Parmar Parmjeet: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParmar Parmjeet: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11135. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): It is a pleasure to rise and take this call. The Opposition has been going on and on about heating and ventilation so I would like to talk about clause 13 which amends section 45 of the Residential Tenancies Act which states the landlord’s obligations. Yes the landlord’s obligation does not include heating and ventilation as a minimum requirement. There are significant reasons for that. No. 1 is the evidence. The evidence shows that most benefits in terms of health outcomes related to cold houses can be obtained by insulating uninsulated houses rather than adding heating to insulated houses. So it is based on evidence. Yes I understand—it is technical. It is difficult to comprehend. That is why a technical advisory group was set up to look into the idea of a warrant of fitness. That group did come up with ideas for ventilating bathrooms but later on dropped that as a minimum requirement because it realised that that is linked to the behaviour of the person in the house. So it will be the tenants’ obligation to ventilate the bathroom.Given the lack of evidence of adding all of these requirements on top of the requirements that are in this bill I do not see any sense in that. I do not see any sense in that. This is all based on evidence and based on the evidence we are focused on insulation.A second point I want to talk about is clause 6 and I also want to talk about the Green member’s Supplementary Order Paper 172. I do not support that Supplementary Order Paper. The Green member Metiria Turei says that there should be calculations indicating increases in rent. That is not possible because we cannot base this on any baseless assumptions that all landlords will be able to absorb the costs that we keep imposing on them. Every landlord is in a different situation. Some landlords can put in heat pumps and may not pass the cost on to the tenants but others might have to simply because they just cannot afford it.The second thing is that landlords love to have long-term tenants but sometimes if landlords want their property back for some reason they should be able to give notice to their tenants to get their property back. Clause 6 also requires landlords to specify the extent of insulation. They are required to include that in the tenancy agreement. If the house is exempt from that requirement then the landlords are also required to provide that statement in the tenancy agreement. That is a good thing because we are putting the responsibility on to landlords to assess the property and provide that assessment and statement accordingly to their tenants. Yes if tenants feel that they have been given the wrong information that they are not satisfied with the state of the house or that it does not match with the statement that is provided by the landlord then they can get an independent assessment done. They can go to the Tenancy Tribunal and they can get a work order issued for work to be done on that property.We heard about a warrant of fitness for houses. We have been hearing that continually from the Opposition. But the idea of having a kind of warrant of fitness—having an independent body assessing houses—is going to cost. Yes it does cost. These things do cost. We did a cost-benefit analysis. Yes cost-benefit analyses are important. You cannot dismiss them. The cost-benefit analysis said that it would cost $100 million a year—$100 million a year. Yes landlords will pass that cost on to their tenants. So if I break it down to the cost per house it comes to $225 a year for a tenant. This is without providing any additional benefits. So how is it fair to pass on this kind of cost to tenants when there is no benefit for them?The member opposite Peeni Henare spoke about a family he knows that is left with just $15 after paying their rent. This is $15 per week. If this cost of $225 is passed on to that family they will be left with just $10 a week. How fair is that? It is not fair. We do not think that the idea of having a warrant of fitness is good. If I speak about the amounts for unlawful acts I believe that they are very reasonable after the changes that have come after the select committee process especially for breaches under section 54(3) inserted by clause 15 for a retaliatory termination notice. We know that these kinds of notices are not uncommon. After looking at that we decided to increase the amount from $2000 to $4000. Looking at other amounts that are there for unlawful acts to make sure that landlords are complying and also to make sure that tenants are complying—for example if tenants fiddle with their smoke alarms they can be fined up to $3000. When looking at these things I believe that this is reasonable.