Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to be talking on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill (No 2). It's good that we seem to be heading in the same direction on this bill. Essentially a large amount of this work was undertaken by the Hon Nick Smith in bringing this bill to the House as the Minister just noted back in April 2017. I'd also like to commend the work of the Governance and Administration Committee for the amendments they have made which have sought to improve it and clarify elements of this bill.This bill is about striking a balance between protecting the rights of landlords and also the position of tenants. Therefore it's interesting because on some occasions it strengthens the rights of landlords but on the other side it strengthens the rights of tenants. That is the right thing we should be doing making sure that we do get that right balance. It has three parts as has been noted: liability for damage to rental properties caused by a tenant the issue of unlawful use of residential properties and the third one is around the contamination of properties. I really want to just talk to the first and the third element of what the bill strikes at.The first one is around the liability. Of course what this has done and what the committee has done in terms of the landlord's obligation is make sure that if they have insurance on a property they're tenanting that insurance information is made available to the tenant. That is an important disclosure in terms of trying to assess from the perspective of the tenant what his or her potential liability may be if damage is caused. Of course there's an issue of who caused that damage—whether it was caused by the tenant or someone they have responsibility for—and I think being clear about the element of who causes the damage is important but also the extent of the liability of the tenant in that situation. As we've heard it's limited to the lower of the excess or four weeks' worth of rent.The other one I think is the issue around when damage has occurred how you actually prove who's done it. The bill seeks to address this through an amendment outlined in clause 7 inserting new section 49B to clarify those provisions as to who should be incurring the loss. The second bit of this bill is about methamphetamine contamination—now referred to as contaminated properties". This part of the bill was largely driven by a member's bill in my name matters around methamphetamine contamination of rental properties and the issue that real estate agents were having in dealing with it.There was a strong recognition some years ago that the industry needed to be further regulated and so the work that was commissioned a couple of years ago looked at three things. First of all: what was the threshold at which contamination was deemed to be of such a significant scale that it would affect the health of New Zealanders? The second bit of the work that the committee did was to look at how to standardise the testing regime because if you apply a different approach to the testing of houses you would come up with a different result. So the need to standardise the testing regime was an important second element of the work. The third bit was to look at if you have remediated a house how you know that it's been remediated. The committee was also asked to address that particular issue so that we could have conformity amongst all the various testing companies. That extensive piece of work now helps in terms of making sure that we've got a much more professionally operated sector that tenants and landlords can rely on. That has gone a long way and hopefully many of those recommendations will be picked up in the regulation component part of this bill.The issue around the level of contamination is obviously a contentious one but that is something that will be set by regulation. I think where we've ended up is with a much better outcome to protect the safety of New Zealanders when they're living in their homes and for landlords who have a big investment in those properties. Thank you very much."