Woods MeganThird ReadingHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): I move That the Residential Tenancies (Healthy Homes Standards) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. What we have in front of us is a piece of legislation that is not about whether or not New Zealand should have healthy homes standards. This is a question that we as a Government made a priority in our first weeks of Government to progress. We saw that we had an inadequate level of measures in our rental properties to ensure that these were for their benefit of New Zealanders and their health. Whether that be around insulation standards whether that be around the provision of ventilation whether that be around the provision of efficient and affordable heat sources from the very beginning of our Government this was a cornerstone project that we put into play. I think it's really important that we understand that that is not what we're debating.What we are debating is about the ability of landlords whether they be from the public sector or the private sector to comply with deadlines that were set in 2019 before the world had even heard of the global pandemic that was coming. I don't think it's fair on landlords to say they should have completed it by the time COVID arrived this had an end date of 2023 or 2024 so I think that is unreasonable. What landlords whether they were public or private were gearing up for was compliance in 2023 or 2024 depending on whether or not they were a public or private landlord. Of course if they were a public landlord they were required to have an earlier finish date than landlords in the private sector.What we are saying in the face of a global pandemic that caused the world to shut down that caused our cities and towns and centres around New Zealand to go into lockdown periods that has caused global supply chain issues whether or not we should extend out by 12 months the ability for our landlords to comply or whether or not we should just leave the status quo and knowingly put landlords—both community housing providers Kāinga Ora and private landlords—in the position of breaking the law. Turning a blind eye to that is not an option for me as a Minister. It is our job to make sure that we are making laws that do not put New Zealanders in the position of knowingly breaking the law.I think we need to also pause and think about what we have achieved. In the face of a global pandemic we have our public landlord Kāinga Ora 84 percent compliant or having the builders in the houses doing the job as at the latest data. We think by the end date it will probably be around 95 percent compliant. This is something for us to celebrate. Would I have liked it to have been 100 percent? Of course I would. Would I have liked there to be no COVID no lockdown no interruptions to supply chains? I think all of us would wish that for our world but that has not been the case.We have 85 percent of private landlords in the best data that we have who either have complied or are in the process of complying. I don't think it's correct and we shouldn't set this up as some kind of Olympic sprint between the public and the private sector as some members of this House have tried to do. I want to congratulate those private sector landlords who have complied but to claim that they have done better than the public sector is nonsense and wrong. If you look at that data 15 percent of our private landlords had complied and 70 percent of those were in the process of starting to comply. It simply isn't correct to say that and I don't think it's useful.What we need to do is make sure that we are working towards our rental properties in New Zealand being warm and dry and being something that is for the wellbeing of New Zealanders. We make no apologies for taking a pragmatic approach and saying that when we do see that there is going to be an issue with compliance given what we've all been through in the last 2½ years that we might have to take some of those pragmatic approaches we will do that. Thank you very much Madam Speaker.