Turei Metiria: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: General Debate[Sitting date: 13 April 2016. Volume:713;Page:10468. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): Renters deserve warm dry and safe homes. Renting is now a reality for a third of New Zealanders in this country. That is nearly one and a half million New Zealanders who are living in rental homes and every one of those New Zealanders deserves to live in a warm dry and safe home. The Green Party will do what is right by renters and it is right to make our homes warm safe and dry for our kids and for our families. It is right—and not only that it is 100 percent possible—to make New Zealand homes warm dry and safe.New Zealand needs to have a warrant of fitness for rental properties in this country. That is what is needed to make homes warm dry and safe. So I am urging New Zealanders to sign the Green Party petition—and you can find it on our website—that will urge this Parliament to put in place a warrant of fitness for New Zealand’s rental homes and for those nearly 1.5 million New Zealanders who live in those homes. We can make warm dry and safe rental homes real in this country. We can make it real in this country if we all work together. So please sign the petition. I invite members to sign the petition.Why is this important? Well we know that on average 15 children in this country will die from conditions related to cold damp and mouldy houses—on average 15 children a year. Why do we not just think for a minute in this House about the kids whom we know and love? Think for a minute about our own children about our own grandchildren about our nieces and our nephews and the children in our neighbourhoods whom we love and think that there will be families this winter—up to 15 families this winter—who will see their child sicken and die because they live in a cold damp home. That is the only reason why these children will get sick. It is because they live in a cold damp house. We can fix that in this country. We can save these children’s lives and save these families the grief of watching their children sicken and die.Think for a moment about your grandparents and the kind of home that they and their friends might live in. Did you know that 1600 New Zealanders die every winter in New Zealand from preventable illnesses? Those 1600 deaths would be preventable if those people were living in warm dry homes—that is all that is needed to make sure. Of those 1600 most will be older people who die as a result of living in cold damp and mouldy homes. Think for a moment of the 40000 hospitalisations of children this winter from respiratory illness—40000. That is the entire population of Gisborne—every man woman and child—going to hospital for respiratory illness. It is the entire population of Wanganui or the entire population of Blenheim going to hospital—that is the equivalent. We can fix that. We can make sure that our kids and our grandparents and our families are safe in their homes with a warrant of fitness for rental homes that will make those homes warm dry and safe.The power will be in the hands of this Parliament when it soon comes to debate the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. We can choose in this House to make sure that our homes are warm dry and safe for our kids for our families and for our grandparents. That power rests also in the hands of the public and the public is saying: “We demand that our Parliament puts in place the systems that will protect our families this winter.” I urge everyone to sign the petition to make sure that our rental homes are warm dry and safe. Thank you.