Peachey Allan: New Zealand Sign Language Bill — In Committee 
Peachey Allan: New Zealand Sign Language Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:630;Page:2174] 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 I appreciate the opportunity to continue my contribution to Part 2 of the New Zealand Sign Language Bill. I return to clause 10A which provides for a review of the operation of the Act and I commend the Justice and Electoral Committee for making provision for that review. I note that under the Minister’s proposed amendment the review is to take place 3 years after the date on which the Act comes into force. I guess that means that the review will occur sometime in 2009 and I I think like an increasing number of New Zealanders take a lot of confidence from the knowledge that when that review is conducted the Minister responsible for it will be a Minister in a National Government. New Zealanders cannot wait for that to happen. 
Clause 11 provides for the making of regulations and again I commend the select committee for not recommending the establishment of a New Zealand Sign Language commission. This bill is not about bureaucracy. Let us be very very clear about this: we do not want legislation in New Zealand that simply creates more bureaucrats for the sake of having more bureaucrats. This bill will not require more office workers more bureaucrats or more people ticking boxes and filling out forms and using words like compliance and accountability. What will be required is more people who are trained as sign language interpreters. I believe that the final test of the success of this bill when it is implemented will be our ability to deliver on that. 
I believe that whenever we are dealing with any issue of disability the focus must always be on what an individual can do not on what an individual cannot do. The focus is not on whether an individual can hear; the focus is on what an individual can do—and that individual can communicate. One of the means by which deaf people can communicate is through sign language. For many of those people—for the 7000 Deaf New Zealanders who use sign language—that is their first language. It is the key to their being able to communicate in a formal sense and in an informal sense and the key to their being able to participate as fully contributing and involved members of our community. Sign language is the key to their being able to make a contribution to our community to stand on their own two feet and to take responsibility for themselves. That is what language is all about. It is about the inherent worth of the individual and the ability of that individual to communicate and to participate. As I have said once before New Zealand Sign Language is a formal language. It has structure it has grammar it has syntax and it has expression. It is worthy of our recognition as an official language. 
I have a sense from the Committee that I may be the last speaker and if that is the case it is a privilege to be able to speak finally before the vote is put. I conclude by once again paying tribute to those people who make the effort to learn a second language—to those people who understand that disability is not about what an individual cannot do; it is about what an individual can do. But there is little point for example in a child who is deaf learning sign language if others in his or her immediate community are not prepared or are not able to do so. I know from my own observations and my own experience as an educator that in those families where mum and dad grandad and brothers and sisters take the trouble to be involved with the child and to learn the child’s first language it means that that child can participate fully in family life. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 18 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 10A be agreed to. 
Amendment agreed to. 
Part 2 as amended agreed to.