Doocey Matt: Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDoocey Matt: Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2414. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): I rise to speak to this first reading of the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill a bill that the Government will not be supporting. I acknowledge the sponsor Phil Twyford and congratulate him on his member’s bill being selected from the ballot. As a new MP I do look forward to that opportunity myself. Mr Twyford raises some good points I think. Reducing the number of admissions for the vulnerable be they young or old to the health care system—I agree with that. Reducing the cost and more preventative intervention for the health care system—I agree with that. But I suppose what I do not agree on and I will be raising these three points over the course of my talking tonight is the unintended risk to housing supply for this bill the unintended increased rents that this bill might cause and very much the unclear level of standards that this bill will set.Just looking at this bill—I must admit that I have not had a lot of time to look at it tonight—it is intended to ensure that every rental home social or private in New Zealand meets minimum standards for heating insulation indoor temperatures ventilation draft stopping and drainage. Mr Twyford is right about the health effects of cold damp and leaky homes. As someone who has had a career in health specifically mental health I understand how this can manifest into health conditions such as bronchitis and asthma and also how it manifests into mental health issues for people who are stressed and how it causes depression and anxiety. I suppose that is why this National Government has invested in insulating every State house that can be insulated as well as trialling minimum quality standards on Housing New Zealand houses.The Government though is yet to make a decision on minimum quality standards to other social housing providers and to the private rental market. As I say this bill does pose an unintended consequence or threat to housing supply. The advice is that thousands of houses will never be able to be insulated and will never meet the standards required. I suppose as someone who represents an electorate that was severely hit by the first earthquake and consequently the second earthquake and the lack of housing in Canterbury we need to make sure we use all the housing stock we have. “Waimak” has the third-largest population growth of all the electorates and we need to ensure and sustain the housing stock we have and not do anything to incur any further shortage that unfortunately a disaster like the earthquakes has caused. We have seen a significant population shift in Canterbury and the housing market is responding to that.Could I also share some experiences of mine of the way social providers and also community providers are responding to this very important need to make our houses in New Zealand drier and warmer. Last Friday I went and met with the Community Energy Action group in Canterbury a great fantastic organisation funded by the Government and also voluntary funding. It sends its assessors out to assess houses in order to understand how it can warm them up and make them healthier to live in. It has various means for that. One is the Curtain Bank where it takes donations of curtains puts lining in them and provides these free of charge to any houses that might like them.It also provides advice on insulation whether that be in the floors in the walls or in the ceilings. We do have a problem with modern design and the downlights in the ceiling. We find that the insulation has been cut away around those downlights so the group has very ingeniously developed a plastic dome that sits on top of that so the insulation can go over the top. It also gives advice on how to use a woodburner more effectively and how to use plastic strips across single windows as well. So that very much gives an example and a flavour of organisations already out there supporting the need and demand of making houses drier and warmer.On Monday I also went and met the Comcare Trust which has recently been announced to provide social housing and emergency housing in Canterbury with the VisionWest Community Trust. It is a very much needed housing supply for 8 weeks for singles and families. It was very interesting understanding their sense of definitions of homelessness. They talked about street homelessness people who are very problematic in housing as well as people who are waiting on the Ministry of Social Development wait-lists and waiting for housing to come up. They were very much talking about building new social housing that will be dry warm and insulated.Just to summarise I am not supporting this bill because of those three things. I am very much concerned about this bill—the unintended risk to housing supply whether this means that once the bill comes in tenancies will have to be cancelled and people will have to be put out on the street; and also the unintended consequence of increased rents. Will this force very vulnerable people in the rental market to seek further overcrowded housing as this level of rentals is taken off the market? And I am very much unclear about the level of standards that this bill will be set at. It would be interesting to hear further information about what the levels of standards of this bill will be. This is the reason that I do not support this bill.