SpeechSARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you so much Mr Speaker. I am absolutely delighted to take this call as the member of Parliament for Ilam. Before I get into the nitty-gritty of my speech this afternoon I just want to highlight and celebrate the fact that the University of Canterbury which is undeniably the very best university in the whole of Aotearoa New Zealand is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. In order to celebrate its offering 150 Te Kakau a Māui scholarships to students primarily from low-decile schools in Te Wai Pounamu—full scholarships for the entire duration of that student's degree. The first 150 have been allocated but if anybody is interested in applying please do reach out. And equally if anybody is interested in making a donation a substantial donation to the very wonderful University of Canterbury can I direct their attention to the vice-chancellor Professor Cheryl de la Rey who will be more than happy to talk with them. I'll move on to the issue I'm going to be talking about this afternoon. I'm going to talk a little bit about students but primarily how they fit into the electorate in terms of housing capability. One-third of our electorate in Ilam are renters—one-third of households; that's 8000 households—and many of those households in the very wonderful surrounds of the University of Canterbury are students. Labour has in fact made great strides in helping renters get a fair deal. We've limited rent increases to once a year. We've introduced healthy home standards and banned unfair letting fees. This is really personal for me because two of my daughters have recently been students. One of them was a student before I entered the House as the member of Parliament for Ilam and when I was going around the properties that she was renting—and she was a great tenant—she and the other young people like many students in the very wonderful University of Canterbury are responsible tenants who really looked after their properties and gardens. But I have to tell you that some of the properties that they were living in were appalling covered in black mould not even meeting basic building standards and they were afraid to complain because at the time the no-cause termination policy for tenancies was in place. They didn't want to complain because they thought that they might be on the receiving end of a no-cause termination which would flick them out into the community with nowhere to live. It was very hard at the time post-quake to actually find somewhere to live because housing stock was so limited.The National Party plans to reintroduce no-cause evictions which will cause families who've been in their homes for many years potentially paying their rent on time—great tenants tenants like my daughter and her colleagues—and with children settled in school to be evicted for no reason except on the whim of the landlord. I have to say that we know that there are many fantastic landlords in the electorate but some are not so great. It surprised many people that 33 percent of households in Ilam were renting households. But it also surprises people when they hear that we have the second-largest social housing area in Christchurch. I'm so incredibly happy to have 34 new warm dry homes for people in need—social housing homes mostly two-storey one to five bedrooms—just around the corner from my electorate office and they are one of many planned in Bishopdale Bryndwr and Burnside. There are 114 new warm dry units planned across 14 sites replacing 39 older units. In Christchurch this Government has delivered 1821 additional public houses whereas under the previous National Government before 2017 Christchurch had a net loss of 341 homes and National planned to sell off another 2500 State houses a policy incidentally that was enthusiastically supported by the then city councillor and now leader of the Opportunities Party Raf Manji—just by the way. Can you imagine the mess we'd have been in if those 2500 houses had been lost to our housing stock? I'm incredibly proud to be part of this Government which has actually increased the number of houses in my electorate.