Chadwick Steve: Protection of Personal and Property Rights  Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chadwick Steve: Protection of Personal and Property Rights  Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 September 2007. Volume:642;Page:11761. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 It is nice to take a call on the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Amendment Bill. I was not on the Social Services Committee so this is an outsider’s view of the bill. 
People are saying that this bill has arisen from a Law Commission report. I want to give some acknowledgment to the Minister for Senior Citizens Ruth Dyson who is the one who decided that it was time to get things done for the population of older people. She rolled her sleeves up had a report from the Law Commission and got going. The reason why she got going is that this Labour-led Government decided that elder abuse and neglect is one of the key platform planks that we will take some notice of over the next 5 years and this fitted perfectly with what the Law Commission report found. This is a feel-good bill as I have noticed from all members speaking in the House tonight because we have been increasingly concerned about the abuse and neglect of older people and also about the misuse of the current enduring powers of attorney approach. 
I want to go back to the context of 1988 when the legislation was first introduced. Most old people then— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: 1988! 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: Yes 1988; it is only 20 years ago. Most older people then were either in rest homes or in hospital beds. Actually they lingered in geriatric wards in hospitals and they were considered to have not much of a brain or much ability to make decisions about their own well-being. The care sector at that time was very paternalistic and decided just what was best to do with these people as they aged. 
We now have the Ageing in Place strategy and the Health of Older People strategy to look at the context of people being able to be nursed in their own homes or in a family environment or in retirement villages. When these people make decisions about their future—when they feel they have a future—and are not being tucked away by the family it makes it even more important that they are given the protection of this bill. It was timely that this was put into the focus of this century. 
The most worrying thing is when the frail elderly get overwhelmed by feeling that they are a burden to their family. Age Concern has pointed out that elder abuse is largely from direct family members who decide that they can tuck mum or dad in the back of their house in a little bedroom and that that is OK—they will look after the old person and then they may be able to get their hands on the assets. That is actually one of the most common problems of elder abuse that we see particularly as electorate MPs. 
A very interesting point in the bill is about the ability to identify what we used to call a person’s testamentary capacity which is a person’s ability to make decisions as to his or her mental well-being. I like the new section 94(2) which makes it so much more simple to be able to identify a person’s ability merely to make a decision in his or her own interests. It is important to be able to put the older person in the centre of this whole legislation. I heard Te Ururoa Flavell talking about manaakitanga and kaitiakitanga. I am sure he is aware there has just been a Maori lawyers hui this weekend. I do not think that this bill was one that was high on their priority to discuss because one cannot legislate for manaakitanga and kaitiakitanga. Those concepts do not fit into this sort of framework of legislation. But of course it does come down to the principle of trust and the relationship between a lawyer and the donor—as we call the person granting an enduring power of attorney here—is absolutely central. 
There are many family lawyers who are called out at all times of day and night like the old general practitioner to change a will whether or not the donor has the mental capacity to really understand what is in his or her best interests. It is very good to see strengthened here the requirement that a donor have his or her mental capacity and competence tested out by a health professional quite independent from that relationship between the lawyer and the client. There are many cases with motor neuron disease where older people are trapped in bodies that no longer function well but their mental capacity is in no way diminished yet sometimes family members become rather dominating and patronising about their care when the older people are screaming out for what they really want for where they know that they would be better nursed and for what is required for them in their future care. 
We all know that older people worry terribly about the assets that they have accumulated over their lives and what it means to them to protect those assets not for themselves but for their future generations. I think this is a fantastic bill. Good on this Government for getting it going and congratulations to the Social Services Committee which obviously worked so well on it.