Prime Willow-JeanWILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to give a contribution in the first reading of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. It's an absolute pleasure to stand this afternoon to talk about this bill because the rental market has changed significantly as we heard in the Minister Kris Faafoi's opening comments. I know that the number of people renting in Northland has continued to increase. I was perplexed when a lady stopped me outside of the Kaikohe Warehouse and she said Willow I have had over 50 people apply to live in my one rental property in Kaikohe. How do I say no to all of these people? How do I even choose which needing and deserving family to give this one home to?" So I know that more people in Northland are renters and not homeowners and that is a real challenge for us. As a Government we believe that everybody should have the access to a safe warm dry and secure home. So this Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill is important for those families whose realities whose situation is that they are going to be or have been and potentially could be renters for life. So I'm really pleased by the series of changes that this Government is making to make our rental accommodation safer warmer drier and healthier because that is lifesaving legislation that we've introduced. What this bill is proposing to do is to give people more security in their tenancy where their families are in the position of being renters so I'm really pleased to see that you can't terminate without good reason. I think this is important especially when there is so much demand on rental properties now days; there's such a power imbalance between landlords—Angie Warren-Clark: Bidding war. WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: —and renters. There's a bidding war. In fact we're prohibiting the ability to auction off what price of rent it is that people are going to pay. So I think that these are really important safeguards that are being introduced in this legislation. I think about the over 43 percent of our children in Aotearoa who are living in these homes. It's really pleasing to see that families are going to be able to make minor changes to make their houses safer and more secure. In fact one of the references that was made was to even being able to baby-proof a house. There are just some really practical suggestions to enable those who are in the renting situation to make this a home for them and their families in consultation and conversation with their landlords so I think it's a very humanising aspect and whānau-friendly aspect of the legislation. I don't want to take the full amount of time as there are others who are going to be speaking after me but the thing that I wanted to conclude on—and I found this quite interesting—is keeping up with the advances in technology in the modern world and actually being able to install ultra-fast broadband into a lot of these properties. You know when I looked at that I hadn't realised that this has potentially been a problem. When I think about it in Northland we're still receiving the roll-out of that up there. It's just a really practical thing that we can put in here that is going to give those families and those communities access to the best technology. So I think it's a very forward-thinking piece of legislation as well. With that I commend the bill to the House."