Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill

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

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I move, That the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill.

This is an important bill that proposes sensible, much-needed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 which will remove barriers to increasing private rental housing supply as well as introducing pet bond provisions—which is part of the National-ACT coalition agreement and has generated a lot of excitement amongst many people, particularly pet owners. The approach of the previous Government when it came to landlords ultimately caused worse outcomes for tenants. Rents increased rapidly under the last Government; the social housing wait-list that we’ve been talking about a bit in the House over the last couple of days increased by around 20,000 families; and of course we have, very sadly, many families in New Zealand living in emergency housing motels.

Not all of these problems can be put down to the residential tenancies changes that the previous Government implemented in progressive stages, but some of those problems can be put down to that. For example, the removal of 90-day no-cause terminations by the last Government made some landlords unwilling to take a chance on tenants who don’t have perfect references or a steady nine-to-five job, or had just left prison, for example, or for a variety of reasons landlords didn’t want to take a chance on. Many landlords just decided to exit the market altogether. I’ve had many, many people say to me, “The combination of interest deductibility, 90-day no-cause terminations, the brightline test. It’s all just too hard—I’m out.” Ultimately, mum and dad landlords are an important part of the housing market in New Zealand, so this bill reintroduces 90-day no-cause terminations for periodic tenancies.

It also fixes the situation around the end of fixed-term tenancies. The last Government’s changes to, essentially, make the roll-over of fixed-term tenancies into periodic tenancies essentially automatic has caused chaos in a variety of markets, most notably down in Queenstown, where previously there was a situation where many people would offer up properties into the market for, say, six to nine months when they didn’t need to use the property to become available for a fixed-term tenancy. The near-automatic roll-over of those fixed-term tenancies into periodic tenancies has meant that people just think, “It’s all too difficult, we’ll just put the property on Airbnb.”, and then the property just is not used for much of the time.

So we had the situation in Queenstown where you’ve got a real homelessness problem; you’ve got workers unable to get access to accommodation—I see my good friend and colleague Joseph Mooney here, the MP for Queenstown and the wider region. So we are going to fix that problem. The chamber of commerce down there has made this point multiple times in the media. Because interestingly, the former Minister of Housing, Megan Woods, turned up there at the height of all of this. I’ve forgotten, was it July last year? Maybe August?

Joseph Mooney: It was around then, yeah.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: It was around then. We were approaching the—she said, basically, “I acknowledge the problem but, you know, we can’t just fix this. You know, it’s very difficult to change laws.” Well, actually, she was the Minister. I found that quite remarkable, and I said to her, “You could put a bill towards the Parliament right now. We’d back it. Put it through under urgency—can fix it next week.” That idea seemed to go nowhere. Well, we are fixing the problem. We’re doing it as part of a suite of changes.

I’ve also heard that this provision has caused problems in the Dunedin market. I’ve also had some anecdotal evidence that this fixed-term tenancy change from the last Government has caused problems on Waiheke Island, which is a similar market in some senses to Queenstown.

Joseph Mooney: Is the local MP going to support it?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, that’ll be interesting to see whether or not the local MP for Waiheke Island—who I think is Chlöe Swarbrick—whether or not she supports this, because we’ve got a similar problem with rental accommodation over on Waiheke Island. So let’s wait and see whether or not that happens, but I’ll hold my breath.

So, ultimately, when it comes to fixed-term tenancies and the 90-day notices, we are incentivising landlords back into the market to put downward pressure on rents—that’s a good thing. Of course, in the medium term and the long term, the ultimate answer to rental affordability in this country is growth of housing supply. That’s why we’ve got a wider package of reforms coming that builds on the work of the Hon Phil Twyford, who I see in the Chamber, around the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, and the last Government—the sole good thing the last Government did when it comes to housing. It builds on that work and tries to smash urban limits and allow for greater density inside our cities and sorting out the infrastructure funding and financing settings. So I won’t dwell on that, but just to say we have more work to come on that.

I think the good news is that collectively across the Parliament now, there is a consensus that the solutions to our housing challenges are fundamentally around supply—actually tinkering around the demand side of it, tinkering around with other things extrinsic to the fundamentals of supply and demand leads you down a path that doesn’t actually deal with the underlying issues. But the fundamental answer to our housing affordability challenges, whether it’s homeownership or of rental affordability and indeed in social housing—because Kāinga Ora and the community housing sector face the same planning and the same funding and financing constraints—

Hon Phil Twyford: That’s a misrepresentation of the consensus.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, I meant in a broad sense. I meant in a broad sense, there is now a—well, put it this way: compared to, say, 20 years ago, when most of Parliament thought that the solutions to our housing crisis were not around supply, we’re in a much better situation now than in comparison to 20 years ago. I mean, the Greens are yet to join the fun on this—the Greens, sadly, still propose economically insane policies like rent controls, so the Greens are yet to kind of join the mainstream of the of the Parliament when it comes to housing supply. But we’ve got a new spokesperson.

Tamatha Paul: We’ll always do better.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Right, well, I don’t think rent controls are doing better. Because, as I said in a debate—I think it was last week in the House—economists don’t agree on much, but they agree on two things: one, free trade is good and it lifts incomes and raises economic growth; and the second thing they agree on is that rent controls are nuts. In fact, I can’t remember the exact economist, but the quote is basically “The single best way to destroy the housing stock of a city is rent controls.” But we’ve got a new housing spokesperson for the Green Party, Tamatha Paul—she’s an energetic spokesperson and I’m looking forward to her seeing the light and changing the Greens. But anyway—

Tamatha Paul: Never!

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: —I digress. “Never,” she says. OK, we’ll see—we’ll see. The other thing this bill does is it introduces provisions related to pets. So it’s too hard to find rentals that are pet-friendly, and one of the reasons why that is is that many landlords are reluctant to take on pets. They worry about the damage; they worry about the costs. So what we are doing is enabling landlords to require a pet bond if they have agreed to the tenant keeping a pet up to the equivalent of two weeks’ rent. They’re a win-win: landlords have additional assurance they won’t be out of pocket for the possible damage, and tenants with pets will have more rental options.

It also clarifies the consent rules. So the status quo is landlords are able to, essentially, say, you know, advertise on TradeMe, “No pets; don’t allow pets”. So under the bill, tenants will be permitted to keep a pet with the landlord’s consent. Here’s the critical point: landlords can only refuse a pet if they have a reasonable ground. So the bill includes a non-exhaustive list of reasonable grounds. For example, the property’s unsuitable due to its size or the type or the breed of the pet; or the property’s unsuitable because it’s too small, for example. So there’s a range of non-exhaustive list of reasonable grounds in the bill, and I’m sure the committee will want to kick this around and I’m very open to sensible amendments around that.

There’s also a range of technical changes to improve the clarity and efficiency of our tenancy laws. So the bill enables online lodgment of bonds, for example—and you would have thought that would be able to be done for a while, but indeed it isn’t. So we have to legislate for that, so we are doing that. That will improve the customer experience. This is a small but good change: the bill will allow the Tenancy Tribunal to make decisions by reading the relevant papers instead of having the parties attend—

Arena Williams: Which ones are the bad changes?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, they’re all good changes—they’re all good changes. You might disagree, but they’re all good changes. It’s basically hearings on the papers rather than attending in person. Reduced costs. There’s massive delays in the Tenancy Tribunal right now. This will help. It also confirms the long-held understanding that a landlord may prohibit a tenant from smoking indoors, which clarifies the law after some recent Tenancy Tribunal decisions to the contrary. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Right throughout every single debate, every announcement, and every policy debate, this Government has not been upfront with New Zealand when it comes to housing. They have been disingenuous, and this bill is yet another example—the second in the last two days. There are aspects of this bill that makes sense. Their provisions to encourage landlords to take on tenants with pets, we support. The provisions to allow tenants to withdraw from a tenancy in the case of family violence, we support. But the core of this bill is that it is easier for landlords to dismiss tenants and make them homeless than it would be otherwise, and that is simply why we cannot support this bill.

But in order to fully understand this bill, it’s important to understand the broader context of the housing debate and housing policy from this Government, and that is why I say they are being disingenuous. For the Minister to stand up in the House when introducing this bill and say that there is a consensus on increasing the supply, yet in seven months they have not made a single announcement that will lead to the increase in supply, or—i.e., in simple terms—the building of new houses. In fact, what is clear is that the policy changes that this Government has made will decrease and disincentivise and lead to fewer houses being built.

It is that simple, and that is exactly what this bill will do. When you consider this bill in the context of things like reintroducing interest deductibility, like what we’ve seen throughout—

Carl Bates: How will it make the building of houses less? Can you just walk us through that logic?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: I’ve been asked for logic. How about you listen up? Here it is: taking away interest deductibility made an incentive to invest in new builds, and it was working. If you don’t want to listen to this, listen to the evidence. As a result of moving that, we saw an increase in new builds and an increase in new homebuyers in the market.

Carl Bates: What—KiwiBuild?

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: And then—oh, he’s changing the subject now. Typical—typical National MP. He’s asked a question, gets presented with evidence, doesn’t like the answer, and so changes the subject. But I’ll tell you what, for the sake of everybody else, I’ll continue.

We saw investment in new builds, rather than contesting between speculators and investors on existing stock. That was driving up house prices, and this bill does nothing to help with that. By changing that, what they’ve done is they’re going to move investment away from new builds and increase speculation on existing stock. That means new homebuyers who were entering the market will not—exactly what happened the last time National were in Government.

So why is that important in the context of this bill? Because when people are able to be kicked out of their home easier, what’s going to happen to them? They are going to look for more rentals, or they’re going be homeless. Now, homelessness is an interesting part of this debate, because this Government has made it harder to access emergency housing and easier to be kicked out of Kāinga Ora properties. What is going to happen to them if there’s no houses going to be built? They are going to be homeless.

Every way you look at this, this leads to more homeless people. The easier it is to kick people out of tenancies, the higher the likelihood that the homeless rate will increase, and it’s very simple. They can holler, they can bicker, they can shout, and they can heckle, but they actually have nothing to refute the fact that their policies last time increased homelessness and increased house prices, and we saw a drop in the build of new builds, of affordable builds, and of social housing.

They follow exactly the same policies, and now they argue that it’s going to be a different outcome. It’s rubbish, it is disingenuous, and that is the core point of my speech. It is that they are telling the New Zealand public that something is going to happen that actually isn’t, because all evidence and all experience shows that what they’re saying is simply not true. What they have done is they have packaged this up with the nice and fluffy bits, like the pet bonds—and did you notice how the Minister focused on that for much of his speech? Because he knows the guts of this bill is actually going to be unpopular and that Kiwis can see through it, and they know that this bill—

The member’s time has expired.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. So today, the Government is introducing dramatic changes to rental laws in Aotearoa, and I want to be very clear about what these changes mean for ordinary New Zealanders.

Hon Member: Lower rents!

TAMATHA PAUL: Lower rents? I’ll get back to you on how that actually goes as a renter. At a time where homelessness is increasing and more people are rough sleeping on the streets and in their cars; at a time where public housing projects for thousands of homes are being cancelled and delayed because those people cannot guarantee sustainable funding; at a time where families are trying to raise their families in motels and backpackers, where you have 16 people overcrowding in three-bedroom houses; and where children are routinely admitted to hospital because their homes are making them sick, because they are that mouldy and that damp that our Government has chosen to prioritise making it easier for landlords to kick tenants out of their own homes, not building more houses, not committing to sustainable funding to allow for more housing to be built, not making renting more secure or reducing the discrimination that renters face when trying to find a home, but making it easier for landlords to kick people out of their homes with no reason at all.

Because regardless of whether you have been the best tenant in the world, regardless of the value you have added to your home by maintaining it or even improving it, and regardless of whether your whānau has settled into the communities that you have built roots in, your landlord can kick you out for no reason at all. And this is on top of the billions of dollars of tax cuts that this Government is giving to landlords. It makes me wonder who is being served by this Government. Is it purely landlords?

What else do you expect when you elect a leader of a Government who owns seven houses at a time where people can’t even make their rent? Minister Bishop would have you believe that good tenants don’t get kicked out. And this is a statement by a Minister that is so deeply out of touch with the reality for average New Zealanders, because I put out a call asking good tenants to share times when they had been unfairly evicted, and I received over 500 responses in less than 24 hours. I want to share—

Carl Bates: How many of them were from Green Party members?

TAMATHA PAUL: Oh, you wish you had this level of social media engagement. The stories included this one: “I lived alone.”—true story; first one there. Next one: “I lived alone, paid rent on time, kept my home tidy, cosy, and maintained. Worked full-time as a senior analyst in a Government ministry. My landlord threatened me with eviction on multiple occasions for the following reasons: asking her to lodge my bond, asking to move in on the date that was set out in my rental tenancy agreement, keeping a small compost bin, and asking for the full 48-hours’ notice of inspection.”

Here’s another story: “My children had 12 homes by the age of 14. Many of them were houses that the landlord was selling or I chose to go into other houses, as they were better suited, to find out that they would be sold in six months’ time.” This can’t be the country that we’re living in where every single housing avenue for ordinary New Zealanders, whether that is private rentals or public housing, is insecure, unaffordable, and unattainable.

And the consequence of kicking people out for no good reason is this: constantly having to pay moving companies to move houses multiple times in a year—if you can even afford a moving company; if you can’t afford a moving company, you have to move the stuff yourself, which is impossible, impractical, and unaffordable for seniors and for people with disabilities; and you have to continuously re-enrol your kids in different schools because your new rental is in a different school zone. Moving those kids around schools is extremely unsettling for them and makes it harder for them to make friends and achieve in school. It means people are less confident in enforcing their rights and it means worse health impacts and costs to our already under-resourced public health system.

I’ll close by saying this: renters deserve better and I have no doubt that they will rise up and kick this Government out in two years’ time for these actions.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’ve heard tonight a lot about people leaving tenancies, despite not wishing to, in circumstances where landlords have given them notice to leave. We live in a country which is sparsely populated. The only reason we have got a shortage of housing is because of decisions made by Government that make it harder to build and provide housing to each other. The coalition is committed to easing access to housing for over 1.7 million New Zealanders by removing barriers to rental supply and incentivising landlords to get back into providing to the rental market. This bill affects slightly under a third of our population. And ensuring Kiwis have access to housing is the first step in providing a future where all people and pets have a safe and happy home.

The previous Government sought to increase hurdles in the housing sector, causing many of our landlords to exit the market. The amendments made today are sensible changes that work to fix that. This is a positive for landlords and tenants alike. These changes are part of the Government’s plan to create a well-functioning property rental market. This ensures New Zealanders have a greater ability to access rental properties. To do this, we use all the tools we can to increase supply and make sure landlords and tenants feel represented in the changes we make today.

ACT has been fundamental in ensuring landlords and tenants can leave a fixed tenancy by reversing changes made by the previous Government. This allows a landlord or tenant to give notice to end a tenancy up to 90 days but no less than 21 days before the expiry of a fixed-term tenancy. This bill reinstates the 90-day no-cause termination for periodic tenancies, and returning landlords notice period to 42 days in specific circumstances. And good news for tenants: we will increase the amount of notice that a tenant gives to end a periodic tenancy to 42 days as well.

This Government is introducing pet bonds, because we know that there are tenants out there who are more than willing to pay a bit extra so they can live with the pets they know and love. Anyone who has tried to rent in our major cities knows how impossible it is to find a place that is pet friendly. Approximately 64 percent of New Zealand households own at least one pet, and more than half of those remaining would like to get a pet. We are enabling you to have pets in rentals by ensuring landlords feel protected from some of the risks of sharing their housing.

We are modernising our residential tenancy practices by including a range of changes to improve the clarity and efficiency of the Act. The bill proposes changes for the tenancy bonds, as we heard from the Minister, so that they can be lodged online, and maybe you won’t need to chase your landlord up, as the previous Green member pointed out, but that should never be the case. We want to see responsible landlords in this country, as well as enabling some decisions in the Tenancy Tribunal to be made on papers, rather than dragging everybody in with expensive in-person hearing costs. Finally, this will allow the Tenancy Tribunal to process cases with much less of a delay.

We are making it easier for people to have a safe home to live in. I am excited to see this bill before the House. Fundamentally, this legislation is about making it easier for one Kiwi to offer another a place to call home. It is a rejection of the Opposition’s cheap campaign to pit landlords and tenants against each other. I commend this bill to the House.

Thanks, Madam Speaker. Look, we’ve heard quite a lot of hyperbole already in this debate and how radical this discussion that we’re having is, but the reality is that we’ve actually had this discussion before in this House, probably not that long ago, when the roles were reversed and the direction of the legislation was reversed, so it’s not particularly radical. This is something which was signalled quite clearly in the campaign and signalled quite clearly in the coalition agreement that this was the thing that the Government was going to do, and the Government is doing exactly what it said.

I look across the House there and say that you guys should try that, because it would have done you a lot better than some of the things that you did actually do when there were a lot of hidden agendas that you didn’t tell the public about and you then proceeded to embark upon.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Not “you”, Mr Foster. Don’t use the word “you”.

ANDY FOSTER: Oh, sorry, Madam Speaker; it wasn’t you—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s OK. Keep going.

ANDY FOSTER: We’ve been accused of being disingenuous by the Hon Kieran McAnulty, but this is very, very clear. This is exactly what we said we were going to do and it’s exactly what we are doing.

It’s interesting that when you read the regulatory impact statement, there is clear difference between the submissions which were made by the landlords and people representing landlords and people representing the tenants—clear difference between those two parties about what the best arrangements are between them.

It’s also clear that the advice that we’re getting actually is nuanced and there is no parallel universe to test the advice and say, “Well, if you do it this way, it’s going to work better than this way.” or “If you do it this way, it’s going to work better.” So this one is a balancing act. Obviously, on that side of the House, they’re falling on one side of the argument; on this side of the House, we’re falling on the other side.

But the great thing here is that what we’re going to do is go out to the public with this piece of legislation and we’ll give the opportunity for the public to have their say. What I hope is that, instead of going backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards, somewhere we might have the collective wisdom to be able to find the right arrangement. The reality is that the vast majority—if we had good tenants and good landlords, we wouldn’t need to be involved in this at all. The vast majority of people are good tenants and good landlords, but there are some who are not. Sometimes the tenant needs to be protected against the landlord; sometimes the landlord needs to be protected against the tenant.

We heard over there from the Green Party that so often, tenants are kicked out for no reason. But as a landlord, why would you kick a good tenant out? What is the purpose of doing that? If they’re a good tenant, they’re paying their rent, they’re not damaging your property, why would you kick them out? That is completely stupid and is against your best interest.

Look, we know that the Labour Party didn’t set out to demonise landlords, but the reality is you look at the kind of legislation they’ve passed, you look at the approach they’ve taken, and time and time again from that side of the House, we’re hearing the arguments against the deduction of interest against the cost of running a business. Every other business is able to do that, but poor landlords, they’re not able to do it, according to that side of the House—there’s something wrong with that.

But while they probably didn’t set out to demonise the landlords, what it looks like is that’s exactly what they are doing. You know, the funny thing is that what landlords are doing is they’ve responded to that and they have withdrawn from the market. The funny thing is that what that has done is it has driven up rental costs, so it has actually not been in the best interests of the tenants. So what I’m saying is that we need to find a balance and find a way through this, and that is exactly what the idea of the legislation is to do, because it opens up the conversation again to be had.

A good tenant is worth their weight in gold to a landlord. It gives you security. It means that you know that the hard-earned money that you put into that property is going to be looked after well. It means you know that there is going to be a secure income coming against that property. I cannot see why a good tenant will be kicked out by a good landlord. The legislation which we’re bringing in really is about dealing with the problem relationships which there are from time to time, and if all relationships were good, we wouldn’t need to be involved in this. The problem is that they are not.

The debate has been had, and, sadly, we’re all going to have to do it all over again, so my appeal to submitters and my appeal to us in this House is to see if we can find a middle ground that is a sustainable way forward for both landlords and tenants and for “New Zealand Inc.”, because if we don’t do it, it is not going to be good for anybody.

The final thing I’d like to say, in the last few seconds I’ve got—Kieran McAnulty talked about house building. The reason that house building has dropped off is a very simple one. It’s the economy—the cost of building has gone up like that. The value of houses went down like that. What do you expect to happen? Lots of developers have pulled out of the market simply because they cannot make the numbers work. Similarly, a lot of landlords have pulled out because they can’t make the numbers work with the kind of regime that is in place at the moment and without that interest deductibility. I commend this bill to the House.

Te Pāti Māori—Te Tai Tokerau Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak against this bill. Changes to the Residential Tenancies Act are dangerous for Māori. The changes would, for one, reintroduce 90-day, no-cause terminations for periodic tenancies. This supports landlords’ power to end a tenancy without requiring a specific reason. This is dangerous for our people, given that there is a higher proportion of Māori who reside in rental properties and social housing.

The research shows that Māori report higher rates of movement between homes, at 8.7 percent compared to 5 percent of New Zealanders. The reality of this is Māori moving five times within five years. Creating changes to the Act will likely make living conditions within the homes of our people more difficult, less manageable, and, ultimately, unstable for our tamariki. Anyone with a whānau, raising children, will know the difficulty of having to move, especially with young ones. Our whānau make it work, but they shouldn’t have to.

In Tai Tokerau, nearly 40 percent of the population identify as being of Māori descent. We have some of the highest rates in the country for our Māori population, and at home we are facing increasing numbers of our community accessing social housing. We cannot reduce this, we cannot aid in a transition into stable housing, when we continue to place more power into the hands of landlords. The Minister of Housing, Chris Bishop, claims that the changes to the Act will encourage landlords back into the rental property market. I must implore the Minister: is this the most effective way to improve the housing market? I must then question whether the Minister understands the obligation as a partner of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, when he continuously supports choices that he knows will negatively impact on Māori communities.

Of Māori in Te Tai Tokerau, the median age is 27 years of age. It is difficult, country-wide, for our younger generation of first-home buyers to enter the housing market, given that it is predominantly the older generation who remain in a position of homeownership. Our young Māori in Te Tai Tokerau face major challenges when looking to transition from rental properties into the housing market. To improve this market, our focus should not centre around enhancing conditions for landlords. We should, simply put, be providing quality housing at affordable rates. Regardless, age factors cannot be attributed as the sole reason for lower rates of Māori homeownership. Intergenerational wealth plays a major role in this process, and considering our continued experiences of colonisation, it is unsurprising that Māori remain excluded from spaces. The figures recorded in 2018 are reflective of this. Only 31 percent of Māori were in a position of homeownership, compared to 57.9 percent of New Zealanders.

It is evident the group of people whom this Government prioritises, and it has been evident since the beginning of their term. Again, Māori are disregarded, and, in actual fact, the poor are. What the Government illustrates to us is that we are not worth a single bill, a single amendment or repeal, unless our failure is their financial success. I do not at all commend this to the House. Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. I rise in support of this bill.

This reverses changes made by the last Government, which were no doubt well intentioned and trying to assist renters, but actually had quite the opposite effect; a classic example of the unintended consequences principle, which is often seen in this House, and the implications flow out into our country from well-meaning decisions that unfortunately aren’t well considered, and don’t take into account all factors, and, in some cases, have effects that can’t be foreseen by anyone. This, however, was an impact that was foreseen.

What has happened is that this, effectively, is an example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. So, trying to protect renters but not taking into account the reality of human nature, and the reality of conditions for people who own houses and need to rent them to others. There are 1.7 million renters in New Zealand; 80 percent of those renting rent from the private market—not from the Government—from the private market. It’s over half a million homes that are provided by the private market in New Zealand. That’s something that the Government cannot do—the Government is not in a position to be able to provide those homes. The regulatory environment needs to be structured in such a way that people are willing to rent their houses, and the no-cause termination—or the periodic tenancies—that we’ve seen have had an impact that has been quite extraordinary in my own region in Queenstown, as well as other places in the country. Literally, it became a crisis where people were unable to find a house. People were sleeping in their vans, sleeping in cars, sleeping in all sorts of places around the region that were literally unsafe.

Now, people had houses, but they were not in a position to rent them out, or not willing to rent them out. So, I’ll just give you an example. This is a fairly common one that was recounted to me. People often have a holiday home in the region—

Hon Member: They live in Arrowtown, and they have a bach.

JOSEPH MOONEY: No, they don’t just live in Arrowtown, they have a holiday home in the region. They used to be quite willing to rent those out for some of the year, when they didn’t need that house. They wanted to be able to come on over usually during the summer season to spend roughly a few weeks or a month in that holiday home—something that they worked hard for much of their lives for to be able to purchase and have. Because of this change to the legislation, they are unable to do that. That meant that a lot of people who would otherwise have had access to the house throughout the year, and many of them—people who worked a seasonal job were unable to have those houses. That means that people were literally living in their vans as a consequence.

To be clear, this bill will not solve everything. The reality is we need a lot more houses, and that is something that the Government is doing with the fast-track legislation, which I know that the Opposition is also opposing. But the aim is to actually try and get a lot more housing into our market, because ultimately we want people to own their own home, and that is something that young people, I think, aspire to. We want our young people in this country to have that opportunity to purchase their own home, make a life for themselves, and to have a place that they can call their own. But, in the interim, they need to rent, we need them to be able to have places to rent, and we need to have landlords who are willing to rent that to them.

Another example is a survey done in Queenstown: over 70 percent of businesses cited housing for workers as an important issue for their businesses, with one in three saying that housing represented the biggest barrier for achieving optimum staffing levels. They advocated for urgent solutions, I note. As Minister Bishop spoke to before, the previous Minister of Housing from the previous Government came down to Queenstown, was told this was an urgent issue that needed to be solved, and that though, again, wouldn’t solve everything, addressing this issue around these no-cause terminations, or the lack of, would help solve that problem—literally, people would put more houses on the market. However, the last Government didn’t address that, and I’m very pleased that this Government is doing so.

I’ll just make one last comment on rent controls that I was speaking about earlier. I have to say Sweden is an example of rent controls: it takes nine years for someone to get a house there—so, again, a well-intentioned policy that has not worked.

Madam Speaker, thank you. It’s a good day for mega-landlords. If you are one of the 900 people or legal persons who own the 22,100 homes which are owned by this special class of large property investor, then 90-day evictions clauses—that’s the policy for you. You’ll be excited by this bill, but for everyone else, this will have a big impact on our communities, on not only housing but on education and on the ability for people to put down roots into their communities and to make a contribution. So this is not the bill that this House should be voting through tonight. This, in fact, is something that all members of this House should reject, because it does not do anyone any favours, not just the renters, for whom their rights are being taken away by this bill but everyone who has to live alongside people who are being disenfranchised in the very homes that they live in and in the places which they call home, which are meant to be safe for not only them but for their children. This is not well-thought legislation. It is also being rushed through, and it’s something which I hope we will see some wisdom about later and come back to this House and amend.

The problem with this bill is that it’s also part of a suite of bigger packages which go alongside rules which take away renters’ rights and make it easier for landlords to get rid of tenants that they see as problematic. That together, we’ve heard from the Prime Minister in question time today, is meant to put downward pressure, as he said it was called, on rents. Now, the problem with this is that the Reserve Bank, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, and Treasury have all presented reports which are publicly available which say that, actually, rents are not determined by downward pressure on landlords’ costs or by taxation but they are in fact determined by the amount of money that people have to spend on them—by people’s incomes. So making that claim repeatedly in this House that this kind of legislation will bring rents down is simply false. It’s not true that this kind of legislation, which would see more people out on the street, which would see more vulnerable families displaced from their houses and will ultimately increase homelessness, is the answer to rents.

Grant McCallum: Yours increased rents—your policies increased rents.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Not the word “you”.

ARENA WILLIAMS: What is the answer? It’s putting more funding into Kāinga Ora and the ability to build more houses. But instead we have heard an obstinate refusal from that Government to put any of the extra funding that’s required into Kāinga Ora to build more homes. In fact, those programmes are paused, and it’s that kind of decision making which is short-sighted and we should see for what it is, which is taking away renters’ rights with no ability to provide the housing that New Zealanders need to live the kind of lives that they want their parliamentarians to be enacting for them.

This kind of thing leads to bigger problems. For people who are not renting, we should see this as leading to further absenteeism in schools. We should see this as the kind of movement around communities which displaces people and stops parents from being able to keep their children in the school which they had started in and also keeps parents from being able to contribute to community sport, to their churches, to their local organisations, which need volunteers but will not have them if people have to constantly move around.

You heard from my colleague Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, who said that, actually, this is an issue of equity too, that the people who are most frequently displaced in Aotearoa New Zealand are whānau Māori, that these people find it the hardest to find long-term, secure, warm, dry homes. These are exactly the people who we should be supporting into those homes, so that they can continue to make a contribution to their communities, so that they can put down roots and find the kinds of lives that we want them to be able to live.

But instead, this kind of legislation says, “No, we don’t care about that. Instead, we’re going to prioritise the 900 people and legal persons who own 22,100 homes between them.” That is the size of the city of Nelson, owned by mega-landlords in New Zealand, and this kind of policy makes it easier and cheaper for them to run that like a business. Housing should not be treated like a business. Housing is a right, and the renters whose rights are being taken away by the National Government should hold them to account at the next election. Consider these changes alongside those housing changes at Kāinga Ora which are actively promoting tenants being kicked out of their homes. These changes are not going to make a positive difference in our society, and I do not commend this bill.

We do need to use every tool that we have in New Zealand to increase housing supply. One of these tools is to incentivise or to encourage people with more than one house to enter or re-enter the property rental market and to increase the number of properties that are available for rent. It really boggles the mind to propose that when a good tenant has found a good home with a good landlord, the landlord would want to use any opportunity, willy-nilly, to get rid of that tenant.

The Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill focuses on that very situation where it may be that a tenant has demonstrated that they are unable to maintain the tenancy agreement that they have signed into. The Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill focuses on providing the landlord with the opportunity for no-cost terminations. Now, whenever the 90-day, no-cost termination is mentioned, there is that reaction: that this will be used willy-nilly to get tenants out of homes. But, again—if we pause for a moment—good tenants will always be in demand by persons who consider themselves landlords and offer their properties that they have worked hard to hold and offer to other people to live in. There is that responsibility to maintain that household for the tenant. Reintroducing the 90-day, no-cost termination for periodic tenancies is really just providing an opportunity for landlords to exit, should they need to, and, again, it is not something that a reasonable mind would consider to be there for willy-nilly use.

Also, providing landlords with the opportunity to end a fixed-term tenancy without requiring any specific further reason—it’s a fixed term. The term ends and the landlord can choose not to continue for another fixed term or to go into a periodic tenancy—this is restored to the landlord.

The amendment bill also addresses a major issue among New Zealanders, which is that Kiwi families are estimated to have around 64 percent of New Zealand households owning at least one pet and—this is very interesting—59 percent of people who don’t have a pet would like to have a pet, and I am probably one of those. The restrictions on having a pet in a rental property are very complex, and what this bill tries to bridge is that idea of having pets in a house that may be destructive. We all know that dogs, when they’re very young, will be trying their teeth out on everything that they can manage to find—and also cats, especially, who are wanting to run around. So the bill provides for pet bonds and for more people with pets to have the opportunity to find good rental accommodation alongside their pets. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to rise and speak against this bill. Because the Government has signalled its strong support for landlords, it has chosen to ignore the longstanding work that Labour had delivered under our previous Government. But instead, it’s chosen to make the choice that it will be rewarding landlords with $2.9 billion—and you would think that’s a sufficient incentive; it goes further with this bill because it weakens the ability for tenants.

Many of our tenants across the motu will be very worried that the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill doesn’t provide the hope and also will add the stock availability for housing choices for people who are still on that rental ladder. In fact, reading through the bill, it will not provide a single rental property in the private rental market and it won’t help tenants, and I’m going to just continue to stress that point. It actually weakens the ability for tenants. It provides them with uncertainty. Tenants across the board who don’t have the current means, financial means, to step on to the property ladder; it makes that dream go further. The no-cause termination proposals are not about helping tenants; it actually proposes the opposite.

We heard Minister Seymour say the policy will fix the problem for tenants, but in actual fact due to landlords being given the ability that within pet clauses, that will actually help them. And the Minister quoted the rationale of these proposed changes that tenants will have the required benefit, and a better incentive for landlords would be to negotiate and critique and be able to offer their tenants or new tenants to be able to critique them, because they can now come in with a pet. We don’t oppose that and it offers that closeness or option for that particular family or tenant.

We also heard Minister Bishop announce recently that the changes implemented quoting sensible pro-tenant changes to help increase the supply of rental properties. The reintroduction of the 90-day no-cause terminations for periodic changes means landlords can now go back to ending a periodic tenancy agreement without providing a single reason. Now, that’s not going to assist many of the tenants across the motu. What does that do for the tenant? What pathway of certainty does it provide for families who are in a vulnerable situation?

I just want to quickly talk about a local example in Māngere. In my rohe, in my electorate, there are over 4,000 Kāinga Ora properties which provide housing choices for over 16,000 tenants. In the private rental market, there is also a number of thousands and we’ve seen some new dwellings of properties in our local area. But we also have other pressures of cost of living. And we’ve got a number of school principals that I have spoken to recently who are worried about tamariki being moved all over the motu because of the situation and the new bill. So it provides a myriad of issues for people in my local area.

I’m just going to quickly talk about an example of a tenant who moved into a property, who didn’t because English was his second language. These are the types of problems that are caused when a tenant doesn’t fully understand the obligation. The landlord had been quite kind and given him the opportunity to miss one week of rent, but that’s $600. This bill will not give the confidence for that particular tenant because the landlord at any time can choose to end that tenancy without any specific reason. Labour opposes this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, great news. This is great news: the war on landlords is coming to an end. Finally, we have some common sense coming back to our rental market. This is what the tenants require, and this is what the landlords require. Look, one of the early things we did was we’ve brought back into play the ability for people who run a business—like every other business—the ability to deduct interest as a business expense. That’s the first thing we brought back to the table for landlords.

During the campaign, I got people coming up to me who were mum and dad investors, and this figure was something that was pointed out to me by one of my colleagues: 83 percent of rentals are owned by mum and dad investors—83 percent. These are the people that have worked hard, saving a few dollars for their retirement so they can enjoy themselves in their twilight years. They came up to me and showed me their little profit and loss account, and they were losing money under the previous Government. Losing money, going backwards—why? Because the previous Government declared war on them. They didn’t care about landlords, and they didn’t care about the fact that they were looking after themselves. Appalling!

So we’re changing that, and it’s desperately required. Then the other thing we’re going to do now is actually allow people to have fixed-term tenancies. Well, actually, as was indicated by the member for Queenstown—well, Queenstown and the Southland area—when he pointed out that you couldn’t do that because there weren’t enough rentals available for the workers in a seasonal occupation like skiing for people to have places to stay. So what was happening? They were staying in cars and that sort of thing, which is just appalling—absolutely appalling—and not what we want to achieve.

But one of the actual real highlights of this bill—the real highlights—is the pet bonds. The pet bonds are the real big—they allow us to bring our pets so people can take pets into rentals, a really, really good thing to be able to do. In fact, I can talk about pets. I’ve got a few of my own. I’ve got a dog called Mack and another dog called Bell, and they would love to be able to move into a rental, but they wouldn’t have been allowed to under that Government. It would have been too hard. It would have been too hard. But, now, under this Minister, we’re going to be able to bring them into a rental, and there’s good terms around it. It’s just what we require, right, and it makes for a much better outlook. It shows that we care about animals, on this side of the House. Believe it or not, we actually care.

Carl Bates: And people.

GRANT McCALLUM: And we care about the people—that’s correct. That’s right. Also, the other side of the House gets so very righteous about the fact that the State is the only one that can look after them, and you look at what they did to the market. What did they do to the rental market in New Zealand? I’ll tell you what they did. They drove up the price of renting a house by 170 bucks a week. How does that help anybody? That is a disgrace. You should hang your heads in shame. An absolute disgrace. We are focused on actually allowing people to rent their houses, and there seems to be this view that good landlords want to kick out good tenants. Why? If you’ve got a good tenant, why would you want to kick them out? Landlords are running a business. If you’ve got a good tenant in there, you want to look after them, which is another good reason for the pet bonds. The good tenants often have pets, and they want to be able to bring their pets into their houses.

It is great to get to the stage where we’re finally going to allow landlords in this country to be given the respect that they deserve, particularly the mum and dad investors. We, on this side of the House, understand who they are, understand how important they are, and understand that they are looking after themselves. They’re not going to rely and look on a Government to look after them; they want to look after themselves, and that’s what we’re about on this side of the House: personal responsibility and actually allowing people to get on and do business in a fair way. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

The question is, That the

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill and the Māori Fisheries Amendment Bill.