Ngaro Alfred: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNgaro Alfred: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11130. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ALFRED NGARO (National): It is quite an honour to be able to take a call. I want to start by first acknowledging the comment by Mr Peeni Henare when he said that small things do make a big difference. I absolutely agree. For almost 20 years I worked in the community of Glen Innes—for a number of years—which had the largest State housing stock in New Zealand at one stage. Almost 2500 homes were there. I know that in working with a small trust with the families the children and the young people in that community and wanting to meet their needs—I know there were many times that there were cold homes that I went into. There were homes in which there were people who were struggling where there was poverty and where there were issues.Although the talk on the other side is about housing poverty and health conditions I saw all those three things and under a Labour Government of 9 years not once did I see any change in that. I can name the streets: Fenwick Avenue that is there; Flanders Street; and Ropata Avenue. Those are the streets with houses that families were in and not once in those 9 years did I see insulation going into those homes addressing the issues of poverty. Even the Salvation Army’s state of the nation report talked about how that needed to happen.But I am talking about the bill here in its Committee stage. What is really important are the issues. I want to address the issues around insulation because talking about insulation—there has been outcry over the fact that this does not meet the standard. I understand that many of those members may not have had the report. We know that the Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ) had a report and a survey. It said that there were 450000 homes out there that needed some form of insulation. When Mr O’Rourke talked about the sense of uniform ability—well if he had read the report he would realise that at least 100000 of those homes are unable to be insulated because of their physical dimensions.I want to point to the two different sizes of insulation that have been making their way around the Opposition benches. Having come from a construction background as an electrician by trade what I can say to you is this: while they can bandy around and show two different forms of insulation what they will not understand is that to truly insulate a property and a home it is like for instance how you need to think about a chilly bin or a cooler. In order to get 100 percent insulation you need to make sure it is watertight and airtight. You cannot do that in a house but what you can do is move towards that with double-glazing of windows. It is insulation in ceilings and in the floor—that is what this Government is moving towards. That is what this bill is moving towards and has the best reasonable and rational point of view in what it is doing.What do we say then to the point of insulation from 1978? Well there was an energy performance survey that was done in which it clearly states that obviously from 1978 the sealing of the insulation that was installed to the new standard of 2008—when the Opposition members talk about it they will keep holding up the two different levels of insulation. If you take the technical aspect—not just your own philosophy or ideology—the technical issue is that from that form of insulation to this form of insulation the efficacy and the efficiency that you will try to gain is not there. As long as the insulation retains itself to that 1978 standard—to try to include that is not there. The technical aspect of different insulation does not weigh up.Let us go a little bit further than that because the BRANZ report clearly states this: the average cost of insulation is $3400 per home for ceiling and floor right? Therefore if you were to upgrade that form of insulation to try to get it back to what you would call the standard of 2008 what is the cost? It is $2800 on average. Where is the cost saving in that? There is none. There is no cost saving.But here is the question that Mr O’Rourke then brought: will that cost go back to the tenants? He said that of course it will not. Mr O’Rourke needs to realise this: over 70 percent to almost 80 percent of current landlords in New Zealand are who? They are mum and dad investors with one rental property. That is the average. They are good people who are out in our communities who want to do the right thing and who are doing the right thing. That is what we are saying inside of this legislation. If we are going to try to have a uniform response to try to make sure that everyone has to impose these costs then mum and dad and average investors will simply say: “We have to push this cost on to the tenant.” That is not rational. That is not reasonable. That is the reason why we believe the standards that we are taking are making a difference.I just want to make some other comments in regard to regulatory powers that are inside the bill. There was the issue around ventilation. The Housing Improvement Regulations 1947 clearly state the fact that households need to provide adequate ventilation and also the heating that is inside of that. The question was asked to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and it looked and reviewed this. What clearly came back from MBIE was this: that the cost that is incurred will be passed on to the tenant.