Williams Poto: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 11 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:11026. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): It used to be that we as Kiwis had a dream of homeownership. We used to dream of homeownership but it was actually achievable. It was achievable. We used to be able to afford to buy homes. My father who came to this country in the late 1950s was a labourer who could not read or write and he was actually able to afford to buy a home so that his family could grow up and live well. A decent home decent living—that is what the Kiwi Dream used to be about.We have gone in one generation from being a nation of homeowners to a nation of home-renters—in one generation. In one generation we have slipped that far. And who is it who rents? Who is it who rents? It is not people who earn in the top income levels; it is those who earn the least. In general it is the lower-income families. Through legislation this Government has introduced the rights and the power of renters have diminished and been eroded time and time and time again.Who would want to be a tenant in this country when the power rests with the landlords? Do not get me wrong—there are some good landlords. There are some great landlords who actually invest in their properties maintain their properties and want to hang on to good tenants by making sure that they have got decent properties. But there are some not-so-great landlords. There are some landlords and we know of them in Canterbury—and my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson will back me up on this—who have taken their earthquake insurance money have not fixed up their earthquake-damaged homes and have put them on to the rental market. We have got this happening in hundreds and hundreds of places in Canterbury. So there are some good landlords but my goodness there are some bad landlords.What does the research tell us about homes that are not insulated properly and do not have a good heating source? It says that if we insulated our homes to the 2008 standard we could reduce hospital admissions across the country by 6 percent. That is 3000 children. That is evidence that the standard that is in this bill could cost the health of at least 3000 children. That is not good enough.Nick Smith says that it is too expensive to actually get landlords to upgrade their properties to the standard we have been talking about today—the 2008 standard. Most of the submitters—and we have heard a bit about the submitters today—have said that insulation without heating does only half the job. We know that in most of these homes where the children are impacted on by poor health outcomes it is not only because the insulation standards are poor but because the heating standards are poor too.When you live in an environment like Auckland where in the wintertime there is an awful lot of moisture in the air that promotes the growth of mould. We all know what mould particularly black mould does to the lungs of small children—it is one of the biggest causes of respiratory conditions for children. That is in Auckland where as Parmjeet Parmar says the sun shines all the time and the weather is fine. Try taking that further south where we get much colder conditions and you are in a situation where you have got some dire health conditions sitting on your doorstep.I want to get back to the point that I made about the quality of homes particularly in the Canterbury region where we have got hundreds if not thousands of homes that have not been repaired and that have been pushed out on to the rental market. We have got a cohort of landlords in this country who do not care about anything except collecting their rent from people. They are taking advantage of New Zealand renters and this Government is helping them do that.