Shearer David: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11141. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I want to pick up exactly where my colleague Kris Faafoi left off because he is absolutely right. Just think about what it would be like to live in a home that may be insulated but without a heater. It does not make it any warmer and that is exactly the point that we are trying to make in the Labour Party and the Greens—frankly everybody except the National Government—in trying to promote and get through a bill that will actually make a real difference.If you look at the statistics and you look at what this bill could potentially do for children—but does not—it could reduce the number of kids being admitted into hospital by about 6 percent and by Otago University’s figures that would be 3000 children a year. That is a very conservative estimate; there are others who believe that it could in fact be much more. Just think: 3000 kids who will not need to go to hospital with rheumatic fever with respiratory conditions with colds—with problems that will get so serious that they need to be admitted. Think of the savings to the taxpayer on our health bill if 3000 children no longer need to go to hospital. There is an overwhelming benefit to New Zealand in this bill being done properly. It is an overwhelming benefit because it costs the Government effectively nothing. I cannot think of a policy change that we could look at right now that we could implement that would have such dramatic impacts on the very people that we want to help most who are the people who are living in poverty and living in rental accommodation. Another statistic—if you can keep this in your head—70 percent of kids who are in poverty are in rental accommodation. So we are addressing the issues affecting most those children who are living in poverty and in the worst conditions. Think of another policy that would be able to target them and have that dramatic effect as quickly.My surprise is that I think this was brought up in 2013 and here we are debating it in 2016. I am thinking: 3 years? That was 9000 hospital admissions ago. We have 16 children dying every year from poverty and housing-related issues. Just imagine—some of those kids might well have been here as a result of this. Three years at 3000 hospital admissions. Think of the cost in dollar terms. Think of the cost in social terms. Think of the cost to those families of having to take their kids to hospitals because of not meeting the basic requirement of having a warm dry house. Many of my colleagues have already spoken about this and the fact that New Zealand is well behind in terms of the housing quality that we have here in New Zealand. This is an Act that has needed to be addressed for some time. I do not know why it has not been addressed more urgently.Here are the three things that we in particular want to be able to see. We want to be able to see that when these houses are brought up to spec—when they are insulated and they are warm and dry—they are monitored by the local council and there is an enforcement policy. I know—certainly from people who are coming into my electorate and talking to me about their housing issues—that many of them are too scared to complain to their landlords because they think their landlords will kick them out. In Auckland where there is a real housing crisis—how anybody could not call it a crisis I do not know; it is a severe crisis—they are scared about complaining to their landlords. So we need an independent arbiter making sure that those houses are monitored and enforced. We need to heat cold houses for God’s sake. It is all very well putting insulation and everything else in it but we need to have a heating source so that those kids stay warm. And we need to make sure that the insulation is up to date—that we have 2008 insulation standards and not insulation standards that are 20 or 30 years old. When I mentioned at the beginning of my contribution this evening being able to save—