Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: We’re reading it for a third time, I think.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yes, all right. I move that—

SPEAKER: Yes, it’s not quite stated here in my little instruction. You’re going to move this for a third time.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: OK. I present a legislative statement, which I assume will eventually be published under the authority of the House. I move, That the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The bill makes a number of changes to the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA), as we’ve been discussing at quite some considerable length during the committee stage. I do want to just thank Opposition members for the very useful and constructive questions and comments that were made through the committee of the whole House stage; I enjoyed participating. I’m just a bit sorry I couldn’t be there for all of the debate, but I was there for a decent chunk of it, and it was, I think, a good example of how the committee stage can help ventilate issues and, maybe, over time, improve the law. That was good to see.

We are a pro-tenant Government and a pro-landlord Government, and, at a basic level, there’s not a fundamental contradiction around that. Most importantly, we are a pro - cheaper housing Government, because rents in this country are too high, house prices are too high, and we have a severe housing affordability challenge, as the 2023 census data that was released last week, I think, made very clear. I won’t litigate that for the House, but everyone in the House is aware of the appalling state of housing in this country.

This is a suite of sensible pro-tenant and pro-landlord changes to encourage landlords to enter the market, give tenants more ability to secure a rental home, including for their furry family member or, indeed, non-furry as well.

It increases flexibility and support for landlords to end tenancies, aiming to remove barriers to increasing private rental housing supply, as well as other changes. We’ve well canvassed, in the House, the changes to the tenancy termination provisions in the RTA that will largely return the law to what it was pre-2020.

It also changes the rule around the rollover of fixed-term tenancies into periodic tenancies, which is a technical change but will, I think, make a difference on the margins and markets like Dunedin and Queenstown and, interestingly, I’m advised, also Waiheke Island, where a lot of people who would otherwise put their rental houses into the rental market on a fixed term but are, essentially, disincentivised to do so because of near-automatic rollover of the fixed term into a periodic tenancy. It doesn’t give them any flexibility or discretion, and, as a result, those houses just sit on an Airbnb when they could otherwise be in the private rental market. Strong feedback from Queenstown, for example, in 2022 and 2023, is that that is having a really deleterious effect on the Queenstown rental housing market. Now, clearly there are wider issues in the Queenstown housing market that we need to address—most notably the supply of land, and infrastructure funding and financing—and we’ve got work under way around those as well. But I do think it will make a difference at the margins.

We’ve dealt with the issues to do with pet bonds. This is a very paw-sitive move for tenants. It will have a positive effect on wellbeing, and with the way our rental market is, it is challenging—sometimes impossible—for tenants with pets to find pet-friendly rentals. So we are em-bark-ing on changes which, we think, will have—

Hon Members: Very good.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Oh, thank you. I thought I’d get a smile out of the Hon Kieran McAnulty, but not a sausage—not a sausage.

Hon Mark Patterson: You’ll be able to get the greyhound in there, Kieran.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, exactly, exactly. That’s the point. We’ve talked about the greyhounds a lot this morning. Look, it’s a great day for the animals in New Zealand, particularly greyhounds. It’s a great week actually. Anyway—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: You wouldn’t give them an exemption.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No, I wouldn’t give them an exemption. We went through that.

Hon Kieran McAnulty: No, so I’m not going to smile at you.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Ha, ha! OK. I’m not going to relitigate that one. The major change here is that the bill—

Jenny Marcroft: Good day for cat ladies.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: What’s that?

Jenny Marcroft: Good day for cat ladies.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Good day for cat ladies—I’m not going to go there. You mentioned it; I’m not going to go there. I’m not going to go there.

Tamatha Paul: He’s a dog man.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I am a—well, I’ve got a cat as well. We’ve got a cat as well. That’s right. RIP, Buzz.

The major change is that we are, essentially, reversing what we have at the moment, which is making it easier for tenants to have a pet, and landlords can only withhold consent on reasonable grounds. We had a long debate, back and forth this morning, about what “reasonableness” means. There are non-exhaustive definitions in the bill, and, as I said to the House this morning, there’s 140 mentions of the word “reasonable” in the RTA.

The bill enables landlords to require a pet bond, if they’ve agreed their tenant can keep a pet, up to the equivalent of two weeks’ rent. Only one pet bond per tenancy can be required at any one time, even if there’s more than one pet. It includes pet consent rules clarifying the rights and obligations of tenants and landlords relating to pets and rental properties. A landlord has to provide a written response to a tenant’s pet request within 21 days, stating whether or not they agree. We had a debate about whether or not 21 was the right number or not. I’m happy to see how that goes, and we can always change it later.

Some submitters thought the term “reasonable grounds” was too subjective, but as I just said before, the word “reasonable” is consistent with other provisions in the Act. It’s important to note that pet conditions must be reasonable, having regard to the nature of the premises and the type of pet.

The bill makes tenants liable for the cost of damage caused as a result of keeping a pet that is not fair wear and tear, and this change addresses landlord concerns about excessive pet damage costs and incentivises tenants to take additional care in rental properties.

Disability assistance dogs were debated at length this morning, particularly by the Greens. The bill expressly excludes disability dogs as pets, and it’s in the interpretation section.

These pet provisions are a win-win. Landlords will have assurance they’re not out of pocket for possible damage to their rentals, and tenants will have more rental options. I think the changes are pretty awesome.

The bill also makes a whole range of other amendments: a common-sense approach to the issue of smoking, which has been a concern for the sector, clarifying that smoking inside premises can be prohibited. It clarifies and strengthens retaliatory termination provisions providing it is unlawful for a landlord to serve a termination notice in retaliation to a tenant enforcing their rights or in response to legally enforceable actions taken against the landlord by others—that’s a pro-tenant move—and supports efficiency in the tribunal, enabling adjudicators to make decisions on the papers by reference to documents submitted by parties where appropriate.

It’s a good step forward for a whole range of different reasons, most notably the pet bond provisions, but, most importantly, it will provide a bit of extra incentive for landlords to enter the rental market. They are an important part of our property market. They are an important part of our housing situation. Ultimately, as I always say to people in relation to housing, long-term answers to our housing solution are more houses. We need more rental properties, we need more social houses, we need more market houses, and we need more affordable properties. The ultimate answer to all of these issues is land supply, urban zoning, and infrastructure funding and finance, and we’ve got work under way around that, but this is a positive step in the right direction. I commend the bill to the House.

The Minister presented a legislative statement, and it is published under the authority of the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. When we did the second reading speech, it came after the Minister spending the entire speech talking about pet bonds. I thought today, given that this third reading speech happened straight after the committee of the whole House stage, where we have spent some time diving into—or attempting to—and understanding the Government’s rationale with the significant changes to tenancy rules under this bill, that perhaps they might try and change their approach and try, this time, not to fool people into thinking that this bill is all about pets. It’s not. It’s not even mentioned on the front page when it talks about the bill summary.

There are five bullet points, and every single one of them talks about the reduction of tenant rights proposed in this bill, the reduction of notice periods, and the reintroduction of no-cause terminations, but if you listened to that third reading speech, people would be forgiven that it was actually about something different altogether. Thank God for legislative statements, because if people came back to this day and listened to what the Minister had to say, they would be forgiven for thinking this had nothing to do with tenancy altogether, but it does; it is the guts of this bill, and it is the reason why we cannot support it.

The pet bonds stuff makes sense, and I wish that it was actually in a different bill, so that we could vote for it. The changes to give landlords clarity around rules restricting smoking inside absolutely makes sense. The inclusion of a dependant on the special provisions for those that find themselves, regrettably, in a family violence situation, we support that. But none of that outweighs the destructive changes that this bill does, and the gall of the Minister to stand up and say that this Government is a pro-tenant Government—rubbish. To stand up and to say that today is a good day for those that are looking to find a house amidst this housing crisis—again, rubbish. There is nothing in this bill that is going to help people into a home.

If this bill was about building houses, sure, but this bill is about making it easier for landlords and making it harder for tenants. The premise behind this, the Government argues—not that you’d know from the Minister’s third reading speech—is that if you make it easier for landlords, there will be more landlords and, therefore, more rentals. It is a flawed logic in the context of the current housing situation in this country. When the Government has, essentially, ended new builds for Kāinga Ora post-2026 and has significantly reduced funding for community providers and has tightened up the criteria for entering into emergency housing to the extent that during scrutiny week, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development said that this is playing a part in increasing levels of homelessness—and now we have this. All of those things are Government decisions, and then, to top it off, the Government’s solution to this is to make it easier for landlords to kick tenants out.

Now, even if their argument was right that these changes would incentivise more landlords into the market, if the Government isn’t incentivising house builds through Kāinga Ora or community housing or other means, what that means is that first-home buyers will be locked out of the market, because another decision that the Government made, that this bill needs to be seen in the context of, is their decision to reintroduce interest deductibility. Now, that still applied to new builds; it did not apply to existing homes, and what was seen was that investment shifted from existing homes into new builds. That’s been taken away now, and it’s an important piece to understand the full picture of the housing crisis.

Consents are down, home builds are down, the number of new homeowners entering the market is down, and 12,000 construction workers have lost their jobs since this Government took office. That’s important, because the Government stood there and said, “This bill will help the housing crisis.” The only way it will do that is to incentivise new landlords entering the market. They’re not entering the market by building homes, so they are competing with potential first-home buyers on existing homes, and that drives house prices up. We know it does. It’s done it in the past and we’re set to make the same mistakes, as a country, and I find that really sad, because when Minister Bishop stands up and says he wants to solve the housing crisis, I actually believe him. The problem is that the policies that he is introducing to this Parliament don’t back that up.

If we accept the Government’s rationale that these changes will mean more landlords in the market, that means that there’ll be fewer first-home buyers, prices will go up, landlords will pay more for houses, and they will need higher rents to reap their investment back. This is bad news. All for what?

Why—why is this the priority? Of all the things that the Government could do to address the lack of rentals in this country, they’ve chosen to make it easier for landlords to kick tenants out without showing any evidence at all that there was actually a problem. If the Government came to the House and demonstrated clear data to show that the changes that were made to tenancy laws by the previous Government were actually stopping people finding rentals, then they might have a case. We pleaded with them during the committee stage to show us that evidence and to point us towards a source—point us to any sort of data set. They couldn’t do it, because this won’t do what they said it would do.

It does some good things. I would have liked the bill to have done more. I think it is actually a shame that the Minister didn’t accept my amendment put forward at the committee stage to make those greyhounds that are coming out of the industry, as a result of the pending ban, exempt from the pet bond for four years, and the flip side of that was that a landlord would have been able to claim two weeks’ more rent than what they are currently allowed to if there are damages. It meant that the landlord wasn’t worse off, but it meant that there was no barrier to a tenant taking in a greyhound, and it would have helped a lot with the pending influx of extra greyhounds. I think that is a genuine shame, but I hope that the Minister is true to his word that he said that he will go look into it, and I encourage the Government to seriously consider that. We are going to need some provisions to help home these greyhounds, and this would have been a real, practical way to do it.

Nevertheless, that still actually wouldn’t have changed our position on this, even though it was my amendment and I would have loved the Government to have accepted it, because, at the end of the day, there is enough evidence already available to show, as a combination of things, that when you make it easier for landlords to kick tenants out, as this bill does, and the Government doesn’t encourage the building of houses and it pulls back on Kāinga Ora and it slows down the momentum of community housing providers and it stops people entering emergency housing—what does that all add up to? Unaffordable rents, unaffordable house prices, and increased homelessness. Does that remind anyone of anything?

Hon Member: John Key.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: The nine years of the John Key Government?

Shanan Halbert: Been there, done that.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: Been there, done that, and here we are again. Back to the future, not back on track. Back to the same old, tired policies that benefit landlords, but don’t benefit anybody else.

Ahiahi mārie, Mr Speaker. It’s with sadness that I address the House on this bill tonight, because I don’t own a home, and probably won’t for a while, even with all of the different tools and mechanisms and privilege that I do have access to as a member of Parliament. I know, from my experience pre being an MP that, as renters, we don’t ask for a lot. We’re only asking for a roof over our head. We’re only asking that when we pay our rent on time, we get the entitlements that are legally provided for. We only ask that we can live in a place where we don’t get sick from the black mould all over the roof. We only ask that the bathrooms that we use—that the hot water is running. We only ask that there aren’t mushrooms growing out of the shower. We only ask that the roof doesn’t leak on our head. Somehow, in Aotearoa, that’s become too much to ask for.

Actually, we don’t ask for what we deserve, because there’s more than a million of us. It’s interesting being based in Wellington Central and reading about the slumlords that used to exist in our urban centres, and how back in the day is so similar to how things are now for renters in New Zealand. Somehow, if you live in one of those slum houses and one of those slum flats that has become normalised in our country, you’re looked down upon, and this bill is an example of the way that you are looked down upon. But, if you own the slums, if you’re a slumlord and you own 20 of those things, somehow our society privileges that. Somehow our society and our systems applaud that kind of behaviour, because, at the end of the day, this bill is actually about the rich getting richer, because we live in a country where housing isn’t treated as a human right; it’s treated as an opportunity for people to make money.

That to me is morally bankrupt because, as I’ve said over and over and over again on this bill: how can anybody be expected to live a decent life if they don’t have a roof over their head? The answer to that is obvious and clear: you can’t. You can’t live a decent or meaningful life. You can’t go and get a job. You can’t look after yourself. You can’t raise your family if you don’t have a roof over your head.

Now, today, we’ve spent the entire day canvassing this bill and trying to understand—trying to give the Government the benefit of the doubt, actually, to actually try and see whether there is a basis for this decision. We asked over and over and over again—we asked the Minister of Housing and we asked the Associate Minister of Housing what is the evidential basis that underpins the rhetoric that this Government has provided around bringing back no-cause evictions, and they told us over and over again that it’s about helping landlords and property managers take a chance on riskier tenants.

Well, first of all, what is a risky tenant? Who are we talking about when we’re saying these so-called risky tenants? Are we talking about Māori? Are we talking about poor people? Are we talking about disabled people? Like, if you’re going to say that that’s your rationale, then be very clear and very specific about who it is that you’re talking about. Also, even if that was the case, then where is the evidence to show that this would even allow for property managers and landlords to take a chance? That doesn’t exist, and that’s because this bill is simply a product of the coalition agreement—the infamous coalition agreement that somehow happens to supersede every other agreement, every other treaty, every other international convention in this country.

They’ve decided that that’s what they’re going to do, and so they’ve worked backwards—they’ve worked backwards—to try and make the evidence work and to try and make a case for no-cause evictions. It hasn’t worked, because if you look at the regulatory impact statement, you look at the evidence, you look at the data, and you listen to the people that came and spoke to us about this bill, it becomes clear that there is no basis for this bill. It’s purely political, and even with the policy problem, there are so many ways that you could try and encourage landlords to take a chance on riskier tenants. There are lots of different ways that they can make this work. But, no, the outcome was already determined within the coalition agreement, and so that’s what they’ve pursued.

It’s really strange that they’ve pursued that, because there’s not even support within the property industry for no-cause evictions, because 53 percent of people who submitted on this bill who were representing property managers or landlords—or were, themselves, those two things—don’t even support this bill. Then, if you look at the public’s perspective, 97 percent of people don’t support this bill, so there’s actually not a lot of support for this bill. But I think the Government knows that and understands that, and, like my colleague Kieran McAnulty was saying, that’s why they’ve couched it in all the fluff. They’ve fluffed it up so that it detracts from the fact that there is no basis for no-cause evictions.

The reason there is no basis for no-cause evictions is because if you look at the way that that kind of law has been applied around the world, it has resulted in nothing but increased homelessness and chaos and destruction of people’s lives. The fact that it’s been couched in all this fluff with the pet bonds, which we could get into as well, because the pet bond provisions aren’t even as great as they’ve been touted to be—it’s been couched in all this fluff because I think that the Government is ashamed to be bringing back no-cause evictions.

As we watch the results and the destruction that will come from this decision that we are about to make, sadly we’re going to look back at this and we are all going to feel ashamed that we allowed this to happen. I’m not surprised, because we’ve got a pro-landlord Government. We’ve got a Government made up of politicians who all—not all, sorry. We have a Government made up, by and large, of politicians who own multiple properties, and that is the problem. There should be more people in this room who have never owned a property, because maybe then we’d get better decisions that actually treat housing as the human right that it needs to be treated as.

The thing is, as we live in a democracy and there are actually more of us than there are of you—there are more renters in this country than there are landlords. Thank you for doing this no-cause evictions mahi, because I think renters will actually recognise their power in numbers and utilise that, and this is going to be a one-term Government—not just because of all of this but because of everything else that the Government has decided to do.

Let’s use the last two minutes to talk about solutions, because that’s a big piece of criticism that we always get: we’re always quick to point out the harm, but we never point out the solutions. I’ll tell you what the solutions are. First of all, we need rent controls, because those members might never understand what it feels like to have an unexpected rent increase sprung on you at a time where you don’t have the financial means to actually pay that rent, and the anxiety and the despair that it causes people when those kinds of decisions are sprung on them. We need rent controls. We need a rental warrant of fitness system that actually looks at the dilapidated and poor and disgusting state of rental housing in New Zealand—speaking as someone living in Wellington, where we are notorious for the quality of our housing. Most importantly, we need a mass public housing build programme, because the core problem here is capitalism, and it’s the way—[Interruption]

Funny, that’s always the root of all problems. We always arrive back at that point, don’t we, guys? We always arrive back at that point. In this country, we treat housing like a game of Monopoly, like a business, like a thing to be profited from, and that is fundamentally and morally bankrupt because, again, people don’t get to choose whether or not they have a roof over their heads. People don’t get to make that option. You cannot live a meaningful or decent or productive life—economy, people—if you don’t have a roof over your head. That’s why we are in full, staunch opposition to this bill. We will continue to be so, and we look forward to putting our rental policies in place in 2026. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, there is a bit of a dark cloud hanging over that side of the House, isn’t there? Let’s try to brighten things up a little bit.

This is a great day, not just for landlords but for tenants as well, because when you separate people against each other and you say tenants are getting this and landlords are getting that, all you’re doing is making a conflict where there doesn’t need to be one. To have a landlord, you must have a tenant. To have a tenant, you must have a landlord. To have that relationship, you have to have a property. What this Government has done, by following through on what the ACT Party campaigned for and this coalition Government has signed up to do, is restore confidence in a market which operates when participants come together with mutual respect and dignity, have a chance for both to express their ways and their rights and privileges. Those people need to be able to come together and supply one another with what they need.

A landlord needs someone to occupy their house who looks after it, who respects it, who pays the rent, who treats their neighbours with care, and who doesn’t diminish the property value. A tenant needs a landlord who looks after their property, maintains it, buys it in the first place—actually, let’s go back a few steps: works hard, saves, invests, and buys one, and then allows someone to occupy that property. What we end up with is a relationship, and that relationship is going to be going back to the way it was when we had people who respected each other rather than holding each other to ransom. I have to say that that was the feeling that the property-investing community—“the landlords”, as they have been tagged over there—have been feeling.

What the downstream effect of this feeling is, is that you end up with people who don’t want to take risks, not just on tenants but, actually, on even supplying a property to the market—even being a landlord. People don’t want to take that risk, because if you have got your hard work and capital invested in a property and then you have no ability to guide the way it is looked after, the way the person who is occupying it treats it, why would you take that risk? I think we need people taking a punt in New Zealand, saying, “I want to invest my capital in a way that supplies to the market”, who needs it—

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: You’re not smarter, you’re not hard-working; we just don’t have a fair tax system.

CAMERON LUXTON: I know you say, “Oh, the people who care about the economy”, on this side of the House. The economy is a way to describe the way our society operates. It’s when people come together with mutual benefit, and that is what we are trying to bring back to this country.

There was an earlier conversation today in the House. I hesitate to use this term, but there has been described a “war” on landlords previously, and I think what we are seeing now is the end to that, so described by others in the past—a conflict—which was causing a vast amount of collateral damage to tenants. I think what we are seeing is an ending of hostilities in that particular sphere of New Zealand’s psyche. I have to say, after listening to the speeches on the other side, it’s more of just a détente on that side; it’s just a pausing in hostilities. You can hear them just waiting for that power so that they can come in and say to people, “I demand you do this with the property that you own. You’ve invested your life into this product or this property or this asset, and I demand you do what I say!” That is just something that we cannot go back to in this country.

We had a speech poorly delivered, not a lot of passion, by Mr Kieran McAnulty. I mean, he is the hardest-working MP in the Labour Party, so you can forgive him for being a bit exhausted at this point in the week. He asked what this Government is doing to get some more houses. Well, Mr McAnulty, the market needs to have more houses. I agree with you, and this Government is doing multiple things to it. I won’t digress too far, Madam Speaker, and feel free to pull me up, but we’ve got a cost of housing which makes it harder for people to actually build houses to deliver to each other. And that means that we need to do things like sorting out the products that go into houses that become rental properties.

That means going through the Building Act and making it easier to bring products in from overseas—something that we’ve campaigned for and this Government is delivering. We’re making interest deductibility come back, not as fast as I would perhaps like to see it, but faster than it would have without us. We’ve got things like Resource Management Act reform, which the Minister earlier this week has indicated will be coming before this House. That is something that has been sorely needed in this country, so we can actually build—so we can build places for each other to live, for each other to work, and so that we can produce an economy which will provide for others, because that is what we’re all about.

This bill simplifies a few things as well. Oh, actually, hang on, there was another part in there that I’d like to address. We heard Tamatha Paul say things like, “All a tenant asks for is a long list of: not a mouldy house, not a leaky roof—all I want is a roof over my head.” That is a very fair comment. You do just want to have a roof over your head. You do just want to have a safe, warm place to live. We don’t get those by punishing the people who are supplying it. That is the feeling from the people who are supplying it.

I come today to this House to report that the property industry, who invest and try to be good landlords, have felt under pressure. They have been exiting. They have been less “risk-take-y”—“risk-take-y”? That’s a bit of a funny word. They’ve taken less risk. You can say, “Well, you know, they’re going to take a punt on”—I can’t remember the language that was being used over there to try and denigrate tenants who were probably not top of the list when it comes to property inspections, but I think, if you allow people to take risks, you will get more people housed.

If you allow people to take risk, you will not just get more people who wouldn’t have been housed housed; you will get people who have been housed and they want to move up into a different part of the community—as in, they want to move into a part of the community with—[Interruption] No, I don’t think so, Mr Bayly; I’m perfectly enjoying the speech right now, because this is something that we have asked for, for a long time. New Zealand has asked for it for a long time. It is a place in New Zealand that needs to have a functioning property market. The ACT Party heard from the communities that were affected. We represented them into Parliament. We did things, like the pet bond.

The pet bond was not just a piece of fluff tagged on the end; this is an important part of what makes somebody feel at home. It’s when they have their companion animal or the ability to get a pet. I think we’ve heard from many people who have seen the benefit of this. You could tell by the first part of this bill’s committee stage, where the Opposition said, “Look, we have some quibbles with it”—and I think, fair enough, you could say it could be more, it could be less, it could be defined, we don’t want to leave it out, we want it to be more strict on what sort of pets, but I think we’ve landed in a good space.

I think it’s a credit to the ACT Party for bringing this idea to the House so that people can have the life that they would like to choose and just pay a small two weeks of bond for the privilege of having an animal in someone else’s property, which is their home. Madam Speaker, I’ll leave it there. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to stand and rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. And I’ll begin my contribution by acknowledging the work that has gone on with the Social Services and Community Committee. I’ll mention also the Minister of Housing, who brought this bill to the House, and the contribution of a part of this in terms of the pet bond from the ACT Party, and I will speak to that in just a moment.

My home is my castle, and currently I’m between castles, so I’d like to talk a little bit about what that feels like. I’ve been a homeowner. I have been a landlord—a very good landlord, I think. I have been a tenant fairly recently. When I was a tenant fairly recently, I had fabulous landlords, because they allowed me to have my two cats, Romeo and Leonardo, with me. It was because of their consideration of me having my cats that I could stay in that wonderful place. I do understand how vitally important it is for women of a certain age who have cats to be able to have their cats in their homes, particularly in rentals. I think that is something that as we have an aging population in particular, the companionship of our cats, maybe a small dog, whatever it might be, is a consideration. I think that those landlords that are willing to do that—they’re usually because they’re pet owners themselves.

The particular changes in this legislation that will enable people to have their pets because of the pet bond will in fact broaden out the types of landlords that may say, “Actually, because there is a pet bond now, I will take the opportunity to have a tenant with a pet because I’ll be covered financially in case there’s any damage or whatever caused by the pet.”

There are a couple of other points I’d like to make about that. Incentivising with the pet bond is a fantastic amendment, noting also that there are around 1.7 million renters in New Zealand; 80 percent rent from the private market. This amendment bill will really support that private sector to continue to be good landlords and continue to put more into that rental market.

Now, I’m in the process of actually beginning the process of building my own home, and we have that desire—we grow up with that ideal, that vision, that dream of owning our own homes. If we can get to build a home, that’s such a wonderful process, except for when you get to council. In particular, Auckland Council is very difficult to get that building consent and resource consent processing through. For quite a period of time, you might need to rent somewhere while you’re going through that build process.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That was good—you brought it back to the bill.

JENNY MARCROFT: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s really interesting for a person like myself, who has two cats, while I’m in the build process—which is going to take more than a year—to be able to know that I can go and rent with my pets rather than having to farm them out.

This is a very good bill. I note that the pet bond will be one bond per tenancy, regardless of whether you have maybe two cats, like myself. In terms of the commencement of that, it will come later once there is the upgrade to the bond system, which the Minister has spoken to the House about this afternoon.

In all, this is a very good piece of legislation, and on behalf of New Zealand First I’m very pleased to commend it to the House.

The next call is a split call.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou katoa e te Whare. “Stone the crows” is the closet comment I’ll get to discussing pets in this particular bill, because that’s what it feels like. It’s like “Jeez, stone the crows—is this really happening?” It was disappointing, despite, I guess, the humour that was put around the pets and all of that pet kōrero, that what was ignored most noticeably was the people part of it and the impact it will have on people.

Of course, pets are precious—ka pai tēnā [that is reasonable]. People mai i Te Tai Tokerau mai i Te Aupōuri ko te mea nui ko te tangata [from Te Tai Tokerau, from Te Aupōuri, understand that the most important thing is people]. I’m just putting out those for the committee to understand and, ideally, appreciate.

This bill puts whānau and families in harm’s way. How disappointing and dangerous to be placing in harm’s way renters with little or no evidence but a reliance on speculative assumptions to improve the housing supply. We’re yet to see, but we already know where that’s going to end up. It seems we are consigned to be a nation of renters because the housing market is so inaccessible and so unaffordable for the majority of this country. The dire state of housing in New Zealand is a point that I know the other side of the House knows about—whether they really understand it in the way that Māori do, I would doubt that.

No research endorses the notion that having 90-day no-cause evictions will alleviate pressures during a housing crisis; in fact, it will exacerbate the challenges that the sector already faces. I’m not quite sure why that is not understood let alone appreciated enough, but that’s what happens when you have a gap of knowledge and a misunderstanding of reality.

The risk is this: if we lessen the time frames and afford greater freedom and eviction processes to landlords, we will absolutely see drastic increases in homelessness and reliance on social housing, and already 25,000 people are on the social housing waiting list. These amendments will change the lives of many, and not for good, who are already marginalised.

Eviction is a leading precursor to homelessness. I will say that again: eviction is a leading precursor to homelessness, and Māori already make up over 50 percent of renters and 60 percent of homeless communities.

Research shows that the high proportion of renters in this country are Māori. In Te Tai Tokerau, our whānau, māua ko Peeni, mōhia me Willow anō hoki, we understand and contend with rent prices of up to $600, $700, $800 a week, and a third of whānau income goes to paying that. It’s a tough reality on a daily basis. In 2019, it was identified that over 40 percent of renters spend more than a third. I would hate to think where the figures sit now.

For nearly a third of renters, it can take up to four months to find an appropriate rental property, and, in all of the discussion, I can’t hear that that’s really and truly understood, and it’s definitely not appreciated in this bill, sadly. Mums and dads—there will be pets there but mostly mums and dads—will face the reality, particularly Māori, of their children, their mokopuna, being removed from their care because they cannot provide a safe and good and warm home. That’s on us and that’s on this bill.

When Minister Potaka, I think, was speaking, he used the word “mōkai” in his kōrero, in the pets conversation, and I thought then, “If only he understood how that’s deeply and truly understood in our tikanga.” With all of that said, and the deep disappointment that this party carries with this particular bill—and others might think otherwise, but they do not know otherwise; only we know—it behoves me to absolutely reject this bill. Kia ora tātou.

This Government is really saying “Merry Christmas” to what the ACT Party calls the “property investment community” in giving coal to a third of the country who rents, who will now be far more vulnerable to be evicted and to face homelessness.

It’s so shameless that this Government is ramming through this piece of legislation under urgency, rather than by going through the usual motions, to literally gift to landlords across the country the ability to make more people homeless. This is what they have been advised this bill could cause and it is what it will cause. Those of us who have worked at the front lines with renters and people who have been homeless know the intergenerational hardship and poverty that evictions can create on low-income communities. If you’re living week to week and you face an eviction, your life gets turned upside down, but they wouldn’t know about this because many of these members live now incredibly comfortable lives, and those who may have faced hardship in the past are completely disconnected from it, have turned their eyes away from the streets, and live in an echo chamber disconnected from the communities that are going to be most disproportionately impacted.

This Government has told us that this bill is about pets. Well, it turns out they can now evict you and your pet as well! This Government can now evict you and your cat, you and your dog—so great, particularly when we consider that the provisions that they have added to allow for people to be with their pets continue adding more barriers for those low-income people. They have also created ways to ensure that landlords can recover your general bond, and now your new pet bond, as they see fit. This will just allow landlords to continue treating housing as a profit rather than an essential human right.

No amount of dribble from the members on the other side will make up for the fact that they are literally under-resourcing our public housing entities. They are going to be providing less public housing over the next few years and that will leave communities across the country far more vulnerable to landlords of expensive rentals who will actually put them into more financial hardship.

The Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill is nothing but an affront to the communities who we should be prioritising and serving. The Minister in the chair earlier kept talking about how we should centre our debate on facts and not opinions, but if we look at the actual facts and the advice and the research that has been provided to grant this bill, it shows that there is absolutely no evidential basis to back that this bill will (a) put downward pressure on rents; and (b) will actually support tenants to have secure tenure. We know this because we have had no-cause evictions before, here. Overseas, we’ve seen how no-cause evictions have been one of the leading causes of homelessness. We know that when someone is homeless, it’s not a simple matter of just putting them back on track into a home. There’s literal long-term harm to your health that comes from being homeless. It traps you in debt, it traps you in poverty, but this Government does not care.

No-cause evictions will be a blight for many people, and it will be a shameful record from this Government because they’ll start seeing the harm later down the line, and then the very same people that they would have made homeless will be stigmatised. These people will be called “at-risk tenants”.

Rima Nakhle: 90 days—three months.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: I hear them saying “90 days”, but again, they forget that, actually, this bill has provisions that allow for landlords to have people leave in less than 90 days. In fact, if a landlord says that they have a family member coming over, they can use 42 days.

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Some families struggle to get a new rental in 90 days.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: That’s right. And then many people assume—and, again, it just reeks of privilege from the other side to assume that it is so easy for people in our communities to find a suitable rental close to where perhaps their kids go to school, close to where they work in that time. We know that rental properties are facing such massive, massive competition from people across the country that sometimes people go to these viewings, only to feel like they have no chance of getting into the rental property that they’re looking at.

Once again, I just look at this Government’s members and see how out of touch they are with renters across the country and how they’re there to serve—quote from the ACT Party—“the property investment community”. [Interruption] No amount of fake outrage and crocodile tears from the other side will make up for the very same facts that they are supposed to care about, because the facts speak in our favour. This bill is about creating harm, it’s about creating inequality, and the facts will back and validate our words today later on down the track.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill, alongside the re-introduction of interest deductibility, are parts of the puzzle that is housing availability and housing affordability. Much has been said about this legislation being used by landlords to kick people out, their tenants out, without reason, when reasonableness dictates that the landlord-tenant relationship is one of accountability and respect, and that this, in general, would not really be happening. I commend this bill to the House.

I am a member of the Social Services and Community Committee, so I got to see this bill through the journey that we take when we’re scrutinising it at the select committee level. I will say that it was one of the bills that I went home and talked to my family about—not that I often do that—because of the high level of concern that I had for the implications for so many communities, with the provision in here that would mean no-cause termination periods. I really do think that some on the other side of the House are out of touch. I don’t want to make the assertion that all are, but I was watching on TV the speech given by ACT Party member Cameron Luxton earlier, who was saying that this is a day to celebrate and that both landlords and tenants should celebrate this. Well, I can tell you what: over a million people renting in this country will not, because you have just reduced their housing security. There is a lack of real understanding from that side of the House—not all, but from many—on the discrimination and the barriers that some communities and people face to being able to secure housing.

I can say for myself that I’ve only owned a home for, I think, the last 15 years, and before that I was renting. I had some classic examples, despite the fact that I was a professional woman, often flatting with other professional women, in getting rental properties. The reality is that being brown played a role in that, and sometimes being a solo mum played a role in that too. I’ll give you one example, one landlord. On paper, I looked good. She rang me up and she said, “Oh, you look great, yes. When would you want to move in?” And then she said, “Oh, by the way, is your surname—Sepuloni—Italian?” And I said, “No, actually, it’s Tongan.” Well, her tone changed completely, and all of a sudden that house was no longer available and that phone was hung up.

What that side needs to realise is that when landlords are given the ability to terminate a tenancy in this way, with no cause, that whānau or individual has to go on and find another rental, and we happen to have a shortage of rental properties in this country. Now, who are going to be the groups and individuals that struggle to secure their next rental property if the landlord makes the decision to kick them out with no cause? Well, we know who that’s going to be, and, actually, the submissions made really clear who that would be. They did say it would be Māori, Pacific, and people from ethnic communities; they did say LGBTIQ; and then they also talked about the risk for disabled people, because disabled people, when they get a rental, particularly if they have physical disabilities, find it very difficult to find accessible housing, and so, if booted out, 90 days is not necessarily going to be enough.

It’s not just us saying it. It’s not just the 97 percent of submitters that are saying it; even the Government’s own documentation that accompanies the bill tells them about these issues and concerns. You can see it in the departmental disclosure statement. You can see it in the regulatory impact statement. We went through this during the committee stage, but the Government has ignored the evidence—not the first time. Please, don’t come to the House and tell us that we should celebrate this, Cameron Luxton, and that tenants will be so happy about the fact that you’ve just made their housing security even less than what it was before, because, actually, over 1 million New Zealanders will not be celebrating this.

We do have to wonder what is the connection and why it is that this Government is so hell-bent on supporting landlords. Here we are. You’ve got this bill. This part of the bill is the first bit that will go through; everything else is staggered till later. You’re pushing this through on 30 January. We are very mindful of the fact that it’s not just this. You made the decision—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Government made the decision.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The Government made the decision. I’ll say it again: the Government made the decision to give $2.9 billion of tax breaks to landlords, as well as making it easier for them to kick tenants out.

Now, I’m going to put this on the record: the vast majority of landlords are good landlords, and that came up during the select committee. What also came up was that the vast majority of tenants are good tenants, and I think even the property investors group that came through acknowledged that. Why, then, do we shift the power to this particular group and away from the most vulnerable, into the hands of the landlords when there is no evidence to support that it will actually result in more supply in housing or that it will actually result in tenants being better off in any way? In fact, we’re presented with a whole lot of evidence around why this is not a good move by the Government.

I was slightly embarrassed by some of the speeches given by the Government, across the journey of this bill in this House. There was such a focus on the pet bond. Now, we get that—there were a lot of people that were really positive about that—but, actually, you have to wonder whether or not the Government was choosing to put their entire focus on that as a way of deflecting from the really, really negative, harmful aspect of this bill. We had so many Government Ministers coming to this House telling us about their pets. We know someone’s got a three-legged cat. We know someone’s got a cat and a dog, or two dogs. Here they were, telling us about how important pets were to them and their families and to their communities, and yet they were not able to put the same level of focus on the people impacted by this bill. I tell you what, it’s not positive for the people.

The one part of the pet bonds provision that still is disappointing for me, which came up during the committee stage, was that in the report it’s pointed out that the pet bond is not necessarily going to be of benefit to low-income households and those on benefits. Now, the Ministry of Social Development has a housing support product for those on low incomes and on benefits, which means they can get access to a recoverable grant, which they have to pay back, and they can support them to pay bond, but even with this coming into place, the Government is not moving to extend that recoverable grant so that it could cover the four weeks’ general bond plus the two weeks’ pet bond.

Those people on low incomes, those beneficiaries, they’re not going to be the ones that are allowed to actually take their pets with them, because they won’t be able to afford to pay the pet bond. Yet the Government had an instrument in place that they could have changed to ensure that there was fairness, that, actually, even those on low incomes and on benefits can enjoy the company of their pets and would have the same rights and have access to that like every other person. It seems like a no-brainer, but they just decided that, actually, they were not important, they were not even considered, and nothing would change for them. They will be the only ones that don’t get the opportunity to do this, because it’s just become more expensive for them if they want to take a pet and they need to move.

I was disappointed the whole way through the select committee that we couldn’t get any evidence from the officials about how long it takes to secure another rental property, as well. We heard the member Rima on the other side saying, “Well, they’ve got 90 days.” Well, we have met so many families who even within three months have not been able to secure another property. As an electorate MP, I have had whānau come to my office, saying they are so scared because their tenancy has ended, they are nearly about to move out, they cannot secure another tenancy, and they are on the verge of needing emergency housing. Now, how does that stack up with the Government’s target to reduce emergency accommodation? It again just shows how out of touch that side is.

I am going to end on the Government targets in relation to this, because the issue around housing insecurity, and that churn in terms of housing and having to move on, has other social impacts. The regulatory impact statement makes it clear. It can impact education, it can impact health, and it can impact employment. Here that Government is, saying that they are going to reach all of these amazing targets and improve the education, health, and employment outcomes for New Zealand and New Zealanders, and then they go and pass a bill that is going to put more New Zealanders into precarious housing situations. Now, all the evidence tells them it’s wrong; they still do it. We will not be supporting this bill. We do not understand the way that Government thinks.

I don’t blame members opposite for putting their headphones in for that last speech from the Hon Carmel Sepuloni. Goodness me, it must be tiring believing everything you say is right despite all evidence to the contrary. Let’s start where she left off with those targets: 70 percent of people moved out emergency accommodation in the last year, 1,600 kids out of emergency accommodation—making it easier to build more homes. I’m proud of what our Government is doing in housing, and I’m proud of this bill too. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There’s a term that’s come up in recent years—certainly in the time that I’ve been in Parliament—and that term is “Generation Rent”. Our ancestors wouldn’t believe that this country has now turned to call its present generation “Generation Rent”. Homeownership numbers have plummeted—

Dr Hamish Campbell: What are they?

Hon PEENI HENARE: —particularly amongst Māori—particularly amongst Māori. In fact, it’s just dipped below 30 percent—28 percent. There you go: Māori homeownership. I can tell that member, in the time of my parents, that homeownership rate was just above 80 percent—just above 80 percent. If that member doesn’t believe it, then he might want to have a look.

Hon Barbara Edmonds: Take a call.

Hon PEENI HENARE: Take a call and let’s debate the numbers. But the fact remains, we are calling our tamariki, our young people, people of this generation, “Generation Rent”. This Government is proud of putting the pressures on this generation and not supporting them into homeownership. At the start of this term, this Government took away the support for first-home buyers.

Simon Court: Mate, I rented for a decade and then I bought a house—everyone did.

Hon PEENI HENARE: Prove to me, ACT Party, that you didn’t do that. Can the ACT Party prove to this House that the Government did not take away that support for first-home buyers? No, they can’t. Crickets. Silence.

I can tell that side of the House a story about a person by the name of Miria Henare. Miria Henare had been looking for a House—a qualified lawyer, a professional, who applied for no less than 12 houses to rent. The minute she changed her name to Millie Henry, she got a response from a landlord. Oh my gosh! It’s road to Damascus is all we hear from that side of the House. This is the reality for Generation Rent. This Government is not doing anything (1) to support those people; or (2) to actually solve the issues that have plagued this country. We heard stories about, “Oh, well, you’ve got to look after landlords too because if they leave the market then—”. That doesn’t mean the house disappears; it doesn’t. What we’re not hearing from this Government is how they are going to build more houses. How are they going to continue to support our whānau, our communities, into owning their first home? That used to be an aspiration for this country; now we’re satisfied with the term “Generation Rent”, and that’s simply not good enough.

I’m really disappointed that, at the drop of a hat, tenants can find themselves in a precarious position where they have to leave—at the drop of the hat, no cause, and they’re gone. Once upon a time, we could rely on a strong conversation, a dialogue about people’s situation, caring for those who find themselves in difficult times, both landlord and tenant, but now we’re saying, “No, it’s OK.”, just at the whim of a landlord or somebody who is in a position of power to simply make it difficult for those who find themselves renting. Now, it is true that we have lots of very good landlords in this country. We also have a lot of great tenants, and that’s to be acknowledged, but those who find themselves most vulnerable in this situation are Māori, are Pacific, are ethnic minorities, are the elderly—

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Disabled.

Hon PEENI HENARE: —are the disabled, and are rural communities, simply because there’s not enough housing supply. This Government has not answered that question or stood up to that challenge. It’s extremely disappointing that we find ourselves here.

I take the words of the Minister during the committee of the whole House, where the Minister would say and admit that this particular legislation and anything that we look at towards tenancies actually needs a serious overhaul. Well, let’s do that and let’s do it in a bipartisan way where we can get support right across the House for such an important matter in our communities. But, no, we’re going to plod along. We’re going to do a bit of change here. We’ll see how it goes after six months or nine months; we’ll look towards the evidence. Well, all we’ve seen from this Government is ignoring evidence, ignoring the facts, and ignoring statistics.

It’s disappointing to be in here again. I’ve been here 11 years—not as long as others; I won’t name anyone—but in that time, we have debated this exact matter time after time after time after time. It’s time we got it right so that we can fix the term “Generation Rent” and call it “Generation Homeowner”.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in favour of this bill. I think there’s been a number of provisions laid out—sensible, pro-tenant changes to the Residential Tenancies Act, which, along with the introduction of interest deductibility, will increase the supply of rental housing and make landlords more willing to enter into arrangements. This is going to be a good bill for tenants and for the rental supply in New Zealand, and I support this bill. Thank you.

I have particular personal investment in this bill because, during our last couple of years in Opposition, I worked hard as the housing spokesperson for Labour to develop a policy that would give renters in this country more rights and more security of tenure, and as housing Minister, I oversaw the development of the legislation and its passage through the House of the provisions in the law that this bill takes away.

For a long, long time in this country, politicians in this Parliament never gave a moment’s notice or thought to the life and the situation of renters in this country. Whenever housing was discussed, it was always in the context of either State housing or homeownership, but something’s changed over the last generation in this country, and, now, nearly 40 percent of our people in this country rent. Those people who rent are disproportionately the young, the poor, female, Māori, Pacific, and new migrant communities. There is a direct correlation between people who have power in this country and people who don’t have power, and homeownership and people who rent. If we care about fairness, if we care about social justice in this country, we have to take the rights and the security of renters seriously.

Now, there is abundant literature internationally and here in New Zealand that shows conclusively that security of tenure is one of the most important things that determines the wellbeing—the physical, social, and mental wellbeing—of our people. Without security of tenure, it is very, very hard to live a decent, dignified life, to raise children, to stay healthy, and to do the things that we all aspire to.

The rules in the Residential Tenancy Act make a really big difference. If you can be kicked out, even theoretically, for no reason at all, it changes the mind-set of the renter, and it changes the mind-set of the landlord. If you live with the kind of insecurity, daily, that you can be turfed out of your home, the place where your family lives, for no reason, you are much less likely to ever raise a problem with the landlord or get into any kind of dispute or argument, regardless of the rights or wrongs of it or what the law says.

When the market is hot—and it often is in our highly cyclical property market—properties change hands frequently as landlords and investors cash up and buy another property. The human cost of that is that, all over the suburbs and towns of this country, low-income families are being turfed out of their homes. In the early teens—early 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015—when the market was extremely hot in New Zealand, it was not uncommon for young families to be moving house every year or even more frequently. Now, the cost, the sheer cost to their health and wellbeing, let alone the wellbeing of the kids who are then being shunted across the city from one school to another.

Now, the law that we passed in 2018 gave renters a little bit more security. It pushed out the notice periods, and it said that the landlord could not get rid of a tenant for no reason at all. They could still terminate the tenancy if they were selling the house, if they were renovating it, if their family were moving back in, and if they wanted to sell it—the provisions still applied. If a tenant engages in antisocial behaviour, the landlord can go to the Tenancy Tribunal. It’s not like a European situation where, in Germany, people literally have tenancy for life. Not at all. Nothing like that. The law gave them a little bit more security.

It was part of a package of measures giving renters more rights and security, introducing standards for healthy homes. In rental properties, it became compulsory for landlords to have insulation and basic measures to stop cold, damp homes making renters sick. We got rid of letting fees. We embarked on a massive programme of State house building. We banned foreign buyers from buying existing properties, and we dismantled the tax breaks that, for so long, had incentivised a highly speculative real estate economy based on the entrenched expectation of tax-free capital gain. We did all that to make housing warm and dry and healthy, to make renters more secure, and to bring down the cost of rental housing.

Now, I’m sad that the right-wing parties basically have made a fetish, a political fetish, out of their support for property investors. They are willing to advance the economic and financial interests of one class of investors, residential rental property investors, at the expense of nearly 40 percent of the population. They are willing to sell renters, the young, female, low-income, ethnic-minority communities—they are willing to sell them down the river and compromise their quality of life and their life chances in order to strengthen the economic position and the financial interests of property investors. Frankly, for people who should be in this House because they want to do something that’s good for our people in this country and good for New Zealand, I find that absolutely appalling.

We always hear in this debate from the National Party benches that it’s unnecessary to put regulations and rules on—it’s often employers but, in this case, it’s landlords and property investors, because they’re good people and they want to do the right thing and, of course, they’re reasonable and they would only ever throw out a bad tenant. Oh my God! If I had to hear that one more time! It completely denies reason. It’s facile. It’s infantile. We have rules and we have regulations to protect people, to make sure that the market works properly and delivers fair outcomes for everybody.

The members on that side of the House would rather strip away the negotiating power and the protections of people who they want to pretend have equal power to landlords—that people who are shelling out two-thirds of their weekly income to put a roof over their heads are the equals of people who might own three, four, five, six, seven, or eight properties, and that somehow it’s an equal relationship. That is utter nonsense, and I’m amazed that the members on that side of the House are willing to stand up and make that argument, with a straight face.

Our country does face a serious problem, and if you look at a number of our youngest and best and brightest who are currently heading to Australia and further afield because they do not have hope that they can get ahead in New Zealand, the sheer number of people leaving is a problem. Why are they leaving? They cannot get ahead, because of low wages and high housing costs. It’s now been like that for more than a generation, and we have to tackle this problem. Governments these days spend all of their time and money fixing up the social mess caused by insecure work and insecure, expensive housing, but that side of the House seems completely unwilling to do anything about it. They don’t want to raise wages. They don’t want to reduce housing costs.

This bill will undermine the negotiating position of renters. It puts them in an even more precarious position. It gives the lie to everything that they’ve said on that side of the House about wanting to improve the position of renters. We need to do something about housing, and I’m pleased to say that this Government and the Minister Chris Bishop is at least willing to do something about planning reform, about zoning reform, but on every other aspect of housing policy—whether it’s the rights of renters, building State housing, every other aspect—that Government is taking this country backwards. It will only drive more and more young New Zealanders overseas, because they regard this country as being backwards. It’s going backwards at a greater and greater speed because of this Government. This bill, which takes away the rights of renters, makes them more insecure and more precarious, will make life worse for between 35 and 40 percent of this country’s population. Why? So that the National Party can continue to privilege the rights of property investors.

I rise in support of the Residential Tenancy Amendment Bill. As we’ve heard, the other side of the House did so much for renters—$175 a week increase in rent under the previous Government. Is that doing things for tenants? No, it is not. This bill helps balance the approach between tenants and landlords, because it is a relationship.

Now, let’s just have a look at some of the data which they’re claiming isn’t on our side. Data from TradeMe shows an increase of 26 percent of new rental listing in the recent period. Realestateagent.co.nz—you have Google; you can check these numbers yourself—reported a 40 percent increase in rental stock in the last quarter. That is what good legislation does: it helps renters. That’s why this bill is going to add to that. Therefore, I support this bill.