O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you Madam Speaker. The National Party does not support the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. I'll go into the reasons why but I need to draw the House's instant attention to the absolute disrespectful and shoddy approach—unfortunately while I respect the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing) as an individual—of this Government to have literally tabled in the last 20 seconds I kid you not—to those thousands of people who have submitted against this bill be very clear the Government in the last 30 seconds now has tabled an SOP of over 15 pages of which the Opposition has never laid eyes upon. In fact it was only five minutes ago—five minutes ago—that the Minister announced that there was an SOP making substantial changes. Some from what the Minister's indicated this side could accept; most probably not. But in terms of an absolute affront and an arrogance to this Parliament—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Under urgency.SIMON O'CONNOR: —under urgency as the shadow Leader of the House has rightly pointed out. I probably do need to take a slight step back because I am somewhat indignant.This House—this Parliament is under urgency. It is rushing this bill through all its remaining stages this afternoon and an SOP has literally only just been tabled. Sorry for the public at home an SOP—or Supplementary Order Paper—is a series of amendments which are made to the primary legislation. These are 15 pages—15 pages of proposed changes—which the Government has known about and I would suggest has deliberately withheld from the Opposition. We will have only a matter of a couple of hours if that to discuss think and debate before the Government rams it through. This is a complete affront to the democracy of this House but I would like to suggest this is an absolute illustration of a Government that does not care about those they purport to—in fact I might put it this way because the other side likes to babble on with the k" word being "kindness". This is not a very kind thing to do. Hon Tim Macindoe: It's completely the opposite.SIMON O'CONNOR: It is a complete—it's absolutely absurd. We'll have to come to that.But look unfortunately this sits within the framework of the way that this entire bill has been handled including through the Social Services and Community Committee. The select committee continued during the COVID lockdown. The meetings had to be conducted via Zoom. That's not to take away from the committee members who worked hard on this bill but this was pushed through at a stage that the country was not only distracted with COVID but members of this Parliament were coming to grips with a new way of working. The bill was rammed through I would suggest a committee process which ultimately leads to flawed situations. I need to remind the House: just about every piece of social legislation which this Government has put through has been flawed conceptually and practically. We've had to return to this House multiple times to fix up errors which the Government has created by rushing the process.I'm actually quite angry. As far as I do emotion I'm actually quite angry that this has been foisted on us. The primary bill itself the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill is a bad bill and I'll come to the reasons why. But again the fact that literally at 2.56 p.m.—again to the thousands of people who have written in to me and the Opposition please take absolute note that not only has the Government ignored your—as in the public's—view on this but now they are dumping more amendments literally four minutes ago. That's the affront and that's ultimately how much the Government cares about the views of other people: not a bit.Why does National oppose the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill as it stood? It's important to say that now—"as it stood"—because it's about to change comprehensively. Why we oppose it is a matter of principle and a matter of pragmatism if you will. In principle National remains the party of private property rights. We expect that there's a rightful balance between landlords and tenants but the fundamental aspect is that the landlord owns the house. We've heard it several times from the other side that believe that actually housing needs to be a social service. The Government has said very clearly at times that private landlords are really acting as a social service. That is wrong. That is an affront to private property rights. It is up to the owner of the property to decide how they want to use their property and not to be told by a Government of how to use it.Now that probably is a difference between the left and the right of politics. The left are very keen on telling people how to live their lives and how to run their homes. But why National's pragmatically against this bill is not because it believes in a balance between tenants and landlords; it's that this bill completely throws out of whack—for want of a better expression—the balance. It tilts it completely against the landlord—the owner of the home. But sadly the changes in this bill—and I'm happy to have it on Hansard—will harm tenants more. A big part of this is this is classic leftist behaviour which believes that a little bit of writing on paper and black and white ideals are just going to make major major changes.What we will see with these changes are fewer landlords operating in the market. How do we know that? The Minister will know this from going through the submissions. Landlord after landlord in the committee and those that have been contacting certainly MPs on this side of the House are saying "It's no longer worth being a landlord; it's time to get out." Our constituents already write to us email us call us and complain to us about all these ghost homes these empty homes that sit around our towns and cities. That's probably because landlords are already tired of all the extra requirements and costs which this Labour Government has foisted on them. This is probably going to be the final straw for many of them. Why that's actually going to harm tenants—and it's simple mathematics; it's simple market dynamics—is fewer private rentals will see an increase in rents. Just remember rents have already gone up about $50-$60 a week on average across the country—even higher in Auckland. Rents have already gone up under this Government; I would suggest because of this Government it's going to get even worse.But the Government being a bunch of theoreticians think that they can solve it by putting a clause in this bill which says you can only raise rents once every 12 months because that will solve prices going up! Well as I noted in a video last night it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a mathematician to work out that all landlords will do—those who remain in the market—is make a steeper increase every 12 months. If they're not able to actively compete for who the tenants shall be it's not the tenant who's going to benefit at the end of the day because some Minister or Government's written a whole lot of words on a piece of paper; it will be the tenant who suffers as the landlord uses what they can to provide what they believe is the rightful rent.Fundamentally as I said at the start it is the landlord not the Government that owns that property. It is the landlord day after day who is paying for the cost—be that a mortgage you name it they're paying for it. They need to recoup their costs. The irony of the leftist thinking on being a social service is that the social service is meant to be there to serve the tenant but there's no social service if you will or support of the landlord who is attempting to provide something.Fundamentally we have a Government already—and we brought this up during the select committee process—that is failing in the housing of New Zealanders. The Minister knows this: 18000 Kiwi families are currently waiting for a State house. There were about 5000 under National when we left Government—that was 5000 too many—but now it's at 18000. Why National opposes this so aggressively—why National opposes this so aggressively—is that number will get worse because of this bill. It's a theoretician's bill. It all looks wonderful on paper and all the advocates who came in arguing for it from the pro-tenant's side think that simple words and intentions are going to make a difference.Hon Kris Faafoi: Is that all you've got?SIMON O'CONNOR: But at the end of the day—oh no we've got more readings after this. The Minister's saying is that all I've got? No I've got a lot more. I'm actually pacing myself. As the Minister might remember he and his Government are rushing all parts of this bill through this afternoon. To end where I started not only are they rushing it through as they've rushed the entire bill through they have literally dropped an amendment only a few moments ago providing the Opposition and myself absolutely no chance to engage it. That's exactly symbolic of what they think of landlords and landlords will take note in the election.Debate interrupted."