Twyford Phil: Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2423. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Let me address the three objections that I heard from the members opposite. The first is that somehow my bill would result in the unintended consequence of putting housing supply at risk and causing large numbers of rental properties to suddenly no longer be able to be rented. Well if the members opposite had actually taken the trouble to read the bill they would understand that there is a 5-year phase-in period. Every time a new tenancy agreement is signed a landlord is required to meet the new prescribed standards. On average a tenancy agreement lasts 15 months so over that period of 5 years it is easy to see—I think most normal people would understand—that all of the rental properties would then be brought up to scratch.The second objection I heard from members opposite was that somehow this bill was going to result in rents going up. I ask those members to think about this. The estimated cost of retrofitting a standard three-bedroom New Zealand home with heat pumps and insulation would be about $5000 according to the experts. That is a $5000 cost that would have a 15-year lifetime—all right? Let us consider that the median rent in New Zealand is about $360 a week—that rental property a median New Zealand rental property would generate a gross revenue stream over those 15 years of more than $280000. So that is a $5000 outlay to bring the house up to minimum standards to ensure it is not a health hazard for the people living in it as compared with a gross revenue stream over the same time period of more than $280000. On top of that we all know that what sets rents is supply and demand—all right? That is why over the last decade rents have been relatively static in most New Zealand markets—because there is a decent supply of rental properties. So supply and demand is going to mean—Brett Hudson: Rents are going to go up.PHIL TWYFORD: —that rents will not necessarily go up and the member cannot predict that with any confidence. It is not at all true to suggest that this bill will put rents up.Government members also tried to say that the bill has unclear standards but what the bill says is that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority will be mandated to set standards taking into account the economic and social reality of the day and it will be required to update those standards regularly to ensure that they have a positive effect. So the arguments put up by the Government members simply do not stack up.So why does National oppose this bill? I think actually that Pattrick Smellie the journalist had a very interesting theory about why National does not support this bill. What he said was that National’s electoral base tends to include large numbers of small non-professional landlords and National believes it would be politically unpalatable for it to be associated with regulating landlords. What the members opposite seem to be completely oblivious to is that the New Zealand Property Investors Federation has said that this bill is a sensible and pragmatic measure. It supports it. So what is National doing by voting against this bill? It is standing on the side of the worst bottom-of-the-barrel ratbag landlords who are content to compete against other landlords by renting out slums—cold damp housing that is not fit for people to live in. National stands with those people.Labour and the Opposition parties on this side of the House stand with professional landlords who want to rent out good quality houses. We stand on the side of the one-third of New Zealanders who rent. One-third of the New Zealand people live in rental properties. They need warm dry homes for their kids to grow up in but National members do not understand that. They are happy to stand on the side of slum landlords and against ordinary New Zealanders who want their kids to grow up in warm dry homes.