Mackey Moana: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I thank the Minister of Housing for his comprehensive response. 
I will take a final call in respect of my last amendment which is to clause 9. The Minister and I will never see eye to eye on these issues. On the issue of the Tenancy Tribunal I say to the Minister that it is not happening. If he talks to any of the advocates who are out there they will tell him that it is not happening. I think it would be far cleaner for the Tenancy Tribunal to say that a tenant can have an advocate. The Tenancy Tribunal has powers to exclude people who are problematic; if someone is vexatious and deliberately dragging the matter out the tribunal can deal with that. I think that is far easier than having a convoluted list of A B C D E F and G things saying that someone can have an advocate when we know from the experience of tenants that it is not happening. I think my amendment is a really clean and simple way of dealing with it and I do not think it will cause the problems that the Minister has outlined. 
When it comes to the Rugby World Cup issue I say that yes of course boarding-house tenants will have more protection under the law. But all it means is that a landlord has to give his or her tenants more notice that he will evict them; it does not mean that he cannot evict them. It means that instead of being able to give 24 hours’ notice that a tenant has to get out a landlord now has to give 28 days’ or 90 days’ notice—it is just notice. The Minister did not address my question about tenants already being told that they are going to be given 90 days’ notice. We have had plenty of warning that the Rugby World Cup is coming; it is not something that suddenly jumps up overnight with landlords thinking “Oh here we go.” So I do not think the Minister addressed either of those questions. 
My final amendment is on cleansing orders. The Social Services Committee actually removed the requirement—and Labour voted in favour of this because we thought it seemed sensible given the arguments we had heard—for a tenant to be told that a cleansing order had been put on a property. We had heard a lot of argument about why it was ridiculous why it would be unfair to landlords if something had been cleaned up and the property was all hunky-dory and fine why should we worry tenants—yada yada yada. At the time that kind of made sense and I think the select committee was under quite a lot of pressure to report back; we did not have time to investigate as much as we should have done. 
Since then I have been contacted by a number of people who work in this area who are really really concerned that the select committee took it out and I think it raises enough concern that the Committee of the whole House should put it back in. I have been told that there are not consistent standards. What we are talking about here largely is methamphetamine labs. That is what this measure was trying to address. These labs leave residue that is dangerous and yes we should deal with that. The argument we heard was that the cleansing orders was put on the land information memorandum report. Well tenants do not have enough money to pay for a land information memorandum report in order to see whether there has been a cleansing order. Who will pay up to $300 or $400 on the off chance that there might have been a cleansing order on his or her property for a methamphetamine lab? Tenants simply cannot afford to do that they are not going to and they should not be required to. 
I have discussed this with the Property Investors Federation. Obviously it would rather that this provision was not in there but I have put a 5-year limit on. The federation said that it would be happier with this provision if it had a 5-year limit. So for the 5 years following a cleansing order during that time a tenant would need to be notified that there was a cleansing order on that property and be shown documentation that it had been cleaned up. I think the protection of tenants should be paramount. I think the chemicals we are dealing with here are very dangerous. 
I do not think the select committee made this decision with all of the information before it. Yes it is a requirement under law for a cleansing order to be placed on the land information memorandum. I have been told by councils that that practice is not uniform. Some councils take it off the land information memorandum once the cleansing order has been approved; some leave it on. It is not policed. Some councils do not know when a methamphetamine lab has been found so they do not know that the cleansing order is meant to be on the land information memorandum. 
I say to the Minister that I think there are too many questions in this area. I think the clause the Minister himself drafted and put into the legislation should be put back in until we are certain that this provision is an undue burden. 
As I have said I have spoken to the Property Investors Federation. It has said that a 5-year time limit would make it far more comfortable with this provision. I welcome any short comments that the Minister has on this. I really hope that this is the one amendment that we can get some agreement on. Again I say that on all my other amendments he has not really answered my questions which suggests to me that he does not have an answer to my questions.