Twyford PhilHEALTHY HOMES GUARANTEE BILL (NO 2)Third ReadingHon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): Every New Zealander deserves a warm dry home—Hon Michael Woodhouse: Move the motion. I move That the …".Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I move that the bill now be read.Hon Michael Woodhouse: No "That the Healthy Homes Guarantee …".Hon PHIL TWYFORD: That the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill—Hon Michael Woodhouse: Be now read a third time.Hon PHIL TWYFORD: —now be read a third time. Thank you.Hon Michael Woodhouse: Oh we've been there don't worry.Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Ha ha! I move That the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) be now read a third time. Every New Zealander deserves a warm healthy home. The passage of this bill—the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2)—into law today will add the next chapter in what has been an impressive and important piece of work in this country over the last decade overhauling and upgrading the quality of housing in New Zealand. This bill once made law will I believe be the most important public health reform that we can currently make in this country. Anyone who's been following this debate will know that some 42000 children in this country go to hospital every year with infectious and respiratory diseases that are largely a result of low-quality cold damp and mouldy homes and the inability of their parents to turn on the electricity and heat those homes. Every winter we have what's called winter excess mortality in which some 1600 mostly older New Zealanders die premature deaths for the same reason: cold damp homes and an inability to heat them.What this bill does is it builds on the work that's been done by previous Governments over the last decade or so. The story I think has to go back to the efforts that were made by Jeanette Fitzsimons and the Green Party working with the then Labour-led Government to set up an insulation-retrofitting subsidy programme. To give credit to the former National Government they continued that work through the Warm Up New Zealand programme and insulated approximately 300000 homes during the last nine years.Our belief is that even more is needed to be done and that's because all of those subsidy programmes hardly put a dent in the very poor quality of rental housing in New Zealand. Most of the subsidies were taken up by owner-occupiers. What this bill does is it actually raises the minimum standards that will apply to rental properties by putting in place the ability of the Government to set regulations. It's our intention over the next 18 months to set the regulations that will put in place a higher standard of insulation. We have in the course of this bill going through the House made it clear that the current standard legislated by the past National Government which allows approximately 70000 to 80000 rental properties in this country that are already insulated to the 1978 insulation standard to remain at that standard and not have to be upgraded a nearly 40-year-old insulation standard—we don't think that's good enough. The regulations that will be promulgated under this piece of law will set a higher standard. They will also extend beyond insulation and beyond the requirement for smoke alarms for a whole range of other factors that are critical to preventing homes being cold and damp. We're talking about moisture control. We're talking about ventilation and most importantly a requirement in most cases for a modern affordable fixed heating source which very likely will be a modern heat pump or a modern woodburner. To have an insulation standard without any requirement for heating is a nonsense. It simply makes a cold damp home insulated.Hon Michael Woodhouse: There is a requirement for heating in the Building Act.Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well the member thinks that the Building Act has a requirement for heating. A power point Mr Woodhouse is not a requirement for heating. Under our law every rental property will require a modern fixed affordable heating source. This will ensure that it will be effectively illegal for landlords to rent out properties that are a threat to the health of the people living in them. It's our view on this side of the House that it's past time to modernise and upgrade the quality of our rental housing. It's not OK for a landlord to be able to make over let's say a 10-year period hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue on an asset by renting out a property that is a risk to the health of the people living in it. We are better than that as a country and this bill is going to make a serious step forward in improving the quality of rental housing.I want to acknowledge the work of a lot of people on this issue that have got us to this stage. The first one I want to mention is the people at Otago University's Wellington campus and the public health team there led by Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman. Professor Howden-Chapman and people like Professor Michael Baker and others have done groundbreaking internationally acclaimed public health research that has changed the public conversation on the issue of cold damp homes and poverty in this country. It's been a remarkable body of work that has influenced not only public opinion but public policy.There's a whole movement of people who have campaigned and worked towards the aim of a warrant of fitness a set of tough mandatory minimum standards for rental properties. I want to give special mention to the Child Poverty Action Group people like Dr Innes Asher Dr Nikki Turner and people like my colleague Dr Liz Craig who has made a huge contribution to the well-being of children particularly in this country in relation to cold damp homes and preventable deaths.There's a whole movement nationwide of people like the Community Energy Network non-profit community organisations who have been doing fantastic work in communities up and down this country insulating homes retrofitting helping people to make their homes warm and dry and using all of the subsidies available from councils from central government and from other places to help people afford those things.I want to acknowledge the Hon Annette King who recently retired from politics. She was the architect of our policy in this area that led to the drafting of the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill that first appeared in the House here as a member's bill in my name but was later taken up by the Hon Andrew Little in its second reincarnation before it was adopted as a Government bill after the election.There are many many more people I want to thank: the officials for the work that they have done helping us to get this bill into shape and ready to be passed and all of the submitters the organisations the private citizens and the many community and advocacy organisations who came along at select committee and helped shape this bill.The other key aspect that I want to mention is that as well as enabling a set of regulations that will put in place the minimum standards on heating on ventilation on insulation and on moisture control the other thing this bill does is that it beefs up the compliance mechanism in the bill. It's been very clear to us that a complaints-based system in the rental market is simply not enough that the very nature of the rental market means that most tenants simply will never complain to the landlord because they're worried that that will either harm the relationship they have with the landlord or lead to them having their tenancy terminated. What we've done is we're beefing up the capacity of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment to be responsible for a programme of risk-based auditing and investigations. So the legislation won't simply rely on complaints or tenants taking the landlord to the tenancy tribunal if the landlord is believed to be in breach of the regulations but there will be a really significant programme of auditing and investigation to encourage compliance across the whole industry.The big argument that our political opponents have put up throughout this debate has been that the standards will impose on landlords some kind of insupportable burden that will either drive landlords out of the market or lead to big costs being passed on to tenants. To be honest this has just been scaremongering by the Opposition who are looking for an excuse to oppose this. The National Party are opposing the idea of a landlord who has an asset that over the lifetime of the insulation and heating that they're going to put in place will generate hundreds and thousands of dollars—the National Party is opposing the landlord being required to spend something between $3000 and $5000 with the help of substantial public subsidies to get there. That shows I think a terrible kind of lack of vision and compassion. This law will make a huge difference to the people of New Zealand."