Smith Nick: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSmith Nick: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11122. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Housing): I am delighted to have the opportunity to respond to the challenge from Mr Little. There is only one provision in his Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) that is not in the existing regulations and that is the issue of regulating for a minimum temperature in a house. Members on our side of the Chamber say that it is not proper in this bill to regulate for a minimum temperature in a house. What Mr Little needs to go back and check is that housing regulations already require heating. It is already in the current regulations—not the regulations from this bill; it is in the current regulations. Heating ventilation absence of mould electrical safety plumbing integrity—all those things are in the existing regulations so the Leader of the Opposition does need to do his homework.The second point is this: the member has raised the issue of visibility strips and it is not the view of the Government that it should be illegal to rent a house that does not have visibility strips. If people want to have them and want to advocate for them that is fine but I have to confess that my house does not have them. My office does not have them. That does not mean I am an irresponsible parent or homeowner. It is not the sort of thing that should be regulated for and I am surprised that Mr Little is getting his party back into the nanny State routine of saying that visibility strips on all long glass windows must be provided or it will be illegal to rent a house.The third point I want to make in respect of Mr Little’s contribution is that he is mistaken around the issue of insulation standards. Let me take him through it very simply: in 1978 when we first provided compulsory regulations—Andrew Little: That one there?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes for that insulation. Do you know that that 1978 standard reduces heat loss by 84 percent—84 percent? The 2001 standard took that up to 87 percent.Andrew Little: That one?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No that is the 2008 standard righty-o? And here is the issue: why would you want to incur an expense of $3000 ripping out perfectly good insulation to gain only a few percentage points in insulation performance? It does not make sense. It does not stack up to cost benefits. You are going to impose more costs on people than you are going to impose benefits and this is where members of the Labour Opposition live in a world where when you impose regulatory requirements no one gets the cost. Yes you do. We need to—Andrew Little: You’re going backwards Nick.Hon Dr NICK SMITH:—we are going forwards. In fact let me just tell you how far we are going forward: 300000 homes insulated under—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am just going to interrupt and admonish the Leader of the Opposition mainly because the responses coming—[Interruption] Well it is happening both ways. I remind members not to use the second person. Thank you.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: This bill’s provisions around insulation around smoke alarms around being able to enforce existing standards and around the abandonment notices and the retaliatory notices are a huge step forward for the standard of residential tenancy agreements. I just encourage Parliament to support this bill to drop the nit-picking and to actually focus on what is a big step up in the standard of New Zealand housing.