Hague Kevin: Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) — First Reading[Sitting date: 04 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10821. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): When we hear the word “home” we think of belonging security warmth and safety. The Green Party believes that every person in this country has the right to those qualities—the right to a home. We have campaigned on this issue for many years now and we are proud of the role that we have played both in partnership with Labour and then subsequently with National to try to ensure that we could get as close to that as we could. We have done so because we recognise that those qualities are the ones that are necessary absolutely necessary if a person is to be able to go on to fulfil their potential as a human being. That is surely the fundamental responsibility of a Government. That is the very first thing that a Government owes its citizens.I want to quote from someone who wrote to me and said: “For what it’s worth I have one of the better and more expensive rental properties in Porirua East and mine would meet just one of the criteria which is decent ventilation—as in the kitchen windows don’t shut flush. It has broken toilets cracked guttering old wiring with broken power points and blown light fittings. No internal heating—there’s a broken heat pump that the landlord won’t fix—no underfloor insulation and mice holes in the walls and ceiling. This was the best I could afford after a month of hunting and applications.” The health consequences of poor housing are manifold—and others have already spoken about them—but they are of two sorts. One is a consequence of a shortage of affordable supply and that is the consequence of overcrowding with its consequences of rheumatic heart disease of respiratory infections and of skin infections. The other type of consequence is the consequences that come from poor quality housing: cold housing draughty housing and mouldy housing.In the Government’s recently announced health strategy one of its actions is to support families especially those with newborn babies to have healthy housing—warm dry and smoke-free—and address crowding issues to reduce transmission of infectious diseases infant mortality and family stress. But I do not actually believe it. I do not believe it because that poor quality housing actually serves as a safety valve for National’s complete failure to actually supply affordable housing in sufficient quantity. That is why Nick Smith’s legislation is such a pale facsimile of what is actually required with its failure to address many of the significant issues and with its inclusion of obsolete insulation standards. His claim to the House this evening that many of the issues like home heating are already dealt with by existing law and regulation is disingenuous because he knows that his Government does not enforce that law and does not enforce those regulations and he has not taken any of the opportunities that have been available to him to actually change that.Minister Smith said that he would welcome the opportunity for this bill to be debated in select committee. Paul Foster-Bell has said the same thing. Well that is a traditional way of dealing with disagreements about some legislation and improvements that could be made to legislation. Why then is National not voting for this bill tonight?It is not voting for the bill tonight because fundamentally it wants to protect that safety valve for itself. In doing so it fails that basic test of a Government that basic duty it owes every person in this country to a warm safe healthy and secure home.