Ardern Jacinda: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11131. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): We have had a lot of discussion about cost-benefit analysis and obviously with any significant legislative change there is an expectation not just because of the requirements around setting out regulatory impact statements that at least some cost-benefit analysis is done. But it is really up to a Minister and a department to factor in the range of issues that they would like to include in that cost-benefit analysis. In this debate an area that seems to be severely lacking in the Minister for Building and Housing’s logic around the cost of for instance including standards in the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill around heating or even including higher standards around insulation is that it does not factor in the cost to the State in the cost-benefit analysis of some of the issues around living in cold and damp housing.I would actually really like to hear from the Minister about what he considers to be an adequate cost-benefit analysis because he describes this bill as economically rational when for instance the cost to the State of rheumatic fever for a child is between $300000 and $500000. Obviously the Government does consider that to be a cost worth mitigating because why else would it have made it one of its Better Public Services targets. It has implemented ways to screen by swabbing children for streptococcus and treating children with antibiotics but actually if we were serious about prevention in this space we would acknowledge that you cannot pick up a child who is not at school—because that is where the children are being swabbed—and so if you really want to prevent further incidences you would look to the source which is cold damp overcrowded housing.So I think that it would make very good sense to include in a cost-benefit analysis the cost of the diseases of poverty and overcrowding but also those that are directly influenced by—Hon Dr Nick Smith: They have.JACINDA ARDERN: If the Minister says that they have I would welcome then further detail on why it is that in his cost-benefit analysis where we have over 40000 children admitted to hospital per annum it did not make economic sense in his mind to add for example heating and higher standards around insulation in this instance because—Hon Dr Nick Smith: It’s already in the regulations.JACINDA ARDERN: It does not make economic sense for the State to bear the burden of that cost because the ministry has made an assumption that if that went to a landlord—and I challenge this assumption—and we required landlords to provide a source of heating they would automatically put that cost on to their tenants. I actually question that rationale. Alfred Ngaro has said that mum and dad investors are the people we are talking about here who would be impacted by changes like that—I do not disagree with that—and that they want to be good landlords and those are the people whom we would be putting this cost on to who would naturally then pass it on.I question the decision making there to assume that every single landlord would put that cost on to the tenant. I have been a tenant for most of my life living in properties outside of my family home. I have had continual upgrades to different properties that I have lived in. Not once has that upgrade come at a cost where that landlord has said to me: “Because I have made this adjustment to the property that you are in I am now going to immediately charge you more in your rent.” I have not had that experience. We have made an assumption here—an assumption that we want the tenant to bear the brunt of poor quality housing because the trade-off is that they will paying more.Tenants are paying more because we have a housing crisis—let us be clear on that. That is the reason why tenants are primarily paying more. Why not have a requirement that landlords do right by their tenants because actually I have a belief that there are a good number of landlords who would not necessarily pass that on. For those who would not—those who are the slum landlords—let us make them provide quality housing. What is wrong with that? Why should we as a State bear the burden of the cost of children being hospitalised whilst we allow landlords to get away with not providing quality housing?