Faafoi Kris: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11133. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): It is a genuine pleasure to speak to the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. Can I refer to clause 38 which I think a number of my colleagues have referred to previously in the debate.Like Denise Roche who said in her speech that she grew up in a railway house I too spent most of my younger years in a State house in Christchurch. I do not think I left it until I was about 20. I think my parents moved in there about 1976 so it would have been prior to the 1978 age of insulation. I think my colleague Jacinda Ardern poses a decent question to ask of the Minister for Building and Housing around any work the Government has done around how this piece of work will make the lives of those people in low to medium income families better off and safer and healthier in those homes. The reason I ask that is that I grew up in one of those homes. I suffered from asthma; I still do to this day and I think it is because of the lack of decent insulation my family home had that I still suffer from asthma from time to time—sometimes it is due to my own management but most of it I believe is because of the home that I grew up in. I do not say that lightly. There were a couple of occasions my late father told me when the doctor said “Well that was a close one.” when I was young because I had such bad asthma attacks that I nearly died.I believe we come to this House with a responsibility to make the lives of people who follow us markedly better. It is certainly one of the things I push for in my own electorate. With all sincerity and all generosity and fairness to the Government although it is trying to make an effort with this piece of legislation I do not think it goes far enough. I fear that the same kind of experiences that my family went through with me having asthma when I grew up will happen to families who grow up in the same poorly insulated homes which we are allowing to continue to happen under this piece of legislation. On this side of the Chamber we have argued that as well as insulation there needs to be a decent mode of heating—something again that my family did not have. We had fan heaters which cost us far too much to run—and I am talking here of the 1980s and 1990s.I am asking in all seriousness why families who are on low incomes and in poorly insulated houses have to go through the same experience my family went through 20 years ago. Why should parents have to worry about their children who get constantly admitted into hospital with illnesses like asthma like me—and in some cases those children will pass away unnecessarily—because we here in Parliament have not learnt the lessons of 20 to 30 years ago?I do not think my parents overly enjoyed the experience of taking me to the hospital and seeing me nearly pass away from an asthma attack yet in this Parliament we seriously think it is OK to let the conditions of a 1978 insulation standard continue to be OK for families here in New Zealand. It is simply not good enough. I was one of the lucky ones but I still go to hospital every so often with an asthma attack. But why should we allow this to continue to happen?Someone from that side of the Chamber—and they already have—stood up and said: “Well what did you guys do in your last period of Government?”. Are we here to sit here and continue to play politics like that?Hon Jo Goodhew: Ha!KRIS FAAFOI: Is that all you are going to say? And there is laughter over there. But I do not think it is good enough that we allow conditions in terms of heating and insulation to continue to be those of 1978 1980s and 1990s standards. The Government members can laugh at my speech—they can say whatever they like—but what I think is that we deserve to do better for the families out there like mine who are living in these substandard conditions and who do not want their kids to go to hospital with life-threatening illnesses not just once but constantly.I think we owe it to the people of New Zealand who are in these conditions and these substandard houses to make sure that they can live a decent life. I was lucky enough to do that because my parents cared for me and looked after me and I think other families deserve that too. When people ask why I am a member of Parliament I say it is because I got the lucky chance to have a decent home and be looked after and I am in Parliament to be able to make sure we do better for the children in New Zealand. We can do better and we must do better.