Garrett David: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Garrett David: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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DAVID GARRETT (ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the first reading of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. It is a pleasure to take a short call on the bill which will hopefully go some way towards rebalancing the relationship between tenant and landlord. The Act that this bill amends by modern standards is a fairly ancient one. The Act was passed in 1986 and from my memory this is the first time it has been amended. In 1986 we had the Lange-Douglas Labour Government and the Act was a beacon of simplicity and good drafting in its time. But as speakers on both sides have said the market has changed and the nature of renting has changed in the 23 years since the Act was passed. 
This amendment bill began life under the previous Labour Government but was withdrawn by the Minister who is now in charge of the bill the Hon Phil Heatley for very good reasons. It has undergone a substantial rewrite and I commend the Minister and his officials for the work that has gone into improving it and for discussing with our staff the changes proposed. 
I will point out one particular aspect of Labour’s original bill that was removed. But before I do so I will touch on the speech of the previous speaker Sue Bradford. Although she carefully couched the relationship between tenant and landlord as not being a one-sided relationship and said there were some bad tenants as well the landlord and tenant relationship is sadly often portrayed by members on that side of the House as the landlord being a horrid Victorian chap wearing a dark overcoat and appearing out of the gloom to suck the widow’s mite for the rent that is overdue and the hapless tenant as simply the victim of big bad Bill the landlord. The reality of course is very different. There are big bad tenants as well. I am afraid I do not have too much sympathy for gang member tenants who might be subjected to changes under Housing New Zealand Corporation policy but I digress slightly. 
The part that has been removed from the original Labour bill is the one that limited recourse to landlords to the 4-week maximum bond in the case of damage done to the property. Four weeks does not represent a lot of rent and if that provision had stayed in the landlord would have few avenues for recourse if the tenant left the property in a more damaged state than a 4-week bond could cover. It is not hard to do such damage. Sadly Mr Taito Phillip Field is no longer in Parliament to tell Labour members of some of the perils of owning rental properties but if members opposite had listened to property owners in their electorates they would have heard grave concerns being expressed about that part of the bill. 
Most people in this country who invest in property are not the stereotype we think of when we hear the term “property investor”. In fact I believe that even some Labour members are property investors in the sense that they own a nest egg rental property. People who invest in property are by and large mum and dad investors as the Minister said in his speech. They own their own home and one additional property—or perhaps two if they are really entrepreneurial—which is their primary investment their nest egg and their security for retirement. All too often those nest eggs are wrecked by unruly and uncaring tenants. 
We will not hear it said from members on the other side but it would break members’ hearts to hear some of the stories of landlords of reasonable people whose lives have been ruined by their tenants—tenants who have gutted flats of all fixtures and fittings and have even removed the floorboards tenants who have turned their houses or flats into tinny houses or P labs and tenants who have ruined the property’s market value by damage or criminal activity. Labour’s provisions would have made it difficult if not impossible for landlords to seek further compensation. For that reason I am very pleased that the Minister the Hon Phil Heatley has recognised the challenges that so many landlords—the mum and dad investors in this country—face. I am happy to speak in support of this bill on behalf of the ACT Party. Thank you.