Sepuloni Carmel: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 11 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:11017. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I just want to reiterate what my colleague Phil Twyford said earlier. We are supporting this bill but it is a wasted opportunity to set decent minimum standards that would ensure that all rental properties are warm and dry.I really want to start with the Children’s Commissioner’s comments and I really want to talk about what the Children’s Commissioner said at the Social Services Committee. Matt Doocey the member who just spoke is on that select committee. Phil Twyford and I are on that select committee. We heard what the Children’s Commissioner had to say. When submitting on this bill he mentioned that there are 42000 hospital admissions and that 15 children die a year due to living in cold mouldy and damp houses. He argued that these standards are inadequate to resolve that. He said the “… Government made a promise to New Zealand children: We will make your house healthy. Three years on from that Budget promise this bill will do little for children living in cold damp mouldy housing. It is a wasted opportunity and a broken promise to our children.”I think that members on that side of the House should be ashamed of themselves to hear from the Children’s Commissioner that that is the case. We hear them talk about children with respiratory problems we hear them talk about their attempts to resolve them but I do not know whether or not they really understand the reality of the respiratory problems that our children are faced with. I do not know whether they have been into an emergency ward in the middle of a winter’s night. Some of us have and I have to say that some of us are not actually living in poverty and are not living in overcrowded houses but we have children whom we have had to take to the emergency ward in the middle of the night due to conditions like bronchiolitis. I am one of those parents who has had to do that and I have to say that the house I was living in previously was half a leaky home and had problems and since moving into a house that has the adequate insulation that we need—the HRV system the heat pump and everything else—all of a sudden that child is not sick any more.It is disheartening when not only do you have to take your own child into the emergency ward at 2 o’clock in the morning because you get told by Healthline that actually 60 breaths per minute is too much—they have listened to your child and they have said: “Get in the car and take them to the hospital straight away.” But also when you get to that ward it is not just your child but a room full of—and I am going to say this—predominantly Māori and Pacific children in that emergency ward at 2 o’clock in the morning in the middle of winter with respiratory problems. There is no blame on their parents at all but for many of them it is because of the conditions that they are living in and also because for some reason our children seem to be slightly more susceptible to these respiratory problems. But it is made worse by the fact that so many of them are living in housing conditions that are inadequate. That is what we are here to address today and that is what the Government should have been addressing.As many submitters told the select committee insulation without heating does only half the job. Insulating a cold damp home will not stop it being cold and damp. But again for so many of those members across the House they do not even have any understanding of what that reality is like. We believe on this side of the House and many of the general public believe that in 2016 it is completely unacceptable that children are still dying in houses that are unfit to live in.According to the Children’s Commissioner at least 15 children per year are dying because of the fact that they are living in inadequate housing conditions and yet we had the Minister for Building and Housing Nick Smith saying earlier tonight that the cost of doing what Labour is attempting to do through Andrew Little’s healthy homes bill is too expensive. Actually Minister Nick Smith and the National Government the hospitalisation of 42000 children a year in New Zealand due to cold damp mouldy homes is too expensive for this country. The cost of 15 children’s lives every year because of cold damp mouldy homes is too expensive Nick Smith and the National Government. This is the wrong place to try to make cost savings Nick Smith and the National Government.We believed during the select committee process—and to this day now that we are debating it in the House again—that a standard for ventilation should be enforced and we should require an affordable modern and fixed heating source. We also believe that the 3-year phase-in period is excessive. We need to contrast what the National Government is trying to do with what Andrew has proposed which fortunately will now go through to the select committee with the support of the parties in the House that have some common sense which does not include ACT and National. Andrew Little’s Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2)—Jono Naylor: What’s his phase-in period? What’s the phase-in period of Andrew’s bill?CARMEL SEPULONI: —would provide that all new tenancies after a year would have to meet standards for (1) methods of heating (2) methods of insulation (3) indoor temperatures (4) ventilation (5) draught stopping and (6) drainage.All of these things are things that the National Government should be supporting so when Jono Naylor is yelling out as if I am saying something outrageous he really needs to reflect on his own set of beliefs and principles and on what he is willing to support. He probably needs to reflect on the fact that by joining National he has sold himself out. The Government’s standards by allowing exceptions for houses insulated to old standards leaves thousands of rentals not properly insulated. We believe that this is unjustifiable and we think that all rental properties should be required to meet the modern standards.Let us look at what the National Government is proposing. Insulation: it is proposing insulation like this. What is Andrew Little proposing? Andrew Little is proposing insulation like this. If we look at this let us just reflect for a little while—42000 children are admitted into hospital every year because of cold damp mouldy homes. Is it worth the cost to just go with this first type or should we actually be paying for this second type? Fifteen children a year are dying because they do not have adequate housing and the National Government still wants us to rely on this. It should be ashamed of itself.The biggest issues coming through our office in west Auckland are about Work and Income and housing—usually housing is the major thing because of Housing New Zealand being situated at Work and Income. But we have people coming to us all the time with letters from their doctors from their GPs and from people at the hospital letting us know that they must be moved because of the housing conditions that they are in. Even when we are successful at rehousing these people so that they are no longer in those unhealthy homes we know that another family desperate for housing is going to take up that same house that they have just moved out of because their children are sick. There is nothing we can do about it because of the demand for housing and the desperation that our people are experiencing. That is shameful.I feel embarrassed as an MP that when we move this family out of that house because their children are getting sick and the hospital has provided them with a letter to say that that is the case another family is going into that house—another family is going into that house—because of the fact that we have this housing shortage that has not been addressed by the National Government at all. We go round and round in circles talking about everything in the housing area—healthy homes emergency housing social housing the cost of rentals and the fact that people cannot afford to buy in this housing market—and all of it is interrelated. All of it the Government has an opportunity to influence but it chooses not to and it is shameful that it does not do anything to address it.As I said we have so many examples—I could write them up and publish them—of families who are in this situation. I just want to talk about one before I end and it is a woman called Val who contacted me to say they had just left the hospital to go back to their home after her daughter had been in hospital for over a week with respiratory problems. She wrote to me and she said: “I know we’re going to end up back in hospital because we’re back at the same house and this house is making my daughter sick.” When we got in touch with Val straight away she said to us: “I’m sorry I’m back in the hospital.” That visit that we made to her which was meant to be at her home ended up being in Waitakere Hospital. It was the second time that her daughter had been admitted into that same hospital in 2 weeks because of the unhealthy home that they were living in.We have no choice but to support this bill because it does something—it does something. But it is far from enough and actually what we need the Government to do is to support Andrew Little’s healthy homes bill because that will actually make a dent—