Sio William: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11127. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I want to make some preliminary statements and then make reference to clause 4 clause 23 and clause 37 of Part 1 and then if I have time I do want to speak in support of Metiria Turei’s Supplementary Order Paper 172.I want to put to this Committee that we have three significant crises that this country is facing. The first one is housing—the lack of affordable housing and cold and damp housing. The second one is the growing number of children living in poverty. The third one is the growing gap in equality. All three contribute to another growing crisis—that is sickly and unhealthy children—but I am told by those in the medical profession that if we get the affordable housing and if we get housing to be more warm and more healthy then we can fix the growing number of sickly and unhealthy children.Firstly I want to ask the Minister a question. In a statement that he released as a preamble to this bill he said that this bill was primarily about affordable or cheap insulation and yet I heard earlier that he talked about saving lives. I want to ask the Minister: what is the primary focus of this bill? Is it about cheap insulation or about saving lives? I put it to you that if you are saying it is about saving lives then I do not believe—I have to agree with my colleague who spoke earlier Denis O’Rourke—that you are going to achieve that. And I do not believe the figures that you have put out particularly when you hear the Children’s Commissioner say that as a result of cold damp and unhealthy housing we have 42000 kids going to hospital and 15 deaths a year. Am I correct—it is 15?Hon Member: Yes that’s right.Su’a WILLIAM SIO: So I am asking the Minister: is it true that the primary focus of this bill is about saving lives or is it true what he released in a preamble statement leading to this bill that it was about cheap insulation? I do not believe that you can have both. If you are going to save the lives of children and families at risk then you cannot have the primary focus of this bill being cheap insulation. It concerns me what has been raised earlier that those houses that were built prior to 1978 will get insulation retrofitted but those houses built after 1978 will remain as they are.I have to say that many of the houses in South Auckland go back to the 1940s but some of the new houses that come after 1978 do not have insulation. These were built—I think the Hon Maurice Williamson made reference to it—during the period of those homes that had the leaky home syndrome. These were the houses that were built during that era after 1978—the 1980s. So those houses are not going to be healthy or safe for children if we are not going to compel their owners to retrofit them with insulation that is of the time. By leaving out those houses that were built after 1978 you have got a gap of 33 years.I do ask the Minister: is this about saving lives or is it about providing cheap insulation? If it is about providing cheap insulation there we go again—you lead yourself to the condemnation of the public because the public will be seeing this and they will say: “There he goes again—supporting his mates rather than doing the right thing for the country.” I want to then ask in terms of clause 4 of Part 1: do the provisions that extend insulation apply to garages and to sleepouts? Because—Hon Member: What about cars?Su’a WILLIAM SIO: And cars—well ha ha! Right now at this very moment we have a number of families with children living in garages—garages with concrete floors. There is no insulation on the walls. There is merely a piece of iron around that and a boarding up against the wall but there is also no insulation.