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:11119. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Housing): Firstly can I welcome the broad support for this bill across Parliamentat the Committee stage. I will briefly summarise the key provisions in these Committee parts and then just briefly speak to the Supplementary Order Paper in my name.This bill does five important things. Firstly it requires smoke alarms in all tenanted properties by 1 July this year—thus the priority for the bill. That is expected to save three lives per year. Actually 75 percent of the fatalities that occur in fires in New Zealand are in tenanted properties. They are higher risk and this bill provides the regulation-making power that we have in line to bring that provision. The Government is particularly keen to get that provision in place by 1 July as per the requirements in this Committee stage because we all know that those fire risks are greatest during the winter months.The second key requirement of this bill is a requirement for all homes to be insulated progressively over a period of 3 years. I do want to note that during the second reading there was some debate about the number of lives that it would save. I do want to correct something. At that time I said that the figure was 23 lives per year that would be saved as a consequence of the provisions. That was on the basis of a sample size of 30000 homes. Actually it is 180000 homes so my ministry has come back to me and said that the insulation provisions in this bill are actually expected to save 129 lives per year. They are very substantive they are important and I welcome the broad support for them.The third provision in this bill toughens up the capacity for the ministry to be able to actually enforce the existing standards. We have housing regulations. They cover issues of heating electrical ventilation and all of those things. The problem is not that the regulations are not there; the problem is a matter of enforcement. What this bill does is create the mechanics in the law to enable my ministry to actually go after that relatively small minority of slum landlords and ensure that those existing regulations are enforced.The fourth change in this part is around retaliatory notice. I am sure a number of MPs have noticed the issue that when a tenant does choose to go to the Tenancy Tribunal and seek to have an application of those housing regulations enforced there is a risk that the landlord will just give them notice. The provisions in this bill extend the period in which we can take a retaliatory notice application to the tribunal and the powers for that to be resolved.The last and the fifth useful part of this Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill is to provide for abandoned tenancies. Nobody wins from properties sitting vacant for months. As a consequence of the fast-track mechanisms in this bill it will improve that. The Supplementary Order Paper in my name No. 177 does make some amendments that I wish to make plain as to their intent and what they do.The first of those is in respect of the enforcement orders that are required in respect of the requirement to fix a property. It is making plain that those orders include those important new insulation and smoke alarm provisions. The second is an issue that has been debated and we want to make absolutely clear that anybody upgrading the insulation of their property before the deadline of 1 July 2019—just 3 years away and I remind Mr Little who is in the Chamber that that is a substantially faster programme of insulating houses than what is provided for in his own bill. What I am making plain with the Supplementary Order Paper is that any insulation work has to be done to the 2008 standard—that is if you are a landlord and your property is not insulated at the moment you cannot whip in and get some 1978 insulation and pretend that that meets the requirements of this bill. The Supplementary Order Paper makes that absolutely explicit: any insulation work has to be done to the 2008 standard.The last point that I would like to make is that the Government is not intending to support the Green Party amendments. They go too far. Let me give a practical example: it would be illegal to rent a home if it did not have visibility strips under the Green Party’s Supplementary Order Paper. Yes we think things like insulation and smoke alarms are right. But I do note that the Green Party’s own offices do not meet—do not meet—the visibility strip requirements that Metiria Turei is imposing on others. We on the Government benches say: “Don’t put rules on others that you’re not prepared to comply with yourself.” It is exactly the same I have to say when I check these standards against my own private home—it does not meet them. We need to focus on those things that are the basic legal requirements and that is what the bill does.