Turei Metiria: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 11 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:11021. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): The problem Simon O’Connor is that the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill is a useless bill and if it was effective then we would be having a very different debate. I do want to say that the Green Party really wanted to be able to support this bill. We supported it at its first reading. We were looking forward to the Government in particular seeing the evidence laid out before it that would show that a more comprehensive bill—maybe not exactly what I want but something better—would mean that children’s lives would be saved and families would do better. I am not a Pollyanna as Parliament knows but I always live in hope that Parliament will act courageously for New Zealand because it does happen some days in this place. We do do courageous and amazing things some days in this place but clearly today is not one of those days.Last week in the debate on Andrew Little’s healthy homes insulation bill I set out the ethical argument and the moral pathway that we can take and should be taking to improve the quality of New Zealand’s rental homes for children and families. That kōrero from last week was a popular one and it came from a very deep frustration that I have felt in dealing with this Government bill on rental homes through the select committee process.I was on the Social Services Committee and Marama Davidson also heard some of those submissions. We—MPs from across this House—sat together over quite a few days and we listened as person after person organisations health centres and child advocates came to tell us how we could make a real difference in people’s lives and how we could save lives. This was not by grandiose expensive gestures not by sweeping economic reforms that would take capitalism by its short and curlies and wrestle it to the ground and not by banning some social evil or by spending billions and billions of dollars on some social good. We could save lives by simply saying that we want our families to live in homes that are built for the 21st century not for 1978. That is simple—that is it. That is all that we need to do. Genuinely it is all that we need to do.We want our friends and our families and our communities to live in warm dry safe homes built for the 21st century not 1978 and we can have that. That is right. We can have that for everyone if we make a very small change to this law to say that our homes should have an insulation standard for today not for 1978.The year 1978 was a long time ago but I am sure you remember at least some of it. So what was happening in 1978? Well I was 8 years old. Mr Deputy Speaker I am sure you were not much older. I was 8 years old. Rob Muldoon was Prime Minister in 1978. Precious McKenzie—do you remember him? He won gold at the Commonwealth Games in 1978. Iain Lees-Galloway was born in 1978. It was a great year—a great year.Carmel Sepuloni: 1977 was better.METIRIA TUREI: Ha ha! What were the standards that applied to New Zealand in 1978? What were the laws and regulations that applied in 1978? Well you could sell smokes to children in 1978—not just to teenagers but to little kids. They could go to the dairy and buy lollies and milk and smokes for mum and dad in 1978. Children under 8 years did not have to wear a seatbelt. Everybody else did but not little children under 8. They did not have to wear a seatbelt in 1978. In 1978 you could smoke anywhere you wanted to—in bars in shops on aeroplanes. No one cared and few really knew about second-hand smoke and its effects then.In 1978 you could divorce only because of adultery desertion or habitual drunkenness. You had to have criteria for divorce. Homosexuality was illegal in 1978. Corporal punishment was encouraged. The Māori All Blacks were still considered to be honorary whites when they toured South Africa. And in 1978 women were regularly refused mortgages unless their husband or their father signed the mortgage documents. In 1978 women could not get mortgages under their own name.None of those standards apply today do they? None of them would be considered the least bit acceptable today like they were in—Denis O’Rourke: Is Iain Lees-Galloway acceptable today?METIRIA TUREI: Well OK except for Iain Lees-Galloway—he is cool. None of those standards—what was OK in 1978 is not OK now when you are talking about quality regulation that is about improving the health of families communities and children. So why does Nick Smith insist on having a 1978 insulation standard for New Zealand homes? Why? Why does—Hon Member: We don’t.METIRIA TUREI: Well that is another part of the question. He does know that the 1978 standard will not save children from being sick because he has in front of him research that proves it. According to Dr Lucy Telfar-Barnard from Otago University having the modern standard of insulation in private rental accommodation reduces the number of children’s hospital stays by nearly 20 percent—by nearly 20 percent. Having the modern standard would save one in five of the children who have to go to hospital in a winter because their home is cold and damp. Having the 1978 standard will see thousands of New Zealand children still going in and out and in and out of hospital and getting sick and for 15 of those families who see their children going in and out of hospital in a year they will lose their child for good. Fifteen families will lose their child for good because—Carmel Sepuloni: And they don’t care—they don’t care.METIRIA TUREI: —those members do not care. They do not care.The Children’s Commissioner said that this bill was a broken promise to New Zealand’s children. He came and said that to the select committee to all the MPs there who were there to hear the evidence about how we could do better. The Children’s Commissioner said that it was a broken promise to children and is that what the legacy of the National Government is to New Zealand? A litany of broken promises to children some of whom will not live to see the year out—will not live to see the year out.We can do much better than that. I will be putting forward Supplementary Order Paper 172 to this bill when it next comes back to the House for debate. This will show what New Zealand could achieve if we wanted it to—what a comprehensive warrant of fitness would look like and how it can make homes warmer drier and safer for children and their families. Yes it will certainly include glass visibility tape for glass doors—yes it will my Supplementary Order Paper. Do you know why? Because 500 children a month are injured in this country by falling through windows and breaking through glass doors—500 children a month. Those are the statistics from ACC.Those 500 kids—their lives matter. They deserve to live in a safe home. The 40000-odd hospital admissions—those children all deserve to live in a warm dry safe home that does not make them sick. The 15 families who will lose a child in the next 12 months they deserve to live in a warm dry home that will not make their children sick or make them die. Every one of those kids’ lives matters. Let us make sure that their homes are warm and safe and dry. It is an easy thing for us to do. It is not going to cost the earth so let us do it. Tonight let us just be a little more courageous for our kids and make no more broken promises. Thank you.