Owners forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars refurbishing rental properties based on a discredited methamphetamine test deserve compensation, as do their insurers, Tenancies War spokesman Mike Butler said today.

If the Government is to compensate 800 Housing New Zealand tenants kicked out of their homes for meth tests that could provide no evidence of harm, it should also compensate both owners and insurers who have paid out tens of thousands for each property “decontaminated”, Mr Butler said.

“This is regulatory failure,” Mr Butler said.

“No one in Government asked the simple questions of how a substance, if smoked in a property, be so toxic to warrant evicting tenants, tearing out gib linings, dumping carpets, stoves, electrical fittings, and placing warnings on property titles,” he said.

“Inquiries that I did in 2014 under the Official Information Act revealed no evidence of any actual harm from illnesses, hospitalizations or deaths resulting from methamphetamine contamination,” Mr Butler said.

A toxicologist confirmed in 2016 that the benchmark for testing for methamphetamine was 24 times lower than "the lowest level that could you could plausibly have a health risk”.

The Prime Minister’s chief science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman, officially busted the methamphetamine testing nonsense in June of this year when he confirmed that there had never been a documented case of someone getting sick from third-hand exposure to meth.

“The last Government’s failure to base policy on evidence during the meth moral panic is unconscionable, as would be a failure by the current Government to compensate owners and insurers for losses incurred as a result of regulatory failure,” Mr Butler said.

Blaming a former Government for botched meth tests does not get the current Government off the hook because it was a Government failure, and the current Government is the Government, Mr Butler said.

Blaming another administration is no help for out-of-pocket owners and insurers, he said

Stop the War on Tenancies aims to empower both owners and tenants in the face of ongoing Government ineptitude with housing.

For further information, see Meth, evidence, govt failure at https://www.nzcpr.com/meth-evidence-govt-failure/

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