Residential Tenancies (Registration of Boarding House Landlords) Amendment Bill

Residential Tenancies (Registration of Boarding House Landlords) Amendment Bill First Reading Hon JENNY SALESA (Labour—Panmure-Ōtāhuhu) (19:49): I move, That the Residential Tenancies (Registration of Boarding House Landlords) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill. I rise in strong support of the Residential Tenancies (Registration of Boarding House Landlords) Amendment Bill. This bill proposes something that is humane and quite simple: that no boarding house in New Zealand should be able to operate while hiding in the shadows; that we do our part as parliamentarians to legislate, and to shine a light on, boarding houses and to make sure all boarding house landlords are registered. The problem that is before us in the House of Parliament tonight is not a new one. For many years, boarding houses have accommodated some of our most vulnerable in society—people with complex health needs, people on low incomes, people leaving institutions, people without family support, and those with nowhere else to go. Yet, too often we have not had a reliable way of answering these very basic questions: where are these boarding houses located across Aotearoa New Zealand, who is running them, and are these boarding houses complying with the law? I must say that this is not an abstract legal or policy debate—not from me tonight. We have seen the human cost of unsafe boarding houses. We will all remember what happened here in Pōneke Wellington on 16 May 2023, the tragedy that catalysed the urgent national attention about boarding house safety, the fatal fire at that 92-bed Loafers Lodge, which unfortunately killed five people and injured 20 others. It was one of the most devastating fires of its kind across New Zealand in, I understand, over 50 years. The four-storey building was originally an office and a warehouse, constructed in 1971, I’m informed, but it had no sprinkler system, and despite this, this building was given a building warrant of fitness just two months before the fatal fire. This boarding house was home to some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable, and the people who were living in it were referred from Government agencies. This boarding house is one that fell through the regulatory gap. Loafers Lodge had flown under the radar, operated in the shadows, until lives were lost. The Social Services and Community Committee, way back in 2011, recognised that boarding houses were a problem here in Aotearoa New Zealand. In fact, at that time, they had an inquiry, and that inquiry took them about three years. Their report was finalised and tabled here in Parliament in 2014. Two of the key recommendations that they made and two of the findings that they made I’d like to speak of tonight. The first was that many of the boarding houses they looked into fell far short of the most basic of standards. The second was that there is no register of boarding houses in New Zealand and no statutory regime for oversight. In fact, one of the main recommendations from this inquiry was that we should have a national register of boarding houses. Now, we in the Labour Party believe that every New Zealander deserves a clean, safe, and warm place to live. This is central to our commitment to healthy homes, to ensuring that people have decent jobs, and to ensuring that the cost of living is tackled here in New Zealand. Right now, there is no registration system of our boarding houses for the country. This means that anyone—and, unfortunately, I mean anyone—can operate a boarding house with no oversight, no accountability, and no way for Government agencies to know or to tell the difference between a property that is legal and one that is not complying with our laws. Auckland Council in 2024—this is in the aftermath of Loafers Lodge—inspected 44 properties, and when they looked at these 44 properties, 40 out of the 44 properties were found to be operating unauthorised transient accommodations or boarding houses. Auckland Council also found fire safety breaches, properties that were converted without consents, and some had grown from single dwellings to over 20-bedroom dwellings. They found growing gang-affiliated occupants, and what they also found when they went to inspect some of these boarding houses was that they actually had to take police with them because some of these landlords were not even allowing them to come into their boarding houses. Some of the landlords were refusing to accept that Auckland Council and the inspectors had any authority to be in the boarding houses. What we also know from this report is that the Department of Corrections and Work and Income New Zealand actually said that, without an official register of boarding houses, it is hard for them as Government agencies to know whether a property is legal or whether a property is non-compliant. These are Government agencies. Some of you may remember that, in Dunedin, the Otago Daily Times had a story that they called the “Houses of Horror”, where they investigated and found homeless people who were living in dilapidated boarding houses, described as one of the darkest corners of our housing system. These stories are not isolated; they are warnings, warnings for all of us here in Parliament about what happens when vulnerable people are housed in places that agencies cannot easily track, regulators cannot easily target, and the public cannot easily identify. That is the longstanding issue that my member’s bill addresses. The bill will improve the oversight of boarding houses in New Zealand by requiring registration of all boarding house landlords under the Residential Tenancies Act 1986. Landlords cannot grant a boarding house tenancy unless they themselves are registered, and this registration is something that must be renewed every year. It aims to protect vulnerable tenants and ensure compliance with our tenancy laws. A public register will be created and maintained by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MHUD), and the details include the landlord’s name, contact information, address for service, and addresses and descriptions of the boarding houses that these individuals or companies own. Members across this House don’t always agree, but it is my sincere hope that we agree on this: when a person or a company operates a boarding house that houses particularly vulnerable people, both local and central government should know who they are, where they’re operating, and whether or not they are fit to do so. To my colleagues in the coalition Government, it is my sincere hope that you support this bill to first reading, because even if you do support it to first reading, it doesn’t mean that you have to agree with every single clause of the bill, but it does mean that it allows the bill to go to select committee, allowing tenants, councils, Fire and Emergency, MHUD, tenancy services, responsible landlords, housing providers, disability and migrant worker advocates, and community organisations to have their say. Voting for this bill at first reading sends the message to the public of New Zealand that we have heard the warnings, we have learnt from Loafers Lodge, we’ve listened to the Auckland Council inspectors’ report, we have not forgotten Dunedin’s Houses of Horror, and, more importantly, we are prepared to work together to fix a longstanding gap in our laws. I commend this bill to the House. DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to. JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland) (19:58): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Residential Tenancies (Registration of Boarding House Landlords) Amendment Bill in its first reading and just want to take the opportunity at the outset to congratulate the Hon Jenny Salesa on drafting this bill on an important issue and on having that drawn from the ballot, which is always one of the things that every member of this House who is on the backbench hopes will happen to their member’s bill. It’s a great moment when it does. Look, I just want to congratulate her as well for grappling with a very challenging and difficult issue. Unfortunately, Loafers Lodge really highlighted some genuinely serious issues that need to be taken into consideration. That was obviously a tragic incident here in the city of Wellington, in the suburb of Newtown, where five people unfortunately lost their lives. There are a number of factors to that, but, certainly, I think the lack of sprinklers and alarm systems played a really crucial role in what happened. Look, boarding houses—as the member who spoke before me, the Hon Jenny Salesa, mentioned—provide accommodation for some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable renters, including people with limited housing options, people with mental health issues, substance abuse issues, poor credit history, or involvement with the justice system. I’ve certainly seen that in my previous practice in the criminal justice sector. I worked as a lawyer, and I certainly saw people moving through that system and I saw some of the housing they were going through, some of which was of a very high standard and some which was not. Evidence does show that some boarding houses continue to operate with poor maintenance, poor health and fire safety standards, and tenants can often face barriers to raising concerns, including a fear of retaliatory action due to shorter termination notice periods under boarding house tendencies, so they can be more vulnerable than the typical renter. However, we do believe that any regulatory response must be tightly targeted, must avoid unnecessary red tape, and must focus on lifting safety and quality outcomes in boarding houses, rather than creating broad compliance-heavy registration requirements. We want it to be really targeted, and we want it to be effective. I acknowledge and welcome the Hon Jenny Salesa’s plea before to Government parties to consider this even if they don’t agree with all of it. That, basically, sums up our position at this point. We don’t think all of this quite hits the mark. However, we do think it’s an important enough issue that we agree it’s appropriate that she has brought this to the House, and we will be supporting this through to select committee and we will welcome submissions. I believe it’s being referred to the Social Services and Community Committee, which I chair, so I can say we will be looking forward to hearing submissions. We want to hear things that people think work well, things that they think don’t, things where it could be improved, and we will be listening very carefully and looking at how this piece of legislation can be improved. One of the things about drafting a member’s bill is that there is some support that’s provided by Parliament in doing so but we don’t have the benefit of all of the advice from officials, and so this process through a select committee is a really good one to really panel beat the ideas, panel beat the draft legislation, and look at how it can be really effective in addressing the legitimate and appropriate concerns that have been raised in this bill by the Hon Jenny Salesa. With that, I commend this bill to the House. RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (20:02): Thank you so much, Madam Speaker. The Green Party is supporting the Residential Tenancies (Registration of Boarding House Landlords) Amendment Bill. I want to congratulate Jenny Salesa for bringing this issue forward. I’m really stoked to hear that the National Party is going to be supporting this, at least to select committee. I’ve spoken a bit about my life before being an MP, but when I worked at Auckland Action Against Poverty, one of the things that I often did was try to advocate for people to be given access to things like emergency housing when they were homeless. There were moments in Auckland, particularly where I worked, where emergency housing was not deemed available for people, but people were being placed in boarding homes. There were several instances where elderly people, disabled people, people struggling with ill mental health were put in boarding homes that I got to see myself. Many of them were in terrible conditions, and they clearly were not safe places for people who were just struggling to make ends meet. We’ve heard other speakers mention some harrowing incidents like Loafers Lodge, which tragically cost people’s lives, but the overall situation we’ve got in this country is a genuine lack of adequate information over who is running these boarding houses. There seem to be very little safeguards to actually put the landlords who run these on notice if they do not provide adequate conditions or if they’ve got a poor track record of running them. They should not be able to make a profit out of providing often unsafe, expensive, poor-quality housing. We are supporting this bill, and I want to encourage—now that we’ve had confirmation from the National Party that this will at least pass the first reading—that we hear from people who have experienced living in boarding homes. Ultimately, those voices are the most critical to ensuring that the provisions of this legislation to have a register, but also to establish a criteria by which a boarding house landlord could potentially be disqualified, are genuinely fit for purpose. The Green Party looks forward to engaging with this bill at the select committee stage. We commend the member for bringing this important issue, and we hope that the Government, in supporting this, acknowledges the need for a comprehensive register of landlords and property managers as well. Thank you. CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) (20:05): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Residential Tenancies (Registration of Boarding House Landlords) Amendment Bill. Can I first thank Jenny Salesa for the time she took earlier in this process to talk with me about this bill and explain her reasoning in a one-on-one conversation, which was very helpful, including that the stated aim is to improve the visibility, compliance, and accountability within the sector, particularly for the protection of vulnerable tenants who use and call boarding houses home, if even for a short while. I am rising and speaking in cautious support of this bill, but ACT believes that a conversation is worth having at select committee to make sure that the bill does what it says on the tin. Over the summer, I had a bit of a read through a book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson calledAbundance. They used the case study of boarding houses in certain Californian cities, and some of the rules and the prescriptions and registrations and minimum lot sizes and a lot of the things that went on in the name of protection—registering actually made vulnerable tenants more vulnerable. We recognise that there is an impact on the community in having boarding houses and having them poorly run, but also, I think a lot of the arguments that have been made about compliance and risk are—and the fact that current regulations were looked over; like what you currently must do by law: code of compliance, resource consents if it’s a large building, every year get a building warrant of fitness. The amount of burden that puts on a lot of people who are doing the right thing—checks every month, every day, every year; getting those checked by the councils; keeping them registered as a building warrant of fitness. Those are quite a large burden, and when those are overlooked, that’s when stuff happens—bad stuff, death and pain—but that doesn’t mean that more regulation is always the solution. We are supporting this to select committee because vulnerable tenants deserve better protection, but protection that prices them out of housing altogether is not protection at all. I hope that during the select committee discussion we hear from all those parties in a robust way, about the effects they’ve had living in boarding houses and the effects they’ve had providing them. I think we can do well, in this country, to lift the standards, but we must make sure we’re doing it in the correct way. Thank you, Madam Speaker. ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (20:08): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First, also to speak in cautious support of this bill. I just want to say congratulations and thank you to the Hon Jenny Salesa, as other speakers have done, for the conversations we’ve had about this. I think we probably need to have a few more of them. Where are we at with this? We are cautiously supporting this legislation. I note that it’s really about frustration about the lack of data about boarding houses. I mean, at the moment, if you look at the requirements under the Residential Tenancies Act, broadly, the definition of a boarding house is at least six tenants, and each tenant must be intended to stay for at least 28 days or more, but the requirements on them are pretty much the same as the requirements, in many cases, on other renting arrangements. That includes having written agreements; it includes lodging that landlords can request a bond for—although sometimes I suspect they may not do. If you’ve got a bond there, you’ve certainly got to register that with the Tenancy Tribunal, so that information should be available. That’s one of the questions which I would like to see teased out as we go through this: what information actually is already required in law? What are the outs in that law, if you like? And are we in the situation where we actually have a large number of boarding houses—it seems to be the case—who are not actually complying with the law as it is at the moment? I think that’s one of the questions: does the law need to be changed, or is it the fact that some of them are not, or many of them are not, actually complying with the law at the moment? The second question that I want to ask as we go through this process—and I know that the mover of the bill, the Hon Jenny Salesa, has the right of reply at the end—is the intention. Once we’ve got better quality information—let’s say we’ve got a number of boarding house owners who are not complying with the law at the moment, or they are complying with the law at the moment and this will make them go a bit further—it’s the issue there, at the end of the explanation: “In establishing a register of boarding houses, this Bill will support the monitoring of boarding house compliance with residential tenancy laws (such as the Healthy Homes Standards)”. I know, I think, when we had the first conversation on this some months ago—I’m directing this at the Hon Jenny Salesa—there were some pretty horrific stories about the quality of some of these. Obviously, there’s been some discussion about the Loafers Lodge situation, but the question is going to be: what’s going to happen if we push the standards up higher? Do a lot of those drop out of the market? Then what happens to the people who are currently accommodated in those boarding houses? Do we end up with a group of people who then have nowhere to go and end up on the street and we’ve got another problem? I think all of these things need to be teased out during the select committee, but it would be useful, just in the right of reply at the end of this introductory reading, to have a little bit of that teased out, if it wasn’t already teased out in the introduction. Again, on behalf of New Zealand First, we are cautiously supporting this bill, at least to the select committee, and we’ll see what we get from this, because I think we’ll get a lot of different situations which people will raise with us, and I think that will be most useful. The other point I’d like to make is just in terms of people who actually end up on the street. We talk a lot about homeless people. Having had some conversations with some of those folks who were on the street when I was Mayor of Wellington, going around the streets of the city, many of them actually did have a place to go. They chose not to at a particular point in time; they wanted to be there on the streets. Sometimes it’s because of social reasons they want to be there; sometimes it’s for the reason they don’t actually want to be at their place of residence. The question is: there will be an interface, potentially, between this legislation requiring higher standards and potentially the impact on homelessness, so I think we need to tease out all of those things. I commend this bill to the House and look forward to the select committee process. Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) (20:12): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s really encouraging, yet again, to see an issue that has been brought forward via the members’ bill process where it appears the whole of Parliament agrees. It’s disappointing, and I say that sincerely, that Te Pāti Māori haven’t taken their call, because it would have been, I think, a nice signal to everybody that cares about those that find themselves in precarious housing situations to see that every party in Parliament wishes to see this issue discussed further by the select committee process. I do want to acknowledge those Government parties that have expressed support, at least to the select committee stage. It is an important issue and, as we see homelessness increase to the levels that we have, with front-line providers saying that it is the highest it’s ever been—the likes of the Wellington City Mission say that it is the worst they have ever experienced—we’re going to have more people in precarious accommodation circumstances, and boarding houses certainly are one of those. The question as to whether they should be registered is a valid one. I want to acknowledge my friend and colleague Jenny Salesa, who is an extremely active and effective local MP—and I don’t think anyone would say anything counter to that—who listens to her constituents and identifies issues and brings them here to Parliament. This is one of those occasions. Jenny has identified that this is an issue not just in her constituency but, frankly, everywhere. This isn’t just a city issue; this is just as relevant to where I live in Masterton as it is in South Auckland or elsewhere. In fact, I can think of a circumstance in recent history in Masterton where what was a hotel then became a boarding house. It closed down because of unsuitable conditions that could have all been avoided if there was a regulatory system in place that set minimum standards. But, to Andy Foster’s point, the people that left this had nowhere to go. There is a massive question mark here: are we as a country satisfied that, for the sake of getting people off the street, any sort of accommodation will do? I would say no, we’re not. But how do we then ensure there is a minimum standard, and why should people—if a boarding house is the only option available to them—put up with standards that are below levels that other people in similar circumstances would expect to meet? I’m pleased this is going to a select committee stage. There have been some legitimate questions raised. I know, given I know the members who are raising them, that they mean them sincerely. We want to make sure we get this right, but we’re not going be able to do this on the floor of the House at this stage, at the first reading. We’re going to do that at select committee, and we’re going to do that at the committee of the whole House. I’m really encouraged to see that this will have the level of support to get to that stage. Once again, good on you, Jenny Salesa, for bringing it forward. RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (20:16): Thank you. Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to stand and rise on this members’ day and speak, in particular, to this piece of legislation, the Residential Tenancies (Registration of Boarding House Landlords) Amendment Bill. Again, as has been done regularly tonight, may I congratulate Jenny Salesa on this bill. I haven’t had a lot to do with Jenny, apart from in the Regulations Review Committee, which Madam Speaker, you probably would, of course, realise is one of the most riveting of all the select committees that we have in Parliament. I got to join it—it was one of my first jobs—and I really wondered if I’d made some correct life choices at that point! Fortunately, I was flanked by several lawyers—the Hon James Meager and Joseph Mooney—who helped me navigate, and of course the Hon David Parker as chair, who was very diplomatic in that role and helped me to find my feet. I congratulate you, Jenny, on this and the luck of the draw, as it were, and what would certainly appear to be favour in advancing the cause of your legislation at this point. I acknowledge you on that. We often get a hard time in the National Party in terms of our stance on housing—that we’re contributing to rough sleeping and to those vulnerable people—but if you look at our record, even over the last two years, we can speak with some conviction to what we’ve done, because we know that housing is an ecosystem, or it’s a system of the worst affected, the vulnerable, who rely on emergency housing. I spent six years as trustee and chair of Te Whare Korowai, the Hamilton Christian Nightshelter. We saw firsthand—in fact, at the time, the night shelter operated literally as a night shelter and we’d kick people out at eight in the morning. Through COVID, we had to adapt, and actually now the organisation is run incredibly capably by the manager, Joanne, and is a 24/7 operation with several properties, including many transitional housing beds. That whole system is designed to help those at, essentially, “the last hotel”, we would call it, where there’s no questions. If someone needs a place to stay, we’re able to accommodate them. That’s at one end of the spectrum, and of course, as we know in 2023 when we came into Government, we had a lot of emergency housing crisis across motels and hotels all over the country. We knew that wasn’t a sustainable place for children, and we targeted that as one of our priorities under Minister Tama Potaka and very quickly exceeded our target in eliminating the hotel situation and getting those from emergency housing into good social housing, wraparound support, and all those things which are needed. There’s still a little bit of work to do there, but we haven’t taken our eye off that. Then, of course, there’s social housing, which is another piece in the system. With Kāinga Ora (KO), there was a lot of mismanagement with the financial organisation which we had to remedy; reinstate a board, set some protocols, and actually make tenants responsible for their actions, as well. One of the first things I had as a local MP was complaints from neighbours about unruly tenants. KO had, effectively, their hands tied, because they had little ability to intervene. We changed that, and now I don’t have those complaints any more; I genuinely don’t. I know, also, the team at KO works really well with those people, placing them in the right environments and giving them the right support, and that’s fantastic. Of course, we know, with KO, 50 percent of the housing was only pumping out three- and four-bedroom units when 50 percent of people needed one- and two-bedroom units, and they were only producing 12 percent. We’ve amended that, through the work of the Hon Chris Bishop, and that’s having an incredible effect on social housing. Then, of course, we look at what we’re doing through fast-track legislation, the IFF legislation—the infrastructure funding and financing. Of course, an area close to my electorate is Te Awa Lakes, where they’re going to be building 2,500 homes, some of which will be affordable—another key cornerstone—and I hope the IFF legislation will also be supported across the House, as it was largely a bipartisan tool to help free up funding and financing to unlock housing and not let infrastructure constraints stand in the way. We look forward to supporting this tonight to select committee. I see it was in select committee in 2011-14. Obviously, it has been permeating for some time. Sometimes, unfortunately, this House isn’t very efficient at dealing with things that need to be changed. This is an opportunity to revisit that and take it to the select committee and, to use Joseph Mooney’s words, panel-beat the process and make sure we end up with something which we can also support. It’s my pleasure to support this to the next stage. Thank you. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Helen White—happy birthday. HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert) (20:21): Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I was absolutely thrilled to see this come out of the biscuit tin, and I am so grateful to my colleague Hon Jenny Salesa for having drafted this and put it in as a priority for her. I have a constituency where this will make a huge difference. We have boarding houses in my area, and I have been concerned about the stories I’ve heard. I know this is a problem throughout the country, and I’m thrilled to see us, as a committee, the Social Services and Community Committee, get this to look at it. I acknowledge the cautious support that we have from two of the parties here and Cameron Luxton’s comment that he was concerned, after reading Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance, that perhaps we would do some damage by over-regulating and making it impossible for people to run homes like this. It was a book that I was very attracted to in lots of ways. The problem with those books, as you settle down about them, is that they are too blunt an instrument. There might be some merit in rethinking those rules, and we should do it all the time, but we should also be vigilant about our values and our needs as a community. I want to talk, in a way, about my portfolio of sexual and family violence prevention, which perhaps shines a light on that. I got the portfolio not that long ago—not a year ago—and it’s quite a heavy portfolio to get. I went to see someone at the organisation called Help, and they were talking to me about someone being referred into a boarding house and that it happened because their relationship was a violent one. They had been scared because there was not a lock on the door. They were told not to worry about it, and they were raped. That is a story that I take really seriously. It is about making sure that, as a society, we give people safety. People won’t leave violent relationships if that’s the option that they have. I wanted to talk for a minute about my fear that what we’re doing when we narrow that ability for people to move into the nurture of our society through emergency housing, through alternative housing, is so damaging to the fabric of our society. It impacts on our children. One of the things that comes up over and over again is that, now, people are asked whether they contribute to, or have contributed to, their homelessness. That is a narrower way of looking at things, and actually life is really complicated and people in those situations probably already feel they’re contributing to their situation. That’s probably the reality of a lot of people’s view of themselves in that situation. Their esteem is low, and they don’t need to be asked that question. If, in fact, there is narrower criteria, they end up in their cars or on our streets. If the boarding houses are not safe, if we don’t take adequate care, we end up with a situation which is completely, completely damaging, and it’s not just the person in that situation; it’s their kids. It means they don’t leave. Now, there’s an absolutely stunning piece of information I’d like to put before you, because it shocked me and I’m still thinking about it, and it was out of Canadian research. It said that, if somebody rings a women’s refuge and they get turned down, 80 percent of those people never come back. They never ask again; they internalise that situation, and they think it’s their problem. We have to provide a range of solutions. There will likely always be boarding houses, but we need to make sure they’re safe places for people, as a bare minimum. Thank you. TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) (20:26): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I’m not sure who I’m going to congratulate first, whether it’s Helen White for her birthday or Jenny Salesa for having her bill drawn. Hon Nicola Grigg: 32, is it, Helen? TOM RUTHERFORD: Yeah, 21 for Helen, actually—and for Jenny having her bill drawn, and then actually beyond being drawn, actually getting what seems to be universal support across the House at this first reading. Obviously, noting we haven’t heard a contribution from Te Pāti Māori, but I suspect the Green Party will be voting proxy on their behalf and we’ll see how their support lines up on this legislation. As speakers before me have outlined, both Joseph Mooney and Ryan Hamilton, we are cautiously supporting this at first reading through to the select committee stage for a couple of reasons: one, to have the opportunity to hear from submitters on the legislation, to tell us how they think it will work in practice, whether they think it is necessary, from the general public and from those who operate in the sector; and two, as rightly said by Joseph Mooney, to panel beat the legislation, to work it into a sort of tip-top shape that we think it can actually work in today’s society. We know that boarding houses across New Zealand provide accommodation for some of the most vulnerable people in our community; people who have really, in some cases, extremely limited options to where they can choose to call home, and that may well be due to circumstances often beyond their control, whether it’s mental health issues or disability issues. Often, it relates to substance abuse and addictions. It can even be things like poor credit history or involvement with the justice system one way or another. Often, they find themselves living in boarding houses. We have some of the most vulnerable Kiwis in those circumstances living there and ensuring that they get the support they need when they’re there and that the system has their back—in a way. Evidence does show that boarding houses continue to operate—in many cases; not all of them, but many of them—with some really subpar maintenance, poor conditions, poor health. Many people tonight have talked about the Loafers Lodge example, with really bad fire safety standards, which is hugely concerning, particularly for our most vulnerable people. Tenants often face barriers to raising their concerns, whether it’s that they can’t even access management—some of them might not even know how to go about doing so in the first place—including the fear of eviction if they raise issues with things they’re not happy with, and shorter termination periods as well, which they can be held over them too. This is why we believe that appropriate legislation may well be needed in this space, but we want to make sure—and this is where we’re cautiously supporting it at first reading—that it’s tightly targeted to where it is needed the most. We want to avoid unnecessary red tape. We came in as a Government and slashed a number of red tapes across the sector. Now, that’s not to say that we don’t support regulation and red tape where necessary, but we don’t want to be adding it unnecessarily and as an additional burden. We want to make sure this legislation strikes the right balance, and we want it to have a real focus on lifting safety and quality outcomes in boarding houses for those that I just mentioned, who are some of the most vulnerable in our community, rather than just creating a really broad sort of compliance-heavy registration requirement, which we just think will go against that. Actually, Jenny Salesa’s intentions with the legislation are about bringing the standards of boarding houses up, rather than lowering them by bringing in additional regulation. At the moment, we don’t think it is targeted enough to where we want it to be. That’s why we’re sending it to the select committee, to give it the opportunity to get some light on the legislation so we can hear opportunities to improve it and to make it better. I do note that it did go to the former Social Services and Community Committee for inquiry during the 2011-14 Parliament, and they did highlight a number of issues in particular. The member’s intention with the bill is to create a register that has some of the most basic information about the boarding house—such as the name of the landlord, their contact details, their address for service, and the address and description of all boarding houses that currently have been granted a boarding house tenancy—and making sure that information is publicly available, probably like the New Zealand Companies Office, for example, where you can look it up, see who it is, see what they operate, and see if they’ve got a number of other operations across the country. As I’ve said, the National Party supports this bill at first reading. We welcome the opportunity to hear from the public on their submissions on the legislation. I congratulate the member for having it drawn, and at this stage, we commend it to the House. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just before I call the Hon Jenny Salesa, I wanted to make a comment. A couple of people have referred, in the House tonight from both sides actually, to a particular party choosing not to have a call. That’s acceptable in my view, but I think we need to be careful when we start predicting whose party might vote for what. It comes very close to breaching another Standing Order. Thank you. In reply, the Hon Jenny Salesa. Hon JENNY SALESA (Labour—Panmure-Ōtāhuhu) (20:31): Thank you so much. I would like to begin my contribution by thanking all of my colleagues from right across the House. I’ve got to say, when I drafted some bullet points for this address and reply, I did not expect that I would get this much support. Can I thank the National Party, the New Zealand First Party, as well as the ACT Party—all of the coalition Government parties—as well as, of course, the Green Party, who were the first party to give me their support on this member’s bill. I understand from the Green Party, who hold the votes of Te Pāti Māori, that they are also voting in favour of this member’s bill. I’ve been in Parliament now for a number of years. This is my very first member’s bill to ever be drawn out of the biscuit tin. I’m not actually that fortunate. For it to actually have unanimous support is actually really unexpected, but I’m glad that I have it, because this is a really serious issue for New Zealand. I didn’t speak about it in my first contribution, but one of the main reasons why I drafted this bill is because this issue, in my own electorate of Panmure-Ōtāhuhu—particularly the Ōtāhuhu part of my electorate—is a really big issue. The issue of boarding houses is something I have had other constituents come to my office about and that I have had police in the past reach out about. The manager of the town centre in Ōtāhuhu reached out to me as the local MP. I’ve also got to say that, as local members of Parliament, this is something we all do. I know. We go door knocking, and in doing that, I came across a house that I thought was just a house. It looked like just a normal house from the outside, but when I walked up to get into this house, there was actually no front door. The whole front door had been taken off its hinges, and it was used so that you could not fall through the actual stairs. When I walked into introduce myself as the local MP and to offer my services, I noticed, in the sitting room, which was a shared space with the kitchen, there was no running water. There were no taps. All the taps were taken off. On my way out, to go back out on to the street, in the place where there should have been a bathroom and a toilet facility, there was nothing. This was actually a boarding house that had no running water and no bathrooms, and it was not fit for human beings to live in. I know this is not the only boarding house like that in my electorate. This is one of the main reasons why this is a bill that’s needed. There is no register of boarding houses. We don’t know how many there are across New Zealand. We don’t know who is compliant and who is non-compliant, and, as they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. A public register that brings transparency would ensure that landlords who profit from housing our most vulnerable citizens will be held to a certain standard. I will end with where I began, by thanking each and every one of the members of Parliament from all the different parties in the House of Parliament in New Zealand. Thank you so much for your support. I look forward to having this member’s bill discussed at the select committee, and I also look forward to making sure that the bill is fit for purpose for all of us, especially for all of the tenants that live in boarding houses right across Aotearoa New Zealand. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa. Motion agreed to. Bill read a first time.