Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Statistics New Zealand data tells us that renters are more likely to pay more of their income for their housing but more than that they are more likely to live in worse mouldier and less stable homes. I'd like to draw the House's attention and the public's attention actually to that given that we're going from zero to a hundred with this legislation being announced yesterday and it's going to be passed within 48 hours without the opportunity for us to go through scrutiny at the select committee stage or to grill officials or otherwise. So again I'll reiterate that we're really looking forward to the committee of the whole House stage. But there is a really peculiar set of rationale outlined in the many papers that have been tabled and released and I'd like to commend the Minister for that at the very least and for tabling and releasing particularly the Cabinet papers and the minutes that led to this decision. But there's a really peculiar set of rationale outlined in those papers that I want to draw the House's attention to. Now this won't be exhaustive because obviously as I've just stated we've been provided with less than 24 hours to kind of—or rather 36 hours at this point in time—go through these papers and to present these arguments and to debate this in the House which obviously is going incredibly quickly given that the Opposition is not particularly willing to put up much of a fight. Firstly the regulatory impact statement identifies as I said in my first reading speech that renters and that tenants and particularly our most vulnerable tenants are going to be the most impacted by the passage of this legislation but it also states in that regulatory impact statement that the tenants the most vulnerable tenants in this country—who are most likely to be impacted by this legislation—are precisely the group that were not consulted with. The Government consulted instead with a select group that it chose of property managers landlords and of course—as many have already canvassed—Kāinga Ora. Secondly the Government says that in—or rather it's outlined in this regulatory impact statement. Fascinatingly because I didn't know about this it says that The Government has an ongoing educational and informational programme to help landlords understand how the healthy homes standards can help maintain the value of their investment and retain tenants. These programmes may help reduce the frustration that a compliant landlord might feel." I'm not sure how to interpret that as some kind of sell for what is being rushed through the House this evening—the fact that the Government has an educational programme to educate landlords about their responsibility to provide the human right of adequate housing to their tenants. Thirdly we have it as outlined in this regulatory impact statement that it's believed that landlords need prompt relief—landlords need prompt relief—as they are already having to comply with their healthy homes standards obligations when tenancies start or are renewed. If we want to talk about the people that need relief again I think it's really worthwhile that we go back to the core constituency the core group of New Zealanders: the 1.5 million New Zealanders who live in rental properties who are identified in the exact same regulatory impact statement as being primarily affected and disproportionately affected by this legislation that we're passing through tonight and who again the Government consciously chose not to consult with given that it proactively went out and chose those groups to consult with. It is those tenants who are disproportionately living in overly expensive more mouldy and less stable housing who are the ones that need immediate relief. I also find it really fascinating again—this is on page 4 of the regulatory impact statement for those who are following along at home—where when you go through the assumptions regarding the issues that are being raised it states—and I quote—"The key assumption underpinning our understanding of the problem is that the information provided to HUD by stakeholders is accurate and representative of the rental market for both private landlords and public housing providers." To put that in plain English: effectively what we have here is rationale that is entirely self-referential. The problem that this legislation is seeking to resolve is one that the Government consulted a select group on to tell them their problems and then it is rationalising on the basis of what that select group said. Again this is not the group that the regulatory impact statement has identified as being primarily impacted by this legislation with that being the 1.5 million renters in this country who disproportionately live in worse homes than those who own their homes. Fifthly the Government is now actually trumpeting as you go through this regulatory impact statement and also through the Cabinet paper that they are speeding up the process of compliance particularly with Kāinga Ora which of course the Opposition has spent most of their time going through and with good reason because the State should be leading by example. The fact that we are seeing that the Government is lagging on this and on updating—particularly with the economies of scale that it has at its disposal to purchase and to upgrade these properties—is frankly abysmal. In this report it's trumpeting that we've gone from upgrading and compliance of around 180 homes per week in June 2021 to 600 to 700 per week now. Again I have to ask the question. We have known for years that healthy homes standards are needed to be enforced by next year but we've only started to see the Government start to ramp this programme up at the very tail end of things. So it prompts the question of why are we waiting until now and—as I believe others have already also said in earlier speeches in the first reading of this bill—it is in fact the case that many landlords have actually sometimes got themselves in debt to do this stuff early. We are also hearing as reflected in the regulatory impact statement again—which I'll continually refer to because it is the Government's rationale for this legislation being rushed under urgency tonight—that the Government has no idea what actually happens if we reach the compliance deadline. Now this is a really important one for us to dig into because what we have at paragraph 14 of the regulatory impact statement—and I think I'll quote this for those who are interested in the House and are engaging in actual robust debate about this—is that "Currently where private landlords have not complied with their deadline and this is brought to the regulator's attention the regulator will seek information to establish what efforts the landlord has taken to comply to help inform the appropriate response. Landlords are encouraged to keep records of the steps they have taken to comply in case this is sought by the regulator." Effectively the compliance deadline is kind of a wet bus ticket slap anyway. The Government has no idea what happens if we got to the deadline already in the legislation. We also have fascinatingly a rationale in here about the fact that "In the absence of Government intervention to extend the compliance date landlords and tenants may seek resolution through the Tenancy Tribunal. This could strain the limited time and resources of the Tenancy Tribunal." Once again this is a rationale for a warrant of fitness that front-loads these issues with the healthy homes standards which currently are effectively voluntary based on the fact that the Government is not collecting data on them and again it continues to rely particularly on tenants for enforcement and taking them through to the Tenancy Tribunal. The other fascinating part of this when you get down to paragraph 19 is that it says here—and I quote—"The Tenancy Tribunal can only order someone to pay exemplary damages when they have committed an unlawful act intentionally so a landlord who has attempted to comply would not receive an exemplary damages order." All of that—we're going through all of this—to extend the deadline for healthy homes standards compliance when it says in black and white in the regulatory impact statement that it is a wet bus ticket slap on the wrist for non-compliance anyway and the very least that the Tenancy Tribunal has power to do is to simply order that a nominal charge be paid. So I have to ask what's the point? The healthy homes standards—absolutely. They're an improvement on what the status quo was prior to them being implemented. But none the less we still have 1.5 million renters in this country who are left to fend effectively for themselves with these effectively voluntary healthy homes standards. I just finally want to point out that there's something called the Healthy Homes Initiative which is run by the Ministry of Health and it is not to be confused with the healthy homes standards. But there is some overlap particularly because the Ministry of Health is identifying homes that are explicitly unhealthy because people are presenting in our hospitals with illnesses created by living in those unhealthy homes. And guess what? Over the last nine years 25000 homes have been identified as unhealthy for people to live in but only 41—41—of those homes were ever investigated by Tenancy Services. That is a strike rate of 0.16 percent. If you speak to tenants—and many experts and researchers have—in these homes identified by the Healthy Homes Initiative they are terrified of the power imbalance in this country which this legislation continues to entrench."