Goldsmith Paul; Dean JacquiHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's my pleasure to speak on behalf of the National Party around this inquiry into student accommodation. And I want to start by acknowledging the many submitters who responded to the question raised by this inquiry and made their thoughts known and took the time to talk to this committee and to have their voices heard. I want to acknowledge my colleague Penny Simmonds particularly our tertiary spokesperson who has been working closely on this and is unfortunately away in the South Island today. But she like myself and many of us on this side of the House are naturally very concerned to ensure that students in this country get the best experience that they can during the student accommodation phase if they indeed use it during their university time.It's a big part of the tertiary experience for many young men and women in this country most often in the first year having left home sometimes going to another city sometimes actually just going down the road in the same city to have the experience of living in a hostel and the wonderful social times involved in that. And most of the time it goes very well and great memories are formed lifetime friendships are formed and people go on to study and to live happy and healthy lives. And the less that the parents know about the details of what goes on in these particular student accommodations the better. I know myself having the prospect of some of my children heading off in this direction in the next little while I'm not sure that I necessarily want to know exactly what happens. But I'm confident—Simeon Brown: You'll see it on TikTok.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well that's right. TikTok is sometimes useful in getting an idea of what's happening.Nevertheless with the numbers involved—so like I say most go along into student accommodation whether through the university or tertiary provider or through some sort of charitable foundation or a church or something like that. They come through and they have a good experience. But of course with the numbers involved—tens of thousands of students—there will also always be problems there will be tragedies there will be extreme personal circumstances through that period. And this inquiry was sparked by one such tragedy: that of the devastating loss of Mason Pendrous in 2019 and the circumstances around that. And many people were naturally concerned by that and wanting to ensure that we did have systems in place across the sector to try and reduce the chance of something like that happening again.But when we step back and look at the question of student accommodation the thing that probably wasn't a focus of this inquiry but may well have been is the more fundamental issue of affordability because that is a big element of it. There's no question that student accommodation generally whether they are provided by the institutions themselves or elsewhere is relatively expensive. Of course particularly in the university setting where it might only be 30 weeks a year or less where people are needing to be accommodated that does create its own sort of difficulties from an organisational point of view and then there are the wider expectations of being fed and looked after. So it's an expensive proposition and many families struggle with that cost and many students of course are very mindful of taking on student debt. So we all have an interest in ensuring that the sector is as efficient as possible.And the very worst outcome of such a review like this would have been if the rest of the committee had listened to the Greens' proposal which was to do away with any private providers in this sector which is not I suppose unexpected from the Green Party but that would have been I think a very bad outcome. Everybody knows that the universities in this country are not necessarily always the most cost-efficient organisations in the country. I don't like to be unkind to the university sector but it is not necessarily the most cost-efficient sector in the country. I always found it very easy to wind up the previous vice-chancellor at the University of Auckland by pointing to the fact that the university bought a very large section in Newmarket and had plans to do something with it over the next 50 years but didn't seem to be in any hurry and clearly they had more money than they knew what to do with if that was the circumstance.So what you have is organisations that are incredibly administratively heavy and quite expensive and so it is critical that the sector also includes private sector providers and not-for-profit providers to keep the institutions themselves on their toes and to drive down costs so that students are not overburdened with debt going into their lives. And of course it plugs into the wider housing affordability issue which I think is one of the critical issues facing this country at the moment. And there has been an explosion in growth in the development of particularly institutional tertiary education - provided housing and accommodation over the last few years driven primarily by the very shortage of supply of housing in our cities—particularly in Auckland—and the cost therein. That is of course a much broader discussion but it is an essential context to what we're talking about here.In terms of the actual focus then on the student accommodation I mean we have to not just conclude that the solution to every problem is yet more regulation and training and further requirements because we do recognise that there is a clear relationship between some of those regulations and requirements and cost. Ultimately it is those students that bear that cost. And we don't want our young people starting off their working life overburdened with debt any more than they need to be. So we want to have a simple and clear and effective way of ensuring first and foremost there is clarity of information so that there's no misunderstandings about the rules and the liabilities when people change their mind when they want to move and what they're going to get and what they're not going to get. And the code of compliance that was drawn together quickly in response to the terrible case a few years ago steered in that right direction and the draft proposals around that code that we've developed in the course of this inquiry make sense. Likewise with dispute resolution processes again having some clarity there is helpful.And thirdly in the area of having some recognised student voice in the process—equally important. Again one or two people suggested that students should be on the governing board of all such institutions and that doesn't necessarily make sense particularly in the company context but there can well be some way of having that voice extended and included in the discussions.The only point I would make around the frequent references to the need for consistency throughout the sector—and I don't see that myself. I don't think the world has to be the same everywhere. You can have a variety of experiences and a variety of providers just as you do when students leave the student accommodation and go into flats—they have all sorts of weird and wonderful experiences and different approaches and everything doesn't have to be consistent. But what we do obviously need to have is student accommodation that is safe and where there is clarity around the expectations about what you do get and what you don't get and where if things go wrong there is a good clear process to deal with such disputes. And in so far as the code brings better progress in that area we in the National Party support it in that respect.But I suppose my final point to make is when we talk about student accommodation the broader issue that is most concerning to parents and students themselves is the overall affordability of the process so that they can have that wonderful experience of being in the hostel and forming those lifetime friendships without saddling themselves with unsustainable debt. And in that way a real focus on the effectiveness of housing policies—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member's time has expired.