Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I'm pleased to take a call at the third reading of the Residential Tenancies (Prohibiting Letting Fees) Amendment Bill. It's a short and straightforward bill. As we all know it amends the Residential Tenancies Act to remove the ability for landlords and agents to charge letting fees.I'm only going to take a quick call on this but I would like to point out that in my view this bill perfectly sums up the Government's level of competency and capability. They don't like something—well just get rid of it. If we just ban it put it over there—poof! It's gone. Don't worry about it anymore. It reminds me of playing that game with a baby where you put their hands in front of their eyes and everything disappears and it's all gone and it'll all be fine if we just get rid of it. They're incapable of coming up with a nuanced approach and actually understanding all of the issues because what they tend to do and have done in so much other legislation that's come before this House is rush it. They don't do any proper consultation. In fact I think in this case the regulatory impact statement actually said that there hadn't been proper consultation and the full extent of the impacts could not be identified. And it's done in so many other bills and it's done here again. That's why we don't have a nuanced approach. We have this approach of if we just ban it then everything will be fixed and everything will be fine.The point is that they can't understand that actually there are always implications when you do this kind of thing. They can't understand that maybe there will be some unintended consequences. We were at pains to point this out through this whole process as were the submitters. Basically they said that there is a reason for these costs. There are costs associated with the renting out and renewing of tenancies and those costs must be borne.As the National Party being a completely capable party we did come up with some suggestions in our minority view where we said that a sensible alternative measure would be to make these letting fees more transparent to ensure that they can be reasonably charged that renters would understand what and why they were being charged and that there would be a reasonable cost charged rather than just banning them outright. But instead of allowing landlords to charge these letting fees upfront renters will now most likely be—as we've pointed out and as submitters have pointed out—paying higher rents throughout their tenancy. So in fact what we end up with is a position of unintended consequences where renters will over the lifetime of their tenancy be paying far more than they would have with this upfront cost. As my colleagues have mentioned we've already seen a $25 per week increase in rent since this Labour-led Government came into power. It's happening and it's going to continue to happen.One of the other things that we pointed out was the fact that we don't understand why the Minister has forged ahead with this badly designed bill instead of wrapping it up with the Government's sweeping residential tenancies review—review number 52 of 170 I should point out. They're rushing it through with a commencement date of 12 December which is some sort of poorly planned Christmas present to tenants which will actually make them worse off in the long run.As I said earlier this bill reminds me so much of other bills that we're dealing with—airy-fairy feel-good put it out there it sounds really great—like the oil and gas ban. But the reality is the Government haven't done their work. The regulatory impact statement pointed that out in this case like it did in the oil and gas case as well. They are incapable of putting together a nuanced approach that actually looks at the potential outcomes in coming up with a much better policy rather than just banning it and pretending like everything is going to be OK and that is why we are opposing this bill. Thank you.