Eagle PaulPAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's certainly a pleasure to be talking on housing again. The last time I was in here it was to talk about letting fees but today it's another really important part of the coalition Government's business—Hon Phil Twyford: Hard-working Government.PAUL EAGLE: —the hard-working coalition Government's business—to fix the national housing crisis. I was going to say National's housing crisis" but that would be completely unfair of me. But I do want to thank the Minister of Housing and Urban Development for this comprehensive suite of housing initiatives to fix the housing crisis. This is one small but very very important part of that. This one is focusing on rental housing. Sometimes we get confused between public housing and KiwiBuild but this is rental housing; so it's good to get some focus on the many thousands of Kiwis who are now renting. They can't afford to purchase a home in New Zealand—maybe Gore. I was in Gore yesterday.Hamish Walker: You looked at home Paul!PAUL EAGLE: I looked right at home as the member said. So did my colleague next to me. Housing affordability in Gore is fine but in the city of Wellington in the electorate of Rongotai you need $1 million to buy a house and if you want to rent one I would say you'd be looking at just under $1000 for a three-bedroom home. But certainly with a wonderful MP like myself and part of a wonderful coalition Government—Greg O'Connor: One of the best.PAUL EAGLE: Thank you colleague. How humble and modest of me.Hon Member: Good looking.PAUL EAGLE: Good looking? This is getting better.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! This is a lovely valedictory speech but it is not a second reading debate speech. So if you could come back to it.PAUL EAGLE: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I'm constantly distracted by all sides of the House. But can I just go back to the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill (No 2). I am part of the Governance and Administration Committee. It's a good committee. I do want to thank the submitters on this bill. My colleague talked about who came in. Just for me personally I ran a couple of public meetings on this as a hard-working electorate member of Parliament does.Greg O'Connor: Hardest-working.PAUL EAGLE: Hardest-working sorry. But the best thing about that is we got a good balance of people. I'm all about the grassroots the retail and person on the ground and got good feedback from tenants from individuals from their advocacy group Renters United and also from property managers on what the impacts were. I'm not going to embark on a finger-pointing exercise like the previous speaker Simon O'Connor but what I think this brings is a balance between tenants and landlords. There were good stories about why there needs to be some clarity for certainty on both sides for the tenants and the landlords.There are three main aims that I've managed to summarise. One is that clarity around the law with respect to the tenants' liability for damage. Secondly to make sure that the Act applies to all premises and sites for residential use even if they are unlawful—and we saw that in Wellington City high-rises when we had a wee earthquake issue and they had some illegal tenants there. Third is that contamination issue around meth and several of you who have spoken on this have spoken about that already. If you were to look at one aspect of it and say "What is the biggest change?" it is in fact around those contamination provisions.Just some of the detail around the bill: it's been amended to remove references to "methamphetamine" and instead refer generically to "contaminants". There was absolutely a lot of debate and discussion around that in the committee to say "How do we ensure that we use a term that's appropriate relevant but also recognisable both practically and legally?" Some of the submitters said the level of risk from exposure to meth which has been smoked in a home may be less serious than the health risks from other toxic and infectious substances such as asbestos toxins and lead paint.We also have several other parts of the bill which I could talk to but I'm just going to leave it there. I think I've made my points. I commend this bill to the House."