Prasad Rajen: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10190. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): Continuing on from my last call when I was rudely curtailed by the bell and I did not get a second call I was talking then about a principle that really undergirds clause 4 of the bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) which is the one about the primary responsibility of the family to care for its own members. I was saying then that there is no context to it there is no explanation of it there are no caveats on it and we do not even know where it comes from. What are the philosophical and ethical origins of that particular belief? We would have thought that the Government might explain it the Ministers might explain it and certainly at a select committee hearing we would have the opportunity to pursue that a little bit further.But when that principle is applied in this way to the disability sector we get the impression that it shows very little awareness of what family members actually go through to care for their seriously disabled family members. Often families are the only ones who are committed philosophically to that person in that situation for a lifetimebecause of that familial relationship. They stay there day in and day out providing enormous support. Members of the Committee debating this bill have given examples of such cases from their own family situations. But this particular new section 70A and what emerges from it show very little awareness of that.I do not know what the Government is worried about. It is not as if we will now go and produce a whole lot more people with disabilities. These are situations that have occurred and all that society is doing is responding to that. So potentially the principle is about our own responsibilities as a society to our most vulnerable. Somehow the Government has weaselled out of this particular responsibility on the basis of figures—on the basis of what it will cost.There have been discussions about unmanageable fiscal costs. What are those unmanageable fiscal costs? The figures we have seen are not unmanageable. The Government is of a mind to provide hopefully $1 billion of tax cuts and ACC cuts in the next Budget we believe. That is manageable. Somehow for the most vulnerable it is their families’ responsibility and the provisions of clause 4 really stand in the way. It actually does show the mean-spirited nature of these provisions. Perhaps the select committee process would have brought people out to actually argue those particular implications of the provisions of clause 4 but we are not able to do that. We live in an interdependent world. We are as a society our brother’s keepers if you like. A decent society does that and these are the kinds of provisions that do it. The costs are manageable. The numbers are not enormous. No matter how long it has taken no matter what the history is this is something we ought to be doing.On a different point new section 70A(2)(c) limits the rights of citizens to take complaints to the Human Rights Commission. That right is taken away. It is a very very serious clause that takes away an important right from our citizens. But of course all of that would be obviated if we did indeed provide the kind of care that our most vulnerable required. If we did that then there would be no need to take away their right to go to the Human Rights Commission. So again here we have a problem and the solution is actually seriously flawed. Again the provisions of clause 4 warrant that concern quite a bit.I want to talk a little bit about new section 70B(2). Perhaps there is something quite monocultural about these particular provisions when we talk about the family and we talk about family responsibilities. I draw attention to the definition “aunt or uncle”. Who is an aunt and who is an uncle? The Minister in the chair the Minister of Health rolls his eyes but the Minister will I hope take a call and explain the question I am about to ask him. In a Western European context that is easy to define. But in an Indian context it is not. In a Chinese context it is not. And even in a Māori context it is not.