Faafoi Kris: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Faafoi Kris: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2497. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Taloha ni Mr Assistant Speaker and thank you for giving me the call at the first reading of the Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. Labour will not be supporting this bill at this stage. 
We oppose this bill because of the way it has come to the House. We listened very intently to the finance Minister’s speech yesterday and nowhere in that document could we find any reference to this change. But we do have a bill before the House that will impose a significant change to some of the elderly who are in residential care in New Zealand. So we do not believe that the Government’s process around this has been transparent and we are not happy that a significant number of people who we believe would want to submit this bill to a select committee hearing on this issue will not have the opportunity to do that because this bill is being put through this House under urgency. 
The Minister the Hon Paula Bennett in her contribution—a very brief contribution—did mention that this was a priority for the Government. It is so much of a priority that there was no press release. There was no mention of this in the Budget speech at all. So we wonder why there was not any mention about— 
Hon Paula Bennett 
: It was in a press statement. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: I stand to be corrected. There may have been a press statement; we certainly have not seen it. But it was not a priority enough to make it into this document—the Minister of Finance’s speech that he made to the House yesterday. 
We have already heard through the media that there is concern around this bill. Roy Reid from Grey Power has already said publicly that he is concerned about the moves that are being made in this bill. We believe that he should have the chance to make a submission to a select committee so he can give his opinion. I am sure that there will be opinions on both sides of the fence and I did notice that there was a press release yesterday from Martin Taylor from the New Zealand Aged Care Association. So maybe Mr Taylor should also have his opportunity to make his contribution to this. This bill is going to affect a significant number of elderly people and the fact that it is going to be rushed through this House under urgency without people getting a chance to make a submission we think is extremely bad process. It does deal with an issue that is going to be a very important issue going forward for New Zealand but we do not believe it is a plan as such to deal with the increasing age of New Zealand’s population. Again it is another example of tinkering and a lack of leadership from this National Government. 
This bill will affect the amount of money that some of our elderly will be able to have in terms of being able to get a residential care subsidy. So in this Budget which we had before this House over the last 20 or so hours we have seen the Government target the very very young—our paper boys and paper girls—and now the very very old. Although our paper boys and our paper girls may not be of voting age our elderly certainly are and certainly their families—their sons and daughters and other family—will be very concerned about some of the measures that are contained in this bill. Again that is why we believe that the process is wrong and that those concerned families should have a chance to have their say in the select committee process. 
As I said at the beginning of my contribution we will not be supporting this bill. The process is bad. It is being rushed through under urgency in this House not giving the families of those elderly people concerned the opportunity to have their say not letting Grey Power—a significant lobby group in this country—have its say and not letting the sector have its say as well. We believe they should have their say. We will not be supporting this bill.