Faafoi KrisPart 2 Amendments relating to methamphetamine and other contaminantsHon KRIS FAAFOI (Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing)): This part goes to an issue which reared its ugly head in late 2017 and 2018 in which as the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs I also had some oversight over around the standard around contamination of methamphetamine in residential properties. What we saw by the previous Government was the reliance and in some cases the—what's the word I would like to use?—beating up of that standard to effect I think it was 800 Housing New Zealand tenants evicted from their homes. That has had an enormous effect on those families to the point—CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I'm sorry to interrupt the member but it's come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Just before the break for dinner I was just working myself to a point where I was describing the negative experience that roughly 800 Housing New Zealand tenants had under the previous Government having been evicted from their properties because of what can only be called dodgy standards around meth contamination. I was working myself into an angry state potentially because it was just before the dinner break and hangry Kris" may have been coming into force but the dinner break has addressed that so I think I should probably spend the rest of my time addressing some of the substance of the changes in Part 2.Part 2 establishes a regime for dealing with contaminants such as methamphetamine in rental properties. As a result of the experience under the previous Government and the standard at the time there was and is a lot of uncertainty among landlords about how to deal with contamination of the likes of methamphetamine. Part 2 of this bill will provide for a more practical regime which is flexible enough to address health risks of not just methamphetamine but any harmful substance in rental properties.As I mentioned at the end of 2017 and at the beginning of 2018 this Government asked the then Prime Minister's Chief Science Adviser Sir Peter Gluckman to look into the issue of methamphetamine contamination in rental properties and found that remediation—according to New Zealand standard 8510:2017; whether it was appropriate—was only appropriate for identified former meth labs in properties where heavy meth use had been determined; so not where potentially just low-level use was but certainly that standard was appropriate only where production and heavy meth use had been determined. Because of the way that the previous regime had worked there'd been a previously widely held perception that the presence of even low levels of methamphetamine contamination or residue in properties posed serious health risks and as a result remediation to eliminate that kind of contamination has been an extremely costly business for landlords and in many many cases—and unfortunately far too many in terms of Housing New Zealand tenants—has been an upheaval for tenants who were evicted at short notice.The bill inserts definitions of "contaminant" "methamphetamine" and "contaminated" and methamphetamine is defined as a contaminant. The bill also inserts new obligations for landlords and I might just take some time to go through those new obligations if it's OK Mr Chair. First is that landlords have to comply with all requirements in respect of contaminants imposed by regulations; secondly landlords are not to provide premises to a tenant if the landlord knows that the premises are contaminated until they have been decontaminated; and thirdly to not continue to provide rental premises to a tenant if the landlord knows that the premises are contaminated unless they are being decontaminated. These obligations do not oblige the landlord to repair or provide compensation arising from contamination damage if the contamination was caused by the tenant.I might leave some room for others to get into the debate but I think that Part 2 will take care of a lot of the ills around meth contamination."