Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): This bill is one of a dozen that was part of National's approach to dealing with the housing challenges. It's part of the substance where what we have seen so much from Labour on this issue is spin and hollow commitments and I want to make that contrast. There are three significant changes in this bill. Firstly it takes a very balanced and sensible approach to the issue of damage that's caused by tenants. What this bill effectively means is that if a tenant deliberately damages a property or commits a criminal act they're fully liable for the damages—that makes sense. If it's a natural disaster of which the tenant's got absolutely no control that responsibility rightly should sit with the landlord.What this bill does is take a pragmatic and fair approach to where there's accidental damage. What triggered this legislation that I was the architect of was a case in Dunedin and what is called the Osaki case. The tenants in this particular property were doing some cooking. They were careless. The house burnt down. The house was insured. The insurance company chose to sue those tenants for $200000 worth of damage. It is my view and I think it is the view of this House in supporting that bill that that was an unjust outcome—that when a home is insured when the damage is not deliberate then the tenant should not be liable for that. Then further down the track we got quite a bizarre court ruling that the tenant wasn't even responsible in terms of their bond.So the very pragmatic view a very National Party approach is to say Yes; if you're a tenant if you're careless if you leave a pot on the stove that results in a house being burnt down you will lose your bond—be careful—but you won't be bankrupted" and I think that is fair and reasonable and that's what this bill does.The second thing this bill does is that there were appalling examples of where people were tempted to rent garages commercial buildings and other premises that were totally unsuitable for being used as residential homes. When cases were taken to the Tenancy Tribunal the Tenancy Tribunal was not able to prosecute that landlord because it was outside the jurisdiction of the Tenancy Tribunal. It's right that we are fixing that law.Thirdly again in National's very sensible approach we've dealt with the issue of contamination and the issue of meth. It is true that there was an overreaction. The bit that members opposite do not grasp and they need to address it is that the standards process where Ministers are not allowed to interfere that let us have a totally unrealistic meth standard has rightly been fixed—and I commend the Government for that. What has not been fixed is the flawed standards committee process that allowed those that are in the meth contamination industry to be able to distort the standard-setting process and ending up with something that did not work for New Zealand.I do want to respond to the comments that were made by Paul Quinn about Ministers because this just shows the degree of the flakiness of this Government's more general approach around housing. This is as I said in my opening the 12th housing piece of legislation that resulted from National's reforms whether it was special housing areas whether it was changes to the Resource Management Act whether it's the new Auckland Unitary Plan or whether it's the Crown land programme there has been a massive—how many bills have we had? How much housing legislation have we actually had from this Government during their 18 months? It's all very well for them to stand up and use extravagant language like "a crisis"—actually the public does not give a hoot as to whether you call it a "crisis" or a "challenge." What the public wants to know is that you're passing good laws and doing good reforms that will make a material and practical difference.I'm happy to have my record there any day and compared with the Government's fraud that makes up KiwiBuild. If any building company had been out and promised 10000 houses and—as Judith Collins exposed today—delivered 87 they'd be in the courts they'd be wound up for fraud and they would be on their back. When are we going to get an apology from members opposite for the electoral fraud that they committed with their KiwiBuild policy? This bill is evidence of the substance that makes up National's approach to the issues of housing."