Potaka TamaTAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Thank you for allowing me the great privilege to speak in support of the Residential Property Managers Bill. But I want to start with a little story about Hamilton West—a great place to grow up and grow old in New Zealand. When you land at the Pak 'N Save on the corner of Mill Street and Ulster Street you have a wonderful gateway to our city and in that gateway are a number of homes and motels—some of those homes will be subject to rental accommodation and some of them are essentially the hotbed of the housing disaster and catastrophe that's facing our great country. You go along Ulster Street and you see the nearly 750 kids and 750 adults that are housed in emergency accommodation in Hamilton right now the $25 million that's used every quarter to pay the motel owners of Hamilton West every single quarter—Angela Roberts: We're building more houses.TAMA POTAKA: You're building more houses but for a billion-dollar commitment under Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga 70 houses is not enough to me. You take a right shoot down to Beerescourt Road and you go along to Galbraith Avenue. And out Galbraith Avenue I want to start my kōrero today with reference to a colleague of mine a fellow Hamiltonian named Everest who lives down on Galbraith Avenue. On the other side of the road is an owned property and there are some beautiful blue signs with my furry face on them—no moustache. But in that transitional housing that State housing on the fence is a Labour election sign. In that transitional housing my friend Everest lives and she's got three kids. She's got another one on the way. She's got very high and complex needs and she's been bounced and she's been hurt by having to go through eight motels in two years to get to a transitional house. It's an absolute catastrophe that her kids have had to change schools. They're not even going to school half the time because they don't know what school they're going to after being bounced around in the housing disaster that's been curated by this Labour Government—curated.The 3500 adults 3500 kids and another 1000 in Rotorua who live in undermined housing can't even access this rental accommodation that we are dealing with in this bill and Kāinga Ora is not going to be subject to the same sorts of expectations that the residential property managers in this bill will be.One thing that concerns me is that the majority of those people in that housing are actually Māori. This is very distressing for a Māori member of Parliament who represents an electorate where 45 percent of all the kids are Māori. Builders can't build to a price point that works. Councils are challenged with algorithms and development contributions models and rates models. There are more people and not enough suitable homes rental or otherwise.Not everyone wants to own their own home as my learned colleague Chris Bishop mentioned. Some people want to live in rental accommodation. In fact a third of Kiwi households live in rental accommodation today and of that third 42 percent of that cohort are managed by residential property managers. Some are good like David and Simon and Simon's sister Claire Lugton of Lugtons in Hamilton West; David Kneebone who runs Lodge City Rentals in Hamilton West. They are managing to the best of their abilities. So landlords and property owners they contract these residential property managers—good ones I hope—to look after landlords' property or properties. That includes a lot of things: turning on the lights; making sure the lawns are mowed; making sure the heat pump is working; following the money and collecting rents because rent still needs to be paid and these managers need to ensure that happens; liaising with the tenants around any concerns of the tenant the landlord the manager maybe prospective tenants if that property is vacant; and resolving concerns that might emerge. I remember a few termite concerns in a rental accommodation that I had when I was a young student down here at Victoria University Te Herenga Waka.So this bill in seeking and desiring to establish a regulatory regime to improve the provision of residential property management services is applaudable. It protects both property owners tenants and prospective tenants. To do this establishing minimum entry requirements for residential property managers—tick. Ensuring professional standards of practice—tick. And providing accountability through an independent transparent and effective complaints and disciplinary process that applies to the managers in the delivery of their services—tick.For some reason though I don't understand why KO—Kāinga Ora—will not have to follow the same sort of standards even if it is through different legislation. It's a worry—a real worry—given that Kāinga Ora is actually the biggest property manager in the country. But back to the bill. The authority in being the new regulator for this regime—I don't know how many consultants and bureaucrats will be engaged by the authority but it will appoint a registrar for licence registration. It will issue licences for residential property managers. And if the legislation goes through a complaints assessment committee and real estate agents disciplinary tribunal will consider the unsatisfactory conduct or misconduct of managers and hopefully we can also see through a bolstering of the Tenancy Tribunal processes the same sort of diligence and professionalism and reciprocity for tenants.An interesting provision is that the authority will also be enabled to get documents around the management of properties. It's sort of like a Mareva injunction or Anton Piller order—I think the DHB in the North Shore went through a few of those in their days Mr Watts. And finally the offenses and penalties—there are no offences and penalties in the North Shore DHB—being established to discover the provision of unlicensed property management services.One provision that I did not see was the Treaty compliance provision. That was a real surprise especially given the feverish approach of the current Government to put a Te Tiriti o Waitangi provision in every single piece of legislation that comes through this House. I thought we must have a Treaty provision and I was denied but maybe that's something that can be raised in the select committee process if it makes it there this afternoon. I felt for sure that residential property managers would have to implement or at least take into account or have regards to or ensure the consistency of implementation with the principles but alas denied by the drafting goalie Mr Simpson.What are our concerns? Yeah we've got a couple of concerns and Mr Bishop has parleyed those concerns to the Parliament today but I'll just amplify them a little bit more. This bill and the regulatory regime will raise costs for residential property managers and ultimately tenants because what we've seen before is when you load more and more costs onto the provision or the deployment of property housing those costs just get shifted along the chain through the residential property managers to the property owners and then ultimately to the tenants. Rents are already up 150 bucks in the last five years in Hamilton. If you need a place let me know; I'll introduce you to David Lugton—this is not a standing advertisement for Lugtons either.But we've seen this before with compliance regimes. It actually might cost more than it's worth. The analysis showing the benefit-cost ratio of 1.07—sounds like my 1993 statistics grade actually; university entrance. However the departmental disclosure statement that master Bishop has kindly read out shows that there is greater certainty around costs than the benefits. I don't know what the rental situation is like out on the Chatham Islands but I want to refer to the Chatham Islands because that rental situation and the property managers out there that's something that he will need to do in a future role. It doesn't matter because all the properties out there are owned by the Croon whānau.Another potential concern is that landlords move away from using good licensed residential property managers and inhale this themselves. They may say Right I'm going to take that 7.5 percent"—or 8 percent if it's in the Coromandel—"and inhale that myself and look after this property." That can have both upsides and downsides but there definitely is a potential incentive issue to avoid compliance with this regime. When you exempt landlords and Kāinga Ora and others that pathway becomes lit up in a bright pink light—not the ACT pink or rinky-dink pink.Finally the most important concern that I have is the distraction that this provides after six years of waiting $3 million—sorry $3 billion Dr Evil; $3 billion equity. Three billion dollars in debt handed to Kāinga Ora to improve their housing and still we have 25000 applicants on the social housing wait-list 5000 whānau in transitional housing and 9000 people in emergency housing. Whānau we need change. I acknowledge everyone in the House is trying to do the right thing but we live under a blue sky and that's the way things are going. Kia ora tātou."