Hipkins Chris: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 By way of introductory remarks I agree with many of the principles behind the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. It is a bill that the Labour Party is generally supportive of—obviously with our minority report in mind. I think all Kiwis should have some security in where they live. Kiwis are entitled to some certainty in their accommodation arrangements; they need to be able to put down roots. Their kids need to have stability in where they go to school. Where children live has a direct relationship on the stability of their lives their schooling their early childhood education and so forth. Giving people even those who cannot afford the homeownership dream stability in their rental arrangements is really important. 
People have the right to live peacefully in their homes even if they rent them with relatively minimal disruption. They are also entitled to be treated with respect by their landlords. I have been very concerned in the last few days as the media coverage has reported the way some tenants of State houses are being treated in the neighbourhood of Pomare which is in my electorate. I think that some of the issues those people are confronting have direct relevance to the debate on this bill. The suggestion is that the Government is not living up to its own expectations and the things it talks about in this bill when it comes to State house tenants particularly those in Pomare. 
In the neighbourhood of Pomare over 40 Housing New Zealand Corporation houses are empty. Over 30 of those houses have effectively been abandoned by the Housing New Zealand Corporation and it is not putting new tenants in them. To some extent those houses are uninhabitable as they have been badly run down. Unfortunately by simply abandoning them the Minister of Housing has made the problem so much worse. He has basically abandoned that whole community. We now have whole rows of empty houses that are prone to vandalism and to squatting in some cases. Simply leaving those houses there and saying that it is an antisocial neighbourhood which is what the Minister tried to argue this afternoon makes the problem worse. A whole lot of empty houses in a neighbourhood make the problem worse. Who wants to go and live in a neighbourhood where a whole lot of houses immediately around them will be empty and subject to vandalism squatting and the various other things that go on? The Government is effectively creating a ghost town. The Government is exacerbating problems that may have existed before and it is stereotyping an entire community based on the actions of a small number of people who are being dealt with in other ways. I think it is absolutely shocking that the Government has all but turned its back on an entire community in my electorate. 
Moana Mackey 
: Punishing them. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: It is punishing innocent people. Good families who are trying to do the best by their kids are being punished because the Government is on this grand crusade to persecute a small number of people. I think that that whole community deserves to be treated with a little bit more respect than that. 
I extended an open invitation to the Minister yesterday and I am happy to re-extend that invitation today. If he wants to come and meet the residents of Pomare I would be happy to arrange that. I would happily go with him and show him around the neighbourhood. It is a community that I have spent quite a lot of time in. I have knocked on every single door in Farmer Crescent in that neighbourhood over the last few years. I know many of those residents very well and I am absolutely appalled at the stereotyping that the Minister has undertaken. For him to suggest that they are all antisocial or members of gangs or involved in criminal activity is absolutely disgusting. Those people deserve to be treated with some respect and they are not getting that respect from the Government. I think that is really disappointing when we consider some of the rhetoric that sits behind the bill we are debating at the moment. Clearly it is rhetoric that the Government is not willing to live up to itself. 
These houses have been poorly maintained. Yes they need redevelopment; there is no argument from me about that. As a matter of fact they have been neglected over several decades. I do not think the blame rests with the previous Labour Government or with the National Government that preceded it. I think that generally speaking that community has not had the level of investment in and maintenance of those State houses that it should have. I do not want to go back over a debate on who is responsible for that; I want to know what will happen now who will deal with that situation and who will give the residents of Pomare the type of neighbourhood they can be proud to live in. All we are seeing at the moment is the Government far from dealing with the situation turning its back on the problem and saying that the tenants are to blame for the situation they find themselves in. I simply do not think that is an acceptable argument for the Government to be putting forward. There is so much more that the Government could do in the area. 
We cannot ignore the impact that tenancy arrangements made by the Housing New Zealand Corporation or others have on surrounding communities. For example I have been a regular visitor to the primary school in Pomare and having a whole lot of empty State houses in that neighbourhood has had a big impact on the school. It is struggling to cope with how to respond to that quite understandably. Empty houses have impact not just on individual families; they have an impact on whole communities. I have been really concerned to see the stereotyping of that community that has gone on. I absolutely accept that some people in that community have behaved inappropriately. I do not want to go into that in great detail at the moment but I absolutely object to the idea that an entire community should be punished because of the actions of a few. 
We heard the Minister say in the Chamber this afternoon that it is not the Housing New Zealand Corporation’s policy to leave empty all of the State houses in an area where there have been some evictions but that is exactly what is being done in Pomare. The question that Moana Mackey put to the Minister this afternoon which he did not answer was why Pomare is being treated differently from all of the other State housing neighbourhoods throughout the country. Why is Pomare being picked off and picked on by this Government? The residents of Pomare were told before the last election that if they had maintenance problems with their State housing the National Government would address those. Phil Heatley went up and down the country and said that he was shocked by the state of State houses in New Zealand and that he would do something about it. The residents of Pomare will be struggling to reconcile that with the fact that he has made massive cuts to the maintenance acquisition and redevelopment budgets of the Housing New Zealand Corporation in this year’s Budget. They were looking forward to Phil Heatley making good on the promise he made them before the last election; a promise that he is now very keen to forget—I guess along with all the other promises on the National Party pledge card on tax cuts and so on. 
I will talk a little bit more about some of the other provisions in the bill but I restate the point—I think we should not underestimate its impact—that residents of rental properties whether those properties are owned by the Housing New Zealand Corporation or otherwise are entitled to be treated with respect by their landlords. I assert very strongly that the Government as the landlord of the people in Pomare is not treating those people with the respect they deserve. I think the Minister should do something about that. There are opportunities there. A redevelopment plan is on the books; he could put money into the redevelopment plan and give those residents a neighbourhood that they can be truly proud of. 
We have to deal with the reality that increasingly people are renting their homes rather than owning them. That is a problem. I am moving on now from the issue of Pomare to talk a little bit about some of the issues to do with why residential tenancies are becoming more and more important as more people find themselves tenants rather than homeowners. I did a little bit of research on this issue a few months ago and discovered that purchasing a home prior to the Second World War was about the equivalent of 3½ years of the average annual salary. After the war that figure went up a little bit as members can imagine because people were paying for the cost of a war and the figure went up to about 5 years then back down to about 3½ years at the time the baby boomers were purchasing their homes. Now it costs about 10 years’ of the average salary for people to purchase their own home and that makes homeownership much more of a dream for so many families and it makes tenancy arrangements so much more important. That is something this House needs to consider and that is why some security in tenancy arrangements ensuring that both landlord and tenant are in mutual relationships of respect and making sure that those things are very clear in the law and that the law is up to date are very very important. Increasingly New Zealanders will be finding themselves in rental accommodation because they cannot afford the homeownership dream. 
I conclude my preliminary comments and I look forward to the rest of the debate.