Salesa JennyRESIDENTIAL TENANCIES (PROHIBITING LETTING FEES) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingDebate resumed from 29 March.Hon JENNY SALESA (Associate Minister of Housing and Urban Development): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and what a night to be here in the House of Parliament in Aotearoa New Zealand. I want to just acknowledge all of the speakers that have spoken before me on the previous bill the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill. How wonderful it is to be here tonight and to see that we as members of Parliament can actually unanimously agree on this legislation on doing what is right.Thank you for this opportunity to speak on the Residential Tenancies (Prohibiting Letting Fees) Amendment Bill. I'd like to acknowledge the Minister of Housing and Urban Development the Hon Phil Twyford for his work in the housing sector as well as for leading this legislation the Residential Tenancies (Prohibiting Letting Fees) Amendment Bill.We know that we came into Government our coalition Government—ourselves as Labour with our coalition partner the New Zealand First Party as well as the Green Party—and we know that one of the things that we inherited from the previous Government is the housing crisis. We are introducing this legislation because it is one of many things we're doing to address the housing issue that we face. One of the things that we did as a Government coming in was we wanted to find out just the right picture in terms of housing and we went to a few people to inform us. We were told that we in Aotearoa New Zealand were short by at least 71000 houses were short in Auckland by 45000 houses and then were short in the rest of Aotearoa by the rest of that 71000 houses.We are not burying our heads in the sand and we are not burying our heads in the sand and hoping that somehow the market will sort out this housing issue for us. No; we in this Government are committed to addressing the housing issue and one of the reasons why we're introducing this particular legislation is because we believe that it is one of many measures that we need to do in order to address the housing issue. One of the things that we did was we looked overseas: what can we learn from other countries that have introduced legislation similar to this one? What we know is that Scotland introduced legislation to ban letting fees and there they did not find evidence that it led to an increase in rent. Another country that also did the same thing—introduced legislation—was the UK Conservative Government. They introduced legislation to ban letting fees and there again they did not find evidence that there was an increase in rent because of this ban in letting fees. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand Treasury in their regulatory impact statement advised us that there is no clear evidence according to what they see from evidence from other countries that banning letting fees will indeed lead to increased rents. So we believe that we should address this housing issue.We also believe that all New Zealanders should have a roof over their heads. We believe that all New Zealanders should have the right to a healthy home. But the legacy of the last nine years means that it is a very complex issue to address this housing issue. We know that pressures have driven up both housing prices as well as rentals. When we look at our largest city Auckland and we know that the average price of buying a house over there is $1 million that inevitably means that when you look at rental accommodation it also means that the rent keeps going up and up and up to a point where so many thousands of our families just cannot afford to rent a house.We have families—and I know this is a common story for a lot of us local MPs—so many families coming to ask us for assistance because they cannot rent a house. We have families coming to see us not because they're looking forward to the Kiwi Dream of owning a house but they're just looking forward to actually being able to rent a house. As local MPs one of the things that we do especially around South Auckland is we go and knock on doors and we offer our services. What is really heartbreaking is when you knock on doors and some of those doors are homes that actually have garages where children are living and you get consistent answers from mothers or grandmothers with children who are in those garages or in those homes and you say to them It is a school day today. Why is it that your children are not involved enrolled in school?" And the consistent answer from these caregivers—they tell us that it is because they do not have the money to keep on buying school uniforms because they move from house to house.When we last discussed this legislation one of the speakers from the opposite side of this House said that the average time for a family to rent a house is two years. I see so many families that move and move three to five times in one year. They move and they're so transient because of housing. When we know from the largest primary school which is in Manurewa when the principal there tells us that 60 to 70 percent of their children enter school at the beginning of the year but 60 to 70 percent of them are no longer the same kids at the end of the year and when you asked the principal "Why is that?" and the principal tells you "It is because of housing costs" something is wrong with this picture.So one of the main reasons why we're introducing this legislation is because we know that every time a family moves many of them fall further into debt because the budget that they have is already overstretched. When they move into a new house this is the kind of cost that they actually have to face: four weeks' bond plus two weeks' rent plus one week advance rent as a letting fee. All of this is on top of the actual cost of moving or shifting to a new house. We also know that some of our most vulnerable families are Māori and Pacific families. When we look into the history in the 1980s Pacific families about 50 percent of them either used to own their own homes or they used to live with relatives that owned their own homes. But the 2013 census data tells us that that rate of homeownership has dropped to 18 percent—18 percent. There are so many of our most vulnerable people that just need a little bit of assistance and we know evidence from overseas tells us that this legislation will not increase the rent as the others will have you believe. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and we definitely strongly support this legislation."