposition members have failed to delve deeply into, and this is the sadness of it all: what about what we’re doing with respect to family violence? We’re removing the barriers to leaving unsafe situations by confirming that a tenant can leave a tenancy if their child or their dependant is in danger of domestic violence. That hasn’t been focused on, and it’s a shame that the Opposition has not focused on that, because people that are victims of family violence are actually the most vulnerable people. We commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the amendments recommended by the Social Services and Community Committee, by majority, be agreed to.