Swarbrick Chlöe; Rurawhe AdrianCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): A third of New Zealanders rent and in my home and community of Auckland Central it is more than half. Those renters in this country spend more of their income on older colder and mouldier housing than those who own. I challenge any MP in this House to argue anything other than the obvious reality that this is morally patently wrong. Fiscally I might add too as it also comes at an immense social health and productivity cost and a cost to education and employment absence. Under international law anything short of adequate affordable housing happens to be a breach of the United Nations' recognised human rights.So why is it that things are so bad for renters in this country? Well a few decades ago politicians in this House right here decided to put profit ahead of people. They decided to abandon the social contract which saw the sell-off of State houses in their masses. They sold off those State houses and handed over responsibility to the private market to the extent that we now see the accommodation supplement paid out to the tune of approximately $2 billion per year bidding up the private rental market.We live today with the consequences of those decisions and those consequences are one of the most unaffordable housing markets in the world on almost any metric that you choose to measure; those consequences are found in the 25 percent of retirees living in insecure and precarious rental properties which the Retirement Commissioner predicts will double based on present policy settings within the next 25 years; those consequences are renters presenting in our hospitals with preventable illnesses particularly respiratory illnesses some of which will stay with them for their entire lives.The point of traversing this history is to demonstrate that the status quo is not inevitable; it is a political choice and we are living with the consequences of political choices that have been made in the past—Andrew Bayly: Are you giving a talk Erica?CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —and to this day. The challenges faced by renters are consequences of decisions made in this place Mr Andrew Bayly. Different political decisions can be made and we can fix these issues. The solutions are clear and so far only the Greens are willing to put forward the evidence-based solutions to those issues. They are of course a rental warrant of fitness which would work incredibly efficiently in tandem with a register for property managers and landlords and of course rent controls.Here I might elaborate that we actually already have a form of rent controls in our Residential Tenancies Act. Those are limitations on the amount of times that rents can be increased per annum to no more than once per year and also that rents can be set at no more than what is considered market rate. The problem is: who determines what a market rate is? Well it is landlords and property managers—Andrew Bayly: It's normally determined by the market.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —and therefore a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stoked to see that I've hit the Andrew Bayly button. These solutions are blueprints to fix the rental housing crisis. You may hear members of the Opposition as you just did crowing about how ensuring these basic rights for renters comes at a cost to landlords. Well let's be straight up. Sure there could be a slight reduction in the profits for the 2 percent of landlords in this country if we are to guarantee warm dry and secure housing for the 1.5 million renters. We make this political decision when it comes to the minimum wage when we say that you can't keep your workers in poverty in order to keep your business afloat. We understand that that is the basis of a false economy. That is the privatisation of profit and the socialisation of cost. I've got to say it's past time that this place realised that the exact same damn logic applies to the rental housing market and the Greens are saying that enough is enough. We have clear evidence that the rental market is cooked. We have it in our housing crisis stories which more than 700 New Zealanders submitted stories to. We have it in the people's inquiry into student wellbeing which also demonstrated that two-thirds of students regularly cannot afford the basics.These are political decisions and we have a solution—one which we put in the ballot today—in the form of a rental warrant of fitness member's bill. In 2017 this House—and the Green Party working with the Labour Government—passed the healthy homes standards. The problem with the healthy homes standards is that we are not accountable as a Parliament when we are not counting compliance. This rental warrant of fitness could bypass the ballot if the Government choose to adopt the legislation to fix precisely those issues and we are calling on Labour to do—SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.