O'Rourke Denis: Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2420. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): First of all I want to congratulate Phil Twyford on having this very good bill selected from the ballot. I wish that I could be as lucky. However it is great to be able to stand up and support a bill of this quality. And I might say at the beginning that I think that the contributions from the members opposite have been utterly pathetic nothing more than a litany of excuses to do nothing completely lacking any logic at all and most of all lacking compassion for people who are these days still in this day and age required to live in unhealthy homes because they are not properly insulated and not properly heated. Some of them have talked nonsense about unintended consequences when if they bothered to read the bill at all they would have found that there is a 5-year phase-in period which gives landlords plenty of time to make preparations and the landlords association itself actually agrees with this bill. So why do those members opposite not actually listen to those people? Because they do know what they are talking about.There is no doubt that home insulation and home heating are the foremost issues for healthy homes in this country—and that means all homes—but this bill deals with only rental homes and they of course are the homes usually in most need of it. New Zealand First agrees that every rental home in New Zealand must meet minimum standards for heating and insulation. That does require legislation and this is that legislation. It is the sort of legislation that the Government itself should be bringing forward if it had any wit but it does not. The bill will require the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority to set the standards—the bill actually says 1 April 2014 but clearly that will be amended. The important thing is that it will make it mandatory for landlords to meet those standards. I can say this: most good landlords actually do want that because they know it will create a level playing field and that is good for the market. One of those members opposite—I cannot remember her name—talked a load of nonsense about people being thrown out of homes about the market not being able to cope and so on. Well a properly regulated market actually works better and this market would too.The bill also amends the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 and it talks about requiring every tenancy agreement to require that the standards to be set would be met. That actually gives the tenants a way of enforcing good standards and so they should be able to. They are the ones best in a position to do it. This should have been done a long long time ago and it is good to see that it could be done now if only the National Government would think a little more clearly about the whole issue.My experience in dealing with tenants homeowners and housing problems in Christchurch has come to a head—I suppose I should say—because of the earthquakes in Christchurch. Like other Christchurch MPs I have dealt with a whole list of people with all sorts of different problems about that. What that means is actually this bill is only the beginning. A lot more really needs to be done. This bill takes a strictly regulatory approach and that is fine but if I were to list some of the other things that need to be done you will see what I mean. For example earthquake resistance is another issue that really should be dealt with in a bill like this and which the Government should be doing something about. There is a lot of information about that now and it can be done without huge expense. Another lesson we have learned is about flood protection. Remember the people in the Flockton basin in Christchurch? That is another big issue that really needs to be dealt with too. Then there are other things as well. Another example would be—and somebody else has already mentioned this—the huge problem of leaky homes. We still do not really understand the magnitude of that.So there is a lot more to be done but this bill is a very solid and important step in the right direction and we should all in this House be supporting it.