Twyford PhilPHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Labour is supporting this bill to select committee because we judge that there is enough in this bill that it is worth giving it some serious scrutiny at select committee. I will have something to say about each of the three main provisions in the bill but it is our argument that it is a bit strange that Nick Smith would bring a bill like this to the House to improve rental conditions—three practical but fairly minor improvements that need to be made—when the housing market and the rental market are in a state of meltdown and of the half of the New Zealand population who are living in rental housing a significant proportion of those people are living in despair at the moment because they are desperately trying to keep their heads above water in the face of skyrocketing rents poor quality housing and what is essentially an unregulated market. But we will come back to that.The first part of this bill that I want to comment on is the provisions that deal with methamphetamine contamination. The bill will give landlords easier access to properties to allow for the testing for methamphetamine contamination and it will allow both landlord and tenant the right to terminate a tenancy if tests come back at unsafe levels. The bill also I think helpfully sets up a regulation-making power to set the standards and the guidelines for meth testing including what would be the maximum acceptable level of contamination.Nick Smith told Radio New Zealand earlier today: I cannot be a miracle man." Nick the country does not want you to be a miracle man; the country wants you to do your job as housing Minister and do something about the appalling conditions that renters in this country are facing and the plummeting rate of homeownership that now sees—on your watch Nick Smith—the lowest rate of homeownership since 1951. It has fallen every week that you have been in the job Nick Smith since you took it on as housing Minister. So the country does not want miracles; it just wants the Minister to do his job. To be honest Nick Smith you have sat around for 3 years—3 years—while cowboy meth-testing companies have preyed on the anxieties of tenants and landlords and because of this Minister's absolute negligence Housing New Zealand alone has wasted $30 million—Peeni Henare: How much?PHIL TWYFORD: —$30 million—testing State houses that they thought were contaminated with meth and remediating those State houses. Hundreds of families have been needlessly evicted because of faulty meth-testing standards and guidelines that the Government was responsible for. This Minister Nick Smith the incompetent Nick Smith sat around for 3 years while $30 million was wasted and more than 500 State house tenants were evicted on the basis of faulty evidence—of testing procedures and standards that simply cannot distinguish between homes that have a residue of methamphetamine that might be harmful to people's health and a residue that poses no risk to anyone's health.The testing and the standards that Nick Smith has presided over cannot distinguish between a home that has been used as a P lab and a home where someone has smoked P. The former is a serious risk to people's health; the latter poses no risk. And yet that Minister has sat around sat on his hands and done nothing while tens of millions of dollars have been wasted and hundreds of people have been needlessly evicted by the Government's State housing agency.The provisions in this bill are long overdue but it needs to be said that without proper regulation of the meth-testing industry that has grown up in the last few years in response to this problem and in a situation of moral panic about P contamination this Government has allowed lack of proper information lack of data lack of decent standards and no accountability for meth-testing agencies which have made a killing at the expense of landlords and tenants. So it is 3 years overdue but what I say to this House and I hope we will have the opportunity to have this debate in the select committee is that without proper regulation of the meth-testing and remediation agencies these provisions are very unlikely to be effective.The other area that I want to touch on is that this bill basically clarifies the law around intentional damage—careless or intentional damage by a tenant. As the Minister said the Osaki case that the Court of Appeal found in April last year—it applied the provisions in the Property Law Act that usually apply to the commercial property industry to residential tenancies and basically changed the law that up until that time had meant that tenants were obligated to pay for the costs of damage to rental premises caused by intentional or careless damage. Basically the Court of Appeal ruled that tenants are immune from a claim by a landlord where the rental property is damaged by careless or negligent action. The effect of that was essentially to let tenants off the hook. It meant landlords could no longer pass on for example the cost of their insurance excess to tenants. I think it is widely agreed that it has tipped the law too far in favour of tenants and there is no disincentive for careless or intentional damage.So what the officials and the Ministers tried to come up with is a new formula that will provide a better balance of liabilities between landlord and tenant that will encourage tenants to take care and not expose them to potentially the risky and expensive legal action that insurance companies could take. We look forward to debating this in select committee. I know that the Property Investors Federation has some doubts about whether or not the right balance has been struck here and I look forward to hearing from it and also the various tenants' advocacy groups which I know were consulted by Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment officials in developing this bill but it will be good to really tease that out at select committee and see whether or not this particular formula strikes the most appropriate balance.The third aspect that I want to finish on is that this bill aims to strengthen the powers for prosecuting landlords who have rented out unsuitable accommodation such as garages warehouses and industrial buildings. There was one very notable case—I think it was 61 Molesworth Street—where at the time of the Wellington earthquakes the ratbag owner of that building had rented out a lot of that commercial space to tenants. They were found to be living not only in kind of unsafe and unsuitable accommodation but—what the bill points out is that if people are not in premises that are consented for residential purposes then landlords cannot be held to the provisions of the Residential Tenancies Act.So we applaud the intent of this legislation but it is ironic for a Government that has overseen an explosion in the number of New Zealanders living in substandard and overcrowded housing whether it is unconsented garages—and we have seen cases of Work and Income New Zealand referring people who would otherwise be homeless to live in unconsented garages in people's backyards. It is ironic that a Government that has presided over that is now spending $100000 a day on putting homeless people up in motels and is now cracking down on this particular aspect of it.I want to finish with the point that there is a massive reform agenda to fix the housing crisis and make conditions better for renters. There are so many things that need to be done to improve the quality of rental accommodation to give renters more security of tenure and to curb the property speculation that is driving house prices and rents through the roof but this Government prefers to focus on fairly small and relatively inconsequential matters when it brings a bill like this to the House."