Turei Metiria: Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) — First Reading[Sitting date: 04 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10818. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I am proud to be in one of the compassionate and responsible political parties in this House that will be supporting the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2) tonight. I would just like to suggest to the country that you completely ignore everything that you heard from the little fellow over there David Seymour. This is a man who has no idea what it means to live in this country with an income where you cannot make sure you pay your rent buy your food and pay your power bill. This is a man who has never lived in a house where you have to bring all of your kids and all of your blankets your socks and your jumpers and all sleep in the lounge room because that is the only room in the house where you know you can keep your kids warm and dry. This is a man who has never been in a home with children who have spent months and months and months sick—sick in hospital at home sick back in hospital at home sick. Not a single experience from that young man about what it is really like to live in this country.I challenge National members to think about what they are doing tonight in refusing to support this bill. You know National knows that there are 42000 hospitalisations of children because of cold damp homes. National knows that there are 1600 extra winter deaths in this country because of cold damp homes. National knows that there are 15 children who will die this year because of cold damp homes. What will it take to convince you to act to save these lives? Why do these lives not matter to the National Party? I know they do not matter to ACT—he is irrelevant. Why do they not matter to National?What will it take? Do you need to go and have a sleepover in one of those homes? Do you need to sleep in a home where the beds have to be pushed into the middle of the room because the cold wet walls make the blankets damp and mouldy? Is that what you need to do? Do you need to go to the hospital and see the kids who are sick—the babies—puffing and on ventilators? Is that what you need to see? Do they need to see the toddlers who cannot play in hospital who are lying listless on their beds because every single breath is a painful labour? Do you need to see that? Or maybe the only option for the members on the other side in National is the invitation to the funerals. Because we are talking about—Hon Nicky Wagner: For God’s sake!METIRIA TUREI: Do not argue with me Miss. We are talking about New Zealanders who die because their rental homes are cold and damp.This is a piece of legislation that will save lives and National is refusing to allow it to proceed. How could that be? That is what the consequences of National’s actions are. New Zealanders will die—babies will die—because their homes are cold and damp and National has a chance to save those lives and will not. This is the reality that you must face because New Zealand families have to face it every single day. These are the New Zealand families who cannot afford to make sure that their homes are warm and dry who cannot afford the power bills who cannot afford the flash houses that perhaps National and the ACT Party members can afford who have to choose every day between decent food and warmth for their kids. These are the realities faced by the people whom you are supposed to support and be here to work for. Some of them will die this winter because you have failed to act.I am not ashamed for one moment to put this reality on the floor of this House. It is necessary for us as legislators to be confronted by what is really happening with our families because that is the reality. Here is a solution right in front of us available to us tonight—to do something real for those families whose kids and whose grandparents whose grandfathers will suffer over this winter. So I urge members: think first about the people who need us the most. Think first about the most vulnerable who need us the most and act for them. We have the privilege we have the power we have the opportunity to save lives—so let us take it. Thank you.