Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): There are four points that I want to make in the third reading of this Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill. The first of those is that the issue of rates and the cost to people on fixed incomes like superannuitants is a really important issue. After the last nine years I'm actually very proud that the cost of living over the last nine years has gone up by less than under any Government in the 160-year history of New Zealand. You may want to check that with the Parliamentary Library. I did. But I'm very proud that our Government took very seriously the issue of costs and having fought 10 election campaigns the 2017 election was the first that I have had where the cost of living was not a significant issue.So for all the schemes we might have like rates rebates let us not overlook the fundamental issues of what this Parliament does to drive up those costs of rates. One of the reasons we had to have a rates rebate scheme is that in the course of the nine years of the previous Helen Clark Government rates went up by an average of 8.7 percent per year. I say to members opposite that rates rebate schemes are no substitute for solid local government policy that ensures we keep the costs of rates in this country constrained and we intend to hold the Government accountable in that area.The second point I want to make is why has National's position on this bill changed? Well it's very easy to work that out if you read the bill that's before us on the third reading. The extraordinary part is that if we look at the original bill that was introduced by Ruth Dyson there's barely 10 percent that's survived the select committee and committee of the whole House process.As we correctly said when this bill was introduced it was a dog it was unworkable and as the previous Labour speaker Deborah Russell said; it required extensive amendment during the committee stage. It is only with those amendments that National members on this side of the House feel able to support it.Here's the key—here's the key. This bill is going to cost in the order of $8 million to $9 million a year for taxpayers. This isn't free money. This is $8 million or $9 million of taxes that hard-working Kiwis have produced. All we're doing is transferring those taxes through to those people in retirement villages. The concern that National had with the original bill is that the money was just going to go to the retirement villages company.Hon Ruth Dyson: Rubbish!Hon Dr NICK SMITH: It was. There was no guarantee that the benefit of the rates rebate—I do have to say to the member that interjects: I do have concerns even with the mechanisms in this bill that we'll be sitting down in two or three years' time assured that all of that $8 million or $9 million a year of taxpayer subsidy through rates rebates is actually going to the residents of retirement villages and not the companies.I would challenge the next Labour member to reassure me on this point. What is to stop any retirement village company as part of its normal contractual arrangements with the licence to occupy in the agreement—sure to provide the rates rebate of $600 a year but just to put the service charges up by $600? The honest answer is there is no constraint on that and I want to give Government members notice that we on this side of the House will be monitoring that closely because we are only interested in the rates rebate if the benefit of that is going into the pockets of our retired village residents and not the companies.The third point I want to make is this. For the last three years I've heard members who are now in Government argue that retirement villages aren't houses that retirement villages are not ownership. It is true that the fastest-growing sector of the housing market is the construction of retirement villages. It has grown by more than 200 percent over the last decade. It is the fastest-growing area of the housing market. But I will be looking for some consistency from Government members. For instance the Minister of Housing in quoting homeownership numbers conveniently excludes those people that own a $400000 licence to occupy in a retirement village. I think that's inconsistent. It's inconsistent with the speech that we've just heard from the Labour member who actually used the term that these retirement village residents own" their unit.When the Government quotes homeownership numbers the number of people that we now have in retirement villages quoting nearly 30000 people is of a scale that it should be included in those homeownership figures. It is a bit academic for someone who sells their family home who then uses that money to buy a $400000 interest in a licence to occupy in a retirement village to somehow pretend that that person is worse off and no longer has an asset and an interest in that unit. I would go even further. I would wish that in the census when we actually provide the detailed information on homeownership levels in New Zealand the scale of the retirement village legislation now is such that we should be separately identifying those people that are in retirement villages.The very last point I wish to make in respect of this rates rebate amendment bill is that we need to ensure that we have a commissioner who's responsible for monitoring the retirement village sector. The concern with this bill all the way through has been that those benefits are going to go to the elderly retired not to the village companies. I would like to ask the next Government speaker to assure the Opposition that in the terms of reference the Government has with the Retirement Commissioner they will include the monitoring of this specific point so Parliament can be reassured that the $8 million to $9 million extra going into rebates for people in retirement villages is indeed going where the supporters of this bill intended. For those reasons National supports this bill."