Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. Well what a pathetic excuse for a bill—pathetic virtue-signalling nonsense. Now the member who's resumed her seat the Hon Jenny Salesa has read out a very nice speech that dealt a little bit with this bill and an awful lot with other bills and policies and other things that might be coming up so I presume given the tremendous amount of leeway given to her on this bill in her speech I'll get the same.So let's just have a look at this. She said This bill will make life better for renters." and I wrote that down as a quote. Will it make life better for renters? Well I don't think it will. What it will do is it will make life more difficult for landlords which means that they will put up rents or they will exit the market. Now it's all very well for the Minister who is representing Housing New Zealand which is the biggest rental company in New Zealand. It has according to its website 63000 homes. It is the biggest it says residential property owner in New Zealand. So we would expect I think in the House that if we're going to get lectured about what's going to make a better life for tenants we might be having a lecture from a Government that is actually going to keep people safe in their own rental homes. Instead we have in my electorate and no doubt in other people's electorates tenants who are living in fear because Housing New Zealand and their brand new homes—that we have all paid for; their brand new homes opened this year—have locking systems that do not keep people safe.I raised this issue in Parliament yesterday with Phil Twyford.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! I don't believe Housing New Zealand homes have a letting fee.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Excuse me. I raise a point of order Madam Assistant Speaker. The member who has resumed her seat the Minister talked about KiwiBuild. She talked about the Government's other priorities and other legislation coming through. None of that was about letting fees Madam Assistant Speaker. She was allowed a tremendous amount of leeway.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I'm just cautioning the member.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Thank you very much Madam Assistant Speaker. I appreciate your assistance.One of the things I want to talk about here is what makes a better—better—life for renters as the Minister has referred to in her speech. She said letting fees are not fair. Well actually not having a safe home is not fair either. So if someone is for instance a landlord and they have to pay the letting fee themselves and a tenant says "Oh by the way this lock on the outdoor locks that we have can be easily popped open with a screwdriver and we need a whole new door system put in." I would expect a good landlord would not say "I tell you what we'll send round the locksmith to give you a different lock." when the entire system needs to be changed—not like Housing New Zealand does.I would expect that a Minister representing a Government that says it wants to make life better for renters might have a commitment to safety in the home. I would expect a Minister who said "This is unfair." about letting fees to say it is unfair when the country's biggest landlord does not care enough to put in a locking system to protect a woman and her young family from burglars and in the latest case an attempted rape. I would have thought that the biggest landlord in the country—and represented by this Government's Ministers—would not be lecturing—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Could the member please make a passing reference to the bill.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Yes thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): That would be useful. Then perhaps make a contribution as a third reading speech.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: So when we look at this particular bill what is so unfair? Well what's unfair is that now tenants who are staying in houses for a long time are going to be paying more rent—more rent—even though they are not shifting around tenancies. Long-term tenancies and long-term tenants will no doubt now be actually paying more. We've heard the Minister say this: that rents might go up by a few dollars a week. That's another direct quote because I wrote that one down too—another direct quote. So I would have thought she might also like to say "Well maybe we could have a bill making life fairer for renters—a bill that addresses security as well." So I would have thought it would've been a good opportunity when we're prohibiting letting fees to have looked at the issue of prohibiting dodgy locks on doors put in by landlords because it's cheap and then taking the cheapest option open to the landlord to actually say to the tenant "Oh we'll just go and change the key in it."So that's the sort of thing that could have been in this bill. That's the sort of thing that could have made life a bit easier and a little bit fairer for tenants. I would have thought when the Minister is referring to this bill making life better for renters that she could also have said "Well actually another thing that could make life better for renters"—and could have been in this bill but clearly is not—"is an obligation for a landlord to treat a renter as though they too have something useful to do in their lives every day." One would have thought this bill dealing with letting fees to apparently make life better for renters would in fact mean that a landlord would contact a tenant before sending a workman to their house particularly when they've been broken into several times; that they would in fact check that that was some time when the tenant was home from work to be there. Those could have been things that could have made life better. Perhaps the letting fees that are now going to be prohibited could actually be included in that idea. I think that would make life better for tenants.So I would have thought that a Government so concerned with making life better for tenants—or renters as we've been told by this Minister—would actually be saying "Well maybe instead of"—as the Minister said in her words—"a tenant being whacked by a rental fee of an entire week's rent perhaps in fact that rental fee could go towards improving the security on the home." That might be a good idea. I think that could have been included in this bill but unfortunately it is not.We've heard from the Minister today that KiwiBuild is to increase demand. Well all I can see in this bill is nothing to do with KiwiBuild other than that it's certainly going to be securing some really good outcomes for some quite wealthy people but it's certainly not going to deal with the average rental person or tenant who's going to be concerned with this bill and the rental fees. I think though that what it will do is that it will in fact hopefully highlight the fact that more people now are going to have to rent and more people are going to be very concerned about the fact that they're going to have to pay more rent because of this bill. I think it does nothing to make life better for renters. What would be better is actually if landlords were encouraged and incentivised and congratulated for doing the right thing by their tenants—you know landlords who actually care about the security of tenants in their homes those sorts of landlords. Instead what we see here is a bill that knocks around landlords that yet again pits landlords against tenants that sees landlords as the problem.Housing New Zealand and the Government are already landlords to 63000 properties. In my opinion and in my experience as a lawyer but also as a constituency MP Housing New Zealand is the worst landlord in the country. Housing New Zealand does not charge letting fees. Not charging letting fees does not make a landlord a good landlord. Housing New Zealand has now a waiting list of almost 10000 families waiting for a Housing New Zealand house. That increase has gone up 1000 this year even though there are no letting fees to be banned when one tries to get a Housing New Zealand house.Greg O'Connor: Someone didn't build enough houses.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: That contribution from Mr Greg O'Connor who once was important—once was important; no longer is. He's forgotten that the increases all happened under his Government—[Interruption]ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! I need to be able to hear the speaker.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. In fact the increases all happened under his Government. The waiting list under National went down; under Labour it's gone up. And that's going to continue because this Government hates private landlords hates people providing a service that they think they should do. They are people who think they are the only ones who can serve the people and they are the worst at it. Thank you."