Little AndrewHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm happy to rise to take yet another call on this very important and innovative piece of legislation that does new things as we sit here and speak.I think this year's general election will go down in history as the one where the party opposite the members opposite not only lost the election but they lost their coalition partners that actually brought some sense to the debate on this piece of legislation. The two coalition partners they had the Māori Party and United Future supported this legislation. They were ahead of their big brother because they knew what was good. So let me address the issue about what clause 3 does when it says that this bill or this Act amends the Residential Tenancies Act and it does it in this fundamental way that members opposite clearly have not cottoned on to just yet.They have focused on the regulation-making power and indeed that is a party that when it was in Government passed legislation that had regulation-making powers that did not specify the content of the regulations because the reason you legislate for a regulation-making power is so you don't put in the primary legislation the detail that you want. Instead you do as my learned colleague the Hon Phil Twyford pointed out: you go through a consultation process on this very broad area. Hear from the landlords; don't just listen to Andrew King from the New Zealand Property Investors' Federation according to the honourable member from Clutha-Southland.We don't just listen to them; we listen to everybody who's got a stake in this—not just the landlords and not just the progressive landlords who are up for doing the right thing because they are good Kiwis and good New Zealanders and for that matter not just the slum landlords but everybody in between. And we talk to the tenants as well and the tenancy advocates and we've probably talked to some of the Tenancy Tribunal adjudicators as well to look at how this thing can be perfected because we are all here to achieve perfection in legislation and in regulation.So you legislate for the regulation but here's the kicker. Here's what this bill does—that you haven't cottoned on to yet—that is different from National Party legislation. You see this bill is about making it real.Hon Michael Woodhouse: How?Hon ANDREW LITTLE: It's about making it meaningful. By requiring—and I know the members are eager to find out because clearly they haven't read the bill. I can imagine the grief you go through from Government to Opposition. You're struggling to read this legislation and it's been before the House before. But here's the thing: it requires in tenancy agreements—and you don't have to wait five years for this; this will happen from 1 July 2019—to have in them the requirements or have clauses that fulfil the requirements of this legislation.The members opposite know because the bill says it. The regulations will be in place and enforced by then. So tenancy agreements—the document that is signed between the tenant and the landlord and mostly lodged with the Tenancy Tribunal because that's where bonds are paid—will have written down in these clauses these obligations that will bind the parties. We're not going to repeat what has happened up to now the regime that the last Government was happy with which was: we'll do a bunch of regulations knowing that no one is ever going to enforce them—the odd exceptional case perhaps but no one ever enforces them. That doesn't work. That's not real. That's not how people live their lives. People don't spend their lives looking at Government regulations and looking at the Gazette notices. Half of New Zealand wouldn't know what a Gazette notice is. But people do know—those who are renting do know—what's in their tenancy agreement. This makes it real. This makes the difference.That's why when in clause 3 it says This Act amends the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 (the principal Act)." that is one of the key amendments—are we allowed to use "key" any more in this House? I think we are now. It's safe to use the word. That is one of the principal amendments that it requires these obligations to appear in the written tenancy agreement. I know the members opposite are stunned into silence when they hear that because they clearly did not read the bill beforehand to see that that's what is in it. That's what makes this unique and it is great that tonight in this debate we take occasion to celebrate the glory of debate and discussion and we get better understanding and I hope now that the members opposite do better understand exactly what this legislation is doing and why it is doing it."