Mackey Moana: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I thank the Minister of Housing for his very brief comments on the issue of letting fees. As I said to him Labour members were not arguing against the level playing field; we were asking why he was opposed to the person who engages the letting agency paying that fee as opposed to the tenant. I do not believe that he addressed that question at all and I would very much appreciate it if in the interests of moving the Committee stage along he would be prepared to address why he thinks it is unacceptable that the person who engages a business is the one who pays for it. I look forward to his answering that question. 
I will pick up on my amendment that was alluded to by my colleague Sue Moroney. It is about what happens to tenants during major events. Over the time of the International Sevens held in Wellington earlier this year boarding-house tenants in Wellington were evicted en masse. They were told that they had to leave their homes—well boarding houses are not really homes; their places of residence—so that their rooms could be charged out to tourists here for the rugby. That move was to my knowledge unprecedented; it was unexpected. The police hospitals and emergency accommodation providers in Wellington were overwhelmed by the sudden outpouring of extremely vulnerable tenants on to the streets of Wellington. It raised a very very serious issue. Because there is no such thing as a secure tenancy in New Zealand that situation is possible. 
I live in a very beautiful part of the country which is incredibly popular over summer. I know people who are told every summer that they have to move out of their homes. For a couple of months they have to move out so that their landlords can rent the places out for three or four times the cost to people who come to the East Coast and Gisborne for their holidays. I think that is incredibly unfair but I have tried to be extremely reasonable with the Government on this issue. I have not tried to cover off the holiday situation in my amendment; I have kept it to the schedule of major events. Let us keep focused on that for now and let us say that it is illegal to evict tenants “for the purpose of providing short term accommodation for a major event” as listed in the Major Events Management Act. 
This is a serious issue. I have already been approached by tenants in Auckland who have been told by their landlords that they will have to move out over the time of the Rugby World Cup. And why would they not be told that? There is price-gouging going on in Auckland over the Rugby World Cup with some hotels charging thousands and thousands of dollars a night— 
Darien Fenton 
: And locking their workers out. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —and locking their workers out at the same time. They are trying to make sure that their workers cannot have any salary negotiations during the Rugby World Cup period because God forbid that workers should be able to stand up for their rights and ruin a good time! 
Coming back to my amendment the fact is there are private sector tenants who have already been told that they will be issued with a 90-day notice to leave their homes—their homes. They have children—and I know that the Government is going to give schools a holiday over that time—and they will have to move away from their communities. Those tenants will have to find somewhere to put all their furniture and they will have to pay to move out and then move back in. They have been told that they can move back in at the end of the period but when they have asked about their furniture and said that storing it was really expensive the landlords have very helpfully said that they could leave it so that the people coming to stay over the time of the Rugby World Cup could use it which solves the problem that a lot of those people will want to live in furnished homes. I have no problem with people who live in their own home letting it out—of course not. A lot of them will get out of Auckland for the duration of the Rugby World Cup and they will charge people to stay in their homes. They will make a bit of money and I say good luck to them. But when a landlord is evicting a family—a family that the landlord has a tenancy agreement with—purely to make money by providing accommodation for visitors over the time of the Rugby World Cup I do not believe that that is something this House should be endorsing. 
I spoke to the Minister about it some months ago and suggested that he get his officials to work on the matter so that he could rely on their wording and not on wording that I had come up with. I asked the Minister in the select committee the other week whether he would support my amendment but he has not told me yet. I sincerely hope the Government will support the amendment. 
The other thing is that boarding-house tenants and people living in short-stay motels have also been told that they have to get out for the duration of the Rugby World Cup. That provides two problems. There is the moral argument that it is just wrong to kick people out of their homes so that someone can make a huge packet of money by providing accommodation to tourists over the time of the Rugby World Cup. But the second problem is the question of where these people are going to go. When people are evicted en masse out of boarding houses and out of their short-stay accommodation they will pour on to the streets of Auckland at a time when emergency accommodation providers will not be in a position to assist them. I think the Minister should grab the issue with two hands and say that yes the Government will deal with it. He should draw a line in the sand and say that this practice is not OK. I have not had any indication from the Minister about whether he will support my amendment but I sincerely hope he will. 
I will go on to two other amendments in my name which relate to representation at the Tenancy Tribunal. Labour has put forward two amendments on this matter because there are two issues. The first is that currently when tenants go to the Tenancy Tribunal the monetary value of what is in question has to be at least $3000 in order for them to be able to take a representative with them. Labour under the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill that we put up got rid of that provision altogether. We said that tenants were allowed to have representation at the Tenancy Tribunal. That was not something we did lightly because the Tenancy Tribunal is intended to be an expeditious agency. It is intended to be low cost and it is intended to be fast. There is absolutely no question that once a whole lot of lawyers and everything else are added into the mix things can become more protracted. But the Government is ignoring the reality that often the people the tenants are going up against are professionals. The people the tenants are going up against are tenancy managers property managers and the Housing New Zealand Corporation. I do not know on what planet it could be said that Housing New Zealand is not a professional advocate. We were told during the process that the Housing New Zealand Corporation could say that yes the tenant can have an advocate as well. But that does not happen. Labour thinks it should be clear that a tenant has a right to representation. 
We are talking often about people who have English as a second language. We are talking sometimes about people who are illiterate and not able to read the documents in front of them. We are talking about people who are simply unfamiliar with a tribunal process such as that of the Tenancy Tribunal. We are talking about people who can be overwhelmed by it. We are talking sometimes about people who have mental health issues or drug and alcohol addiction issues. We are talking sometimes about people who are in extremely vulnerable situations such as those who have escaped from domestic violence. Labour members think these people should be allowed to have representation at the Tenancy Tribunal. Indeed it may actually speed up the process because sometimes tenants do not know what their rights are so they argue everything under the sun. Sometimes having an advocate there to focus them on their strongest argument and telling them to forget about the rest because those issues are not covered by the law can help the process. 
So I have two amendments in my name in relation to the Tenancy Tribunal. The first is to reduce the monetary threshold from $6000—the Government has lifted it from $3000 to $6000—to $100. The more important one is to get rid of that threshold altogether and to not have a prohibition on representation at the Tenancy Tribunal. We have put forward two issues. If the Government says that no it does want all tenants to have representation that is fine but let us reduce the monetary threshold down to $100. I can tell the Committee that people who live in boarding houses do not have $6000 worth of stuff. They do not. They might have $100 worth of stuff or $200 worth but they do not have even $3000 worth so their entire life’s possessions could be being thrown out by a boarding-house landlord—their entire life’s goods. The fact that the worth of their entire life’s goods amounts to only $250 means that according to this Minister and this Government they should not have representation to help them fight eviction even though everything they own—every single thing—is at risk. To some members of this Committee $6000 might not seem like a lot of money but I can tell them that to boarding-house tenants it is far more money than they would ever hope to see or ever hope to own. 
A number of cases that have gone before the Tenancy Tribunal have been about mental health patients living in boarding houses ending up having to go into care for a number of days. When they come back they find out that their landlords have evicted them while they were away—because boarding-house tenants currently have no protection under the residential tenancies laws and we have been waiting a long time for them to get coverage—and all their stuff has been chucked away. They want to go to the Tenancy Tribunal but their stuff is not worth enough to trigger their being able to take some help to the tribunal. Well I do not think that is fair and I do not think that most members of this Committee would think it was fair. 
I urge the Government to support those two amendments. I urge the Minister to stand and take a call.