Salesa Jenny: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSalesa Jenny: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 11 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:11027. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this call on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill second reading. Minimum insulation standards and smoke alarms for private rental houses are a step in the right direction. However this National Government can and should do more. This bill proposes a minimum insulation standard but when you insulate a cold house and you do not require modern efficient heating in that house that will still leave our people our families and our children living in a house that is cold and at high risk of respiratory diseases. The rental houses will not magically become warm dry safe healthy homes without installation of modern efficient heating.This National Government does not stand up for the rights of ordinary New Zealanders. If this Government cared enough and wanted to do enough for our children—on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of families and particularly vulnerable children who live in both State houses and rental accommodation—we would see evidence of that care and we would see evidence of that commitment in this Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. We do not. This proposed bill makes some improvements for tenants living in rented accommodation but it is not a comprehensive bill and it does not go far enough to address the issues for our families.Emma-Lita Bourne—a name that we hear in this House a lot. A toddler from Ōtara Manukau East in my electorate is an example of a toddler—an innocent child—who unfortunately passed away. She paid with her life because of the conditions of the house—a State house—that she lived in which was freezing cold mouldy leaking and unhealthy. The house that she lived in was not fit for a family—for humans—to live in.I find it heartbreaking when I look back at this child. The information that we have got back from the Government told us that this particular family reached out many many times—over 40 times—to Work and Income and to Housing New Zealand basically saying: “This child is sick and has been in and out of hospital with so many respiratory illnesses.” But the other heartbreaking thing is that if the processes of this Government worked that family should have been moved out because her brother who was 6 years old at the time had rheumatic fever. Work and Income tells us that when kids have rheumatic fever as a condition they will be moved to a healthy home. This family was not and this child Emma-Lita Bourne paid for it with her life. It is something that should not have happened. But it is something that is still happening.I give you another example this time from a homeless family—a family that did not even live in my electorate because they were homeless. This child was a toddler too about 12 months old. She had lived so much of her life—more than half her life—in hospital. She was in and out of hospital with all sorts of respiratory illnesses—bronchiolitis pneumonia you name it. This child I am happy to report is now living in a home. I visited this family last week and it was the first time that I actually saw the mother of this child because I dealt with the father when they came into my office. The mother this time—she was so emotional. She was so emotional because this child was discharged from hospital—from Middlemore Hospital in my electorate—in March of this year and that is the longest period of time that this child has spent outside the hospital. Why? Because the rental accommodation that this child had lived in before was not their own. They were homeless and living in someone else’s rental accommodation. But it was cold mouldy and unhealthy and people in that house—they smoked. All of these conditions put together were the reasons why this child was in and out of hospital. So when I hear members on the opposite side say that it is too costly that it is too expensive to do something to address this issue properly I say that we are talking about children’s lives—children’s lives.I would like to turn now to two submissions made to the Social Services Committee. I am not a member of this committee but in just reading the submissions I would like to talk about two both from physicians. There were a lot of submissions from doctors but I would like to highlight two. The first is from the Children’s Commissioner Dr Russell Wills someone whom I hold in high regard. Dr Wills stated that: “In Budget 2013 the Government committed to mitigate the negative health outcomes of poverty and poor housing.” Nice words. It would be nice if this Government in this bill actually addressed that promise. This is a bill that is full of broken promises.In the Budget in May 2013—3 years ago—this promise was made. Have we seen that promise come to reality? No and in fact Dr Wills went even further. He said this bill is a shameful bill. It is shameful because it has not kept up that promise. It is shameful because as my colleague Phil Twyford spoke about before it has not ensured that we would even ensure that the insulation is to today’s standards—2016. We are talking about insulating homes to the standard of 1978. It is shameful that we think it is too costly to try to save children’s lives.Dr Wills told us that at least 15 children’s lives are lost each year because they have pneumonia bronchiolitis and other respiratory diseases. We should do something in this House to ensure that we save children’s lives.I would like to turn to the second submission from another physician. She talked about how she was going around a children’s ward a children’s ward that was full mainly of poor children Māori children and Pacific preschool children. The mother of the first child that this physician saw was someone who was familiar to her. Why? Because she had served this mother but with the older child the year before. The older child had pneumonia; the child that she saw on this day also had pneumonia. The next child she saw was in a similar set of circumstances. She saw yet another mother whom she was familiar with because the child whom she was in hospital with had permanent lung scarring from too many infections from too much pneumonia—from being admitted in and out of hospital too many times. She saw this mother and served her the year before with her older child.This is a bill that should be delivering on a promise to our children. What this legislation does like much of the legislation that we discuss in this House is it sends a message. In this case it sends a message to our children. In the words of Dr Wills he stated: “The message is: you are not important enough for us to set a standard for heating for your house and to check to make sure your house is healthy.”Our children deserve more. As members of Parliament we need to do more in this House so that our children live in warm dry houses. The bill that Andrew Little has submitted and which has passed its first reading will deliver this. It is a much more comprehensive bill that would ensure that our houses are warm dry and healthy and that we are saving children’s lives. Thank you.