Salesa Jenny: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSalesa Jenny: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11139. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this call on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. Putting in place a legal framework to ensure that residential tenants are renting safe and healthy homes is crucial. This bill proposes to introduce some useful provisions towards providing standards for housing in private rentals but it does not go far enough in addressing the dreadful circumstances that many families are living in especially as we go into winter.I would like to tautoko my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor. We have a responsibility as parliamentarians—121 of us chosen by our constituents to come into this Committee—to do our best to save children’s lives. When we sit on this side we hear members of Parliament particularly from the other side talking about the cost and how it is too expensive to heat and to insulate houses but when you actually put to the other side that we are talking about children’s lives—children’s lives—we should actually feel a little bit ashamed or maybe a lot ashamed that we are not doing what we as responsible MPs should be doing.Minimum insulation standards for private rental houses are a step in the right direction—they are. However this National Government should do more. This bill proposes a minimum insulation standard. When you insulate a cold house that house still remains cold. When you insulate a cold house but you do not put in efficient modern heating do you think that house will magically become warm dry and healthy? No it will not. I agree with Dr Russell Wills; this bill should do much better for our children. This is a shameful bill. This is an opportunity to do right by our children but we are not doing that. Rental houses need to be warm dry and healthy.My question as we talk about insulating houses is whether we are also going to ensure minimum insulation for garages. Just this last week we saw so many garages where families are living. I do not think this current legislation actually covers minimum insulation for garages but it is a reality that we have too many families living in garages and as we go into winter we should also consider the fact there are families that have been forced out of houses—forced out of houses—to live in cars as well as in garages. They also need to live in warm dry conditions.The Productivity Commission stated in its report on housing affordability that “Generally the quality of New Zealand’s housing stock is considered to be poor.” This issue of quality applies to private houses as well as to Housing New Zealand State houses. In the Auckland Regional Public Health Service submission to the Health Committee it stated that “New Zealand currently has a high proportion of unhealthy rental homes and the average temperature in almost a third of New Zealand homes is below World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations.” The WHO recommends a minimum indoor temperature of 18°C for most people and if you are a child if you are elderly or if you are disabled it recommends 21 degrees for a house. But in this country the mean temperature in Auckland homes which is what was in this submission is around 16.5 degrees; 16.5 degrees is pretty cold. That is something this legislation should actually cover: insulation as well as minimum standards of heating.Clause 6 of this bill covers information that must be included in tenancy agreements. Clause 6(3) would require a landlord to describe the insulation that is installed at a property he or she is renting out. Omitting to provide this information would be an unlawful act. This bill came back from the Social Services Committee with an amended clause 6(3) where landlords would be allowed to state that despite making all reasonable efforts they have not been able to satisfy themselves of the extent of the insulation. So I worry that this is a fairly slippery set of requirements whereby insulation that is too onerous—