Mackey Moana: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Mackey Moana: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:654;Page:3829] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am happy to stand to speak to the first reading of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. 
This legislation is a very good example of the many differences between National and Labour and between the way National and Labour approach the issue of housing which is a core issue for the Labour Party. National often claims to be the party of aspiration but it has never understood that aspiration is not simply about personal freedoms and being able to reach out to grasp the opportunity that is there. National members have never really understood that for some people that is just not the reality of their lives. One of the reasons why I joined the Labour Party was that it stood for policies that brought stability and security. Those are two of the most important things that our families businesses and communities can have. 
Hon Christopher Finlayson 
: Spare us your clichés and get on with it. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: There goes nasty Mr Finlayson—off he goes! 
Labour supports security of employment. Labour has always supported security of employment. Labour does not believe that people should be fired in the first 90 days for something that is absolutely not their fault and that they do not have to be given a reason. Labour believes in security and stability of income; in the minimum wage being increased every year; in Working for Families; in paid parental leave; and in putting redundancy provisions in the law which my colleague Darien Fenton’s Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill does. Labour supports security in the community which is not about falling prey to ineffective knee-jerk reactions to law and order but about actually addressing the causes of crime and creating safer communities. And Labour has always supported security and stability of tenancy in housing. 
Labour appreciates that a home is incredibly important to a family and that it is what people build their families upon. For many people in the rental market homeownership is not a reality and we need to provide them with security of tenancy. The Government needs to make sure that the law also reflects tenants’ need for stability as well as a landlord’s need for stability. Of course this Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill is Labour legislation once again. [ 
Interruption 
] I know that it has been changed; members should let me get there. The consultation on this bill started in 2004. Members heard Minister Maurice Williamson speaking as Acting Minister of Housing say that the process had been drawn-out. Well this is an incredibly complex area of law. It covers many many people. The law had not been updated for a long time and Labour wanted to do it properly. We know that the National Government’s approach to consultation is to ram through legislation under urgency and to not ask the community what it thinks. That certainly was not the previous Government’s approach. 
But obviously there is a lot in this bill that Labour agrees with and believes should be done. Labour agrees—because we wrote the legislation—that the jurisdiction of the law should be extended to protect tenants living in boarding houses. Labour believes that we need clarification over who has responsibility for outgoings. Labour also believes that there should be clearer processes for terminating and reviewing tenancies and for encouraging landlords and tenants to comply with their obligations. Labour wants to see tenancy disputes resolved more quickly and at less cost and we want to improve the enforceability of Tenancy Tribunal orders. That is why Labour put those provisions in this bill when we drafted it. That is why Labour will support this bill’s referral to the select committee. But Labour will not give its ongoing support for the bill unless significant changes are made to it in the select committee because they are definitely required. 
We in Labour say that the new Minister of Housing is acting a little bit like a cuckoo. He is constantly going into other people’s nests and claiming that they are his. He claimed that this bill was a result of his desire to quickly bring a review of this law to the House. Well of course that was after the 4 years Labour spent reviewing tenancy law and doing all the work and the consultation. Then the cuckoo Mr Phil Heatley jumped into the nest and claimed that it was his. Labour has seen that with the Tamaki Transformation Programme where Labour did all the work and made sure that it brought together all sectors of the community. Labour got the programme to the point where it could go ahead and then the cuckoo jumped into the nest and claimed that it was his. I look forward to Mr Heatley bringing an original piece of work to this House rather than constantly taking Labour policy and changing it—in this case making changes that Labour believes are not necessary and will in fact damage the situation in law at the moment. 
New Zealand needs legislation that protects tenants and landlords regardless of the Government of the day. That is a very important point because at the moment we have a Minister of Housing who has told the Housing New Zealand Corporation that he wants certain undesirable tenants to be removed from Housing New Zealand Corporation houses. Members saw today that people who are on bail have been told they will not be able to apply for a Housing New Zealand Corporation house regardless of the fact that they might be innocent. Apparently the Housing New Zealand Corporation can be the judge and jury. It can decide that someone is guilty before his or her case is heard in a court of law and therefore should not be allowed in a Housing New Zealand Corporation house. Given the long time it can take for a hearing to come before the court this situation might mean that a parent will have to remove himself or herself from the family. The parent will want his or her family to be able to go into a Housing New Zealand Corporation house but the parent is not eligible and his or her family will become ineligible if the parent stays with them. We think that that is appalling under the law. It is for that reason that Labour will work very hard in the select committee to ensure that protections are put in place to improve that situation and to make sure that Governments that want to purge Housing New Zealand Corporation houses of people whom those Governments consider to be undesirable tenants are not able to do so under the law of the day. 
The Minister of Housing claims that this bill is just about balance about making sure that the Government gets the balance right. Certainly that is the case with this type of legislation. But Labour believes that the changes the Minister of Housing has made to the legislation that we originally introduced to the House have pushed the balance too far in the wrong direction. This bill ignores the balance of power between tenants and landlords as National also did in employment relations law when it ignored the balance of power between employers and employees. Labour will be seeking to address the imbalance at the select committee. 
I will talk about one particular clause—clause 35 “Termination on non-payment of rent damage or assault”—because it is relevant in terms of the actions that we have seen recently from the Housing New Zealand Corporation in evicting tenants. The clause basically states that the Housing New Zealand Corporation can go to the Tenancy Tribunal to evict anyone who “has assaulted or has threatened to assault or has caused or permitted any person to assault or to threaten to assault any of the following persons” which are the landlord any member of his or her family or any neighbours. On the surface of it that seems perfectly reasonable. From what members have seen from the Minister of Housing the clause will obviously apply mostly to Housing New Zealand Corporation houses. If a tenant in a Housing New Zealand Corporation house is being threatening or breaking the law then obviously that situation needs to be dealt with. But the fact is that what members have seen so far is that there is no defence under this clause. The evicted tenant does not have the opportunity to defend himself or herself. 
Labour knows that the Minister of Housing had to introduce clause 35 because the Tenancy Tribunal told him it would not uphold an eviction order under the Residential Tenancies Act in the case of the Housing New Zealand tenants out in the Hutt Valley. The Minister of Housing has to pass this clause if he wants to be able to evict people easily. But the fact is that people are not being given the opportunity to defend themselves. They are not being given the opportunity to put their side of the story. There may well be a situation where someone who does not like his or her neighbour just pops up and says to the Housing New Zealand Corporation “They had a gang member boyfriend who came around. That person intimidated me.” Before any of that is investigated or before any criminal claims are put before a court that family could be evicted just because a neighbour does not like them for some reason or another. Labour does not think that is adequate protection under the law and we will work hard in the select committee to require that this clause be changed to make it clear that that is not what the law intends. 
One of my biggest concerns is that there might be a case of a woman who has been brave enough to take her family—her children—out of a gang environment and into a Housing New Zealand Corporation State house then suddenly the gang member boyfriend comes to her house and is intimidatory and really angry because she left. The neighbours get really upset and they ring up the Housing New Zealand Corporation and say the gang member boyfriend has come around and has been threatening people in the community. According to what the Minister of Housing has already sanctioned and according to this clause that family can be evicted with no recourse and with no questions asked by the Minister of Housing as to what their real situation was. We could see women who have been brave and courageous enough to remove their families and children from those situations evicted from Housing New Zealand Corporation houses. Labour believes that those people are the very people Housing New Zealand Corporation houses are there for and those families are the very families the Government needs to protect. Labour will be working to change this clause when the bill goes to the select committee. 
I will talk briefly about what is not in the bill because that is very important as well. Labour wanted to have professional advocates for tenants going to Tenancy Tribunal hearings. The reason Labour wanted that is that no one can tell me that the Housing New Zealand Corporation is not a professional advocate. Of course it is a professional advocate. There is a huge imbalance of power when a tenant goes into a Tenancy Tribunal hearing against the Housing New Zealand Corporation or one of the many landlord groups that represent landlords. Labour wants the law to allow tenants to have someone go to the hearing with them who is up at that same level as the landlords in order to make sure that that balance is right. That provision has been removed from this bill. 
The Minister of Housing talked about the Residential Tenancies (Damage Insurance) Amendment Bill which my colleague Maryan Street brought to this House. He said how terrible it was. The provision in that bill was going to be in this bill under Labour. It would have made sure that if one tenant caused serious damage to a house then the rest of the house’s tenants who had no part in the damage and no ability to stop it were not held liable. That provision was based on a case in Dunedin where a flat was set on fire by one particular flatmate. The flatmate claimed full responsibility and full liability for the fire but the insurance company pursued all four other flatmates whose names were on the tenancy agreement even though they were not in the house at the time had nothing to do with the fire and could not have stopped it if they had wanted to. The flatmate had admitted liability but the insurance company decided that it was not going to get the hundred and whatever thousand dollars from the one guy and it would be better to spread it out across all of them so it pursued them. One young man ended up being pursued for 4 years by the insurance company and was eventually made bankrupt. 
This Government says that is OK. This Government says that is all right. Labour put that provision in the original bill—and Mr Williamson might want to reflect on the words he said about my colleague Maryan Street—because that situation is not OK. It could have been fixed very easily by what Labour tried to do under the original bill. That provision came from a court case in which the judge said the law was incredibly unjust. 
Labour will support this bill going to the select committee because it is a Labour bill.