Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. I rise in support of this bill. This reverses changes made by the last Government which were no doubt well intentioned and trying to assist renters but actually had quite the opposite effect; a classic example of the unintended consequences principle which is often seen in this House and the implications flow out into our country from well-meaning decisions that unfortunately aren't well considered and don't take into account all factors and in some cases have effects that can't be foreseen by anyone. This however was an impact that was foreseen. What has happened is that this effectively is an example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. So trying to protect renters but not taking into account the reality of human nature and the reality of conditions for people who own houses and need to rent them to others. There are 1.7 million renters in New Zealand; 80 percent of those renting rent from the private market—not from the Government—from the private market. It's over half a million homes that are provided by the private market in New Zealand. That's something that the Government cannot do—the Government is not in a position to be able to provide those homes. The regulatory environment needs to be structured in such a way that people are willing to rent their houses and the no-cause termination—or the periodic tenancies—that we've seen have had an impact that has been quite extraordinary in my own region in Queenstown as well as other places in the country. Literally it became a crisis where people were unable to find a house. People were sleeping in their vans sleeping in cars sleeping in all sorts of places around the region that were literally unsafe. Now people had houses but they were not in a position to rent them out or not willing to rent them out. So I'll just give you an example. This is a fairly common one that was recounted to me. People often have a holiday home in the region—Hon Member: They live in Arrowtown and they have a bach.JOSEPH MOONEY: No they don't just live in Arrowtown they have a holiday home in the region. They used to be quite willing to rent those out for some of the year when they didn't need that house. They wanted to be able to come on over usually during the summer season to spend roughly a few weeks or a month in that holiday home—something that they worked hard for much of their lives for to be able to purchase and have. Because of this change to the legislation they are unable to do that. That meant that a lot of people who would otherwise have had access to the house throughout the year and many of them—people who worked a seasonal job were unable to have those houses. That means that people were literally living in their vans as a consequence.To be clear this bill will not solve everything. The reality is we need a lot more houses and that is something that the Government is doing with the fast-track legislation which I know that the Opposition is also opposing. But the aim is to actually try and get a lot more housing into our market because ultimately we want people to own their own home and that is something that young people I think aspire to. We want our young people in this country to have that opportunity to purchase their own home make a life for themselves and to have a place that they can call their own. But in the interim they need to rent we need them to be able to have places to rent and we need to have landlords who are willing to rent that to them. Another example: a survey done in Queenstown was—businesses over 70 percent cited housing for workers as an important issue for their businesses with one in three saying that housing represented the biggest barrier for achieving optimum staffing levels. They advocated for urgent solutions I note. As Minister Bishop spoke to before the previous Minister of Housing from the previous Government came down to Queenstown was told this was an urgent issue that needed to be solved and that though again wouldn't solve everything addressing this issue around these no-cause terminations or the lack of would help solve that problem—literally people would put more houses on the market. However the last Government didn't address that and I'm very pleased that this Government is doing so. I'll just make one last comment on rent controls that I was speaking about earlier—I have to say Sweden is an examples of rent controls. It takes nine years for someone to get a house there. So again well-intentioned policy that has not worked.