Naylor Jono: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNaylor Jono: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11117. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONO NAYLOR (National): I just rise to take a brief call at this Committee stage of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. I just want to I guess from my perspective re-emphasise what a balanced sensible approach this bill is taking. We have heard some contributions already at this stage implying that perhaps the lead-in times for some of the provisions here are too long but I just want to remind the Committee that in some of these aspects that are being brought in—for smoke alarms for example which we know will save lives of people in New Zealand; we know statistically about people who have died in house fires where there have not been smoke alarms installed in rental premises—immediate action is being taken.At the moment what are we talking? We are in May now. By the time this bill goes through 1 July this year it is going to be mandatory for rental households to have smoke alarms. That is I think appropriate timing because we know that there are immediate effects and immediate benefits that can be had. Of course it is realistic for a landlord to be able to have those checks in place to ensure that those smoke alarms are going to be in place by 1 July. It is a relatively low-cost thing that can be done and easily organised and so of course we should ensure that that is put in place immediately.Mr Twyford in his contribution thought that the lead-in time for the insulation aspects of this bill was too long. It is a little bit more complex when you are looking at insulation requirements than it is for smoke alarms. When it comes to smoke alarms as I have said they are low cost and easy to organise. But if a landlord is having to look at completely redoing the insulation on a property it is going to take some time to organise—to assess the current standards and to also assess whether or not it is actually going to be viable for that to occur. I am sure as we go through this process there are going to be some things that need to be sorted out from time to time between officials from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and landlords as to what constitutes viability for the retrofitting of insulation because not all houses are designed the same. We are going to need a significant lead-in time to ensure that this occurs and also to ensure that landlords have put aside appropriate financial provision to enable them to do this.One of the other arguments that I have heard that has been a bit concerning is that we are simply settling for a substandard level of insulation by requiring people to come up only to the 1978 standards. There has been a bit of misinformation that has been out there and I just want to make this completely clear: if a house was built prior to 1978 it will need to be insulated up to the 2008 standard. So we are not simply settling for the 1978 standard. What we are saying is if it was built before 1978 absolutely it will need to come up to the 2008 standard.However if the house was built after 1978 and that insulation is still in good repair then it will not need to be upgraded. That is because the cost of upgrading what may be a minor amount is not proportional to the benefit that will be determined from that. For example if a house was built in 2007 and was not up to the 2008 standard but was close to it—not necessarily back at an absolute minimal standard but because technology had changed over 30 years a builder may have put something in that was more substantial than the 1978 standard—it would be absolutely impractical it would be an excessive expense for very little benefit to require that landlord to retrofit a 2007 house that has been insulated to a very good standard up to that 2008 standard. So as I said this is highly practical. It is highly feasible.If you think it is all one-way traffic for landlords in this bill it absolutely is not. There are going to be higher fines for landlords if they do breach any of these things. It is absolutely imperative that we have a big disincentive for landlords to breach any of these things that are being introduced through this bill and so we are going to be increasing those top fines that people can be paying to ensure that they do comply and do go forward.I just want to address a couple of things that the previous speaker Metiria Turei mentioned. The first is the idea of there sort of being a right of renewal necessary for tenants. Well I can tell you I have yet to meet a landlord who had good tenants in place and who if they wanted to continue would suddenly just terminate their tenancy at the end of their fixed term.