van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in the first reading of the Residential Tenancies (Healthy Homes Standards) Amendment Bill.You know every day in this House we hear an argument from the Government about why they can do a better job at providing services to New Zealanders than other New Zealanders can to each other. We hear it time and time again. We hear the need for the Government to take taxes to take people's money so that they can provide a service that nobody else can—it will be so much better!—because they believe that they can spend our money better than we can spend it ourselves. And you see this sloshing around the economy with wasteful spending but specifically with housing—when we know that there's been a housing crisis. We've seen the Government say Don't worry we can do it better than the private sector." And how did KiwiBuild turn out? An absolute tragedy; billions of dollars being wasted in our economy but specifically in housing. We've been promised houses that the Government just couldn't deliver.Now when it comes to the healthy homes standards that they passed a few years ago they said "Don't worry we can bring all of the houses around New Zealand all of the rental accommodation up to what we consider to be a healthy homes standard." They gave one rule for landlords and one rule for the Government. But it turns out even with a two-year extension on top of what private landlords were given that the Government couldn't even do an adequate job let alone a good job or a better job. We know they've done a worse job but they couldn't even do an adequate job. We know from some statistics that 85 percent of landlords had either brought their home up to healthy homes standards or had actions to do so last year. This year the Government has only brought up and has the plans for healthy homes standards compliant houses for 84 percent. So they're one year behind on what private landlords had already done. So the Government with our money with our taxpayer funds and with the size of themselves as an entity have not been able to do what private landlords across New Zealand have done.Knowing this they've decided to come back into this House and pass an extension for themselves so that they have more time. And the remarkable thing is that we've heard from the Minister the Hon Dr Megan Woods that this is for all landlords because they've been listening that there are problems across the sector because COVID-19 got in the way. But where was the Government listening last year? They are passing this law for themselves so that Kāinga Ora has an extension for themselves to bring up their homes to the healthy homes standards not because they've listened to private landlords and have decided to give compassion to people who are trying to do the right thing to bring up their homes to the healthy homes standards; it's because of themselves.The reason that we know this is because last year I was standing in this very Chamber advocating that private landlords who were struggling to bring their homes up to the healthy homes standards should be given an extension. And the reason was because there were at the time a lot of landlords specifically in Auckland who were struggling to make their homes compliant because Auckland was in the middle of a massive lockdown and there was no possible way that they could get tradespeople in and out of their residential accommodation because we had people living in bubbles. You know tradespeople couldn't just enter a flat or a rental home because they needed the approval of people living in that accommodation. So there were very very stressed landlords saying "We need an extension so that we can follow the law." And what did the Government say? It turned around and pretty much said "Tough luck. If you're not compliant we don't care. You will break the law." They said "It's OK maybe the Tenancy Tribunal will just turn the other way and just not even say that people are or aren't breaking the law. Just don't worry the Tenancy Tribunal will just look the other way."And when we asked what advice they have had on whether they could give an extension to landlords a year ago the Minister said "I don't think it's in the public's interest to release that information." Then when we pressed even further they said and I've got a quote here: "The advice was that it would not be possible to extend compliance deadlines in a way that assists the vast majority of landlords and including those whose compliance deadlines have already passed." So a year ago when landlords up and down New Zealand were saying "We have tried our very very best but we can't comply" the Government said "Tough luck. We don't care." And now they're in this Chamber saying "We have listened to landlords. We know that they can't meet the standards. We are going to give them an extension. Aren't we compassionate?" But in reality it's only because they know they can't meet the standards that they expect of everyone else.So the question to the Minister really is: why do they have such a high standard for everybody else but a different for themselves? Where is the fairness? You know landlords knowing that they've needed to comply to do the right thing to bring their homes up to healthy homes standards have forked out thousands of dollars tens of thousands of dollars knowing that they need to do the right thing to provide that warm safe dry home to their tenants. But the Government have the most vulnerable of tenants and they couldn't do it for those tenants and she needs to explain why. Why is it that only when they're getting close to the deadline have they thought about ramping up the efforts to meet their own rules rather than doing what all other private citizens who are landlords in this country have been doing which is getting everything up to scratch before they become non-compliant?The ACT Party overall doesn't agree that we should have these healthy homes standards because over time we want to see more investment development and growth in our housing market so that we can have more newer stock coming on to market that is of a higher quality. And over time as we have more growth and development and more homes on the market and more residential accommodation that would allow for more affordable housing for all New Zealanders. In the meantime what we've ended up with is a Government that's been fixated on rules and regulations and taxes and all it's done is impose huge costs on private landlords who have been trying to put their homes up to a healthy homes standard some of them forking out tens of thousands of dollars and that cost is needed to go on to tenants. There are flow-on effects from all of these taxes and regulations.But the real problem with the housing crisis is that we just don't have the right rules underpinning us so that we can get more residential accommodation in general. We want to see more development in infrastructure and infrastructure financing and funding so we can actually get to the heart of the problem of why we don't have enough homes for people to live in and why we don't have more accommodation that is warmer drier and safer for people to live in.This is just nanny State from the Government wanting to impose more costs on people wanting to do the right thing but in the meantime having a very very high standard for other people and a very low standard for themselves when they believe that they know best and they can do better. It's not acceptable and New Zealanders deserve better. They should say straight up that they wanted to pass this law because they need an exemption for themselves not trying to say that it was because of anybody else or private landlords who couldn't do it when we know that they were in this Chamber a year ago saying the vast majority of private landlords already comply and the other ones who can't—well tough luck."