New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNew 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:10116. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2)First ReadingHon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): I moveThat the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. It is the Government’s intention that this legislation should pass through all stages today. The New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) is the Government’s solution to the decisions made by the High Court and the Court of Appeal in relation toMinistry of Health v Atkinson and Others. This is a compassionate and responsible solution. It does shift the boundary between family and taxpayer responsibilities but it has landed in a fair and reasonable place. The Ministry of Health advises that New Zealand will be only the third country in the world after Sweden and the Netherlands that will pay a wage to some family members caring for other family members.For over 20 years under Governments of all hues the Ministry of Health has operated a blanket policy of not paying family members for the support they provide to disabled family members receiving disability support services. Support by Governments has consistently been based on the principle that families have primary responsibility for the well-being of each other within their family. Care and support provided by family members to their loved ones are part of that responsibility and are provided out of love and affection and not for money. The Government’s primary role in this regard is to support families in their role. That is why public funding for care and support is targeted to meet the needs that families are unable to meet.TheAtkinson court case raised issues that went to the heart of the relative obligations of families and the Government and the degree of responsibility that family members in different situations have for each other. The court in theAtkinson case found that the Ministry of Health under all Governments had a policy on disability support funding that was unjustifiably discriminating against parents caring for adult disabled children. This bill takes account of the court’s decision and clarifies the Government’s position on paying family carers. The bill provides certainty without the further need to resort to the courts on individual cases and it manages the significant financial risks for the Government. This approach balances the interests of disabled people family carers and taxpayers in challenging fiscal times.The Government provides over $1 billion each year to fund support services for over 30000 disabled people. The majority of these people are supported by family members in some way and the Government recognises the crucial role that families play in supporting and maintaining the well-being of disabled people in our nation. It is—and it remains—a fundamental tenet of Government-funded support services that generally families have prime responsibility for the well-being of their members but clearly change is needed. In some circumstances providing ongoing support for people with lifelong disabilities can place an unreasonable demand on families. In particular the situation of family members supporting adults with lifelong disabilities is an extraordinary circumstance involving a burden of care beyond that ordinarily required or obliged of family members.In consulting the disability and family carer communities on the issue of paying family carers submitters told the Ministry of Health that if prioritisation is required thepriority should be on disabled people with the highest needs. Support should be given to those families who need it most and submitters wanted some flexibility to deal with individual circumstances in their best interests. The Government recognises that changing the policy to pay all categories of family carers would result in unmanageable fiscal costs to the Crown. In considering targeting the Government decided that the fairest way of managing these risks was to provide support to those people who need it most. The bill reflects this community feedback. It allows and supports a pragmatic and compassionate solution to a difficult situation facing family carers. It amends the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act to enable the Crown through the Ministry of Health or a district health board to adopt policies and make payments to family carers of specified disabled family members.The bill provides for clarity about which support services are provided and under which specified circumstances. The approach recognises that the Government’s responsibility is to support families in their caring role. The policy cannot support all groups. This means people will not generally be paid to provide health or disability support services to their family members. This is particularly so for those parents who care for their non-adult children and for spouses who care for each other. The societal expectations and responsibilities for care in these situations are substantially different from those of parents who care for their disabled adult sons and daughters. The bill will allow the Ministry of Health to introduce a new policy of paying parents and resident family members other than spouses to provide disability supports to disabled adults aged 18 and over in high and very high need situations.The bill is a significant change in that eligible disabled people will now have the choice of employing a family member to provide them with support at home. This approach is consistent with the Government’s overall direction for disabled people to have more choice and control in their everyday lives. The Government in this Budget has committed $92 million over 4 years to implement this policy. The Ministry of Health will allocate funding to adult disabled people in high and very high need situations who wish to employ their parents or resident family members to provide personal care and household management supports they have been assessed as needing. There will be some flexibility within the policy to consider disabled people in particular circumstances who do not meet the eligibility criteria but where payment is clearly desirable. An example might be disabled people living in remote rural areas where alternative care is not available.The new family care policy does not affect the existing arrangements for those non-family members who have always been able to be paid to provide home support for a disabled family member who does not live with them. The Ministry of Health also provides the carer support subsidy totalling $34 million per annum to unpaid full-time carers to reimburse some of the costs of bringing in another support person to give the main carer a break from their caring roles. In addition the Ministry funds respite services of $17 million per annum to support short-term breaks for full-time family carers. The Ministry of Social Development does provide income support to the vast majority of those disabled people being cared for as adults.The Crown has acted in good faith to respond to the court’s decisions. We have carefully balanced providing the best supports for those families with the greatest need while being responsible with limited taxpayers’ funds. We have landed in a fair place. The bill clarifies the Government’s position on paying family carers and provides certainty without the need to resort to the courts on individual cases. The bill provides flexibility to implement and modify policies on paying family carers in the future. This issue has challenged Governments of all parties for 20 years. As recently as April 2008 the previous Government rejected paying family carers.This bill meets three central issues. The first is the need for each disabled person to receive the most appropriate care to enable a good life. The second is to recognise the extraordinary work done by family members in many hundreds of homes caring for family members with very high or high needs. The third is for support to be fiscally affordable for our country. I am pleased to be able to present this bill today and I commend the bill to the House.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I begin by acknowledging the families who took the human rights discrimination proceedings that have eventuated in this legislation coming in and acknowledge how traumatic it is for people to have to expose their personal lives in order to get justice. They did that and they are now being responded to by this legislation.It is a puzzle to me why we are ramming the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) through all stages under urgency because the payments do not come into effect until October of this year. There does not seem to be any need for urgency given that. The Minister of Health quite incorrectly stated that this is a major breakthrough and that this is the first time that there will be family caregiver policies but in his very legislation it specifically says: “the Crown and any DHB are and have always been authorised to adopt or have a family care policy and to change cancel or replace such a policy.” That is in the Minister’s legislation that we are debating right now. So there is already the ability for the Crown and any district health board to authorise a family care payment and they have in many instances. What the Minister has created is a new threshold for family care payment which will actually restrict the right of access of some who already meet the criteria.Some families who for example are in very isolated parts of our country—and in New Zealand we have a large number—and for whom it is very difficult to get a stable qualified appropriate caregiver have been able to get a family carer paid for to provide the support services that a disabled person needs. This new policy by saying that the family caregiver payment will be limited to those with high and very high needs—in fact it specifies that there will be only 1600 such people entitled to receive a payment—may well by the implication that the legislation is overriding existing policy limit the ability of district health boards and the Ministry of Health to be responsive to families’ needs and to pay family caregivers as they currently are able to do under existing criteria.I am concerned that in the rush for this legislation some of those “devil in the detail” points may well cause unintended consequences that mean that some families will be worse off than they currently are. I doubt very much that that was the intention of the Minister and I certainly doubt that it is the intention of any of the National caucus members despite what they are doing in housing. I am sure that none of them is intending that families will be worse off as a result of this legislation but with the very narrow criteria that is certainly a possibility.The other significant concern I have is that in this legislation it specifically says that the legislation “stops claims of unlawful discrimination being made concerning any care policy”. This stops future claims being made except for “any claim that arises out of a complaint that was lodged with the Human Rights Commission before 16 May 2013.” What is the date today? We know that in Parliament it is 16 May but in the real world where complaints are laid it is actually 17 May. So we are passing legislation that stops any future claim being made. That means that parents who are providing care currently and who are anticipating because of the Minister’s bold announcement that family caregivers would finally be paid that this would solve their problem will now have the detail of the criteria that only very high needs or complex needs disabled people qualify for this family caregiver payment. Today they will learn that they do not meet thecriteria for family carer payment and what is more that they are being stopped from laying a complaint with the Human Rights Commission about discrimination.This legislation says: “A claim that arises out of such a complaint may proceed but the remedy that may be granted is restricted to a declaration that the policy is inconsistent with NZBORA:”—the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So the Minister is not only significantly limiting the criteria for payment for family caregivers but also saying that anyone who misses out who does not meet those criteria will not be allowed to take a complaint to the Human Rights Commission unless they are expecting just a note saying that their complaint is justified because the policy is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.That is a significant move that this Parliament is proposing to take and not at a normal pace. The Government is ramming the legislation through all stages under urgency and extinguishing people’s right to challenge the policy of the Government. I am puzzled by that. It is the only reason that I can conclude for the Minister deciding to take this legislation through all stages under urgency. There is nothing urgent about it. As he quite rightly pointed out this issue has been around and unresolved satisfactorily for a very long time. The policy decision to determine whether a family responsibility extends to caring significantly for adult disabled family members is a big and complex call and this side of the House has made numerous written offers to the Minister of Health to try to adopt an agreed position so that we could have a parliamentary agreement on such a policy rather than something that appears out of nowhere and is then rammed through all stages under urgency. In my view that is not the way to deal with a significant and sensitive issue—an issue that affects thousands of New Zealanders and one that is hard to take a sensible call on.I think the Minister has got it wrong and I think the Atkinson family who were the instigators of this legal action and who are being responded to might think that as well because although they will be compensated for their care under this policy albeit by agreement and not specifically under the legislation had they applied next week they would not meet the criteria. They have won their case. It has been to the High Court and the Court of Appeal. They have won it through New Zealand’s legal system but under the criteria that the Minister Tony Ryall has currently laid out in this legislation that family would not meet the criteria. Families like the Atkinsons all around the country will have heard about this legislation and think: “Thank goodness our issues are finally sorted and resolved.” When they learn the detail of the legislation they will be puzzled.It is a bit of a contradiction this legislation. It responds to the court case. The Minister trumpets it as being the first ever resolution of the issue of family carers being paid. He is wrong. In the legislation itself it spells out the fact that there is and has always been the ability of the Crown or a district health board to determine under whatever criteria they wish to that family caregivers can be paid—and many are around the country. What this legislation does is now set a very high level a very high threshold for meeting those criteria. My concern is that it may very well exclude some families who are currently getting paid. If the Minister in the Committee stage wants to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper that clarifies that this will not extinguish any existing rights that families who meet the current criteria for being paid as family caregivers have I think that would certainly resolve that situation.This is a disappointing step because it is not as courageous as it could have been. It was not introduced with any discussion with other parties that I am aware of except those needed to get this bill across with a majority. I think this issue is bigger than just a parliamentary majority. I think it has been around for so long that across-party support would have very appropriate.The final concluding comment I want to make is my disappointment that this family caregiver payment specifically excludes spouses. In many relationships spouses are the appropriate people to provide care and in my view that is not a matter that Parliament should intervene in. That is a matter for the families themselves to determine.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): Thank you for the privilege to speak on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). This morning a prominent disability spokesperson said the sector will be relieved that a resolution has been arrived at. The bill indeed does respond to the Court of Appeal’s decision inMinistry of Health v Atkinson and Others and it does create a fair policy to pay for family members who care for their adult disabled children.It is very important to emphasise that this has been about since 2001 since the Human Rights Commission first ruled. That of course was at the time of the Labour-Green Government. In 2002 I must say the Hon Ruth Dyson did speak about paying carers in limited circumstances. In 2005 the Office for Disability Issues on its website said a family carer’s payment would raise ethical issues such as monitoring the care quality and the impact on family relationships if one member became a service provider and another the client.Then in 2008 Ruth Dyson in her Carers’ Strategy “later included the idea of a carer’s payment to some carers limited of adults.” What I do also note is that this was never responded to by the Labour-Green Government at any stage with any payment whatsoever; in fact it was not prepared to do so. So during that whole time the Labour-Green Government did nothing even though the Human Rights Commission had ruled as early as 2001. I think it is very important that this debate is taken in the context of the history that I have just gone over.This is the National Government’s solution to the court challenge and it did come after extensive consultation with the sector in 2012 where a large number of submitters responded and where there were a wide number of meetings throughout New Zealand to ensure that the disability sector was well informed of the complex issues associated with this challenging issue. Indeed it does shift the boundary between family and taxpayer responsibility. In the New Zealand context we have had a situation whereby families have not been paid for looking after fellow family members for many decades. The solution we have arrived at is indeed a very fair place. We recognise the importance of families in providing care and support to their adult disabled family members. This of course does mean that there is always a delicate balance. There is no doubt that there will always be a grey zone in terms of what persons have extensive disabilities and that has to be judged on an individual basis. One will never be able to have the fiscal ability to pay for all.I think the Attorney-General came up with a very well-thought-out report when he made his statement. It included the fact that the objective of the bill is to ensure that the Government does not incur unmanageable fiscal cost as a result of the decisions. We will have the Green Party of course wanting to print money. That is how unrealistic it is and how unrealistic it would be. It is important that that very well-written report of the Attorney-General is also taken into context.This is a significant investment in family care and gives choice and control to more disabled people and their families in the support they receive. It amounts to $92 million over 4 years to pay some family members who care for their disabled adult children. Funding will now be available for about 1600 disabled people with high or very high needs to pay some family members to provide care.This is something that could have been resolved under a Labour-Green Government. Over a period of 8 or 9 years it failed to do so. I am very pleased to be able to say that the National Government is at last resolving this. In my view it would be hugelyhelpful if the Labour Party supported this bill otherwise it might be accused of providing a response that perhaps we could apply that word to that we are not allowed to say in this House; it is known as the “h” word.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Can I begin by saying to Dr Paul Hutchison that it is 5 years that this Government has been in place. If this was so easy to resolve why was it not resolved in the first year of a National Government? Maybe it was because the whole issue actually was before the courts and could not be resolved in that time frame. He also said that the sector would be relieved. Well I have to say that that is not the feedback that is coming from this sector. People in the sector are bemused. They feel misled and actually they are shocked. But they ought not to be because if they go back and they read what Mr Ryall has been saying over a number of years they would know that the bottom line for him has always been cost and not care. It has always been cost and not care. Of course there must be restriction on costs in the health sector. It has always been the case. But he has consistently made it clear that he does not agree with adult disabled children being cared for by their families. If you go back to statements that he made in September 2012 he was part of the scaremongering that it was going to cost $400 million and that really brought out some of those who have to care for families.I draw to your attention Mr Cliff Robinson a parent from Thames who is caring for two adult disabled children. He said: “This is just scaremongering on the minister’s part. And also to even think about means testing people who [are] disabled … just horrifies me.” I think what it has really shown is the lack of understanding about what is involved in caring for disabled children. Members opposite can laugh about it but have they actually met constituents? And I would have thought Dr Hutchison has. I will never forget a woman coming into my office carrying her adult child. Her adult child was now 22 years of age and had left the education system and no longer had support. This woman who was a highly qualified woman had given up her job to care for her highly disabled child and it was a huge impost on this family.You know it is not that long ago when places like Kimberley Hospital and Training Centre flourished in New Zealand where we took our disabled family members and we put them into institutions and we closed the door and we said it was the State’s total responsibility to look after those family members. But over time we became more informed and we became more compassionate about what could be done with a disabled person. They were not non-people; they were people people with feelings and people with needs. So over time and rightly so we shifted much of the care of our disabled people into the community and many families have picked up that role. They have given up jobs they have given up income and they have looked after their family members.So Paul Hutchison when he says the Labour Government did absolutely nothing about it is being disingenuous. As he will know firstly it was before the courts and secondly if he just read the legislation his own Minister has put in the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2)—I suggest he reads new section 70D which says: “The Crown and any DHB are and have always been authorised—(a) to adopt or to have a family care policy:” and to change cancel or replace such a policy.My real concern about this bill is that here we are at 10 o’clock in the morning and last night the regulatory impact statement on this bill was not available as they were not available either for the housing bills. We are told to go and look them up on the internet—and I am sure Maurice Williamson will understand this. We are told to go to “www.hashthishashthat.” and to look it up find the regulatory impact statement run it off read it—not there. It had not been put up. So the regulatory impact statement on thisbill was first provided this morning to this House and we are now required to make decisions on this bill under urgency and pass every stage of it. I have to say to those listening that this is a dreadful process. The fair-minded people of the National Government know that this is a shonky process under which to put through any bill that affects so many important families looking after disabled family members. Why is it being put through with such haste? It does not come into effect until October 2013. Can members opposite count how many months away that is? Could it not have gone to a select committee for a while?I mean I was even interested in the consultation group the Government set up to look at what changes it would make—the task force. Well I notice the task force did not have a person with disability on it. I do not suppose they are capable of being on a task force in the minds of this Government. So there has been insufficient time and a lack of consultation. We asked last year as I know other parties in this House have done for a cross-party approach to get an agreement between parties on this very very complex issue. I say to Dr Hutchison that Tony Ryall said how complex it is so to just throw out there “Oh Labour did nothing about it.” is to disregard how complex it is. But we offered a cross-party consultation on this and were we consulted? We got a bill today and we got some information on it half an hour ago. That is called consultation and cross-party support in this House. It is just not good enough.And I want those members there to have a look—I cannot see any of them with the regulatory impact statement. What they will have are their research party notes all saying the same thing. Go and have a look at the regulatory impact statement. I have never seen a regulatory impact statement anything like this one. Have a look at it. This is the regulatory impact statement. Have a look at where you are meant to be finding out what is going on in this bill. This is what it looks like. It is full of blanks where we are not allowed to know much about what this bill does. They have cut out nearly all the information that would be meaningful. I particularly like page 27. Let me show you page 27. This is page 27 of the regulatory impact statement and what does it say? It says: “Blank blankety-blank-blank blank-blank blank blankety-blank blank-blank-blank.” That is the regulatory impact statement on this really important bill. Hang your heads in shame National members. That is what we are supposed to make decisions on in this Parliament.When I did find some words that I could read in the regulatory impact statement it put up a number of options from the Ministry of Health. One of them was that we actually should pay around $16 an hour. That is what it says in the regulatory impact statement—the little bit that is written. It says it ought to be the minimum wage plus other payments that would bring it up to around $16 an hour. What does this bill do? What does the Minister do? He says that the minimum that can be paid is $13 an hour—$13.75. Well how generous—$13.75! They are to be paid less than other caregivers in our community. I have to say that this is not a breakthrough; this is all about trying to restrict what the Government will pay to people. It will restrict whom it goes to and who will be paid.And I believe that National has done very little in terms of trying to get a cross-party agreement or an agreement with the very people who are affected who look after their family members day after day. I acknowledge that it is complex but why would we not in this Parliament at least allow the public to have a say? I know why the Government does not want the public to have a say. It is because the public are more in tune and more empathetic to those who care for disabled adult children than the Government is and it does not want that exposed at a select committee. I have been on those select committees where the National Party members hear submitters and say “Thank you very much for that wonderful submission. We really appreciate receiving that wonderfulsubmission you have spent so much time writing for us.” and then vote against every recommendation the public make. So the Government knows there would be people coming and saying “Hang on a minute. This is not what we thought you were going to do. This hasn’t been worked through with us.” and it does not want that to be exposed to the public of New Zealand.This is insufficient time. This whole Parliament ought to tell the Minister to take it back to give us time to work across the parties on it and to bring in a bill put it to a select committee and you could still have it passed by 13 October 2013. That is what ought to happen and that will be our very strong argument today. It is not good enough. It is disgraceful to bring in a bill and to hand us this sort of rubbish saying this is what the bill is about.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou katoa. I would just like to acknowledge the families. Thank you all of the families who have worked with me on this issue. Thank you all of the families who could get no help from any other MP on this issue. Thank you for coming to Parliament last term when I held a forum to talk about this and no MP except the Greens would come to the forum. I do not feel like my head should be down today but I think everyone else’s should be because complex or not this is a job. This is whom we are here to represent. These are the vulnerable people in our society who look to us for leadership and after 12 years of going to court to prove discrimination what has happened is that a bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) has been brought forward that will discriminate legally. I will take you through how; I have a lot to say.No. 1 this legislation discriminates against family carers who are allowed to be paid lower rates for the same work. The principle of theMinistry of Health v Atkinson court case was recognising that it was discrimination and now this bill entrenches the fact that they can be paid less for doing the same work as other people. That is a new discrimination. It discriminates against carers of family members who are eligible for disability support in categories 1 2 and 3—i.e. mild to moderate needs. It denies those disabled people choices over their carer and is contrary to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Disability Strategy. It legitimises discrimination against family members under 18 and against spouses.Ian McKelvie: It does not.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: It literally says that spouses cannot be included even if they are doing the same work as other family members. And when we are talking about work this is 24/7 work. I am a friend of Cliff Robinson in the Coromandel and he has two adult children he cares for 24/7. I know all the people in the court case and I know the people who are not in the court case who will be excluded in this bill and they are absolutely disgusted with this outcome.It also discriminates against 45 people who complained to the Human Rights Commission but whose cases have not yet been accepted. Now they cannot be accepted because the Government has locked them out of any form of complaint any form of remedy. People’s future access to courts and the Human Rights Review Tribunal has been locked out. They cannot even challenge beyond a declaration that the Act is a breach. The Government does not want to ever have to justify its discrimination in front of a court again. This is vengeance because it failed in court after court after court for 12 years. This is vindictive and unfair and what is more it is setting up a new level of complexity and these people have been through enough. Sometimes people’s hopes are broken by life and sometimes by legislation and this is one of those times. The Government has lost in several courts of law so now it is making sure it limits the opportunity of whom disabled people can choose to be cared by. It has done it becauseit was beaten in the Human Rights Review Tribunal in the Court of Appeal and in the High Court. Now it is making a law that is actually as the Attorney-General said a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and it discriminates right back at them.Of course you would think that these are the greedy who are trying to get lots of money for doing that easy job of looking after a seriously disabled family member 24/7. But in fact what happens is that these people are already doing the 24/7 job and we have managed to exploit them for years. It is a cheap option and this law is a cheap option because it is capped; I will go into that in a minute. But I do not know that people understand what happens in these homes. Unskilled carers on low wages who can now be paid more than these people come to the home and the family member has to teach them how to care for the family member whom they are caring for for nothing. This is an endless series of discriminations against the people with disabilities and their families who want to be respected. These parents cannot go to work because they are so busy teaching the carers how to care for a severely disabled family member and now there is a big cap on who can actually get remunerated. The Government has said quite clearly and blatantly in the bill: “We don’t like this. We don’t want to do it. We think families should naturally want to give up their lives 24/7 for severely disabled members. We think that’s fine. That’s not discrimination.” But hey the Government lost so it has to do something and this is how it makes sure it protects itself from spending too much money.The bill explicitly states that no one can complain on the grounds of discrimination. What other bill does that? No one can complain to the Human Rights Review Tribunal or the courts on the basis of being discriminated against. So if they miss out on the $92000 over 3 years which is highly likely for a number of families they have no redress—none whatsoever. The Budget provides $92000 over 3 years so that 1600 families might if they can prove it to the Ministry of Health get a family member to be paid to care for a disabled family member. This amounts to $14375 per year. Is that a wage? It is a pittance. It is less than what carers get but that was always the plan. The plan was when the ministry lost in court—they kept throwing public money at the case and lost many times—the Government was going to make sure that whoever got paid got paid a small amount which is $14000 a year for the 1600 families who are lucky enough to get into the scheme. You cannot—sorry not you Mr Assistant Speaker although I am sure you would have a view—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I hope so.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: It cannot be called—it cannot be called—a resolution or a solution.Let us summarise what is wrong with the bill. It is discriminatory against people who complain to the Human Rights Commission. It entrenches the concept that family members who do the care work are not working. Twenty-five years ago Marilyn Waring wrote a book calledCounting for Nothing. It was about the work that does not get valued in our society—the backs of the people we run off. That is what she was talking about 25 years ago and this is what is being entrenched in law today: that these people are not working. The adult mother in Christchurch who has an adult son who is violent who has to wash his bottom—she tells me these stories on a regular basis—cannot be paid. She is in dire poverty and nobody except me has ever talked to her about this. She said that she cannot be paid and that her carers who come in because her son is violent will now be paid more than her if she can prove that she has got a right to be paid at all. It is outrageous as Sue Kedgley once used to say on a regular basis.However it gives all the power to the Ministry of Health and the district health board rather than setting up a newer and fairer framework to negotiate a payment. We have always said this was a complex issue and we have always said we should not walkaway and that there should be a cross-party approach. That is why I held the forum. I was hoping that some people would take an interest in this and that some people would have the guts and the courage in this House to actually engage with these families—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Order!CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Sorry—would have the stomach puku. Is that better? Courage might be a word. Courage fortitude anything—I think the families would accept any of those words. That is whom I am trying to speak for here today.The bill caps the fund so that those people who are not accepted by the district health board or the ministry will not get it. Once they have spent that $14000 per family everyone else will miss out. It is a rubbish process. The consultation from the start was awful and the options that were put up were absolutely awful and the idea that “natural care” could be defined in the way Governments have always defined it is awful and the idea that millions of families and millions of individuals want to apply for this money is ludicrous. It is a hard job. You talk to Cliff. You talk to Vicky. You talk to Gillian. You talk to the families. Is it an easy job? I could not do it. I actually could not do it. I really could not. It is a really tough job.So let us have a look at the bill in detail. It has got lots of interesting words in it lots of doublespeak but it is based on the fundamental tenet that the Government’s primary role is to support families and it will not acknowledge the way in which those families actually live. It will not acknowledge that. The real agenda is in the next line which says “We must protect ourselves from unmanageable fiscal costs.” and the Government has certainly done that. It has done a very very good job of protecting itself but I thought we were here to protect the people the most vulnerable people in our society. The definition of a civilised society is one that protects the most vulnerable. These people have been to court for 12 years on behalf of others who are now in a very very difficult position because if they have not lodged and if they do not get accepted there will be no right of redress. There will be no right to complain.So I think we are seeing a very sad day in the House today—a very sad day—because I know that at a select committee many families would have told their stories and I am sure that people would have listened. I am sure that people on all sides of the House would have been interested. I have more to say. We do not support this bill.SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the New Zealand Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) at this stage. I want to congratulate the Hon Tony Ryall who clearly is one of the best health Ministers the country has ever seen. And the more that our opponents on the other side bay about that the sillier they look actually because competence shows through. I just want to congratulate him on finally getting to the point where compassion is being shown for these people.I want to raise a couple of points that were debated earlier by the Hon Annette King about some of the process if you like. Can we just go back a little bit in time and look at who the health Minister was at the time that the Human Rights Commission court appeal was first promoted or first suggested. Who was the Minister?Hon Annette King: Not me.SHANE ARDERN: Look I understand that the honourable member herself was the health Minister at that time. What did she instruct the ministry to do? What did she instruct the ministry to do? She instructed the ministry to fight this in the court: “Do not allow this to proceed. Fight this tooth and nail. Do not allow it to progress”. She also suggested—and I understand there is a Cabinet minute to back this up—“Do not consult with the public or even with the rest of the rest of the Parliament. Do not consult with anyone. In fact make sure that this is kept below the radar.” How does that square with what she just said earlier on about the process that is happening right now? How doesthat square with that? You know there is a word—I understand that if you use it against a member it is unparliamentary but if you use it against a situation it is not.This Government is now proposing to inject $92 million over 4 years into helping these unfortunate families. We all have personal cases. To listen to Catherine Delahunty you would think she is the only one in this Parliament who has ever encountered one of these unfortunate people. Actually within my own family very close to us we have an affected person or persons so very much we understand individually as constituent MPs the circumstances that some of these families find themselves in. I would suggest to that member that she does not have a franchise on compassion in this regard.This is an excellent move on the part of the Government. This is an excellent piece of legislation and I look forward to its passage through the House.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). Unfortunately on this occasion we are going to oppose this bill. This bill is a real contradiction in terms. There were some positive aspects. When we looked at the $92 million we thought that at last some money was going to be made available for these families. But when we read further the negative connotations overwhelm the positive aspects. When we have a look at the amount $92 million for 4 years it is only a drop in the bucket. It is $92 million over 4 years to pay carers to look after their own disabled family members and it cannot be a family member or a spouse if they are going to get paid.We all know that this is a response to the family carers case that was ruled upon by the Human Rights Review Tribunal the High Court and then the Court of Appeal. Today’sDominion Postsaid that this was a half-baked scheme particularly when you cannot employ a family member or a spouse to look after the disabled person. When we look at it the facts are that there are approximately 1600 disabled people with high and very high needs who will be funded by this proposal.So we have $92 million over 4 years which works out to $23 million a year. If we divide that $23 million a year by the number of people requiring a carer the amount that they will be paid works out to be a real pittance—$14000 per person per year. It is really a pitiful amount of money to provide for these people who are protecting our country’s most vulnerable people. I know of many families who will not allow another family member to provide for or care for their family member. They are happy to do it themselves but they would not be happy for someone else to care so intimately for these people. Of course this is not even recognised in this legislation. Family carers provide a great service to New Zealand. Their love their compassion their tireless caring their sweat and their tears nurture these people our fellow New Zealanders. They are very compassionate they are caring and they are working in an extremely demanding role one that most of us could not do day after day after day.If the National members do not value and appreciate that work basically they should say so. We know that disabled New Zealanders do not receive enough support in our country. There is not nearly enough financial emotional and professional encouragement for disabled people to integrate into a normal more independent life. There have been reports of disabled people not receiving sufficient support even in the area of speech therapy which would really help their integration into society and help their self-esteem as well. What many people fail to realise is that carers need time out too. It is really tiring caring for a disabled person yet if a parental carer needs time out in many cases they need to apply for a domestic purposes allowance. We are making these people—our people—jump over all sorts of hurdles just to make ends meet while expecting them to support our most vulnerable.Carers are a great group of people. I know of one family where the father works at home during the day so the mother can sleep because she works at night to bring in theextra money to try to make ends meet. These people are really struggling to try to keep their loved ones at home. On behalf of New Zealand First I have to acknowledge Mr Atkinson and the others who have fought long and hard to receive any funding and recognise their efforts their endeavours and the sacrifices they have made for their families. We know that this measure proposed by the Government is totally inadequate. It is definitely not enough. We cannot understand either—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Members there is too much background noise. It is discourteous to the member speaking.BARBARA STEWART: —why this bill is going through under urgency. There will be no public submissions and no other opportunities for the public to have any input into this particular bill. It is disappointing. Again we see the focus of this Government on cost and not on care. We know it is a complex issue. It should never be pushed through by the House under urgency. That is how New Zealand First is viewing this bill. We will oppose this bill. Thank you.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): What a pleasure it is as a member of the National Party—a proud member—to stand in support of this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) introduced by the very capable Minister of Health the Hon Tony Ryall. This bill comes to the House after years of prevarication of blocking of putting everything it could in the way of it by the Labour Party during its 9 long years in Government. When it had surpluses for Africa and plenty of money it chose to do nothing about it—years of “obstification” obstruction and blocking by the Labour Party. So this is a major breakthrough.Hon Maurice Williamson: Ha ha!SCOTT SIMPSON: Yes it is one of those Maurice Williamson words. It is one of those Maurice Williamson words on a Friday morning. This is a major breakthrough and one that society and all of New Zealand I think will take pleasure that something is finally being done.In 2001 Susan Atkinson and others including Cliff Robinson from my electorate of Coromandel were part of a group who brought an action into the courts. It has taken years and years to finally put it right. Who was the Minister of Health back then? Well it was none other than the Minister Annette King from the Labour Party. It was she who blocked and fought. It was she who instructed Ministry of Health officials—instructed the lawyers to block it and fight it. She told the ministry to fight it all the way. That former Labour Party health Minister should hang her head in absolute shame. We do not need her to lecture us when back in 2005 she expressly opposed theAtkinson action. She expressly opposed it. That member actually instructed the ministry lawyers to block it on every count. She went further—she went further. The Cabinet minute seems to indicate in fact that she instructed that there should be no consultation—no consultation. Under her watch Labour and the health Minister under Labour when they had taxpayer money that they could have done something about it did nothing about it.This is a proud day for the National Party. The Minister Tony Ryall is doing a very good job. He is introducing this legislation not a minute too soon. I support it. I commend it to the House. Thank you.DARIEN FENTON (Labour): Well this is a morning for learning new words from the previous speaker Scott Simpson. What was it? “Obstification”? “Obstification” yes. Is there a dictionary in the House? Is there a dictionary in the House? Let us look it up.Iain Lees-Galloway: He learnt it when he was getting his “edumacation”.DARIEN FENTON: He learnt it when he was getting his “edumaction” yes—very very good. Anyway I am pleased to take a call on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) although I do so with great disappointment. I think itis a very miserly measure that is being rushed through the House this morning. The Government is clearly reluctant to pay. This bill is full of reluctance full of extinguishments of rights full of excuses and full of ifs buts and maybes.The worst thing about it is the fact that it is being rammed through under urgency when the people who are most affected by this—that is the disabled people and their families—will have no opportunity for input. They will have no chance to have a say about how this will affect them. They will have no chance to come along to a select committee and tell their stories. What is sad is that there will be no chance for the members of a select committee to gain some understanding of the issues that face disabled people and their families. What is worse is that the Government has ignored offers of cooperation from other parties. We have called on the Government to put aside the court case which it did eventually. We called on the Government to cooperate with other parties in order to find a solution that the whole Parliament could support. Last year the Government put out a consultation document that I believe was clearly designed to pre-empt any decision making. Although the Government boasts about the fact that it had workshops and things all around the country it was very clear from the messages that the Minister of Health was giving back then that this was going to be a very very limited solution and that it would be heavily targeted.While I have been sitting here I have been thinking about a disabled member of my family. People who have disabled members of their family will understand this. My auntie was severely disabled. My grandmother used to carry her around on her back. She carried her around on her back. She got up in the middle of the night and looked after her. She did not put her in an institution like so many people did in those days; she looked after her. She taught her to read. She taught her to catch the bus so she could go to town. She taught her to understand money so she could use the little pittance she got. I think that was exceptional in those days but I know the toll that that took on my grandmother. I know that it contributed to her dying sooner than she should have because that was years—that was a lifetime—of struggle for her. Even when Peggy my auntie went into a residential home once we stopped putting people in institutions it was still a burden on my grandmother. There was still that responsibility. So I want to pay a tribute to my grandmother and my auntie and to all of the families who are in this situation of having a much-loved disabled family member whom they do their best to care for to keep at home and to remove the responsibility from others including the State to care for them because they love them and want to give them the best possible chance at having a decent life.One of the things I am concerned about in this bill is the proposal to pay the minimum wage. The proposal is to pay effectively half of what private carers are earning as the Minister has said. As Catherine Delahunty said this is entrenching a new discrimination another pay inequality—and we know all about those. I am also very concerned about the responsibility that goes on families. We support individualised funding but there has to be support put in place for family members who are employed by their disabled adult children so that they are able to manage the responsibilities of being an employer which is essentially what they will be or one of the choices that they have. But as I have said paying the minimum wage is I think unacceptable. I think the families will be very disappointed. I think it shows how this Government values the support and the contribution they make in caring for those very disadvantaged people.Mind you it is not surprising because we had a Budget this week where carers came off worst—actually third-best; not just second-best but third-best. Rest home money—yes there is more money for aged care but there is nothing in the Budget that addresses the low income the critical pay issues in aged care. There is something about trainingbut nothing about addressing the fact that most residential aged-care workers are on the minimum wage or just above—nothing about that. The former Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Judy McGregor did a very extensive report on the critical issue that is facing us with caring for an ageing population but there is nothing in this Budget that even recognises that there is a problem.There is nothing for home-care workers many of whom actually care for both disabled people and older people. There is nothing for home-care workers who are now having to go to court as well to claim the minimum wage for the travel they have to carry out between clients. They go to one home the clock starts ticking and they get paid the minimum wage for the hour they work. Then the clock goes off again they get in their car and off they go to another place which could be miles and miles away. But they get no recompense for that except a measly allowance if they are lucky. They are now going to court to challenge the Government about paying the minimum wage for the period of time that they have to spend on the road in between jobs. And so they should because so many other people who work in the health care sector or other sectors actually get paid for every hour they work whether it be going between jobs or not.There is another group of carers who are currently taking a case to court as well. They are the carer relief workers. They are the carer relief workers who are employed—well they are not employed but they are funded through the Ministry of Health and district health boards. They are paid $75 for a 24-hour period—Barbara Stewart: Really?DARIEN FENTON: —for a 24-hour period—$75. They are pursuing a minimum wage case as well. But guess what? The Ministry of Health and the district health boards are arguing that they do not employ them so they are not responsible for paying the minimum wage. The disabled people they care for the people whom they provide respite care for are the employers according to the Ministry of Health and the district health boards but they are responsible it is hands off not our problem pass the buck and put the responsibility on to the disabled people who are the employers.That is what worries about me about this bill too. I think we will see more of that buck shifting going on to the people who are most vulnerable and who need as much support as possible not only in their choice to employ somebody from their family but also to make sure that that support person is paid properly and that their employment relationship is able to be managed. That is a very very important issue in this bill that I want to see some more discussion on at the Committee stage.Going back to how I started can I say that we are disappointed with this bill. We are particularly disappointed that it is going through three stages today under urgency. I know that it is a step in the right direction but it is a drop in the bucket. The process is awful and the information that the Opposition parties have been given about the background to this bill with the regulatory impact statement like this is outrageous—it is outrageous. But we are used to that under this Government—we are used to this under this Government. Its process is awful. I think it is disrespectful to the carers the adult carers of disabled people and it is disrespectful to New Zealand. Thank you.Dr JIAN YANG (National): Ni hao Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak in today’s debate on the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). According to this bill disabled adults aged 18 years and over who are assessed as having high or very high needs based on a number of criteria will be able to employ their parent or other family member except for their spouse or partner to provide up to 40 hours of support per week. The disabled person will be assessed by a needs assessment and service coordination centre for eligibility. That person if eligible can then choose a family carer or a contracted service provider. Ifthey choose a family carer they will receive funding to pay their family carer an hourly rate as an employee.The core issue of this matter is to find a balance between the responsibilities of the Government and of families. It has always been challenging to find the balance. It is a challenge not only to the New Zealand Government but also to Governments all over the world. The current National-led Government is now facing up to the challenge and it is doing extremely well. So I would like to congratulate the Minister of Health the Hon Tony Ryall on this achievement. We recognise the important role of families in providing care and support to their disabled family members. It is estimated that the paid family carer policy will cost about $23 million per year. This is a significant investment in family care. It gives disabled people and their families more choice and control in the support they receive. The National-led Government is currently providing much support for disabled people and their family carers. This bill is another step towards providing better services to disabled people. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Here we are on a Friday morning under urgency debating the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). As members from around the House have canvassed the issues around this bill are complicated complex challenging and highly emotive. They are issues that ought to be properly considered there ought to be proper consultation across the parties and with the public and they ought to go to a select committee. So for that reason I predict that there will be a lengthy debate around the issues in this bill at the Committee stage and I also expect there will be a number of amendments to this bill because frankly the Government has not quite got it right.But here we are under urgency on this challenging issue and when the public does not get an opportunity to have a say the members of Parliament who are debating such legislation ought to have all the information available to them. One of the ways in which we get that information is through the regulatory impact statement. I have not seen anything so ludicrous in this House as this regulatory impact statement. For those folks at home the regulatory impact statement canvasses the issues that the Government has had to consider and it looks at what the wider impacts of any piece of legislation will be. It is about openness and it is about transparency.Well we get a bit of a warning on page 2 of this regulatory impact statement when we look at the objectives: “Responding to issues arising from court decisions”. It says: “The overall objective is to develop a response to the implication of the Courts’ decisions. These implications arise across a range of family relationships and services where there is a significant risk that discrimination may arise.” That is absolutely correct. “These relationships and services include: parents and other resident family members of disabled adults; other family relationships particularly spouses and parents of young disabled children; disability support services funded by the Ministry; support services funded by District Health Boards (DHBs)” and blankety-blank-blank. There is one other which for some bizarre reason the Government does not want us to know about. Well that is page 2.We get through pages 3 and 4 OK where we canvass the different options that the Government may have had. Then we get to the nuts and bolts the analysis of the options and what will be the impact of the different options. This is where we in the Opposition actually get to look at all the different possibilities and decide whether we think the Government has got it right. Well there is an entire column here completely blanked out. Even the title is blanked out but from reading it through I suspect these are the legal implications for the Government: what might be the weaknesses of this bill and what might be the options for people to challenge the Government over thisbill? Is this Government setting up a future Government for legal challenges? Is this Government causing a future Government trouble and possible costs for taxpayers? We do not know because the Government is not prepared to tell us. Let us go on to the next page: “Analysis of targeting options”. The same column is missing. Again the Government is withholding information from the Parliament and from the people of New Zealand.Then we get down to page 12: “Significant legal issues and risks arising from the preferred response”—significant legal issues arising from the course of action the Government has chosen to take.Hon Annette King: What are they?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I do not have a clue what they are. None of us has a clue what they are because that is the first paragraph and that is the rest of it—that is the rest of it. It is completely blanked out. Have you ever seen something so ridiculous? Table 4 says: “Implications of including or excluding family carers of people receiving DHB-funded HCSS”—again suspiciously that same column is missing. Is it the legal implications? I think it is.Darien Fenton: What are they covering up?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: What is the Government trying to cover up indeed? Then we get to paragraph 43: “Spouses of adult disabled people parents and other resident family members do not have the option of being paid family carers despite having extensive caring responsibilities.” That is what paragraph 43 says. Then we get into what might be the implications of that. Oh look once again it is all blanked out. We do not get to have a look at all of that. Table 5: “Implications of including/excluding spouses”—again the legal implications are blanked out. Then we get into the preferred policy of not paying family carers to provide any services other than home and community support services. The information is missing again.How about that for a page out of a regulatory impact statement? Look at that one! That tells us plenty does it not? Does that not just tell us all about this Government’s commitment to democracy and transparency? What an outrage. “Risks arising from other agencies’ policies”—well once again we do not know what the risks are arising from other agencies’ policies because they have all been blanked out too. It just goes on and on and on. At page 22 we have some bits and pieces missing. Then we get to actually a reasonably good section where it is prepared to share and then we get to the conclusions and recommendations. No. 80 states: “Other options were discounted because implementing them would be too expensive would not be feasible within the time frame available or would exclude family carers of disabled people with high needs.” Then it goes into the details about that and it is all gone. We go on to the next page implementation—it is all gone as well. And then there is another one of those masterful pieces where the entire page is completely missing.Well goodness me! Look at that—that is a mere 28-page regulatory impact statement and look at how much of it has absolutely disappeared. That is not transparency. That is not democracy. It would be bad enough even if we had the opportunity to go to a select committee for people to have their say for the families to come and tell us whether or not they think the Government has got it right whether or not this is the response they were promised and whether this was the response they were expecting. I just want to check with you Mr Assistant Speaker. I was expecting this to be a 5-minute split call with the Greens—can I just check that one with you Mr Assistant Speaker? I want to know whether the families—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): You are absolutely right. The member should sit down.JAN LOGIE (Green): I will just relax. This New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) is a slap in the face to some of the hardest-working New Zealanders and is a demonstration of this Government’s heartless—and I would go so far as to say almost sociopathic—disregard for human suffering and also human endeavour. This bill seeks to reaffirm that people will not generally be paid to provide health services or disability support services to their family members. It confirms that the Crown and district health boards may operate—and always have been authorised to operate—policies in respect of family carers that allow payment in certain limited circumstances or allow for payment at a lower rate than that for carers who are not family members. It stops claims of unlawful discrimination.I would like to take this short call today—and I wish I had more time because there is so much to say but I guess I will get more chances because we are speeding through—and I would like to speak as the Greens’ women’s spokesperson to recognise that this bill is a women’s issue. This bill is a feminist issue. I know that the public face of this bill has been a man and a wonderfully brave man at that. Nothing that I am about to say is to undervalue his work; in fact the very opposite is true. But about two-thirds of family carers are women. As the website of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment points out the higher proportion of female carers in all age groups is consistent with lower rates of employment among females including lower rates of full-time employment. In this country there is a feminisation of poverty. Women are carrying this economy and that is made invisible by this Government. This bill is an entrenchment of that inequality.This bill reinforces what Marilyn Waring described 25 years ago this year as the “counting for nothing” phenomenon. Of course some men are doing this work. Men have now been pulled into this slipstream of women’s inequality and have been caught in that trap which has been created by this entrenched gender inequality. This has come about from the time when male statisticians and economists drew up the current accounts for nations all around the world. They ignored all work within the home. They made work within the home invisible and pretended that it was non-productive. Despite the fact that it would be really easy to make it productive—because it is actually work that is paid for in other contexts and all we need to do is use that counting measure in the home—this bill reinforces that inequality and that male patriarchal system that means that women are bearing the brunt of poverty in this country.History has led us to where we are now. People pretend that we are in an enlightened age of equality and equal opportunity. Well this bill is another bleak reminder to the women of this country that nothing much has changed. Here this Government had the opportunity given to it by the courts to recognise discrimination and to improve the situation for women and people with disabilities. And what has it done? It has chosen to change the law to entrench it.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The question is—Ian McKelvie: Mr Speaker—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Ian McKelvie.IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I shall be brief Mr Assistant Speaker seeing as you did not want me to speak at all. It is great to stand in this House and support a piece of legislation the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) brought to us by Minister Ryall. It is a bill that will make a very real difference to those amazing mothers or fathers—despite Jan Logie’s assertion—or family members who have worked so hard to make their disabled son daughter or family member’s life more bearable.I have to just counter very briefly a couple of comments made by the Opposition. The Hon Ruth Dyson was misleading the House when she said that current caregivers may well lose current benefits. That is absolutely patently nonsense. The bill will also be a great relief to many rural family members who are isolated and find it very difficult to get alternative care. I also want to comment very quickly on the somewhat gratuitous comments from the other side of the House that scarcely touched on the issues of the bill at all—in fact the bill got stuck firmly under Labour’s shadow version of this year’s Budget. It was blanked out—the most part of that blank of course.I also want to touch very quickly on the Greens’ comments because I think they clearly think they have a mortgage on knowledge of this sector of our community which is far from the truth. And as for Barbara Stewart’s contribution at least she spoke with compassion although she ruined that compassion by opposing the disability sector and opposing it receiving a very good start and I guess a new start really with some contribution to what is a very difficult life for so many people. This initiative will be welcomed by the disability sector and the people who face challenges in life that most of us cannot imagine. I have great pleasure in supporting this bill as it progresses through Parliament. Thank you.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes55New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Bill read a first time.Second ReadingHon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): I moveThat the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time. It is worth taking an opportunity to set out to members exactly what this legislation does. It is part of the Government’s solution to the challenge proposed by the Court of Appeal under theAtkinson case. It does move the boundary between family and taxpayer responsibility in respect of the care of each other but the Government believes that it lands in a fair place that balances the various interests of those who are being cared for those who are doing the caring and taxpayers in general.As I said earlier on this bill comes to this Parliament after really 20 years of consideration by Governments of both sides. We know that in 2001 when theHill case first came to the Human Rights Review Tribunal it was considered by the previous Government. The previous Government began a series of papers and considerations. It had a number of reports and discussions with Ministers. A number of strategies were kicked on and kicked on every year. It culminated in 2008 with theCarers’ Strategy and Five-year Action Plan.In 2007 the Labour Government considered paying family carers and in the strategy documents that it considered in 2008 the Labour Government expressly decided not to proceed with paying family carers—in April 2008 the Labour Government expressly decided not to pay family carers. Labour was supported by the Greens in that Government and Labour expressly decided not to pay family caregivers. In fact the Labour Minister of Health instructed officials to oppose this case at at every step and that action was supported by every Labour Cabinet Minister. The Labour Governmentinstructed the Ministry of Health—even before then it was clear the ministry was to oppose this—to oppose theAtkinson claim every step of the way.I know that this is a political chamber and I know that the Opposition will never support any legislation that is part of a Budget but I do have to say it is galling to hear the crocodile tears from the former Ministers who expressly decided not to pay family carers—expressly decided not to pay family carers. In fact Mrs Dyson said this: “We have to have a sensible debate about what are legitimate family responsibilities—what you should do because we are a caring loving member of the family and then what is actually work you should get paid to do.” Then when asked about paying family carers she said that top of her Budget bidding list was more money for equipment services—more money for equipment services. She was not interested in more money for family carers. I know we are going to get political speeches today. I know the Opposition will never agree with Government legislation—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the Minister. It is a convention here that we do not use the words “lie” or “liar” and I ask the member to desist from using those phrases in the future.Hon TONY RYALL: Who was it?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): It does not matter.Hon TONY RYALL: Oh OK; they will not admit it.Hon Paula Bennett: Dyson.Hon TONY RYALL: Oh Dyson! The member who said family carers—Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Members are to be addressed as honourable members or by their full name.Hon TONY RYALL: The Hon Ruth Dyson told disability groups that she thought it was important but when asked whether family carers should be the top priority she said as the Associate Minister of Health that the top of her Budget bidding list was more money for equipment services.Hon Paula Bennett: Not family carers.Hon TONY RYALL: Not family carers. I know we are going to get the political speeches but it is galling that members of the Government that expressly decided not to pay family carers are now saying: “Oh when the health Budget doubled we might have—”. Well they do not really say. They have not addressed why they never paid it. The argument has been “Oh it was very complex.” Well what about the years of reports that they got? What about the years of resolutions in Cabinet? It came to nothing because the Minister of Health at the time expressly instructed ministry officials and Crown Law to fight theAtkinson claimants every step of the way.I can advise the House that this bill protects the interests of theAtkinson claimants. ThoseAtkinsonclaimants who wanted to be on an interim payment arrangement are and thoseAtkinson claimants who are prepared to accept back payment to the Court of Appeal decision date have been paid. There will be a remedies hearing in respect of their settlements prior to the Court of Appeal decision so those people who wanted to be paid under this arrangement in the interim are currently being paid. What I have to say to that—Hon Annette King: Have they been paid?Hon TONY RYALL: The ministry advises that those people who wanted an interim payment received one. I am not going to engage with Annette King because she was the Minister in a Government that expressly decided not to pay family carers—not to pay family carers. So it is all politics today. It is all politics.What this legislation does is it proposes that the Government invest $72 million over the next 4 years in order to pay wages to family carers who care for their resident adult disabled children. This addresses the crux of the claim put forward byAtkinson. Thefocus of this will be on the 1600 families whom we assess as having high or very high needs. Those people will be able to qualify under policies that will be in place from 1 October 2013. That is pretty important. Policies are going to be developed and people will have the opportunity to be supported in this way. It is recognition from this Government to respond to the Court of Appeal case. We know that there will be many people who believe that they should be paid too but this respects the decision of the courts and also the longstanding tenet of Governments of all colours that families are primarily responsible for each other and that will still remain a very very important part of this legislation.In the debate ahead I think it is right to look at why it has taken so long for Parliament to get to this position. It is right to look at whether we are striking the right balance between the interests of the families the carers and taxpayers. I think we are. I think we have landed in a fair place—a fair place that recognises the concerns of the courts but also makes sure that we as taxpayers are able to make a contribution that we would expect to be made in this situation. The reason why the bill is going through under urgency on this day is that it is important that we do not settle these matters on an individual basis before tribunals or courts. We need to have a policy in place that deals with the concerns of the courts with theAtkinson claimants’ case and proceed from there.I know that the debate will be full of bluster from the other side—bluster from the other side—but members should remember when they hear that bluster that those members are the people who in the times of plenty decided to do nothing. They expressly decided not to pay family carers and expressly decided to tell the ministry to oppose it every step of the way.Hon Annette King: 11 years of National—did nothing.Hon TONY RYALL: Oh now it is 11 years of National. Look it is all politics from Annette King—it is all politics. When she was in charge she did nothing.These people are currently being paid nothing and from 1 October we will have a scheme in place that supports family carers those who are caring for their disabled adult family members in a way that is respectful of the huge contribution that they are making to the care of their loved ones.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I just begin my comments by saying to the Hon Tony Ryall that actually this is not about politics; this is about the quality of the policy decisions that have been made in relation to a matter that has as the Minister of Health quite rightly said been live as a topic of debate for 20 years 11 of which have been under a National-led Government of one form or another. So it is a bit rich for the Minister to say that the Labour Government did nothing when this is now his 11th year of having this matter on his plate.This New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) should be an issue where a lot of discussion is had between the many parties that make up this Parliament carers in the community and family members who are affected by this policy to see whether we have got it right because this policy is not straightforward. This bill is a determination by this Parliament about the caring responsibilities that should naturally go with a family and that where the threshold is reached that that caring should be paid for out of taxpayer money. That is not always an easy call.The determination that the Minister has made is that a very high threshold of need has to be met before a family is entitled to be paid. I do not understand why that threshold would be at all relevant. If it is a matter of rationing the money then the Minister should be upfront and say that. If it is because he genuinely believes that parents who look after their disabled adult daughter or son are not entitled to be paid forthat because they do not have much of a need then I think he is wrong. I think that in terms of a public policy position it is absolutely wrong.But the worst thing is that this Parliament is debating this legislation through all stages under urgency without any opportunity for us to hear from the families who are affected. These are families who subjected their personal lives to public exposure by going through the Human Rights Commission to the High Court and then to the Court of Appeal. They deserve better respect than this rushed legislation is giving them in my view. I do not think it would be much of an effort to have even a shortened period of consideration by a select committee.The reason the Minister wants this to go through all stages under urgency without any member of the public having an opportunity to have a say is that this bill extinguishes the right of family members who will not be allowed to be paid under this family caregiver policy and who will not meet the criteria to go to the Human Rights Commission and have a case heard against the Government. I think extinguishing rights is not something that this Parliament should do at any stage let alone by ramming legislation through all stages under urgency. It is wrong to do that to family members who just want their work supporting their disabled son or daughter or husband or wife or parent recognised.I do not understand why the Minister decided—instead of explaining to the members of Parliament who are so interested in this legislation the rationale behind this public policy behind extinguishing the rights of those families who are excluded—to spend the whole of his time attacking the former Government. How is that going to progress thinking and rigour in this debate which affects so many families who frankly deserve better? They deserve better consideration and they deserve respect. They are certainly not getting that from the National Government.There will be time in the Committee stage for amendments and questions to the Minister. I hope he answers the questions because it is going to be the only time that we will have in which to have any questions addressed. In his first reading speech I thought I heard the Minister specifically exclude spouses from the consideration of being paid as a family caregiver and I think that is wrong. I do not think that this Parliament should determine who in a family provides care for one of their own family members. I think that is a determination that should be made by a family. Why as a parliamentarian should I Tony Ryall or any member of the National Government say: “No this is wrong. We won’t be paying you as a husband or wife but we would pay you as a son or daughter or parent.”? Why would it be our determination that decides who receives that payment? The report of the Attorney-General—which actually has got nothing blanked out so I would recommend it to colleagues to read—specifically includes a spouse as being a family member under this legislation. That point is actually quite important and I am confused as to the reason that the Minister said the spouse was excluded and yet the Attorney-General the Hon Chris Finlayson has clearly included spouses in his report on this legislation.I want to move just briefly to the regulatory impact statement. This is an opportunity for all members of Parliament to see independent consideration of the impact of this legislation. Normally it is a pretty robust process. I have seen some regulatory impact statements that are a bit weak but this one looked like it had a lot of pages so I got quite excited. I thought we were going to have a very good analysis of this legislation. Looking through it I have never ever seen a regulatory impact statement like this before. Look at this. It is blanked out—it says “legally privileged”. And on the next page this whole page in the regulatory impact statement is blanked out. How are we to judge the quality of this legislation based on the regulatory impact statement when the whole of this page is blanked out? On the next page the contents of this column are“legally privileged” and blanked out. Page after page after page has blanked-out information.This is the information that Parliament is entitled to have so that we can have a proper robust debate based on facts. What we have got is a regulatory impact statement that has page after page after page blanked out. Here is another whole page blanked out. No wonder the Hon Tim Groser is hanging his head in shame. We would never see that Minister bring a regulatory impact statement to this House with page after page after page blanked out. We are not able to have a robust debate. This goes through the entire document—through the entire document page after page is blanked out and is “legally privileged”. It is Parliament that makes the law of our land not some bureaucrat based in a department down the road blanking out information that we should be entitled to have. How do we know about the robustness of this legislation if we are not even entitled in this Parliament to have the information and therefore have a proper debate?This is one of the most important issues in the disability sector and as the Minister quite properly said it has been a live debate for over two decades. A number of family members took this case to a Human Rights Review Tribunal hearing. It later went to the High Court and then to the Court of Appeal. I was very pleased when the Minister of Health decided not to take it further but to call it quits. I thought the Minister of Health would then work with other parties work with Carers New Zealand and come back to this Parliament with a robust agreed sensible decision.When the options that have been considered by the Minister are looked at—they are contained in the regulatory impact statement on one of the few pages that is not blanked out—we see that this whole issue could have been addressed for the 5400 family members family carers of disabled people. This could have been totally addressed for a mid-point cost of an estimated $65 million a year. That is actually not a lot of money in the scheme of things. The Minister has boasted that he has addressed it for $92 million over 4 years. That is only $23 million a year. I think that the family members who are excluded from this because they do not meet the very very high threshold that the Minister has imposed deserve better. In my view they should have been considered in this payment and they certainly should not have had their rights to take a case of discrimination to the Human Rights Review Tribunal extinguished by this legislation.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): Again it is a privilege to be speaking on this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I want to repeat what I said in the first reading—that it was only this morning that a prominent disability spokesman said that the sector will be relieved that a resolution has at last been agreed on. This undoubtedly is a fair pragmatic and compassionate resolution to a longstanding challenging and complex situation.It is indeed a little rich to hear the Hon Ruth Dyson go on about consultation. We heard both that member and Annette King saying this morning that they wanted—and they offered—cross-party consultation. But really they are indeed saying this far too late given the context of their own response to the human rights ruling in 2001. The fact is they did not respond. The fact is that in 2005 they—this was Annette King and her fellow Cabinet Ministers—explicitly stated there would be no consultation with other parties. This was supported by the Greens—this was supported by the Greens—and then again in 2008 the Labour Government expressly decided not to pay carers. Again it was a Government propped up by the Greens.Hon Ruth Dyson: You’re better than this Paul.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: Well I thought the member would be better than this. Indeed there has been a veil of silence from the Labour-Green coalition regarding consultation which is what I am talking about until suddenly they find themselves in Opposition and then they start saying: “Hey look. That’s what we really wish.”I was interested to hear Annette King say: “Let’s look at the history because over these two decades we have deinstitutionalised the places where disabled people were left often left to wallow and not be cared for properly.” We have always agreed with that. Indeed some of those packages that have been replaced are very very reasonable ones although of course there will always be the requirement for reform. In that consultation process that the National Government went through last year—it was a wide consultation process; I think there were something like 264 submitters and something like 12 meetings around the country—there were examples of the sorts of packages that were available for people through the system in New Zealand. Often that is not realised.One of the classic examples was of an adult who had a rare progressive neurological disorder and used a powered wheelchair living out in the country with her parents. Her support package is $106000 per year together with total additional funding of $43000. That may not be as much as her parents would have liked but it is a realistic package given the amount of money and resourcing that we have in New Zealand.So I want to end by saying that the Government is indeed balancing the interests of those being cared for their families and the taxpayers.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): It has been an interesting debate so far from the members of the Government particularly the Minister of Health who does not particularly like to listen to the debate and so minimises the time that he has to listen. If he wants to talk about politics in this issue I would say that he is a Minister who is well known out there in the health sector as a walking political slogan. Most of what he says is political slogans.I was interested in the contribution from a number of members on this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). Rather than debating the issues they wanted to spread blame around. Well I will give the Minister credit for saying that this is an issue of 20 years’ consideration Mr Hayes—20 years of consideration: 5 under a National Government 9 under a Labour Government and then you have got another 6 under a National Government. So if we are going to throw some blame around about what was not done before Labour became the Government well let us go back that far in history Dr Hutchison. I noticed you did not do that. Let us stick with the issues.Let us start with the regulatory impact statement. I ask the members of the Government whether they have read it. Have they read it? Not one of them has read the regulatory impact statement. Do they know what a regulatory impact statement is for? You see a regulatory impact statement is provided to the Parliament—to the Parliament Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch and you will appreciate this point—to inform members of what a bill is about. It is you would say a neutral way of providing information about a bill to the Parliament. It is something that the public can then read to get a very good understanding of what a bill is about.But when you receive a regulatory impact statement that has been so heavily edited that anything that would give you some of the guts of what this is about has been crossed out then we have a problem. You know this blacked-out page I am holding is just an example from the regulatory impact statement. It would be better used as a draughtboard than the provision of information for the people here in the public and in this House. Probably what it shows is that it was rushed legislation—very rushed legislation. Work had not been finished.The reason I can work that out is that as late as yesterday the Minister was advising the media that operational details of the policy were still to be finalised and would be available by September 2013. So the operational details of this policy are not available to this House. They will never be available to the public of New Zealand. Why?Because this bill is going through Parliament through every stage under urgency today. Does that mean the public have a say? Do they get to look at the operational details? No they do not. They see absolutely nothing about this bill because it will be passed under urgency.Why urgency? I know that the public will ask that. Why urgency when it does not have to be passed until October 2013—this year—and the operational details will not be available until September this year? Why could this bill not have gone to a select committee chaired by Dr Paul Hutchison who I am sure would have enabled people to come and have a say. I suspect he did not have a say on this at all and heard about it at about the same time as everybody else.We have heard from the Minister and others that the sector is pleased with these decisions. Well I think we should read a bit of the feedback that has come in from those who do represent those with disability—a big negative. I will read them out. “Big negative—the minimum wage. Why would those who are caring for a disabled family be paid less than other carers? Are they worth less do they do less? Why would they only be paid the minimum wage?”Secondly they were very upset at the exclusion of spouses and partners from being eligible to do the care. Have members opposite met with Carers New Zealand an organisation that represents hundreds and hundreds of carers around New Zealand? Nobody has met with them. If they met with them they would find out what the average age of a carer is in New Zealand. It is around 80—80 years of age. Let us have a look at Mr Cliff Robinson a man who is caring for his two disabled children. He said he was looking for a half-decent scheme today. He got a half-baked one.Here he is in this photo. Do the members opposite have any idea how old this man is? He is 75 years of age and is the father of two children who are very disabled aged 43 and 40. Spouses or partners would not eligible to look after them. [Interruption] Have a look at your own bill. They could not have spouses looking after them. So Mr Robinson can look after his children but he could not look after his wife if she were in the same situation.The third thing is there is a very high threshold of need. Have a look at the threshold of need that was provided by the Minister’s office to the media—but not provided to this Parliament so that we could look at the threshold of need. In addition let me read this to the members opposite: “In addition the Government did all this without any engagement with carers in the policy design or systems that will be used. One person got on the technical advisory group but they had to only respond to questions from the Minister.” That is what has happened with this bill. It is an absolute disgrace. I just cannot understand why this Government is carrying out this bill in this way.In the few pages that do exist in the regulatory impact statement the Ministry of Health put up a number of payment options. It made payment options under three different categories. What we find is that the Government said it has been very fair. It has taken the mid-point—$23 million a year covering 1600 highly disabled people. That is what it said was being fair. Do you know it had to move down only one column and it could have provided care to 5400 disabled people? The difference in that payment is $17 million a year—$17 million a year—to provide care to 5400 disabled people. Think about it members opposite. Think about those people. Think about what they face every day.Ian McKelvie: That’s $17 million more than they’ve got now.Hon ANNETTE KING: It is no good yelling out now. Think about it because you were not consulted before. I know this is hurting. I know it is hurting because members opposite understand that what I am saying is right. Why for $17 million would you not include 5400 disabled people? That is what I call mean-spirited and so will the rest ofthe community. One thing the community understands is that when you are looking after a family member who needs 24-hour care 7 days a week there is no let-up except for a little bit of respite the Government generously offers every now and then. There is no let-up. It is like caring for the most dependent of young people. The Government could have chosen option 3C—mid-point. Difference from what the Minister chose? Seventeen million dollars.I am also interested—and we will get on to this later in questions to the Minister—in the Attorney-General’s report to Parliament. I did not find it until this morning. I am not sure whether other members did but I suspect that like the regulatory impact statement the Government was not in a hurry to provide it to Parliament. I think it is interesting that on the last page of his report the Attorney-General the Hon Christopher Finlayson said that new section 70E appears to limit the right to judicial review because it would prevent a person from challenging the lawfulness of a decision on the basis that it was inconsistent with section 19(1) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. On balance he concluded that that limitation cannot be justified under section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That is from the Attorney-General—that is what he has said. We will look closer at this because this is Parliament’s Attorney-General a member of the National Government providing that advice and he has obviously not been listened to.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): It is indeed ironic that this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) which supposedly addresses historic discrimination turns out to be a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It suggests poor law at best and it also suggests a deeply cynical attitude to what discrimination actually means. What it means for the status of the Human Rights Review Tribunal will certainly be debated by lawyers and will no doubt end up in more painful litigation. However I just wanted to address some of the arguments in the context behind the bill.I do not claim to know everything about this issue. I have been involved in it only for the last 4 years. I think that rather than blaming each other and talking about who did what to whom let us all acknowledge that Parliament has not dealt well with these families Parliament has not addressed the issue in the past and Parliament has been dragged screaming to this point through the courts. Nobody looks good. Let us just be honest instead of pretending that anybody can hold their head up. None of us can. Why not be real about it?As for compassion no one especially not me thinks that we have a monopoly on compassion. I am sure that everyone in this House knows somebody who has an experience of disability and caring for people with disabilities. But what is interesting is where the action is. If we have all this compassion if we understand Cliff Robinson’s case so well as everybody seems to where was the action? I have been working with Cliff and the families for 4 years trying to get a response and compassion is fine but action is what the families want. Sympathy and empathy are all very well. Action—money to pay your bills in order to live with dignity while your family members also live with dignity—is what they want from us.I think that is what we owe them and that is why this bill does not meet the needs of the people who so bravely went through the court case. They have not all been paid. They have been given an interim payment. They have been told that it might not be until October before they get a remedy. So although they are explicitly protected in the legislation no one else is protected. That is why this legislation is such a serious matter.Let us look at the context behind the Government’s arguments. Apart from the fact that it wanted to protect itself fiscally which is really the only thing that the bill is clear about the rest of it will be debated in ghastly family group debates between the Ministry of Health the district health board and the families themselves who are notalways in the best position to advocate. They bring many stories to the Greens about their ability to advocate complex issues around care with providers. It is not simple. They are the experts but they are treated as if they are trying to rip off the system if they try to get paid for what they do.I am thinking about a family I have been working with. They have a 14-year-old son who has multiple health issues 24/7 care and who has chosen to stay at home. He said this directly to me: “I must stay at home with my family.” He wants his mother to be his carer but in order to do that the income of the family has been drastically cut. So this family may or may not be able to get the money. It will depend on their ability to negotiate with the Ministry of Health and it will depend on whether the Ministry of Health and the district health board think that they are liable and whether they get in this capped amount of $23 million per year. It is very difficult for families to prove that.Because of Government policy towards this there has been a fundamentally suspicious and punitive approach towards people caring for family members. It is as if they have to be spied upon because they might be ripping off the system rather than acknowledging that what they are doing is a really really important job. It has cost them in many cases their own health and their mental health.But one of the Government’s arguments is that families should do it for nothing. The debate was about natural care. Minister Ryall continues to say that that is a tenet of the Government’s bill. “Natural care” is a wonderful-sounding phrase. Natural care is what we do when we raise our children. It is what many of us did for our elderly parents when they needed support in their home as they got older. It is what many people do for family members—whānau ora natural care. But there comes a point in natural care where a line is stepped over.The stories that are being told to me about people who live in the other world are not natural care. It is not natural care for adults to have to wash and take care of control manage feed deal with and support some family members. We need to put the person with the disability at the heart of the matter. If the person with the disability chooses to be cared for by a family member many times it is because they feel safer with that person than with carers on a 4-hour roster. People might have a 24-hour roster where the carers change every 4 hours. They have changing carers. They do not know those people all the time so they actually trust—not surprisingly—their family member more.The Government’s argument was that this could distort relationships in families. Of course it could. Power exists in all relationships especially between disabled people and their carer whether they are a family member or an agency. It does not matter. The reason that that is always going to be a risk is that people with disabilities are at the bottom of the heap and their status in our society is the lowest possible status that you can have. Their ability to advocate for themselves is severely limited by the barriers that we create not because they are incapable of articulating their needs but because we are incapable in many instances of giving them the support to say what it is that they need.I met with a number of groups in the last 4 years that said we need change. They said we need a cross-party approach towards the issue of paying family carers so that the person at the heart of this is protected at all times and has the ability to choose. A number of the people I met were saying that their young people want to live independently but they cannot find a safe set-up. I know there are safe independent set-ups. They are more expensive than exploiting someone at home but in my town for example there is a very good trust called the Lifestyle Trust where they have 25 houses where young people and other people some with complex intellectual impairment in particular who want to live independently are supported. But if like Cliff and his family and others they choose to stay at home their carers should be able to earn a living wage.One of the most reprehensible and depressing aspects of the bill is saying that the people who do that work do not have to be paid what the outside carer gets paid. So you are setting up a bizarre anomaly where someone who might get paid 8 hours a day to look after a family member is paid one rate and then the carer will come in and get paid more. I guess you could call it progress because at the moment they are paid nothing but actually what that does to their human dignity is that after all the struggle after all the court cases and after all the bitterness and debate they are still being told: “Your work is not of value. The caring that you do for your family member—you should do it for love.” Love is very much involved in the sacrifice that is being made and love should not be exploited and workers who are family members should not be exploited.That brings us to the issue of spouses. Actually it is up to the disabled person as to whether they want their spouse to care for them not their mother their father their brother or their cousin but this law appears—and we should clarify this with the Minister—to not allow that. It makes an artificial distinction between who can be paid and whether they are a spouse or not. It does many other things as well. It is interesting given that Whānau Ora is supposedly the flagship of the Government along with the Māori Party and it is potentially a liberating policy but whānau ora means that the whole family are involved in an issue and their needs are met and we recognise what families are trying to do together.I think that putting the disabled person at the heart and putting the whānau ora principle into this would have resulted in a very different piece of legislation. It is very very sad to see the discrimination that comes in in this bill which the Minister of course has not mentioned. He has not mentioned the fact that in the bill it explicitly states that people will have no right to complain—none whatsoever—either to the Human Rights Review Tribunal or the courts. So what this bill is saying is: “We have come up with an inadequate solution without proper consultation and now we are going to shut it down—end of story.”No more will people be allowed to complain. No more can they go to the Human Rights Review Tribunal. Those cases that did not get on the list are over and these people will be desperate but no more will they have the right. I am amazed at a law that actually says: “You will not have a right to take any kind of case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal.” I think it is really churlish when they have lost—and they lost a number of times in court—to say: “We are not prepared to even allow people to say any more. That is the end of the story. If you fail to be accepted through the assessment process—no more. Go home. Look after your family member for nothing or put them into a residential care facility that may or may not be acceptable to them but that is the end for you.” More will be said. We are against the bill.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure to speak in support of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) in its second reading. I just want to acknowledge the work of the previous speaker Catherine Delahunty in terms of her support for Cliff Robinson and his family. Cliff Robinson and his two children are constituents of mine in the Coromandel electorate and it is fair to say that Catherine Delahunty has been a staunch advocate on their behalf and I thank her for that.This is a good bill. It is an important bill. Today is a day of pride for the National Party and the National-led Government but it is a day of shame for the Labour Party and its former health Ministers and their teams during the 9 long years of the previous Labour Government. Really as we get through this second reading debate there is really just one question that should probably be asked and answered: was it the Hon Ruth Dyson who during her term as the Associate Minister of Health in those years of Helen Clark’s administration pushed for a carers’ package and was it actually theformer Minister of Health Annette King who pushed back and opposed it? I support this bill.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Look there have been a lot of political statements made like the one made by the previous speaker Scott Simpson who spoke not at all to the bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) but just spouted a few political statements. He is learning well from the Minister of Health—let us be honest. I think the nature of the debate has been governed by the fact that the proper process for considering legislation has been completely curtailed.This is a house of political debate. This is where we debate the broad policies and where there is often a bit of robust hurling of barbs at one another. It is at select committees of course where we sit down as a group—this bill would I imagine come to the Health Committee which is one of the better-functioning committees under the chairmanship of Dr Paul Hutchison and where the members actually genuinely want to do what is right for the health and well-being of New Zealanders. We may not always agree on the broad policy but we give submitters a fair hearing. We listen intently to what the official advice is and we take our time in comparison with some other select committees to really consider our inquiries and the legislation that we look at.Ordinarily this second reading debate would be an opportunity to come back to Parliament and discuss what submitters had come to tell us at the select committee. But of course the submitters who would be the people who will be directly affected by this bill have had no opportunity to do that. There has been no select committee process. There has not even been any consultation with them just as there was no consultation with other parties in Parliament and just as the Attorney-General’s report and the regulatory impact statement were dumped on the Table at the last minute—actually after the last minute. They are supposed to arrive at the same time as the bill and they did not and that is an outrage.I want to share what I think would be the words of one submitter because we have been contacted by people who will be impacted on by this bill and here is the kind of thing that we are getting. The initial reaction was really positive. It was the reaction that I think the Minister was hoping for—that everybody would have the wool pulled over their eyes and think that this was the solution that the sector was looking for. And that was the initial reaction: “Positive recognition of the obligation of carers … not legislating away … getting started … focused on highest needs first.”It all felt really positive and the first paragraph that we received from this person was incredibly positive. But then comes the second paragraph which reads like this: “But … but … but …”. There are so many buts in this legislation. The big negative they say is the minimum wage—the fact that family carers are going to receive less than other carers doing exactly the same job exactly the same work and with exactly the same passion. Actually you might argue that the family carers will have more passion for their own kin but that is the situation. They are stuck on the minimum wage. This person says: “There will be anger amongst many people and this will be seen as very unfair and mean-spirited.” and I have to concur. This legislation is unfair and it is mean-spirited. “Even going for the industry average of a dollar or two more would have been seen as more acceptable without breaking the bank.” That is what this person had to say. “Many will also be very upset at the exclusion of spouses and partners being eligible.” I think this person is right. “Why is it that they are excluded?” they ask. “Perhaps because of implications for over-65s but it will rankle deeply with the people.”So the Minister has failed. The Minister said that this is all about politics. It is always about politics with Minister Ryall. What he has been trying to do is get the politics rightwithout actually doing the job properly but he has been found out. He would be found out if the bill went to a select committee. He knows that. That is why he has forced the bill through under urgency but I am sorry Mr Ryall the people are not as stupid as you believe they are and they have figured it out.I will read more of what this person says: “Together with these issues what is emerging is it gets worse hour by hour.” In other words they like us are looking through the bill they are looking through the regulatory impact statement—what of it they are allowed to read—and they are looking at the Attorney-General’s report which says this is an unjustified contravention of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and they are seeing this legislation for what it is which is an attempt to appease people who have an absolutely justified claim without doing the job properly.As Annette King pointed out doing the job properly would cost just $17 million more than what this bill will cost the Government. I appreciate that people out there listening will go: “Seventeen million dollars? That sounds like an awful lot of money.” Anybody would like to get their hands on $17 million. But the truth is that for the health budget and for the Government’s overall budget $17 million is not a lot of money.Later on in this passage of urgency we are going to pass legislation—well the Government is going to attempt to pass legislation; I have to admit I am probably conceding defeat already—that will increase fuel taxes. That increase in fuel taxes is going to generate $20 billion more money than the Government needs for its roading programme—$20 billion more than the Government needs for roads. Yet it cannot find $17 million for the families of people with disabilities. Does that not just tell you where this Government’s priorities lie? Does that not just tell you where this Government’s priorities lie?John Hayes: We don’t photocopy dollar notes. It doesn’t grow on trees. It doesn’t grow in the Manawatū River.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: John Hayes has perked up all of a sudden. Perhaps he realises just what a bad deal this is for people with disabilities and for their families—and for their families.John Hayes: No it’s not. It’s a damn good deal.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: John Hayes says that this is a damn good deal. Well he needs to go and talk to the families affected the people who are already contacting us because they have figured out that this is a swindle Mr Hayes. This is a swindle and nothing more from this arrogant Government which does not believe in democracy. It is pushing this bill through under urgency without providing Parliament with the full information and it is forcing us to try to pick the details apart and get to the heart of it.I have to admit that when we first saw that the Government was going to take action on this we thought that was great. It had taken it a while. The court case was actually completed a year ago and the families gave the Government a year—they voluntarily gave the Government a year—to sort this out. And the Government has taken a whole year and again that shows you where those families lie in this Government’s priorities. The Government was not prepared to act straight away. It messed around it sat on its hands and now it is putting the bill through under urgency because it knows it is at risk of litigation from the families. It took a whole year—Ian McKelvie: Haven’t you got a split call?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No Mr McKelvie. I get my full 10 minutes on this one. I also want to say that we have a genuine question. We have a genuine question—if the Minister of Health could just put his props down for a second. Here is a genuine question. How does the employment relationship between the Ministry of Health the person with the disability and their carer work? I am concerned—and we on this side are concerned—that if the direct employment responsibilities are between the personwith the disability and their carer that raises significant issues for the person with the disability. They do not have an army of human resources managers behind them to make sure that they get that relationship right. They do not have the support or the advice that the district health board or the Ministry of Health would have. It is a genuine question because reading through the bill and reading through the analysis and the supporting material I just cannot tell exactly what the situation is.So when we get to the Committee of the whole House I hope that the Minister will clarify that situation because we may want to make changes to that employment relationship to try to get this right. We disagree with the Government on this. We do not think that this is the full package. We do not think that this is the answer. But we do want to do our best to try to get it right for them and I hope that the Minister takes that consideration on board amongst the other issues.Dr JIAN YANG (National): The previous speaker Iain Lees-Galloway blamed the National-led Government for not paying for family carers. The fact is that the previous Labour Government decided not to pay a single cent to family carers. In April 2008 that decision was made. Well the Labour Government decided to forget that fact. It was convenient deliberate—that is indeed a disgrace.As I said earlier the core of this matter is the balance between the responsibility of the Government and that of families. The Government is currently spending over $1 billion a year on a wide range of disability support services including home and community support services residential care support for high and complex needs equipment and home modifications supported independent living and also care support and respite care. This bill is another effort of the Government to provide better services to disabled people while using taxpayers’ money carefully and responsibly. The previous Labour Government felt helpless and did nothing on this issue. The National-led Government actually is now acting on this matter. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call.LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to the discussion about the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I just want to pick up where my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway left off. I think the select committee process would have provided a really good opportunity to discuss issues such as were highlighted by the Ministry of Health in its own discussion document where it said: “the court’s decision may have broader implications for other … funded disability supports and for family carers of other people receiving government-funded support …”. I mean we all know that this is a reaction to theAtkinson and Otherscase. This case has been going since 2000 so it was in its 12th year when on 14 May last year the Court of Appeal made its decision. That judgment was very clear. It said basically that the Government—the Ministry of Health—was unlawful to discriminate against someone because of their family status.I think that is actually the critical question that the select committee process would have been able to go through. I reiterate what my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said. The Health Committee is an incredibly well-run select committee. I think that the way we engage with each other is very much evidence-based and it is very much about trying to work collaboratively and I think this is an area and an issue that we could have worked collaboratively on.The reality—as John Forman who is the chair of the Carers Alliance said—is that there is “disappointment that spouses and partners of disabled people were specifically excluded …”. That really is the criticism that I think I want to focus on. We have been through a process a legal process that said the Government was discriminating. The case was taken by parents and I want to acknowledge the parents. I want toacknowledge Peter Atkinson on behalf of the estate of Susan Atkinson. I want to acknowledge Gillian Bransgrove Jean Burnett Laurence Carter Peter Humphreys Clifford Robinson Lynda Stoneham Stuart Burnett Imogen Atkinson and their counsel who have fought for their right to be supported in their support of their disabled adult children.That was the context of the case but the reality is that the principle applies to other people in other situations and that really is the issue. The Government really is selling short family members in similar situations who are caring for adult members of their family who have a disability. So to delimit it in the way that it has done really is a breach of how this House operates. If we had been able to go through a select committee process we would have been able I think to resolve and reconcile some of the other challenges that that Court of Appeal decision has highlighted. For me that is the fundamental flaw in the process that we are going through.It is very sad and I know that the chair of our select committee Paul Hutchison is always very concerned about evidence about principles and about why the Government makes the decisions that it does. I am sure he would have welcomed our select committee hearing submissions on this particular bill. For me that is the fundamental issue. That is what I want to highlight. Yes we are going to resolve the issue for some families who have disabled adults but this does not resolve the issues for all families who have members who have a disability. I think we have lost that opportunity and I think to say that the fiscal implications should drive what we do is wrong. Kia ora.JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to speak again so soon after the first reading in the second reading of this bill New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). In the first reading I spoke about why this is a feminist issue. I would like to speak just a little bit more about the economic model that this bill is a demonstration of.I was at the Public Health Association Budget day breakfast this morning and one of the economists at that meeting was talking about the counting-for-nothing model and how that has contributed to child poverty and growing inequality in this country. He noted that provision 6.28 inHousehold Surveys and the National Accounts explicitly excludes from our national accounts the preparation of meals the care of children the care of sick and the infirm and transportation.The consequence of that exclusion—and this bill is such a demonstration of the thinking behind that exclusion—is that the Government can focus on the external economic growth model as if it has nothing to do with our families. It can say: “Well if we put all of our focus and our effort into growing business then we may have enough money as a country not to have to introduce these fiscal constraints that deny people their very rights and allow the Government to discriminate.”But that kind of thinking is the same thinking that says that earthquakes and pollution and prisons grow our economy and that the increase in GDP from those evils is something we want to strive for. It separates out and ignores the very well-being of every person in this country in their homes in the places that I believe most New Zealanders feel actually count. The very focus around this means that the impact of any of these little bits of social spending is completely in the words of this economist swamped by the policies that drive social inequality.In this case it is the inequality between men and women and the inequality between disabled and abled people who through their loss of choice and control and funding for their families are entrenched into poverty because this Government and the very model that it is working in says that they do not count. The lives of these people the hours the love and the care count for nothing in the Government’s economic model. I think that is morally bankrupt and I think New Zealanders deserve something better.The Government is saying that this is a good deal. Well it is a bloody good deal for the Government and its model. The Government is getting the benefit of all of these people’s work for nothing virtually—for a token. We see this again in the income support area where the Government has allowed for 7500 people to get the supported living payment for the care of the sick and the infirm—which is care for people who would otherwise be hospitalised—and they are being paid below the poverty line. For those families that is what that means. They are being guaranteed an income below the poverty line so that the Government can save on the extraordinary costs of hospital care because they love their family members and want more for them. That is the economic model that we are being fed as a positive for our communities. What a joke. It is offensive.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes55New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Bill read a second time.In CommitteeClause 1 TitleDr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): It is a pleasure to speak on the major part of this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I note that in new Part 4A “Family care policies” inserted by clause 4 new section 70A “Purpose of this Part” says quite clearly: “The purpose of this Part is to keep the funding of support services provided by persons to their family members within sustainable limits in order to give effect to the restraint imposed by section 3(2) ...”.I think it is very very important to emphasise that this policy does indeed give disabled people the choice of whether to employ a family carer or a contracted provider. And as I pointed out in the second reading of this bill the packages to carers of those who used to be held in institutions are really very realistic. They will come to over $100000 in certain circumstances. Traditionally as we have all debated during the last two readings for 20 years no family members have been paid—no family members have been paid. But this bill enables that choice of payment to those who indeed have very high needs. This will open up payments to something like 1600 families who have in the past not had that benefit.Certainly targeting high and very high needs people was supported by 68 percent of all submitters and 71 percent of family carers in response to the consultation document that was put out by the Government in 2012 and I believe that there were something like over 600 replies to that. There were 273 submitters and there were 12 discussions around the traps in New Zealand. Again it is important to point out that changing the policy to pay all groups of family carers rather than only carers of those with high and very high needs would result in spiralling and unmanageable costs of as much as $175 million a year. We do of course have that difficulty—where are the grey zones? But when we hear the rhetoric of both Labour and the Greens—the Greens which would print money and Labour which has refused to pay anything at all even though it has known since 2001 that this was an issue—it is indeed of great concern.This policy adds to the extra $100 million that the Government is spending on disability support services over the next 4 years. The total investment in disability now reaches something like $1.1 billion. This is a realistic compassionate fair solution to an issue that has gone on for a long period of time. And as one of the disability spokespersons said this morning the sector will be very relieved that at last a solution has been offered by the National Government.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Just before I call the next member just so that we are clear about the parameters in the debate this is a debate on clause 1 and it is a wide-ranging debate on clause 1. The reason for that is the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) has not been considered by a select committee. However when we come to clauses 2 3 and 4 these will be narrow debates and I refer members who are going to speak to Speaker’s ruling 114/7. All of those who are going to be speaking please have a look at Speaker’s ruling 114/7. So it is a wide-ranging debate.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call in the Committee stage of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) and I hope that the Minister of Health takes the opportunity to answer some of the questions that were foreshadowed during the truncated debates that we have already had on this bill.Can I first of all agree with one point that the previous speaker Dr Paul Hutchison made and that is that for some family members who have been denied access to payment for caring this bill does progress that issue and that is a good thing. It is massively outweighed by the frame in which the Minister has put this resolution. The Minister has quite clearly said in his press statements and in the introduction to this bill as well as in the questions and answers from the Ministry of Health that accompanied it that it is the total responsibility of family members to care for their disabled other family members. That undermines the whole point of this bill.The point of this bill should be to say that under the public health and disability responsibilities that the Government has a family member who is performing a support service that would otherwise be performed by a paid caregiver should be entitled to be paid as well. So the whole framing of this debate has been that a Minister was dragged kicking and screaming from the Court of Appeal and into Parliament to address the issue that was raised by the Atkinson family. The Minister knows that when Labour was leading the Government the matter had not been resolved by the courts. It was resolved by the courts during his term of Government and for the last 12 months he has been working out how he could get out of the responsibility of paying for family caregivers.The other point that I want to raise in relation to the issues that Dr Paul Hutchison raised is that it would pay the member well to read the regulatory impact statement because that has accurate costings rather than the drivel that he reported to the House. The accurate costings are that it would have cost only an additional $17 million per year to include all people who are family caregivers who are currently not being paid. That is a miniscule amount of money within the total health budget and if the Minister wants to fix the situation then he should have fixed it.So the remaining 3000 or so—2800—families for whom the Ministry of Health in its regulatory impact statement has presented this information to Parliament will be feeling very angry and very let down by the promises that the Minister has made to solve the situation. Not only did the Minister promise to solve it he then attacked Annette King and other members of the Labour Government for not solving it and he has not done it either. He has not done it. It has just slipped through his fingers. He had the opportunity. He had the court case. He had it resolved during his time as Minister.After taking it to the High Court and then it going to the Court of Appeal the Minister did not fix the situation. This bill does not do it.On page 11 of the regulatory impact statement it says quite clearly that having no targeting and paying all family carers who are providing home and community support services would cost at mid-point $65 million per annum with the range going as high as $75 million. That would ensure that the 5400 family members of disabled people who are currently providing that home support would in fact be paid for it. So there is a smidgen of good in here and why on earth the Minister did not do his work properly and get the entire package sorted is beyond belief. But he has made it worse than that. Not only has he denied access to payment for so many thousands of family caregivers but he is also in this legislation extinguishing their right to take a case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal on the grounds of discrimination. That was the basis on which the other families won this concession. Had the Atkinson family—or any of the other families actually—taken that action under the criteria that the Minister has laid down I do not think they would be entitled to payments still. They are getting it only because they have been through the legal process and the Minister has finally agreed to settle.The Minister has agreed to settle with those families but under the criteria that he is laying out in this legislation for very high and complex needs disabilities those families would not be entitled to the payment that they have won through the courts. So why would the Minister disentitle other family members from taking what is their legitimate case? That is the very question that is answered in this report which is also on the Table from the Attorney-General the Hon Chris Finlayson. He takes quite a long time to say it but it is from the Attorney-General. On page 3 of his report he says at point 17: “It is important to note that a savings provision … preserves the position of the parties in theFamily Carers case and one other case … That litigation may continue or be settled as if the Bill had not been enacted.” So regardless of this legislation those families would have reached a settlement with the Minister or the Ministry of Health.Then point 18 says: “New section 70E appears to limit the right to judicial review because it would prevent a person from challenging the lawfulness of a decision on the basis that it was inconsistent with s 19(1) of the Bill of Rights Act.” He goes on to say in point 19 of his report to the House: “On balance I have concluded that limitation cannot be justified under s 5 of the Bill of Rights Act.” So why would the Minister want to do that? Why would the Minister want to trumpet the fact that he has finally resolved an issue that has been a public policy debate for over two decades according to him? Why would he want to resolve that issue by creating another clear—and confirmed by the Attorney-General—discrimination while at the same time extinguishing the rights of those families who have confirmed this discrimination created by this legislation and prevent them from taking the matter through any system of human rights to redress? That undermines the whole point of this legislation.There are further negative aspects to it. There is the fact that the Minister has not determined that a family member should not be paid perhaps at the average rate that other caregivers are being paid at but only at the minimum wage—so family caregivers’ work is worth less than for somebody who is not from that family. I do not agree with that. If a person is doing the work then they should be paid at the same rate as anyone else who is doing it.I do not think that the sector has been involved in the discussions on this final piece of legislation. I agree that if there was a roll-out of this provision for payment of family caregivers then those with the highest needs would be a priority and that is correct. But this is not a roll-out. This is the beginning and the end of the situation. This is legislation that is not being brought in incrementally. This is legislation that is being done through all stages of this Parliament under urgency with no consideration at all—not even one day—by a select committee. None of the families involved none of the caregivers not Carers New Zealand and no organisations that are involved in the provision of this support for disabled people are being allowed one word of input into this legislation. It is being passed right through all stages under urgency without any public scrutiny.I think that is an immoral position for the Minister of Health to take. To have such a significant piece of legislation affecting the rights of so many families of disabled people—to have those rights extinguished without them having an opportunity to have one say—is an outrage. I am beside myself with surprise that the Māori Party with the Minister for Disability Issues as one of its members with the Minister of Māori Affairs as one of its members is supporting this legislation. We know very well that many many Māori families are particularly impacted by this legislation because many Māori families refuse to have anyone else support their family members because of their cultural priority that they look after their own members. So for the Minister for Disability Issues and the Minister of Māori Affairs to be supporting this legislation beggars belief. It is the price of the baubles of office I guess but it is a great surprise to me. I think that the Minister could well rethink the strategy.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): It has been a very interesting first and second reading of this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) because I have noticed that the Minister of Health has spent a lot of his time scuttling in and out gathering evidence against the previous Government. He has been rummaging through the Ministry of Health’s drawers to try to find anything that he can throw at the Opposition. I would say to the Minister that he might have been better off spending his time providing us with information about this bill before he brought it into this House.I want the Minister to tell us why the regulatory impact statement was not available until today and why so much of it has been blacked out. Why have the public of New Zealand and the members of this House who rely on a regulatory impact statement to have an idea what the bill is faced page after page after page blanked out taking away information. Everybody knows that a regulatory impact statement is there to assist the House to have a debate about an issue. The Minister must have approved a regulatory impact statement that took out vital information that we could have used in this House—that his own members could have used. I would like to know why we face that—I cannot remember a regulatory impact statement like that. The regulatory impact statement for example on Better Local Government was a real shocker against the Minister of Local Government at the time Nick Smith but he did not go through it and cross out the bad bits he did not like. I will give him credit for that. He allowed the information to be put there for us to argue against for the select committee to look at but this bill is not even going to a select committee. Why was there no effort made as was offered last year by members of the Opposition to work with them on this issue?As the Minister said when he started off in a very steady way this is a very complex issue spanning over 20 years. And then as the debate went on he had his members’ and his own speeches becoming more narrow and more narrow throwing a bit of blame around. He has been the Minister for 5 years—5 years the Minister of Health. In 5 years he could have done something so it is no good holding up pieces of paper saying that Labour did not do anything because National was the Government 9 years before we became the Government. Did it do anything on this issue? No it did not. It made no decisions on it and this Minister has been forced to make decisions that he did not really want to make. He can hide his face behind paper and he ought to hide his face behind paper because what you get out of his press statement I think is very interesting indeed. What he actually says is that the public of New Zealand expectfamily members to look after their own family. Well in the main they do but there is one part of our society where we say we need to give particular care and it is those who are not able to look after themselves.The bottom line for this Minister has been all about money. When you look at the options the little bit of the paper that we can read you see that he did have some choices. I happen to know that the choices that the Ministry of Health is providing to him at the moment on carer policy he does not like at all. He certainly did not like the options that it put up. Why did he not choose one of the options under option 3C or option 2C because the difference in money is $17 million a year. You would have gone from 1600 people with disabilities being supported to 5400. Would that have been such a huge impost on the Government’s coffers? It certainly is not when it can throw money around for private schools and it can throw money around to advertise to sell off our State assets at $1 million—$1 million for an advertising campaign. It was about priorities. Why could he not have settled for an option that would have been more expensive but not greatly so when you look at the entire health budget?I would also like to ask the Minister what consultation he had with those who are the carers because we happened to receive this morning information from those who do caring. They say that they had very little involvement at all. They did not engage the carers in the policy design or system. Why not Minister? In fact you had one person on the technical advisory group who was allowed to respond only to a series of questions from the ministry. That comes from the carers themselves. It is no good shaking your head Minister and denying it. They happen to know what happened to them. They happen to know what consultation they had. He is calling them a liar. I do not believe the carers of New Zealand are liars. That is what happened to them. There was very little opportunity for them to look at this policy at all and in fact I believe it has been so rushed that that is why the regulatory impact statement has not been properly completed. The Minister does not need to rush it. Tell this Committee why when it will be implemented in October this year he needs to put it through urgency in this Chamber. Why not try to work across this Chamber and get agreement on it so it could put in place for the future—not something that he decides to do? But it is very much the way this Minister works. He knows everything—he knows everything. He is an authority on everything. He does not need the assistance of the carers of New Zealand. He does not need the assistance of the members of this Committee because he is all knowledgable.I have to say it is also very disappointing and maybe he would like to tell us why it is that when carers are going to be paid they get to be paid the minimum wage. The ministry did not recommend the minimum wage; it recommended around $16. So why has the Minister said that it will be the minimum wage that will be paid? Why are these caregivers to be paid less than other caregivers? Are they less competent? Are they less important? Are the issues they face less troublesome for them? Would the Minister like to respond to why they will be paid the minimum wage? Maybe the Minister would also like to tell the Committee about the operational details of this policy because the operational details of this policy—Minister is it correct—will not be ready until September this year? Can the Minister answer that? Will the operational issues not be ready until September this year because that is what your office said yesterday? They will not be ready until September so we will not even know how it is going to operate. Perhaps the Minister could tell us what he classifies as very high and high needs. Which sort of disability will be included in the high to very high needs? I would like him to explain exactly the sort of person who would have high to very high needs. Would they be people with physical or neurological disability? Would they be people with muscular dystrophy? Whom has he decided will be those with very high needs?I believe that the people of New Zealand deserve answers to questions like this today. They need to understand that this is the only opportunity for debate on this bill which is going to affect many people’s lives. Today is it. The next hour or two is the time allowed. That is it. That is all this House has. Instead of spending time rummaging around trying to attack the Opposition answer some questions about the policy. Put some answers on the table Minister instead of just playing your usual game of being a know-all and wanting to play the political game on every issue. He could have worked with the Opposition. He could have worked with all parties. You have heard it from the Greens you have heard it from New Zealand First and we had a statement put out last year saying that we would work on this issue. There was not even a phone call. When did we hear about this? Yesterday. When did we get the bill? Yesterday. When did we get the regulatory impact statement? Today. When did we get the Attorney-General’s report on it? Today. That is the level of consultation and information that is being provided to this Parliament. To treat the Parliament with that sort of contempt is just not good enough.But let us face it what else would you expect? What else would you expect from a Government that has become so arrogant that it knows exactly what everyone needs and believes it knows what people who are disabled need? Do not worry about it Government members know. Well they do not. They have been asked to address an issue. What does a person who has got two disabled adult children a 75-year-old man looking after his own children who are 45 and 43 say? He thought he was going to get a half-decent scheme. What does he say he got? A half-baked one. That is the problem—a half-baked scheme because the Minister of Health was not prepared to take the time to consult properly with the carers and to work with other parties but wants to shove it through this House under Budget legislation and urgency.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare nui. It is not great to be here—I think we should be at a select committee I really do. I am very very disappointed that we are not because this is a very serious oversight on an issue that given all these years of angst that have gone on we should be talking about to the people who are experiencing it. And they are watching—never imagine they are not. We are being watched as we speak.I had an email just a little while ago from a carer who said: “I am just appalled that the Government continues its discriminatory and exploitative process against families caring for severely disabled people.” This is what she does: “What part of 168 hours in the week allows for only a maximum of 40 to be funded when you are the parent carer? What do these people think we do? Go out on the tiles? Off duty after 5 p.m. till 8 in the morning? Disappearing every weekend? Should our funding be based on their ivory tower understanding of what happens? How do they get this 18-year-old number? I understand that those under 18 have been allocated funding for care but why can their parents not be funded as any other carer is? Do two parents at home get paid and only one that’s left because of death or because a partner leaves—can that person get paid if they are a spouse? I am just flabbergasted that spouses and partners continue to be exploited.”So perhaps the Minister of Health could answer her question: are spouses able to be paid? We would really like to know because of the situation. “This is outright discrimination.” she says. “Are the Government wanting more legal action? No doubt further legal action could delay things and be their cheaper option.”—which has certainly been a strategy for the last 18 years—“This causes total stress and adds insult to injury with an already very difficult situation. People who care for severely disabled people need all the help that they can get and that they are assessed as needing. These battles are real struggles for the carers who should be helped not hindered. It’s notclear if children catering for parents are allowed payment.” That would be another question that she would like answered. “A very disappointing Budget for people with high or very high needs whom it was supposed to be aimed at. The court action deemed that funding should be for the assessment of allocated funded hours that the Ministry of Health would be prepared to pay to anyone else. Why are they now saying ‘We will pay parents only what we feel like’ but yes anyone else can get paid their fully allocated hours? Why is the start date October? Promises for June were made.”This is really true. After the end of the court case promises were made that there would be a resolution by June 2013. She says: “No one is holding their breath.” They have been through so many promises and so many dates have been set. After the court case a year ago it is not that the Government has chosen to take the opportunity to do something wonderful; it has no choice. It would be in breach of law if it did not act.I also had an email this morning from a very experienced advocate who works for disability groups. He said: “I’m just summarising the policy from what I can read of the regulatory impact statement and I have to say that it gets worse and worse. But don’t worry once this is through there will be heaps of sector resistance.” So that is not good news. People have got better things to do than fight the Government when they are dealing with issues of their own family members or themselves needing care for disability. It is really really disappointing to set up another round of conflict even though the bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) certainly does its best to shut down any options for complaint. But the human spirit is not like that. The human spirit will not be told it does not have rights and will not be told by any Government that it will put up and shut up and have no right to complain. This is a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act which is clear. The people out there who are involved in this issue are not after virtually 20 years of litigation going to just give up because the Government says they have to. Let us get real about this. There are going to be more challenges. We have a better path we could follow. We could follow the path of engagement.So let us have a look at the process which is why not holding select committee hearings is such a disaster. What has happened up until now has been pretty bad. There was eventually after the last case was lost and the Government members realised that they would look like fools if there was an appeal—the Government had already spent several million dollars of taxpayers’ money fighting these cases—a decision to have a consultation process. The consultation document was indeed a novel of interesting proportions. It had a sort of Tolstoyan sort ofWar and Peace—mainly war—aspect to it because it made it very very clear that there would be the possibility of taking money away from other parts of the sector if the people who were consulted chose the wrong path. So there was always this implied threat that “Actually you’d better be careful and not want too much you people who already have nothing because if you do it will be taken off other people in the sector”—a very good message if you want to divide and rule what is already quite a divided and difficult sector. People have very different needs and very different experiences of disability and they do not need to be divided and ruled by being threatened.The consultation document actually resulted in a lot of angst and anger from people who did go to the meetings and did want to engage very seriously with the issue. So then there were some options put up around whether Work and Income could manage it. Not surprisingly the families and people with disabilities said: “Oh no we will not become part of the WINZ machine. We will not be treated as beneficiaries. We will not be treated the way beneficiaries are treated. We do not want to. We have enough experience of this. We want to be treated as people doing a job.” And who can blame them? The “WINZ machine” or Work and Income as it is actually called is not acompassionate liberating transformative support machine. Those words have very little to do with what happens on the ground every day in Work and Income. So that is why people wrote that option off. They definitely did not want that option.The other options were around getting an allowance or being an employee. Both of those have fish-hooks in them and also have possibilities. The Government says it claims to have chosen the employee model but in reality when it says that people can be paid less for this if they are carers who are family members rather than being from outside the family this is clearly not a normal employee situation. It is clearly discriminatory and that is where there will be more trouble to come. In reality we have to decide whether we are going to recognise people’s work—and the Human Rights Review Tribunal the High Court and the Court of Appeal have all said it is discriminatory not to—and then we have to pay them a fair wage. It is pretty fundamental that people should be paid a fair wage.So what happened after the consultation? Well after the consultation round there was a silence—there was a deathly silence—which involved people like me being rung up constantly by other groups saying: “Have you heard anything? What’s going on?”. So you know I sent a few questions through to the Minister and “In due course.” was the reply. But there was no information about where we were going. This is the 21st century when sophisticated community consultation processes can be facilitated. But that did not happen. I go back to my own father who always said that “consultation” is a cross between a con and an insult and I do find that has a certain resonance in this case.What happened was that the Government then set up a technical working party. There was considerable effort made by some of the families involved in the litigation as they would have liked to be represented as experts. There is a fundamental issue here which is that these people are experts Minister. They have lived and breathed what you and I possibly have not. They know that there is a need to be fair and reasonable around State money because they have lived with minimal State money for a very long time. They are not expecting a banker’s wage they are not expecting an MP’s wage they are not expecting a consultant’s wage; they want the basics so they can survive with dignity and so can their family. This bill refuses to deliver that. They should have been included in the technical working party and they were not. One person from the carers groups was included and after three meetings there was a shut down. The technical working group was no longer involved. The Ministry of Health went back with the Minister and they started talking about it without involving anyone else.And this bill is the result. This is the result. It is a paranoid fiscally cheap option which could have been so much better if they had kept the door open if they had kept talking to people and kept engaging. I think it would be fair to say that most of us realise that we cannot just write an unlimited cheque on this issue. We have to recognise the constraints. But those constraints should be defined by the human needs of the people. The people themselves should define those constraints not the Ministry of Health and the Minister who have resisted every step of the way and have written into this bill that they basically do not believe that family members should be paid—but if the courts are going to make us do it oh well we will find a cheap solution. The bias the prejudice and the invisibility towards the knowledge and expertise of people with disabilities and their families is now going to be entrenched.With that description of what has happened we now find that the bill will not go to a select committee. So where is the expertise going to come from? Where is the knowledge going to come from for us to make an assessment? We are going to go into the third reading without hearing from the families and without hearing from the people with disabilities who have many ways of speaking about their experience and wouldlike to speak to us. Our job is to listen to those people about how we can fairly meet their needs. Our job is to hear them not to set up a short consultation process threaten them that the Government is going to take the money from another part of the sector and then lock things down while the Government makes up a solution that is fiscally safe for the Government but that perpetuates discrimination to the point at which the Attorney-General says that it is actually a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.So where are we going to go with this? Back to court? Are we asking people who are already stretched who are already broken? They are not allowed to go back to court in this bill. They have been told really clearly in this bill that they cannot go back to court. There is no court that they are allowed to take their claims to. As for what the Government has done to the Human Rights Commission and to its status it is very interesting. Presumably the Government believes in human rights and in the Human Rights Commission and the Human Rights Review Tribunal. But it has said that the most vulnerable citizens the most marginalised citizens—who are people with disabilities and their families with high needs—have no access. It is very bizarre that those with money and those at the highest level of society in terms of material wealth will have access to the courts in the land if they get into trouble which strangely they sometimes do with other people’s money but the most vulnerable will not have access to the courts. That is written into the law. I am really ashamed—Iain Lees-Galloway: Mr Chair—Hon Maryan Street: Mr Chair—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Shall I toss a coin? I think I will go for seniority. I call the Hon Maryan Street.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): That is right—age before beauty again. I rise to join this debate in the Committee stage of this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) because there is a need to do so. I wish that I did not have to but I do. I want to talk particularly about the regulatory impact statement which a number of colleagues have traversed already. I want to talk about it from a slightly different point of view and I want to talk also about the report of the Attorney-General.In the course of drafting legislation regulatory impact statements are made. The advice that has gone to Ministers is put out and the justification for the choice that the Minister has made is displayed—or that is normally the case. That is normally the case. So we have here in this regulatory impact statement the comparisons between the options that were available to the Minister of Health on advice from officials. There were nine options. There was a matrix of three different options with three possibilities within each of those.The option that the Minister has chosen is the medium targeting one which would pay family carers in high and very high need situations. He has chosen the third of the options in that stream which we are advised would cost between $17 million and $30 million—$17 million and $30 million. Another option that he could have chosen was option C which is that of no targeting and paying everybody—all family carers—who provides ministry-contracted home support services. The third option in that stream would have cost a maximum of $46 million. So we have a difference of $16 million between the two better options.That $16 million could have taken the scope of people being covered from 1600 disabled persons whose families would be paid to support them to 5400—everybody. And yet the Minister has chosen to take the lesser of those options for the sake of $16 million. That $16 million dollars is fairly comparable to the amount of money the Government took out of adult and community education some years ago which did enormous damage to a whole network of adult education learning opportunities acrossthe country. The Government has cut a third of the environment portfolio appropriations—34 percent out of that portfolio. It is giving $80 million as a subsidy to farmers for irrigation and yet it cannot find $16 million to do the best option for the most people—the best option for the most people.So looking at this regulatory impact statement I think to myself that if I were a Minister—and I was briefly—and I look at this through a Minister’s eyes I would want to go through these recommended options and say “OK. Where are the risks? What are the risks in here around these options and why would I not go for the best option for the greatest number of people?”. I would look for advice from officials about the significant risks. I go through the paper and I come to the bit that says “significant legal risks”. “Significant legal issues and risks arising from the preferred response” is the heading here—significant legal issues and risks arising from the preferred response.Ministers must always be mindful of the risks. They must always be able to defend why they have taken a particular policy option and what the upsides and downsides of that policy option are. And so I go straight to that section like a homing pigeon having been a Minister and ask what the risks are here. And what do we find? Here is the heading. Here is the answer: it is all blacked out. So I go over the page because I want to know some more about the legal risks. And here is the page—everything is blacked out. Here we go.How am I as a responsible member of Parliament meant to know and on what basis has the Minister made a responsible decision if this blacked-out paper is what we get in the way of consideration of significant legal issues and risks pertaining to the best option? This is not good enough. The Minister can sit there knowing that he has to just endure this period of time in the House. He has to just get through it. And if he sits there quietly and if none of the National members get up to defend the bill he knows that the time will pass—because all of this is time limited—and he will get his way in the end. So he will sit here and think: “I hope everybody who has an interest in this is at work or not watching Parliament on TV because otherwise I might have to get up and answer some questions.” But the truth of the matter is that this blacking out of the paper is not good enough and it is no basis on which this Parliament ought to be assessing the proper risks and legal issues around this.Let me touch further on the legal issues. The Attorney-General has written a report and points out the fact that clause 4 of this bill inserts a new section 70E into the principal Act that prevents a person from making a complaint to the Human Rights Commission or commencing proceedings at the Human Rights Review Tribunal. It prevents the Human Rights Commission also from taking any further action in relation to a complaint made after 16 May. What is the date on the wall today? Because we are in urgency—most of the rest of the world thinks it is 17 May—in this place it is 16 May. This is the first occasion when people have been advised that if they did not get a complaint in before today they were not going to be able to go to the Human Rights Commission.At the end of this report from the Attorney-General he says that the new section 70E “appears to limit the right to judicial review because it would prevent a person from challenging the lawfulness of a decision on the basis that it was inconsistent with s 19(1) of the Bill of Rights Act.” “On balance” he says “I have concluded that limitation cannot be justified under s 5 of the Bill of Rights Act.” It cannot be justified.Why do we not have the Minister getting up and saying “I understand what the Attorney-General has said but I reckon on these grounds Parliament should take that into consideration but proceed in this way.” We are getting no response from the Minister because he just wants to sit here and wait for the time to elapse for this to get out of his hair and for us to all sit down but it does require some response. Not only isthe blanking out of sections of the regulatory impact statement not good enough but the Government is not responding and not saying to this House why it should not take into account the point that the Attorney-General has made which is that it is an infringement of human rights in New Zealand if we proceed with this legislation the way it is. Why do we not hear from the Minister justifying why we should proceed with this legislation?Labour would like to vote for this. We would like to support it because we believe that people do deserve to be paid for caring for disabled family members. This is otherwise health care on the cheap and that I have to say is a feature of this Government also. It wants conservation on the cheap by devolving it to volunteer groups. It wants housing on the cheap by devolving it to the third sector. It wanted and enjoyed health care on the cheap by limiting the amount that it pays family members and then making people pay for it as my colleague says.This bill is not good enough. It should have gone to a select committee. There is no need for it to be passed in urgency. It raises too many points that need to be thoroughly debated and submitted on by the public of New Zealand. This is not good enough. It is the way this Minister works—simply to wield power and push his will through—but it is not good enough.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It is a pleasure to follow the Hon Maryan Street. Age is a matter of fact and there is not much I can do about that but beauty is in the eye of the beholder—that is just the way it goes. Mr Chairperson you have deemed that this debate on clause 1 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) ought to be a wide-ranging debate given the fact that this bill has not been to a select committee and that submitters have not had the opportunity to have their say. It is our duty as members of Parliament to do our best to represent the interests of those submitters.However clause 1 is of course the title clause and it is customary for the Opposition to suggest some amendments and possible alternatives to the title of a bill. The title of this bill actually does not tell us very much. Folks up in the gallery might have been told that we are debating the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) and I bet they thought: “That tells me absolutely nothing. I’ve got no idea what that bill will be about.” So I have got a few suggestions for the Government. My first suggestion is the “Pulling the Wool Over the Eyes of People with Disabilities Bill” because that is essentially what it does. The Government was full of promises. It was going to fix the problem. Carers who were looking after family members who had a disability were now going to be able to be paid. That is what the Government said. That is what it told people in the disability sector that it was going to do and people out there believed it unfortunately.It is rather unfortunate that they chose to believe the Government because it is not the most trustworthy Government we have ever seen but people out there believed Tony Ryall when he said that the Government was going to comprehensively deal with the issues raised in that court case that was settled a year ago. In fact of course as we know that is not the case at all. That is absolutely not the case at all. The Government had three options—well actually it had nine options when as Maryan Street said you put the matrix together of the options of targeting and how the employment relationship will actually work. The Government chose the one that kind of just about does enough to appease people—just about does enough to maybe try to pull the wool over people’s eyes—but certainly does not go the whole way. It certainly does not answer the whole problem. So I would call this bill the “Pulling the Wool Over the Eyes of People with Disabilities Bill”.Another name for it is the “Doing Half the Job and Taking Away People’s Rights Bill” because as I said it does about half the job—actually I think that saying it is doing half the job is kind of generous. It does not really quite get to doing half the job. It does maybe about a third of the job because this will in fact affect about 1600 people with disabilities not the 5400 people whom it should cover. If the job was being done properly it would cover all those people. It is doing not even half the job but let us call it the “Doing Half the Job and Then Taking Away People’s Rights Bill”.I think that second part is possibly one of the most abysmal parts of this bill because even the Attorney-General Chris Finlayson says that this bill is not up to scratch. He points out in his report that new section 70E inserted by clause 4 “prevents the Human Rights Commission from taking any further action in relation to a complaint made after the 16 May 2013.” If members look up on the wall it says that it is 16 May. That is one of those weird things about Parliament; it is actually 17 May. But that means that anybody who lays a complaint from yesterday onwards—well they just do not have the right or the ability to lay a complaint. However of course any complaints made before 16 May can be proceeded. That creates an inequity. That is a discrimination and it is a discrimination that the Attorney-General says is not acceptable. He says that new section 70E “appears to limit the right to judicial review because it would prevent a person from challenging the lawfulness of a decision on the basis that it was inconsistent with s 19(1) of the Bill of Rights Act.” And there you have it right there. It contravenes the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and therefore this legislation is wrong. It is discriminatory. As Catherine Delahunty said it is deeply ironic that a bill that the Minister of Health promoted to people as being something that would remove discrimination actually creates a new form of discrimination. So I would call this bill the “Doing Half the Job and Taking Away People’s Rights Bill”.I think the Minister would probably want to title it the “Gosh I Hope No One Looks At This Too Closely Bill” because when you get down to it you realise what it actually does and that is probably why the Minister did not want it to go to a select committee. [Bell rung] I was talking about why you would want to call this bill the “Gosh I Hope No One Looks At This Too Closely Bill”. The Minister did not want this to go to a select committee because he did not want people who are directly affected by this bill to get a chance to give it the proper scrutiny that it deserves. But we have already started hearing back from the sector. People are looking at this bill because they want to know what the impact will be on them and people are telling us that initially—initially—they thought the Minister was getting the job done just as the Minister wanted to happen. He wanted the politics to work out on this but then when they looked at it when they peeled the layers away from the onion and when they looked at it a bit more closely they realised what was wrong with this bill. They are outraged that this bill says that family members who care for people with disabilities will be paid less—The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for the meal break.Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: In the 4 minutes and 7 or so seconds that I have remaining I would like to turn members’ attention to the amendment in the name of Ruth Dyson that refers to clause 1. It would amend clause 1 with the following: “This Act is the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Lower Pay and Removal of Human Rights) Amendment Act 2013.” which is to be fair a much more accurate reflection of what this bill actually does.Although we have talked about how you know it seemed like a really good idea and it seemed like the Government was responding appropriately to the needs offamilies of people with disabilities what we have actually found out of course is that the legislation does three things two of which are referred to in this amendment. The first thing which is not referred to in this amendment is the fact that it severely limits exactly who is eligible for these payments and that is certainly not what the families were expecting.The second thing it does is it actually tells those carers that they are going to be stuck on the minimum wage. That is what they are going to be paid: $13.75 an hour. If someone was doing this as a job and taking care of someone who was not a family member let us be honest the rates are not that flash—it is not exactly the highest-paid job in the world—but they are significantly better than this. The response we have had from the people who will be affected by this bill is that it is just such a miserly approach. If the Government could have found just $1 or $2 more an hour then that might have made it just a little bit easier to swallow for the families of people with disabilities who are looking after those people.So what we have got here is a lower rate of pay than what people could expect to get if they were working in the disabilities sector and if they were caring for someone who was not a member of their family. That is the only difference. There is no difference in the nature of the work. There is no difference in the difficulty of the work. If anything it is probably more demanding because they are taking care of these people 24 hours a day 7 days a week. It is not something that you would go and spend 8 hours a day at work doing and then go home and leave it all behind until the next shift. It is not like that at all. In fact these people in many ways are even more committed than the incredibly dedicated people who are out there working in the disabilities sector. What does the Government say? It says that their contribution is not the same—is not as good—as the contribution of those people who are carers for a living.The second aspect of course is that it is a removal of human rights because what it says to people is that if you have got a complaint or if you have got a concern and you were thinking about taking this issue to the Human Rights Commission that right has gone. So you are OK if you did it yesterday the day before yesterday or any day before then but from today onwards it is all over. It is all over and that frankly is nothing more than simple discrimination—absolutely unjustifiable discrimination—and even Chris Finlayson the Attorney-General said that. He said that it is absolutely unjustified to have that discrimination in this law.So I certainly support the amendment to clause 1 proposed by Ruth Dyson. We need to make sure that our legislation is appropriately titled and that people can get a full understanding of what is actually being done right from the beginning. If this bill had the title suggested in this amendment then people would be able to far more easily see through the spin—not that they are not. Minister Ryall I am afraid that all the efforts are not going to work because people are seeing through this and people know—LOUISE UPSTON (Senior Whip—National): I moveThat the question be now put.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak in the Committee stage of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I understand that because we are going right through all stages of this bill and there is going to be no select committee process—which is something that we on this side of the Chamber think is unfortunate—the debate around these clauses is going to be wide-ranging. I did want to start around the amendment from the Hon Ruth Dyson that my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has spoken about which would replace the title as it currently stands. It would have the legislation entitled “New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Lower Pay and Removal of Human Rights)Amendment Act 2013”. Iain Lees-Galloway did a brilliant job of talking through some of the semantics of the new wording that the Hon Ruth Dyson has put through.One of the major concerns that I have about what is contained in this bill and it is in the subsequent change in the title from the Hon Ruth Dyson is that there is an ability to not only pay those family members who are caring for those of their loved ones who have disabilities the minimum wage but to pay potentially even lower rates than that which is concerning. I understand that that is in clause 4 of the bill that has been put before us and I think that is why the Hon Ruth Dyson has put forward an alternative title to this bill that more accurately reflects what is contained in terms of the conditions of this bill.The second half of her amendment to the title of this bill is around the removal of the ability of those families who think they are getting a rough deal to have a right of appeal on human rights grounds. As Iain Lees-Galloway said in his speech we are talking about family members of people who have disabilities and some of them have given up their lives to make sure that their family members are properly cared for. The best that this Government can do is to offer them the minimum wage and to take away their right to complain or put forward an appeal if they feel that they are not getting the same deal that someone who is doing a similar amount of work—or the families feel they may be doing an even a greater amount of work—is getting paid to look after those people with disabilities.I think this is an unfortunate trend that has come forward from this Government because in other pieces of legislation there has also certainly been a trend for this Government towards same work less pay—same work less pay. That has definitely been the case for the youth rates that the Government has brought in. It has certainly been the case for our younger people. You have to question the amount of compassion of members on the other side of the Chamber when you have got family members who are looking after their loved ones with disabilities and the Government will not compensate them at the same level as other people staff who are working for other organisations are paid. It will not pay them the same amount of money as those other people even though there is a family connection and you do have to question the level of compassion.As I said this is clause 1 the title clause. Iain Lees-Galloway has talked about some of the alternative titles for this bill. I think that another title for this bill could be “The Government Again Wriggling Out of Its Responsibilities Bill” because this is another way that this Government has tried to look like it is taking action on something but it is doing the complete opposite. It is washing its hands of its responsibility—its fair responsibility—towards those who are looking after their family members with disabilities in their own homes. We saw in a previous bill that the Government has tried to wash its hands of the responsibility of Housing New Zealand tenants. The Government plans to kick 3000 Housing New Zealand tenants out of their houses. We see that again with this bill because the Government is trying not only to wriggle out of its responsibility to pay those people who are looking after their family members with disabilities but also to take away their right to appeal that decision by the Government.This House still says that today is 16 May but as of yesterday those people who think they are not getting a fair go under this legislation are not going to have the ability to go and appeal against the conditions that this bill will put them under. There was no select committee process for this bill so another alternative title we could have for this bill is the “New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Lower Pay and Removal of Human Rights and Zero Scrutiny From the Public) Amendment”—SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I moveThat the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes56New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 1 be agreed to:replace clause 1 with the following new clause:1TitleThis Act is the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Lower Pay and Removal of Human Rights) Amendment Act 2013.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes56New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 1 be agreed to.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes56New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 CommencementThe CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We now come to clause 2 the commencement clause. This is a very narrow debate.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on the commencement clause of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). Yes indeed this is a very narrow debate. It concerns when this legislation will come into force. We will need to consider first of all in discussing the bill the context in which it is being debated—it is being debated under urgency—and the contents of this bill which basically remove the right to a judicial process for a group of New Zealanders. Therefore the date on which it comes into force is actually very significant. It is being pushed through under urgency to basically prevent anybody else using their right at the moment under current law to use a judicial process. This bill is being pushed through to stop further claims being made and that is why we are here under urgency debating it.So let us talk a little bit about the commencement clause which states: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” Well there are many many aspects to this particular clause that are of a slightly more technical nature but “the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” ispretty ambiguous because actually we do not know when the Governor-General is going to sign this particular piece of legislation. In our constitutional arrangements the Royal assent is exercised on behalf of the Queen who is the head of State by the Governor-General. So the first question we need to know the answer to is when the Governor-General is available to sign it and in fact of course there is no guarantee that the Governor-General will sign it. In our arrangements there is no obligation—there is no concrete obligation—on the Governor-General to sign any legislation that this Parliament passes. In fact part of our constitution is the never-yet exercised right on the part of the head of State to veto legislation that this House might pass. It has not happened in the New Zealand context but it has indeed happened in other contexts. What might happen if the head of State decides to refuse to sign something?There is a very interesting example where this happened. It was in Belgium which I visited recently. What had happened was that the King had refused to sign a piece of legislation to give it the Royal assent and therefore the Belgian Parliament was forced to work out how it might get this particular piece of legislation through in the absence of the Royal assent. What were the grounds for the refusal of the Royal assent? The King had refused to sign it on the basis that the legislation being passed—I cannot remember what it was but it was in the nature of the sort that we would have a conscience vote on in the New Zealand Parliament—violated his own conscience. So even though the democratic Parliament had passed the legislation the head of State decided that he could exercise his conscience on it as well and he refused to sign it. That created some interesting constitutional issues there. So the Parliament effectively used a little-known mechanism that allowed it to remove the head of State for a defined period of time. In this case it was for only the period of time that it was necessary for the Prime Minister to sign the legislation because if there was no head of State then the Prime Minister could sign the legislation. Belgium removed its head of State for the duration of the time that it took for the Prime Minister to sign the legislation instead and that is how Parliament got what was the equivalent of the Royal assent for that particular legislative measure.But in New Zealand it is a little bit less clear what would happen to a piece of legislation if in fact the head of State or the Governor-General refused to sign it. It has not happened in New Zealand’s history. I think that is something that is quite interesting because it is very possible that the head of State in New Zealand could look at this bill and say: “Well this legislation which removes the right to a judicial process”—to a legal process—“from citizens of New Zealand has been passed by Parliament under urgency without according it the usual legislative process.”So we have got two issues here. We have got the issue of people’s rights being taken away and then we have got the issue of the correct parliamentary process where the public and people of New Zealand have the chance to have a say also being taken away. So those two things could together compound the concern of the head of State or the Governor-General. The Governor-General or the head of State—the Queen—may refuse to give this legislation the Royal assent. I think that is pretty unlikely because like I have said it has never happened before in New Zealand’s history that the Royal assent has been refused but it is a really important principle—the principle that New Zealanders have the chance to have a say on legislation that impacts on them.There is no good reason why this legislation could not go to a select committee even for a shortened period of time. In fact there has been precedent in Parliament where legislation that needs to have immediate effect can have a clause inserted into it that it would come into effect from the day that it was introduced. So even if it was introduced yesterday I think—which is actually today under the parliamentary urgency system—Hon Ruth Dyson: Not in the real world.CHRIS HIPKINS: No. Well that is right. In the real world it is Friday; in the parliamentary world it is Thursday. It is still Thursday here. So this legislation was introduced today in the parliamentary world which is yesterday for everybody else in the rest of the country. So if we were to send the legislation that was introduced on Thursday—let us just say “on Thursday” to avoid confusion—to a select committee it could have a clause in it that said that once it had been considered by the select committee had been brought back to the House had gone through this process that we are now doing—the Committee stage process—and had then passed its third reading and been given the Royal assent it would come into force at that point. It would come into force backdated effectively to the day that it was introduced. That has happened before in the House. Therefore the idea that this legislation removing New Zealanders’ rights needs to be pushed through this House under urgency is seriously diminished because there is another way the Government could achieve that.So therefore those two things—the removal of citizens’ rights and the bad process that the Government is using to do it—could be sufficient for the head of State to look at it and say: “Well I am not going to give this the Royal assent.” and could the head of State then send it back to the House? The head of State could send it back to the House and say: “Well I want some evidence that the House”—that this Parliament—“has gone through a sufficiently robust process in passing the legislation.” I think it would probably be a good thing if the head of State did that but then again it might create some other issues around the separation or the appropriate balance of powers.The issue that we have here is that there really is not a good justification for this process. One of the reasons the Labour Party is voting against this legislation is that there is not a good justification for pushing it through all stages under urgency in the way that it has been and for not supplying the New Zealand public—the people whose rights are being taken away by this legislation—with the chance to make a submission at a select committee and to talk about it.What tends to happen with bills like this one is there will inevitably be a mistake in it. We know that because after we have done this we are to debate changes to the Crown Minerals Amendment Act which the Government amended literally only weeks ago. That amendment Act has barely been in place for a number of weeks and we are going to be amending it because the Government stuffed it up. I think that bill did go through a select committee process and the Government still managed to stuff it up. This bill has not gone through a select committee process so we could be back here in no time debating—Grant Robertson: We might be back here later in the day.CHRIS HIPKINS: We may be back here later in the day given the way Parliament works fixing up a mistake in this legislation because it has not been given scrutiny. There is not one piece of legislation that has gone to a select committee that I have been a member of that has not in some way been improved by going through that process. That is one of the reasons why we have the select committee process so that we can adequately examine legislation and so that we can make sure the Government is doing its job. How can we do that adequately and how can we discharge our functions as a Parliament when we have things like the regulatory impact statement being mostly blacked out?A regulatory impact statement is designed specifically so that Parliament can ensure that the Government is exercising its responsibilities and doing its job appropriately and we are being denied that information. That is another reason why the head of State could look at this legislation and refuse to give it the Royal assent—due process has not been followed. Parliament is not following its own rules. By passing legislation withoutdue scrutiny—and I am going to ask Grant Robertson to pass me the piece of paper the regulatory impact statement sitting in front of him—Grant Robertson: A very good piece of paper.CHRIS HIPKINS: —a very good piece of paper. When we have a regulatory impact statement that looks like this which no one can actually read to make sure that we are doing our job appropriately it is good grounds for saying that this legislation should not stand.This legislation is being passed by the narrowest of margins. The last vote we had on clause 1 passed by the narrowest of margins in this Chamber against the will of the very significant minority and the process also shut New Zealanders out of this process. But that is what New Zealanders have come to expect from this Government. That is what they expect from the born-to-rule Tory arrogant Government. More and more it is willing to ride roughshod over the democratic process and over the rights of New Zealanders—[Interruption]—and the Government members laugh about it because they think it is funny. They think it is hilarious that New Zealanders will not get a chance to have a say on legislation that affects them and removes their rights. That is wrong.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to clause 2 of this legislation the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill. I am particularly keen to speak to this because I have an amendment in my name to this clause.As my colleague Chris Hipkins has mentioned this is a very narrow provision in the legislation. Clause 2 deals solely with the commencement. As it stands it says: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” Generally that would not be a problem. Generally Parliament would agree to that but generally a bill of this nature which does not require any urgency to be accorded to it would have gone through a proper parliamentary process. It would have had an introduction from the Minister it would have been referred to a select committee the select committee would have called for submissions from members of the public and the members of the select committee—in this case it would have been chaired by Dr Paul Hutchison—would have been able to look at the legislation with fresh eyes and without the tainting of the Minister who has shepherded it through to this stage and obviously has a close and vested interest in its passing.The select committee could have looked at it with fresh eyes and members of the public could have had their say about this legislation but none of that has taken place. Instead we are seeing in an absolute breach of the protocol of Budget urgency this bill being rammed through all stages one after another after another. So at midnight tonight or tomorrow morning—I do not know when—this bill will be passed without a single member of the public having had the opportunity to have their say.This is not a technical bill and this is not a bill that is irrelevant to people; this is a bill that cuts to the heart of families in New Zealand who have disabled members. This bill is about whether or not family members when they provide home care for disabled family members are able to get paid. But because of the commencement date and the process that has been undertaken by this arrogant and out-of-touch Minister none of those family members will have a say.My amendment to this clause reads as follows: “After the current wording”—which I just alluded to—“insert: (1) This Bill can only be submitted for Royal Assent if the Bill has been submitted to the Health Select Committee for public consultation and comment prior to the Third Reading.” With that amendment we could have this debate. We could hear the Minister’s justifications for this bill being so limited. We could hear the Minister’s justification for extinguishing the rights of excluded family members so the family members who are not covered who will continue supporting their familymembers but will not get paid can hear not only why they have had their payment denied by the Minister but also why their rights to the Human Rights Review Tribunal have been extinguished. They would be able to have a say at the select committee if my amendment was passed.I do not think that is a big ask actually. There is no reason at all for this move to be hidden under the cloud of the Budget. It is not a budgetary matter. It is not a matter for urgency. It is actually in my view not a matter for confidence and supply. I think that the only reason it is being put through under Budget urgency is so that the three votes of the Māori Party could be attached to it. If this bill was amended as per my amendment to clause 2 we would be able to have that debate with the full scrutiny of members of the public and the 3800 families who are not given financial support under this legislation who are being denied it and who are also having the right to a Human Rights Review Tribunal denied.The way that the current commencement provision reads no such scrutiny is allowed. The bill having gone through all of its stages in one go with hardly a pause for breath let alone any fresh consideration will come into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. I think that is a big mistake. It has been pointed out in many previous debates in this Parliament what happens when legislation is rushed. Almost without exception the Minister has to come back look embarrassed—even more embarrassed than currently—and ask for more time from Parliament to correct the mistakes.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I want to pick up where my colleague Ruth Dyson has just left off in speaking about her amendment to clause 2 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill. This amendment as has been noted would insert after the current wording: “This Bill can only be submitted for Royal Assent if the Bill has been submitted to the Health Select Committee for public consultation and comment prior to the Third Reading.” This is the first opportunity I have had to speak on this particular piece of legislation and I am pleased to be doing it in the debate on the commencement clause because it cuts to the heart of the issue I have with the process that the Government is going through at the moment.Normally a debate on a commencement clause is relatively non-controversial. The Government makes a decision about the timing by which it wants to put a bill through. It often for instance gives a little bit of time for processes to be worked through. Recently when the marriage equality legislation was passed the commencement date for that particular bill was pushed out 3 or 4 months to allow the Department of Internal Affairs to put in place the arrangements for changing forms and so on. That kind of thing is acceptable when we come to a commencement date clause. Sometimes there is a reason to make a commencement date immediate when there is an immediate issue in front of the House—perhaps a taxation issue or something like that that requires that.This commencement clause comes as part of a bill that has not had the kind of scrutiny that we would expect a piece of legislation to have. This bill as has been stated by my colleague Chris Hipkins was effectively introduced today for the purposes of this House. It is not a bill that was seen by other parties before it came to the House. Along with it as we would expect we have had provided to us a regulatory impact statement. As other colleagues have noted this document illustrates the quality of the regulatory impact statement material that we are working with. It is another great example of work from “Transparent Tony” well known for his ability to let the public in on things! I know there was a story about Tony Ryall when he was a Minister in the 1990s. He had a drawer full of Official Information Act releases. He waited until people complained about them before he actually released them otherwise they just stayed in the bottom drawer unable to be found. That is “Transparent Tony” for you.This regulatory impact statement indicates for those of us on this side of the House that this bill needs select committee consideration and that is the amendment that Ruth Dyson has put to the commencement clause. It is an amendment to push this bill to the Health Committee. So rather than a blacked-out document like this we would actually have the opportunity for members of that committee to talk with officials to question interested groups to bring in the carers and talk to them and to give them a chance to have their say here.That is all the more important and Ruth Dyson’s amendment is all the more important when we look at the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report from the Attorney-General. What the Attorney-General is saying in that report at the end is: “On balance I have concluded that the limitation to the right to a judicial review cannot be justified under section 5 of the Bill of Rights Act.” So what the Attorney-General is saying is that what this bill does—the limiting of people’s rights through the judicial process—cannot be justified under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Surely that alone would be a justification for this bill to go to the Health Committee as Ruth Dyson’s amendment to the commencement clause requests. When we get such a report from the Attorney-General—not a man loath to come to this House and throw New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vets around; he is a person who obviously has thought carefully about this and no doubt has had strong advice given to him from the Crown Law Office and others that this bill does breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and it does breach people’s right to a full judicial process—that should be the subject of extensive debate in a select committee. Ruth Dyson is offering that with her amendment to the commencement clause.Yes it is unusual for a commencement clause to be amended in this way but that is because the Government has undertaken a most unusual process by bringing up this particular bill in the way that it has. Normally we would have seen a process whereby there were public submissions. We would have been able to look at the nature of a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that says that this breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We have had a regulatory impact statement that has been largely withheld. All of those things would have been able to be considered by a select committee. So amending the commencement clause to now allow for a select committee process although unusual is appropriate in this case because of the actions that the Government has taken.SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair for the ability to take a call on the commencement clause of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I think it is right and proper that the Opposition’s spokesperson on women’s affairs gets to comment on this bill as it does have quite a disproportionate impact on women.There are two primary issues that I wish to canvass in debating the commencement clause of this bill. The first one is an issue that some other colleagues made reference to when they were debating the title of this bill but it is actually a commencement issue and it is the fact that one of the impacts of this bill has already commenced. It has already commenced. It commenced yesterday actually and it is the part of the bill that takes away people’s right to go to the Human Rights Commission to get their case heard in terms of their human rights and in terms of whether they are being regarded in terms of their ability to look after their loved ones with disabilities and to be paid for that. That right was taken away by this Government yesterday.Here we are today debating when this bill is going to come into effect. What the Government says is that even though it took away the right for people to actually lodge their case with the Human Rights Commission yesterday the payment part of this bill will not commence until some other date yet to be determined—the date on which it isgoing to be given Royal assent. We do not know when that date will be but it will not be yesterday—it will not be yesterday. So here we have a situation where the payment part of the bill the part that those seven families fought so long for will not commence until a date yet to be determined. Can I just take a minute to acknowledge those families and congratulate them on their tenacity. It is certainly something I want to celebrate. New Zealanders actually do not lie down easily around this type of thing and those seven families are certainly in that category.So for 20 years this issue has been under debate and the commencement is a date yet to be determined—it will be the date on which the Royal assent is given but we do not know when that might be. The point I am trying to make here is that it seems that the payment part of it comes in some time after many many families have had their right taken away. It is a right that even the Hon Christopher Finlayson one of the Government Ministers says should not happen under this bill. He has concerns about it because it is a fundamental right to go to the Human Rights Commission that is being taken away from families who are looking after loved ones with disabilities. That right was extinguished yesterday by this bill. That is the first point I want to make.The second point I wish to make is that I want to speak in favour of the Hon Ruth Dyson’s amendment. Ruth Dyson is a very wise and experienced member of Parliament and she has put forward an amendment that would ensure that there was a select committee process and that this bill could not commence until the public had had their right to be heard on it. And there is no stronger reason for that than what we have got sitting in front of us—the regulatory impact statement.I am holding up the regulatory impact statement and for those who may be watching this debate on the television I am not holding up a piece of abstract art. It looks like it might be but it is actually supposed to be one of the pages of a document that is supposed to inform this Parliament about the impact of the law that we are debating right now. It tells us nothing. That is another reason not just the main reason why the select committee process is so important in this regard—we have had all of this information withheld from this debate.I believe that the only way we will get to the bottom of what this information might be is to hear from the families concerned not only the families who will be the recipients of the payment brought in by this bill but also those families who have been deliberately left out by this Government. In this paper we do read that the Government had several options and it decided to go for a very narrow targeting with this bill. So we do need the bill to go to a select committee and that is why the Labour Party through the Hon Ruth Dyson is insisting that the commencement date is not held until we actually get to the bottom of this. The page that I just held up might tell us what the impact is on women. We do not know. There is supposed to be a gender-impact analysis done on all of this.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): This is the first opportunity I have had to speak on this bill and I am very pleased to be speaking on clause 2 the commencement clause of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I am going to be speaking in favour of an amendment put up by my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson about changing the commencement date. At the moment the clause says that the bill will come “into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” However the amendment would see that this could not happen until the bill has been to the Health Committee before its third reading. I have to say that I think that is so important. We cannot in all conscience see this bill commence before there has been a select committee process. I urge National members to reconsider their position on this.Caring is a critical issue. I do not think that anybody in this Committee would deny that. So many people of our population are involved in caring for family members. Iguess that everybody sitting here can probably think of such instances within their own families. Certainly in my case my mother who lives in the Minister of Health’s electorate is a carer and she cares for my stepfather. Without her he would not be living at home. I want to acknowledge those carers actually because I think that their needs and concerns are the voices that should be heard.That is why I think that the commencement date needs to be delayed until after a select committee process. Those carers both unpaid and paid carers need to be able to look at what has been proposed here and say what they think about this and say whether or not they think as I and my colleagues do that the response of the Government to this particular matter is too limited. It is limited in a number of ways. It is limited in the payment that is going to be offered to carers. It is limited in terms of who can be paid—in particular I note the exclusion of the right of a spouse or partner to be paid for caring for an adult. I think that it is really important that we have a genuine discussion about that because often carers are in fact a spouse or partner.The commencement clause needs to be changed as is outlined in the amendment so we can have a good look at those kinds of issues. For those listening to or watching this debate we are having forced through here at the moment under urgency through all stages a bill that will take away people’s rights to challenge discrimination—a bill that is such a fundamentally important one about the rights of carers who are playing such an important role. The process is just fundamentally flawed.This does require more consideration. I am sure the Minister if he actually was standing up and responding to any of this might point out that there has been a consultation process and therefore it is appropriate to have the commencement as it is in the bill. However I would point out to the Minister that that consultation was at a very general level. It did not actually consult about the specific provisions of this bill and the conclusions that the Government has come to which as I say limit the payment and limit who is eligible to receive that payment.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Order! It is the starting date—CAROL BEAUMONT: And so it is important that we support—and again I urge members opposite to support—our amendment to clause 2 the commencement which says “This Bill can only be submitted for Royal Assent if the Bill has been submitted to the Health Select Committee … prior to the Third Reading.” I just want to continue to justify that position. I think it is important when we put an amendment up around a clause like the commencement clause that we justify why we are doing that.In addition to the reasons I have already said—and others have mentioned this—we have a regulatory impact statement that is an absolute outrage. It is a disgrace. I am showing people who can see this debate a page that I am particularly interested in. It is on the issue of why spouses and partners should not be eligible to be paid for caring. We need I think a select committee process to have a conversation about that. In the regulatory impact statement it says: “Spouses of adult disabled people parents and other resident family members do not have the option of being paid family carers despite many having extensive”—and I would agree with that—“caring responsibilities.”The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!CAROL BEAUMONT: Well I just say Mr Chair that we need to know what the information is here. Why is the response to that blanked out? If we extended the commencement date till after a select committee process—CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): I moveThat the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes55New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We first have Ruth Dyson’s typescript amendment to clause 2. This amendment is out of order as the amendment would make commencement reliant on an indeterminate event. This is Speaker’s ruling 117/2 if members wish to see what it says there.A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 2 be agreed to.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes55New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Clause 2 agreed to.Clause 3 Principal ActThe CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We now move to debate on clause 3. This is debate on the principal Act—once again a very narrow debate.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for letting me take a call on clause 3 which sets out the principal Act that this bill before us amends and that is the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. The amendments that are set out in this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill are significant changes to the principal Act and that is why on this side of the Chamber we would have preferred that this bill did not go through this House under urgency. This bill should have gone through the select committee process and should have been referred to the Health Committee because it is a significant change to the principal Act.As was said in the debate on the previous clause the commencement of this bill may be when the bill receives the Royal assent but the effective change of the bill took place yesterday on 16 May. That is significant because of the number of people who would have wanted to make submissions on this bill and who have been robbed of that opportunity because this Government has decided to rush this piece of legislation through this House under urgency with no select committee scrutiny at all. This does amend that principal Act. There would have been a lot of interest because this law change stems from a Human Rights Review Tribunal case. It is a case that also went through the High Court and I understand the Court of Appeal. So there has been significant public interest and a significant amount of time in the justice sector taken up by the events that took place to lead to this change in the law.In terms of the changes that are being made in this bill to that principal Act we would have preferred that there be the opportunity for select committee scrutiny. It would have given members of the public the opportunity to come and make submissions as Chris Hipkins has said in the debate around clause 2. It would have given the Health Committee the potential opportunity to listen to those submissions and improve the bill and improve the amendments that we are making to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. We are rushing through this piece of legislationand we are opening ourselves up to the risk of making a huge mistake in the way that we are changing the principal Act. It would have been much better for the time of this House for us to go away and do a proper job of changing this principal Act for us to go out there and listen to the opinions of those people who are looking after family members with disabilities those in the organisations that are also looking after those with disabilities and those with legal backgrounds who know the ins and outs of this area and to give them a chance to talk and give their opinions and their concerns and make some amendments to try to improve the amendments that we are making to the principal Act.These are significant changes to the principal Act and the select committee process would give us the opportunity to look through some of the things and some of the impacts that would have been part of this legislation. It is in black and white here in the regulatory impact statement what it all means—it is in black and white here what this means. No one knows! Maybe that is a question I can put to the Minister in chair the Minister of Health: what is actually in here that you have blacked out?Hon Tau Henare: Well you could read between the lines.KRIS FAAFOI: It has kept it all secret—I can read between the lines. This is the kind of bedtime reading that Tau Henare likes. Nice and easy in black and white—nice and easy and in black in white.But going back to the principal Act though this is a serious issue that affects thousands of Kiwi families who have been robbed of that chance to make some submissions to the principal Act—Hon Tau Henare: What time are you going home tonight?KRIS FAAFOI: Whenever you are ready. The changes to this principal Act because of their significance should have gone through due process. That due process would have been as someone has said before for this bill to be introduced to the House. I am sure the Minister in the chair would then have referred it to the Health Committee chaired by the very able and well-respected Dr Paul Hutchison—and in that select committee process many many people would come in because of the significance of the changes to the principal Act and give their submissions and those amendments would be tabled in this Committee.There are some serious changes to the way in which people can launch an appeal if they feel they are hard done by by the fact that the Government says it can pay those family members who are caring for family with disabilities. There are significant changes that the Government has put in this bill around the way in which they are paid the level they are paid at and one very—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! It is the principal Act not the contents of what is in the amendments. It is the principal Act.KRIS FAAFOI: Sorry Mr Chairperson. But there is an amendment to the principal Act within this bill that allows those carers to be paid a much lower rate than those who are doing a similar job who are being paid as employees and who are not necessarily family members. That kind of change to the principal Act I think would be one of the issues that should have got very very focused scrutiny by a select committee. I am sure that my friends in the press gallery or in the media would have loved the opportunity to listen to some of the submissions at a select committee hearing given the significance of the amendments to the principal Act that we are talking about here.I do want to stress again that this process does not seem right. This is a significant piece of principal legislation that we are changing. I just want to show you this regulatory impact statement again. We need to have a better process when we are changing major legislation rather than just getting a complete page of blanked-out notes that show us—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!KRIS FAAFOI: —some of the changes to the principal Act. The principal Act is a major piece of legislation. We are looking for a select committee process. We are not sure whether we are going to get it but maybe that is what the Government should have done.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I just want to clarify something around your ruling about Ruth Dyson’s amendment to clause 2. You ruled it out of order—[Interruption]The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! There is a point of order on. I am trying to hear it.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: You ruled it out of order on the basis of Speaker’s ruling 117/2 which says “An amendment to a commencement date must provide certainty about when the Act is to come into force. An amendment that relies on an indeterminate event is not in order.” Thank you for directing me towardsParliamentary Practice in New Zealand by David McGee page 315.McGee points out that one of the times at which an indeterminate event is acceptable is when an Act may be brought into force by Order in Council “when there are considered to be good reasons for doing so.” An Order in Council is a somewhat indeterminate event. Parliament cannot be sure when an Order in Council would be brought into force. I submit to you that a Parliament would be more certain about when a select committee process would be completed the time frame for a select committee is clearly laid out in the Standing Orders and the reasons for taking the bill to a select committee were clearly presented by members of the Opposition. So the case was made and the time frame is very clear. I submit to you that taking a bill to select committee is not an indeterminate event at all. In fact it is a very clearly time-bound event that is laid out in the Standing Orders and I would seek some clarification on your ruling.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Thank you to the member for those points. The commencement date is the date that needs to be not an indeterminate date. What the amendment did was to have something where there was no certainty about when that date may be and that is why I quoted Speaker’s ruling 117/2: “An amendment to a commencement date must provide certainty”. It must provide certainty—[Interruption] Order! We are ruling on a matter here. In Standing Order 253/1 “A bill must include a distinct clause stating when the bill comes into force.”McGee which I mentioned and you mentioned as well states: “The bill must set out precisely when it is proposed to come into force.” So on that basis I have ruled and we have already voted on it. So that ends the matter.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Speaking to that briefly Mr Chairperson—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No I have ruled so there is nothing to add. So now is anyone seeking the call? Are you seeking the call Hon Ruth Dyson?Hon Ruth Dyson: Yes that is what I said.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): OK we are on clause 3.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am definitely seeking a call on clause 3 which deals just with the fact that the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) which we are moving through under urgency at the moment amends the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 which is thereafter referred to as the “principal Act”. In speaking to this clause I want to draw attention to two anomalies two irregularities two inconsistencies that had this bill been a regulation would have been drawn to the attention of the Regulations Review Committee and would have led to a disallowance motion. Unfortunately it is not a regulation; it is an amendment to the legislation but having an amendment that iscompletely at odds by its very nature with the principal Act is really a very strange thing for Parliament to be doing.The first reason that I say that is outlined in the preliminary provisions of the principal Act in the purpose statement and it is in Part 1—in particular in section 3. That particular part of the principal Act the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 says this: “The purpose of this Act is for … the promotion of the inclusion and participation in society and independence of people with disabilities:”. This very amendment works in exactly the opposite direction. It excludes not only people with disabilities but their families and any other members of the public from discussion about the significant changes that are being introduced here.Further on in the principal Act it goes on to say in the purpose statement section 3 that the purpose is “the best care or support for those in need of services:”. Again this amendment that we are debating works in exactly the opposite direction of the principal Act. As I said if this was a regulation we would be taking it to the Regulations Review Committee and it would be saying that we should have a disallowance motion attached to this because you cannot have a regulation that is contrary to the primary legislation. Here we have an amendment bill that is absolutely at odds with the primary legislation as outlined in section 3.Further on in the principal Act the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 it outlines the responsibility of the Minister of Health. That is outlined in Part 2. It talks about the need for determining a health strategy. Slightly off the topic but just when I was researching this it does refer to annual reporting against the Disability Strategy which I note has stopped. So that is another breach of the principal Act not dealt with by this amendment. Returning rapidly to section 3 it also talks about relevant consultation which is described not as a “should be done” not as a “nice to have if you can do it” but outlined in Part 2 of the principal Act as the responsibility of the Minister. The Minister of Health the Minister responsible for this amendment legislation has in the primary Act the responsibility to consult. Again we are seeing exactly the opposite of this.This bill is not a Budget measure. This bill does not require any urgency. This bill does not actually come into effect for some time. The only part of this bill that is “required”—to abuse that term even more than the Minister has—is the extinguishing of the rights of family members to take a case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal. That is an abuse of the parliamentary process as well as being completely at odds with the primary legislation. In Part 2 of the Act the responsibility of the Minister clearly outlines that in any change to the Health Strategy or health policies or the Disability Strategy there is a need for consultation. That is in the primary legislation that this bill amends and there is nothing in this amendment to the primary legislation that allows let alone entitles consultation on these very matters.So both the purpose statement of the primary legislation and the responsibilities of the Minister as outlined in Part 2 are actually being breached by the purpose and the process of this amendment. This bill is at odds with the primary legislation.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to take a call on clause 3 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) which simply says that this Act amends the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 the principal Act. I wish it were that simple. I am deeply concerned having listened to my colleague Ruth Dyson talking about those items in this bill that directly contradict the principal Act that there were other alternatives given to the Minister of Health rather than simply amending the principal Act but we have not heard any explanation of why this option has been chosen.One could argue perfectly well that this could have been a stand-alone piece of legislation that it could have been something that required provisions unique to itself and of its own and yet the Minister has chosen to tack it on as an amendment to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. But we have not heard any rationale for that. In fact quite persuasively in the last 5 minutes we have heard the opposite. This brings us back—although I am talking only about clause 3 Mr Chair this point is still pertinent—to the fact that this bill is not going to a select committee. It could have been a stand-alone piece of legislation with all the names to it that my colleagues offered when we were discussing clause 1 of this piece of legislation.When we were talking about the title a number of suggestions were made such as the “Pull The Wool Over The Eyes Of People With Disabilities and Those Who Care For Them Bill” and that could have been a possibility. But seriously why was this seen as an amendment to the Public Health and Disability Act when it in fact contravenes it? As the chair of the Regulations Review Committee I say that if this had been passed as a regulation the committee would have immediately sent it back to the ministry and the Minister saying: “This is a ‘Henry VIII’ provision. It allows the principal Act to be amended by stealth and it is not legitimate for those reasons.” But we have it here in the bill as an amendment to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act. It could have had proper scrutiny if it were a separate piece of legislation with separate stand-alone provisions a proper regulatory impact statement that was more white than black and a proper debate at a select committee. In the end the Minister of Health has chosen not to do any of this properly but simply to add this as an amendment as clause 3 says to the principal Act.Again I do not wish to sound like a broken record but the Minister compels me to do so. This is not good enough—this is not good enough. This is no way to introduce legislation of this sort which has not nearly the major impact it could have had. If there had been a proper debate about it this bill could affect 5400 people with disabilities and their families instead of just over 1000 as it is going to. It could have justified a stand-alone provision but the Minister has chosen simply to amend the principal Act and slide it in in that way. Not only does it offend against the purpose of the principal Act—and as I have said if it were a regulation it would be sent back to the Minister—but it also offends as we see from the Attorney-General’s report against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Nothing about this bill has been done properly.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): I want to rise to make a few comments about how this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) fits in with the principal Act as outlined in clause 3: “This Act amends the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 (the principal Act).” My colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson made some points in relation to the purpose statement in that Act. Just to note the principal Act is actually a very significant one. It is the one that covers all of the provisions around the responsibility of the Minister of Health district health boards and other publicly owned health and disability organisations so it is a very large and important Act. My colleague Ruth Dyson referred us to subsection (1)(a)(ii) of the purpose section section 3 of that Act about “the promotion of the inclusion and participation in society and independence of people with disabilities:”. Her point was that this bill breaches those provisions. Again this would be another reason for ensuring that we have far greater scrutiny on this bill than the way it is currently being pushed through under urgency without adequate process and indeed without even suitable information for us through the regulatory impact statement.I want to talk about a slightly different provision that is also in the purpose statement of the principal Act which is section 3 as I said. I want to look at section 3(1)(a)(iii) which talks about “the best care or support for those in need of services:”. When I wasspeaking on this bill before I did mention that one of the exclusions in the bill is around who can provide care and be paid for it. It specifically precludes spouses or partners from providing that care. When you look at the principal Act the purpose section which talks about the “best care or support for those in need of services:” I have to say that I would imagine that in many many cases the best care or support for those in need of services could be provided by their spouse or partner yet this bill specifically precludes that. I am sure as I said earlier that many of us know how people are being cared for in their home by their spouse or partner and I want to acknowledge those people including my mother who do such an amazing job of caring for their spouse or partner often in very difficult circumstances. But my point is that this bill by amending the principal Act does not actually do what the purpose of the Act says. Maybe we would have a slightly different view on that if we knew what these blanked-out bits in the regulatory impact statement say.One of the provisions of the regulatory impact statement No. 43 is the one that talks about whether spouses of adult disabled people should be paid. My argument is that it could well be that spouses or partners are the best people to provide care or support for those in need of services as outlined in the principal Act. It is a fundamental part of the principal Act that that is one of the purposes of that Act. But in fact where the regulatory impact statement on this bill which amends the principal Act starts to talk about spouses of adult disabled people it says: “The views expressed through the consultation process indicate that if Government excludes these groups from payment it is highly likely that it will be faced with claims of unjustified discrimination under the [New Zealand Bill of Rights Act].” I want to know what is said after that. But when you look at the regulatory impact statement people in the House and watching on television will see that there are just a whole lot of blanked-out parts.Why is it that we are being told that spouses or partners should be excluded? How can we be confident that they are not the best people to care for and support those in need of services as outlined in the purpose statement of the principal Act? I would like it if the Minister would actually answer some questions on this bill because to date he has refused to do so. Yet we are expected to debate this bill and to have it pass through in urgency with a regulatory impact statement that is full of blanked-out pieces. It is an absolute outrage and it is made even worse by the fact that the Minister will refuse to answer the questions. So I ask the Minister specifically whether the bill which he is responsible for and which amends the principal Act—CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National): I moveThat the question be now put.SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) and the principal Act that it amends. I actually want to take a slightly different tack to what my colleagues have taken. I get that the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act does have a lot to do with this bill because it is about the care of people and particularly the care of people in the disability sector and it might seem that that is very fitting. But on the other hand quite a number of the clauses that we are about to—well in our case—vote against but that the Government is attempting to pass through under urgency in this Committee actually have an impact on the Human Rights Act 1993. I wondered why there was not an attempt to either amend that as a principal Act or make any subsequent amendments to that Act. I really do want to ask the Minister in the chair the Minister of Health who has returned for the debate to answer that question because I am really quite alarmed at the fact that we are actually extinguishing the rights of a significant number of New Zealanders who you could argue have quite significant human rights issues perhaps. We are extinguishing their rights to go the Human Rights Commission as of yesterday. That is quite a major part of what this amendment Act actually does or this bill—it isstill a bill at this stage—attempts to do. Yet we have nothing here that amends the Human Rights Act 1993 as the principal Act and nothing that subsequently amends that.Why I raise that is because the Human Rights Act is the Act that actually says what is unlawful discrimination and who is eligible to go forward to have their cases heard. Here we are debating extinguishing those rights with no reference that I can see to amending the Human Rights Act in this piece of legislation. Perhaps I am wrong about that and the Minister may want to point me in the right direction. But in Part 2 of the Human Rights Act 1993 it actually defines what is unlawful discrimination and there is also a part of that Act that prohibits what is unlawful discrimination. Correct me if I am wrong Minister but I believe we are doing exactly that in this Act. We are prohibiting a group of people from actually taking a case to find out whether they have been unlawfully discriminated against. And yet there is no reference—no reference—to the Human Rights Act 1993. Here we are amending the principal Act as being the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. Yes maybe it fits but this is a substantial amendment that we are making—I would say an outrageous amendment actually an outrageous amendment that actually extinguishes people’s rights under the Human Rights Act. Why are we not amending that as the principal piece of the legislation? Why are we not even making any consequential amendments to that piece of legislation in this debate?That is the very thing that I think we would discover the answer to perhaps if we were allowed to have the normal democratic process of a select committee process. Or maybe the answer to my query is actually buried on this page. Perhaps it is but we will never know because it is completely blanked out and we do not know. Maybe the explanation is all here. Maybe this explains why the Human Rights Act is left unamended by what we are debating today despite the fact that that Government is extinguishing the rights of people to access what the Human Rights Act 1993 says they have absolutely the right to do. I am therefore encouraged and persuaded by colleague Maryan Street’s suggestion that perhaps the best thing to do would have been to have a stand-alone Act in its own right not to amend another Act that partially speaks to this issue but partially does not but perhaps to have a stand-alone piece of legislation. The piece of legislation that really stands out in my mind that would have been really great to use in this instance was actually a piece of American legislation which was around an equal pay Act. That was a stand-alone piece of legislation that was one of the first pieces of legislation that Barack Obama signed when he took over the presidency. He named that Act after the woman who took the equal pay case. He called it the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Would that not have been a magnificent thing to do in this instance?Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): Namaste. I was enjoying the line of reasoning my colleague Sue Moroney who has just sat down was pursuing. I want to speak to clause 3 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) and about the principal Act. I want to hear from the Minister of Health and hear the Minister’s response to what I am going to raise and what my colleague has just raised as well. Here we have a bill that is really setting down in stone a principle—I will have a lot more to say about this principle when we are debating clause 4—and that is the prime responsibility of the family for caring for each other. That is the principle that most of this amendment bill and its provisions are based on. I want to know from the Minister or from anybody else opposite what considerations were given to amend other Acts where this principle is either not stated or implied and there are many. It would be useful to hear that because that is the anchoring principle in this bill. I have worked with Acts that make this assumption but have not seen this principle written down in this form.Of course if the bill had gone through a proper select committee process we would have asked the officials to tell us what the other Acts were how this principle was operating and whether there was any need to amend those Acts as well. So it is an important and serious question that I am asking. Have those Acts been examined? Has the principle been debated by officials by the Minister and by others? And what are its implications further down the track? For example let us take the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act because here is an Act that is really based on this principle as to who has responsibility. Many of the provisions of that particular Act are about what to do when that principle is not delivered on if you like by family members.The Minister can probably tell me what the implications of this principle will be for those particular Acts and indeed for the whole Whānau Ora programme. Is there anything in that programme that also needs to be amended if you like where there is a principal Act that actually states that particular principle as strongly as this bill takes it forward? As I said I raise those questions quite seriously because I have not seen this principle written in this particular form and there will be others. The Care of Children Act is another one where this principle is embedded assumed etc. I ask whether or not the Minister would want to come back to have a look at those Acts and the family support Act as well. So maybe the Minister can take a call.It is very difficult to debate this bill in this environment when the whole Government side including the Minister sits there like stunned mullets not responding at all. This is if you like the select committee process and yet I think what Government members are doing is taking this side of the Committee to be idiots—and you are probably entitled to do that—Hon Simon Bridges: Well you haven’t raised a good point yet.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: But Mr Bridges you look like an idiot too when you sit there and do not actually answer the questions—a very senior member. If the member wants to I invite him to please debate these particular questions because they are important questions. Maybe that member has not heard of this principle. Maybe when he was arguing in the courts he did not use it but here we are and the principle is important.What I am saying is that I would like to hear members opposite including the Minister of Health tell us where else this principle applies and whether or not consideration has been given to amending those Acts as well. That at least is what the select committee process would have done and it would have done it very well. It is a travesty that that process has not been prevailed upon. If that is what the Government is going to do then it is the responsibility of Government members to answer those questions now and not sit there like stunned mullets and make inane interjections. The only time during the Committee stage of this bill when we have had any sense that they are even awake is when they make inane comments as one was made just then. Thank you.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): I moveThat the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I have not heard from the Greens. I am going to—[Interruption] No I am going to hear Catherine Delahunty.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Thank you Mr Chair; I appreciate that. I would just like to hold up the picture of what it all means. As Kris Faafoi my colleague said this is what it all means. If you want to understand clause 3 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) this is it. It is almost matching the suit of the Minister of Health. It is a great little diagram of what we are really trying to achieve here and what it all means.I think it is really important to talk about the principal Act in relation to the amendment. That is what this clause is about. There is a fundamental issue here around what other Acts have or have not been considered in amending the principal Act. Others have referred to the Human Rights Act. I would also refer us back to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act which has been breached in this case; Te Tiriti o Waitangi given that Whānau Ora is about the principle of families being able to work together and this bill attacks that when it limits who can actually receive this funding; and the Employment Relations Act which maybe should have been amended to include a recognition of what is about to be done to people by giving them less than the minimum wage.These are fundamental principles but the real issue I just wanted to touch on is the problem that is built into the principal Act and that we are entrenching in this clause 3 and this amendment bill. That is the idea that disability is a health issue. That is a fundamental problem that both of these pieces of legislation are entrenching. My partner has a lifelong disability. He is not sick. He does not have a health issue. Many many people affected by the carers’ issues are not sick. Making them sick and categorising them in the health budget means that they are treated as if they are sick and they might get better instead of treating them as citizens with permanent conditions that are manageable providing they have their human rights. It is not the same as being sick. It is very discriminatory what is happening in the clause and what is happening in the principle. For many people such as my partner the lifelong categorisation of being invalid—invalid or “in-valid”—has been problematic.What we need to do is recognise that an independent bill should have been created to recognise the rights of family members to choose carers because this is an issue of rights. In amending the principal Act what we have done is entrench the idea that it is about sick people being looked after. This is in many ways a disempowering model both for the carer and for the person who has chosen the family member to care for them because they are not sick; they are actually people who want full participation in every aspect of society. They perhaps have a lifelong condition that means they have particular challenges but they are not ill. They are not necessarily ill and going to recover. So you get these limitations of caring packages and you get these misunderstandings about the nature of rights entrenched in this clause and entrenched in this relationship with the principal Act. What that does is undermine both the self-determination of the person living in a disabling society and the carer who is trying to support that person in their self-determination.I know that is very complex for people who have avoided this issue and who just lump it all together into “health and disability” a tidy little package: “People with something wrong with them. What can we do to fix them?”—a disempowering model not a 21st century model and not appropriate.If I had spoken on the commencement I would have talked about another name for the bill which would have been “Too Little Too Late Too Bad Shut Up” because that is actually the real name of this bill. [Interruption] Shall I say that again: “Too Little Too Late Too Bad Shut Up”. That is what this clause does when it does not recognise its impact on the Human Rights Act. It fixes itself in a bill in a law that has not been set up with the right order in terms of health and disability which is what I am talking about. The principal Act is amended and what it does is entrench a definition of people’s rights as carers and as people needing care that is problematic.I would like to think about the dark room where all of these decisions got made a dark room that has been dark since 2000-and-something where they have been talking about amending the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act and they have come up with this clause. How did they do that? They did not do that by consulting with the people most affected because otherwise we would not be here today with this mess inclause 3. We would actually be in a clear situation where we had a decent piece of legislation before us that was a facilitator of the rights-based approach that is necessary to empower people.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I moveThat the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 3 be agreed to.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Clause 3 agreed to.Clause 4 New Part 4A insertedHon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): It was clear in the court decisions with regard to theAtkinson case that the court believed that there had been a failure in the process that the Crown since the court case was lodged in 2001 had undertaken in the development of the family care policies of the various institutions of the Crown that operated such policies namely the Ministry of Health and the district health boards. So as a result of the court decision and the Government’s decision not to appeal the Court of Appeal decision it was very important that we undertook a publicly defensible process in respect of the development of the legislation. The core procedures of that are here in the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2).That involved the Government setting up a technical advisory group in order to provide sector input into the development of the consultation process and the options for consultation. A very wide public consultation process was run in 2012 and feedback was incorporated into this policy. There were 12 regional workshops two hui and one Pacific focus group with a total of 273 people attending these consultation meetings. There was also a meeting with the plaintiffs and with the Consumer Consortium. In addition to the face-to-face meetings 619 written submissions were received and the Ministry of Health worked closely with the other agencies in support of developing this policy.Members have asked why the policy is aimed specifically at disabled people in high and very high needs situations. Well the Government has to meet the costs of paying family carers of disabled people receiving health-funded support from within the existing health and disability funding. Targeting the policy to people in very high and high needs situations enables that funding to be targeted at those with greatest need. This is consistent with the views of the carer and disability communities expressed through the consultation with 68 percent of all submitters and 71 percent of family carers favouring the payment of family carers and disabled people with high or complex needs if targeting is to be used. Further the system that we propose for the payment ofdisabled people and their families is also a result of combining the various elements supported by people during the consultation.Clause 4 is the operative clause. What it essentially does is indicate that the Ministry of Health and district health boards can have and always have had family care policies. Those family care policies are able to discriminate on the basis of a number of areas in order to facilitate the policy. Government social policy has always discriminated. Indeed you get the unemployment benefit or the job seeker allowance only if you are unemployed or a job seeker. You get superannuation only if you are of the age of entitlement. You get the child care allowance only if you are of a certain age or are in a certain position. So discrimination has always been innate.What is clear from the court case is that in order for the Government to be able to operate a fair and reasonable family care policy we do need to have the ability to discriminate and we believe that that is a fair basis on which this legislation is being provided. Coupled with that is $92 million over the next 4 years. That is a very significant and fair investment that we are making in the health and disability sector. I pick up on the point that Mrs Delahunty was making; it is a health and disability sector and we think this will be a very significant investment.This is the third time that any country in the world has agreed to pay family carers’ wages for caring for other family members. No countries in the world do what this Parliament is about to do other than the Netherlands and Sweden. So this is a very significant move. Previous Governments have ruled this out—previous Governments have ruled this out—as recently as April 2008.Clause 4 of the bill is the operative clause. It will enable the district health boards and the ministry to establish family care policies as indeed they always have and to have the ability to put in place what the Government wants to happen in order to support the families of those caring for some of our most vulnerable in the community with the very substantial investment of $92 million over the next 4 years.I know that one member in this House described $17 million as minuscule. I have to say that in the tight financial times our country has had since the global financial crisis the investment of $92 million is actually a pretty fair response and is part of the Government’s solution to theAtkinsoncourt case.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): Clause 4 is the major part of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). It is the part where we ought to have a lot of information where we ought to be very clear in this Chamber as to what we are voting on and what the impact is going to be on the many disabled people whom this bill will affect. I was hoping that maybe the Minister of Health would have started to answer some of the questions that have been raised by this side of the Chamber.We have had the usual speeches from the Government such as “I move that the question be now put.” We have had very little contribution other than that. We have had one contribution from the Minister for the whole day. We started this debate at 9 o’clock this morning or thereabouts. The Minister made the contribution that he has to make with the first and second readings reading out his speech. He has sat mute in that chair until a few moments ago and did not answer a single question raised by this side of the Chamber. This is our only opportunity to be able to find out how the bill will work. If the Minister cannot answer it—and obviously he is not in the chair any more so he is not there to answer it—we are going to have to rely on the Minister in the chair Mr Woodhouse to answer the questions. Or maybe Dr Hutchison knows the answers to the questions but I suspect that he is being kept in the dark as well.Otherwise tell me this: what are the operational details of this policy? Who does it affect? How do we define a person of “high need” and “very high need”? These are veryimportant questions. Do you know why we cannot get the answers? Because the Minister informed the media yesterday—not Parliament—that they have not worked out the operational details of this bill and that the operational details of this policy are still being finalised. Information on how and when people can be assessed for eligibility will be available when do you think? Will it be this afternoon? Could it be on Monday? Could it be in the next month? No it is in September this year. That is when the operational details of this very important policy which has been rammed through Parliament with no scrutiny from the public will be available.So do we know who will be defined as having high and very high needs? Can the Minister please tell us today who these people are. Are they people with motor neurone disease? Are they people with muscular dystrophy? Are they people with severe physical and neurological disabilities? Are they people who have got a mental illness? Are they people who have got needs for palliative care who are terminally ill? Who does this bill cover? Why do we not have that information? The operational details are absolutely crucial to knowing what we are passing. The sheep opposite are all going to vote yes and not one of them can tell us the operational details of this policy. That is shameful—absolutely shameful. Why would we be rushing through a piece of legislation when the work has not been done?I can tell you how we know the work was not done. The regulatory impact statement arrived on the table of this House today. Most of the important stuff was blanked out which is very much a sign of a rushed piece of policy work and a rushed piece of legislation. The Minister did not want this part of the bill going out to the public because it is this part of the bill that people would have questioned. They would have asked: “How is it going to work? Which of our family members are affected by this?”. There would have been hard questions for the Minister to answer and he did not want to face them. I think it is disgraceful that we do not have the operational details of this policy.The Minister himself in his very short contribution on the bill after the many hours we have been debating it mentioned the technical advisory group. Well the technical advisory group was a very narrow group indeed. In fact we heard from the people who do the caring—people from Carers New Zealand. I raised earlier on I think in my second reading speech the question of whether any of the members opposite met with Carers New Zealand. Did they know Carers New Zealand? Had they met with Carers New Zealand? Did they know anything about the organisation which works with thousands of carers across New Zealand and has got a very good handle on what is going on?Well you would have thought that it would have quite a major impact on the technical advisory group. In fact it had very little—very little—impact at all because the Government did not have any engagement with the carers in the policy design or the systems that were to be used. It got one person on the technical advisory group and do you know what her role was? Her role was to respond to a series of questions from the Ministry of Health. That was her role. How could that be considered as input into policy development to ring her up and say “What do you think about this?” Where is the real input that you would expect from carers in New Zealand? That is the sort of feedback that we have been getting since we started to debate this bill. The truth comes out eventually. Even when a Minister wants to ram through a piece of legislation and wants to restrict debate to keep it tight so that people cannot really see what is going on—feed them manure—eventually it comes out.Members of this House have been receiving the same emails that I have been receiving so we have moved a number of typescript amendments to this particular part of the bill clause 4. I think some of them really go to the heart of what people havebeen saying. One in particular is—and my very good colleague Ruth Dyson has moved these amendments—that we amend clause 4 with a new section 70D(3)(c) and insert: “Any lower rates set may not be lower than the minimum adult rate of wages payable to workers set under section 4 the Minimum Wage Act 1983.”I challenge any member there to stand up and tell this Committee the people of New Zealand and those who care for the most disabled people in our society that they should not be paid a rate similar to other carers in New Zealand. Stand up and say that their worth their work is not valued enough to pay them a similar rate to other carers. The ministry in its report said that they ought to be paid around $16 an hour. This Government has said they will be paid $13.75. These people are not working just a 40-hour week—although that is what they are going to be paid for—they are working 7 days a week 24 hours a day except for the brief times that they get some respite care.I say to the members opposite: do not vote to pay them only the minimum wage; vote to have them have a fair wage—a fair wage—for looking after their family members. I will be absolutely astounded if the members can go out of this House go back to their constituencies and say that the carers of the most disabled people in New Zealand are worth the minimum wage only—“Don’t worry that you do a 24-hour-a-day 7-day-a-week job; you are worth only that and you’re damn lucky to get it because we didn’t really want to give it to you anyway.”If you read the Minister’s own press statement you get the flavour of where he comes from. He says that most New Zealanders expect families to look after their children. Well most New Zealanders do but there are Mrs Tolley some children who are adults who do need more looking after because they have very high needs and they are disabled. Why would we treat them in this way? I would have to ask Mrs Tolley—who has been smirking and laughing over there because it is not very important to her; she is busy chasing police who are eating hamburgers at a cut price rather than the real issues—why we would treat these people differently.I say to the members opposite that there are a number of amendments. They should get out of their seats get a copy of them have a read and maybe show some of their own internal fortitude and vote for what is right not what they have written down on their research notes and not what they have been told to say and vote for. This I believe has been a shameful process and the Minister is not even in the chair now.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am pleased to be taking a call on Part 4 which is the substantive part of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I want to just start by looking at new section 70A(1) the new section that is being inserted after section 70 of the primary legislation. But before I do that can I just say that I am really puzzled as to why on earth the Minister of Health has signed off on a proposal to insert family care policies as an amendment to this particular part of the primary legislation. If you look at the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act which we certainly were doing in more detail in the last debate section 70 is just further provisions. This has been an add-on—you know just throw it in where we think we have got a bit of a space between two other provisions. I think it is a further undermining of the status of family caregivers that is being reflected in this amendment.In the purpose of this part where new Part 4A is being inserted it does not say that the purpose of this Act is to ensure recognition for family caregivers who took a case to court and who won not only at the Human Rights Review Tribunal but also at the High Court and then the Court of Appeal. It does not say anything about how they and other unpaid family caregivers can get proper recognition of the work that they do instead of somebody else a stranger being paid to do it—no it does not say that at all. I would have thought that would be the primary purpose of the legislation: to give a bit of justice to the people who are family caregivers who currently are not getting paid but are doingthe work. But oh no this is different. What it says is: “The purpose of this Part is to keep the funding of support services provided by persons to their family members within sustainable limits in order to give effect to the restraint imposed by section 3(2) and to affirm the principle that in the context of funding of support services families generally have primary responsibility for the well-being of their family members.” That is a bit of a “Listen High Court and Court of Appeal I am the ‘Minister of Everything’ and I can do what I like!”.Leaving aside the fact that these families took that case through the Human Rights Review Tribunal to the High Court and won at the Court of Appeal the Minister is saying “I don’t care.” The principle in the context of the funding of the support services is that families generally have primary responsibility for the well-being of their family members. Actually the High Court and the Court of Appeal said that the family members should get paid for that part of their work. This does not reflect those findings at all and I think it is a slap in the face to the judges actually and more important to the families including the disabled people themselves.As was alluded to by my colleague the Hon Annette King I have moved a number of amendments to this section. I think there are 10 on the Table at the moment to this part and I will be speaking to them at various stages of the debate but I do not want to do that in the context of this presentation because what I am more concerned about at the moment is the actual wording of the original legislation itself. I do not think that it is an indication at all of the importance of this issue of the sensitivity of the issue let alone of the fact that this policy issue has been heard by courts in this land. It does not recognise that at all. It excludes people under this family care policy. It excludes people for no good reason at all. It does not say that this is an incremental policy: we are doing it as funds allow and we would like to look at the highest needs area first. There is no analysis at all and I say to the Minister that he should be ashamed of himself.There is no analysis at all of the link between the level of impairment of the individual person and the need of the family for additional support. That could be quite at odds. They could be quite unrelated to each other actually. We are assuming that the need of the disabled person is reflected in the financial recognition that is deserved in the Minister’s terminology by the family. I do not see that automatic co-relationship at all; in fact it could be quite the opposite. We could have some very very very high-income families who have very high-need family members for whom this payment would make not a jot of difference. We could have very very very low-income families who have quite low-level needs for whom this payment would make all the difference in terms of their ability to have a bit more security and opportunity in their lives. We could have very low-income families for whom this miserly payment could make a huge amount of difference between their ability to do things in their lives and their current inability to do that but their family member might have quite low needs but still require quite a lot of support. So the link between the impairment of the disabled person and the ability of the family member to need or do better with this payment is not secured at all.I tried earlier to have some consultation injected into this policy because for me it is quite an important principle that if you are making legislative change that has an impact on somebody then that somebody should be involved in the preparation of that policy. The Minister tried to talk about how much consultation was done but it is actually a lot of spin. When you talk to the family members involved they say they had no idea at all not just that this policy would exclude large numbers of families who care for and support the disabled members of their own family but that such a massive exclusion would take place let alone the fact that those families who are excluded from being paid for caring for their family member are also having extinguished their right to take a caseof discrimination imposed by the Government to the Human Rights Review Tribunal so that they could have a fair hearing. That right is being extinguished by this legislation.Why would the Minister do that? Why would the Minister pretend in his spin that this is looking at the families most in need to start with and that of course this policy will be rolled out while at the same time extinguishing those families’ rights to take this to the Human Rights Review Tribunal?I am not surprised that the Attorney-General found that that extinguishment of rights was not appropriate. I am surprised that the Attorney-General has not taken a call so far in this debate. Generally when you have a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act provisions you would see the Attorney-General in the House making some explanation for it or at least drawing it to the attention of the House in person rather than just getting a very late report that was tabled without any explanation at all. Of course we all went to the Table and had a look at it because it was fairly clear that these provisions do breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but we have had no explanation of it at all. We have heard nothing from the Minister to justify the fact that this legislation not only excludes those family members from getting payment for the work that they do despite the case in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal saying that they should get paid for it but also extinguishes their right to take further legal action.As I indicated earlier I have got a number of amendments. Some of them involve consultation which I think is important. Some of them involve the rates of pay because it is not at all clear to anyone in the Chamber from what the Minister has said because it was such a pathetically lightweight contribution why the Minister thinks that the work that a family member does is worth less financially than the work that a stranger or a person from down the road does.The Minister has consistently refused to answer the questions and I heard one of my colleagues say that you know the Minister might not know the answer. He might not know what the operational solutions are going to be to this legislation. What I think every single member of this Parliament will want to know before we leave for home on Sunday morning is when we go down to our electorate offices on Monday what we are going to say to family members who ask: “Will I be getting paid for caring for my son”—or daughter or parent or spouse—“in October? Will I be paid for that?” and we have no idea.This legislation being rammed through all its stages without any input from the public at all has got as many unanswered questions as it has answered questions and that is just not good enough. Families who have been waiting as the Minister said for two decades for an answer are now hearing in the media that this legislation is going to be passed. What is their expectation Mr Chair? Well I will tell you the answer to that because I do not think Mr Chair that you are going to take a call and answer my question. I think that is about as likely actually as the Minister in the chair the Minister of Immigration taking a call and answering my question—no chance at all you know because the Minister is not up to it frankly. It is tragic to have—Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): Namaste Mr Chairperson. This clause 4 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) is really where most of the substantive provisions are and there is lots of space for argument and—Sue Moroney: Debate.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: —debate and indeed for change. Of course I am always reminding myself that this in effect is the select committee process. So again we expect members opposite to get up and explain—to get up and explain—why they take this particular view and the Minister in the chair to take calls and answer questions. So far we have had nothing—absolutely nothing—which is a travesty.We know that the Government has brought this bill before the House because of the Human Rights Tribunal decision. That is the only driving force. There is no principled position that the Government has taken—certainly none that it has explained—as to why this is important and why this Parliament should consider this bill with these provisions at this time in this way. It is clearly borne out of necessity sandwiched in the middle of a post-Budget parliamentary session in urgency and that says something about the principles that members opposite and this Government take towards how they treat this particular area and indeed this House.The fact is as the provisions of new Part 4A in clause 4 show that it is a complex area and the problems are complex. But this House is quite smart. We have lovely select committee processes. We have very good advisers we have very good officials and Parliament has very good legal advisers as well and they are able to help us work through what it is. This problem has been over 20 years in the making members opposite have been reminding us. They might say that Labour did nothing in 9 years but for 11 of those 20 years they have been in power and they have done nothing as well. I am not crowing about that but the fact is that that demonstrates only the complexity of the problem. The real issue is that the time has come to solve this problem and this Government’s process to do that is flawed as I have been arguing. The provisions under Part 4A are flawed because they have not had the advantage of a full and open debate. Indeed we have not even had the advantage of seeing the regulatory impact statement unredacted—as written. Parliament ought to have the right to see the regulatory impact statement in its entirety but that does not happen under this Government because it does not care about the democratic process so we cannot fully debate it.Let us go to section 70A(1). Here we have probably the most important principle that is identified and written out. As I said earlier in my reading this is the first time it has been stated in this way. I may be wrong but I said this to the Minister of Health when debating an earlier part of this bill. He did not take a call to say I was wrong so I simply take that to be the case. Members opposite may have a different view or some other information. If they do I would ask them to share it with us. But the principle in section 70A(1) says: “in the context of the funding of support services families generally have primary responsibility for the well-being of their family members.” That is the principle. That is stated so boldly and it is almost glib to mention it. When I practised as a practitioner in the field in the early years there was a principle like this that every conservative held and whenever you tried to do something as a practitioner that required State support for the most vulnerable this is the principle that they would chuck out. We would fight with head office in those days case after case where sensible decisions could not be made about very vulnerable families because somebody in Wellington had adopted this principle and said: “No the State cannot be helping people like this because it is the families’ responsibility.”But when a Government as it does in this particular bill takes the responsibility of writing that in a clause—in section 70A(1)—then it has the express responsibility to explain what it is what it actually means and it is not explained. And what is the context? How is anybody to interpret this? These things get interpreted by lawyers and judges in all kinds of ways. So what is the guidance that this debate is giving to anybody in the future who might look atHansardto see what Parliament intended to do with this particular provision? There is no explanation. There is no context. There are no caveats—CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): This will no doubt be my last—the fourth—call. I want to bring the issue back to the silent heart of the issue: a group ofpeople who sometimes have been ignored in the whole debate. We are now on to clause 4 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2).I would like to quote from a young man who wrote to me during this long and painful saga over not just today but the last 17 to 18 years. He sent me his picture and he said he is an adolescent living at home with his parents because that is where he wants to be and he has multiple disabilities. He wrote: “I love being at home and this is where I want to live. If my parents cannot look after me because they do not receive the appropriate support it is pretty obvious that I would have to live at the [X] centre”—and I am not naming it—“and have no future. I don’t want to live there. I am so happy at home with my parents and helpers and my friends visiting me. It is not acceptable for me to be living at that centre. But I want to be independent. I enjoy music and acting and recording my own music. I want to get married and be a dad. If I continue to accept that things take time I will have a lot of success in my life.”He is a young man whose parents are really struggling because they cannot be paid. We are not at all sure that the bill will allow them to be because they were not part of the original case. They have had great difficulty getting the Ministry of Health to recognise their issues. Despite the fact that he is in the group of highest need he is not necessarily going to get accepted. That is why he wrote to me because he wanted me to have this piece of paper when I went to work on this issue. He asked me to keep working on the issue for him.For him being put into respite care or into care to give his parents who are exhausted and broke a break means being with elderly people. He is a teenager. He was 14 when he first started writing to me. I do not know what active imagination it might take but it is not very good for him to be there—it is not very good. I personally have spent quite a lot of time in elder-care homes with my mother who had dementia. It is certainly a challenge but it is certainly worse I think if you are young and have nowhere else to be because you are at such a different stage of life. This young man’s parents are not able to be paid and are constantly in battles over the 24-hour care package whereby his mother has to teach all the carers how to care for him appropriately and they do not get respite because they do not want him to go through this. I am bringing this young man into the room because he should have a future as a citizen under this bill and I do not think this bill gives him and many others sufficient future.You can say “$92 million” as many times as you like but when you are talking about it over 4 years that breaks down to $23 million and then when you are talking about 1600 families that breaks down to $14000 or less per household who might actually benefit from this. Again what kind of active imagination does it take to think what it might be like to be living on that? When you read the frequently asked questions associated with this bill—about the bits that are not in black that have not been blacked out—there are questions about how it may affect people’s benefits if they actually get any financial help through this bill.We are getting texts and email messages today from a lot of worried people. One that came was asking: “If you still haven’t got to the third reading can’t we stop the Royal assent?”. Can we not stop this? This is what people on Facebook are talking about this afternoon. They are saying: “Please Parliament while you have got a chance stop it now.” It is interesting because I do not think the Government might have anticipated that this bill would cause this kind of furore. After all it is just a group of marginalised people who fought for 20 years and have been successfully blocked for 20 years. But they won in court and they forced the Government to do something. Now a lot of people around the country are saying: “Can’t we stop this because it’s not right? We want something better for everybody.”It is a very interesting issue when you receive messages from other people who work for example with people with Asperger’s syndrome and autism. They are thinking listening to this that there may well be a risk to their relationship with the Human Rights Commission. They are worried after what has been done to the family carers in terms of the inability to complain being legislated for who is next. Who else is going to be blocked? Who else is going to be told by the Minister of Health or anybody else that they cannot complain? Is this a new trend? Is this going to threaten the people who are the most vulnerable in their ability to go to the Human Rights Commission?If you look at new section 70A and move right through new sections 70A to 70E we have some very very serious issues around this. Looking at new sections 70A to 70E in new Part 4A I just want to point out that the first sentence says: “The purpose of this Part is to keep the funding of support services provided … to their family members within sustainable limits …”. Sustainable to whom? [Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I call Catherine Delahunty.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: I will not take a full call but I do want to finish my sentence. Sustainable to whom? Sustainable to the health budget but not sustainable if you are the people on the receiving end. When we have got a problem like that that is when we start a real negotiation with the people affected. That is when we do not do what we have done up till now. That is why the Green Party members in our third reading speeches will be talking about alternative solutions to this punitive and miserable and mean-spirited approach which should be illegal because it is highly discriminatory. Thank you.SUE MORONEY (Labour): Clause 4 is the part of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) that actually gets to the detail—or the part that we would hope would get to the detail—of what the changes actually are and of course this will need some substantial level of debate. In lieu of a select committee process due to the Government’s decision to rush all parts of this legislation through in urgency new Part 4A in clause 4 is what we really need to understand the detail of. I think as colleagues have already pointed out that if we leave this parliamentary session and this bill is passed what will members of Parliament be reporting to constituents? We really do not have the amount of detail that we need. The whole point of the Committee stage with the officials in the room—particularly when there is not going to be a select committee process—is that the Minister in the chair would actually use the advice from the officials to answer the questions that are being raised by this side of the Committee. So far the questions that we have raised have not been answered. Many of them have not been answered.I want to talk about new section 70D in clause 4—and yes as my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson pointed out it is called 70D because it is the tail end of a very large Act the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act. It is getting towards the tail end of it under something that is kind of loosely known as “miscellaneous provisions”—that is we shove everything there that is not really substantive and is not really substantial. That is where these amendments are going. This substantial change is so important to those seven families who have been battling this issue for two decades. Again I just want to take the opportunity to congratulate those families on their tenacity. It has not been easy. I know that at least one of those families is from Hamilton because they have come to see me to talk about the issue. They have battled for this. Here we are under urgency going through all stages of the bill without the completeness of the detail.So we know that new section 70D is going to cancel arrangements that district health boards may already have in place in terms of paying family carers. That is what I believe new section 70D says—that some district health boards may already have thesearrangements in place. I am not sure whether members opposite seem to think that any of them have but why then would they have drafted this new section 70D that says if they have got them in place then they are cancelled? We need to know the impact of that on the families who may currently have those arrangements in place through their district health board. There may be families who already receive this payment or a different type of payment—a greater payment in fact—for taking care of their family members with disabilities. New section 70D actually cancels that arrangement. So these are the reasons why we need if not a select committee process—and I would argue we absolutely need that select committee process so that those families who are having their arrangements cancelled could come and warn us about what that impact is going to be on them. In lieu of that can we at least have the Minister of Health on his feet consulting the officials and answering the questions that have been raised?I want to refer to Catherine Delahunty’s very good speech earlier about the young man she was referring to. We do not know whether he will be included or not whether his family will in fact receive a payment under these changes in this clause or not because we do not know what the definition of “high needs” is. We know what the definition is of the various family members who will meet the criteria. That much is clear—at least I think it is clear. We know what those definitions are but we do not know who is defined as being of high need. We know what age group it is going to apply to: only those over 18. We have not had any explanation about why the age of 18 has been chosen or what is going to happen to those under the age of 18 who may already be getting these payments from district health boards under the arrangements that new section 70D cancels. But we do not know even for those over the age of 18 who will actually qualify for this payment and we do not know actually how much the payment will be. We do not know what the level of payment will be. We know that it will be lawful—it will be made legal—for it to be below what non - family members are paid for caring for exactly the same person but we do not know how much lower that might be.The Government has said it will not have the details available until September. That is when the Government says the details of how this will operate will be known. Well if that is the case why are we debating this in urgency now? The Government is not even planning to enact it until 1 October it will not know the details until September and it has the House in urgency today going through all stages of the bill without that level of detail. That is where this is going to go wrong. I think many of us have had experiences in this House where legislation has been rushed through and it has been poorly thought-out and then we are back within a matter sometimes of months or sometimes it takes a few years taking up more parliamentary time going through and fixing up the things that went wrong the first time.I want to raise an issue that I raised earlier in the debate because I still have not had an answer from the Minister. It is incredibly important because this is a fundamental human right we are about to extinguish. This Parliament—well more properly that Government—is about to extinguish the right of a very important quite vulnerable group of people in our society to actually take a case through the Human Rights Commission about their ability to care for their loved ones. That is what one of the paragraphs of clause 4 is about to do and yet we have no reference to the Human Rights Act in the legislation that is before us. There is not even a consequential amendment that is happening to the Human Rights Act 1993. Why is that? What is the impact of having the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act say one thing and the Human Rights Act 1993 say another?As it stands at the moment the Human Rights Act would allow all of those families to actually put their case before the Human Rights Commission. That is one of theproblems that we have. If we were having a select committee process then we would actually be able to get some official advice on that. We would be able to find out what the implications were of those two Acts saying something quite different from each other and I think we would get to a logical conclusion. That is the point of having a select committee process.But instead this document I am holding is what we have. It is not a piece of abstract art as some might think it is on the TV screen—I am sure that it is what it looks like. This is designed to be the regulatory impact statement. It is supposed to tell us what the impact on regulation is of this piece of legislation. So not only have we not got a select committee process but we have a completely inadequate—I would say actually a disgraceful—regulatory impact statement because most of the information is hidden. Some people thought “Oh look it’s a mistake. In their hurry what’s happened is the Government’s used a highlighter you know to highlight some sections and then they’ve photocopied it and it’s come out black.” Well that is not what has happened. It is a deliberate attempt to actually—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! We have had the debate on that. We are on clause 4.SUE MORONEY: The detail of clause 4 might be here in this regulatory impact statement for all we know. It might be here for all we know but who will ever know?As the Opposition spokesperson on women’s affairs I am concerned to know what the impact is on women because in this area it is mainly women who are providing this family care—not always but in the main it is women. Yet we have not enough detail in clause 4 for us to actually even ascertain what that is going to mean. We do not know what the pay rate is going to be for example. We just do not know what the pay rate is going to be. And because it is going to be mainly women to whom this pay rate actually applies then that is a major issue that we need to know about. Is that Government even interested in knowing what the gender impact of this legislation is? It does not appear to be at all interested in that. Certainly this regulatory impact statement tells us nothing about the impact on gender—well it might but who would know? It might be hidden under one of these—CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): New Part 4A in clause 4 is of course the substantial part of this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) and it is the part where the new provisions are being inserted into the principal Act the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. I want to talk particularly in relation to the provisions in new section 70D(3)(c). They are to do with the provisions around payment for those providing services for those family members whom they are looking after.In the regulatory impact statement—and this is one of the bits that is not blanked out which is good—Hon Ruth Dyson: And rare.CAROL BEAUMONT: —and rare indeed—there is quite a section about consideration about how people would be paid once this bill was passed. There was a debate about the two main options for how family carers could be paid: as employees or by allowance. I am going to be supporting the amendment to clause 4 in the name of my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson that replaces new section 70D(3)(c) which I believe will do a better job of looking at payment.But just before I get into the specifics of that in the regulatory impact statement where consideration was made of how family carers could be paid as I said there was consideration of whether they should be paid as an employee which would then potentially determine their pay rate or by allowance. Thankfully—and it is potentially one of the few things in this that we could wholeheartedly agree with—it was agreedthat in fact the appropriate way to go was to pay people as employees rather than to pay them an allowance or via section 88 notice. The regulatory impact statement does go through that whole debate and talks about why that conclusion was made and quite rightly says that “Paying family carers as employees recognises their contribution by giving them status as an employee.”—for example enabling them to get a formal work record—“It also incorporates mechanisms for assuring service quality and safety ...”. I think that is sensible. But when you look further on at the analysis of that in the table “Analysis of options for how family carers are paid to provide HCSS” there is a whole column that is blanked out. Of course I would be very very interested in knowing what that column contains and whether it has anything to do with the actual rates of pay which is the provision we are talking about here.New section 70D(3)(c) is relating to the actual rates of pay for these family carers. What the bill provides is that “the rates or ways of setting the rates of payment for support services provided to family members which may be”—and this is the important bit—“lower than the rates of payment for comparable support services”—and I underline the word “comparable”—“provided to persons who are not family members:”. In other words and just to be clear to those listening this is saying that these employees these workers would be paid less than others who are not family members. I think that is a really important point. Why should that be the case? Why should they be paid less for comparable work? By virtue of its being comparable we can say that the value is the same. Certainly I think all of us—on this side of the Chamber anyway—would agree that equal work should receive equal pay. It is a concept that is foreign to members opposite of course. It is a concept foreign to members of the National Government because of course they have recently passed legislation ensuring that young people who do equal work are paid less or potentially paid less. So perhaps they want to extend that principle into other provisions.But for those of us who are looking at what is very very hard work and very important work in our society—and as my colleague Sue Moroney said work that is often done by women—we see that it is already low-paid work. The work of carers in our society is vitally important. Carers are looking after people who by definition almost are vulnerable in some way and who need somebody else to look after them and to help them. It is low paid already. What we are providing for in this bill what the Government is trying to do is to say that some carers carers who are family members could be paid less.IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I moveThat the question be now put.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I have to say that the people ofRangitīkei would be very disappointed to hear that Ian McKelvie’s only contribution to the debate this afternoon was to try to shut down that debate. I suppose that is a reflection of this Government’s attitude towards democracy and transparency. I am sure he will be pleased to go back to his electorate and talk to people about the way he voted today and his contribution to today’s debate.I would like to refer to a couple of the amendments in the name of my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson. Both refer to new section 70D(3)(c) in clause 4 which refers of course to the rates of pay that the carers can receive. One of those amendments is to ensure that the rates of pay may not be lower than the minimum adult rate of wages payable to workers set under section 4 of the Minimum Wage Act 1983. I think that is a reasonably important principle actually. Just because people are caring for a member of their family just because they are actually doing this because it is a 24/7 commitment that they have to someone who lives in their household or is another member of their family does not mean that they do not get the same rights and privileges that everybody else in New Zealand should receive when they are at work.An important concept that I think we have to ensure is clearly laid out in the legislation is that at the very least the minimum wage should be the minimum rate of pay that carers can receive. But I think that that really is not enough. Merely ensuring that they get the minimum wage should not even need to be reinforced by the Opposition. The Government should be making that statement clearly without the Opposition having to make that point. But what is actually even more important is the other amendment which also refers to new section 70D(3)(c) and would ensure that the rates or ways of setting the rates of payment for support services provided to family members are equal to the rates that they could expect if they were caring for someone who was not a member of their family.I think the concept of equal pay for equal work is a good one. It is not one that National buys into unfortunately which is probably why it is missing from the original legislation. But I think that members should be happy to sign up to this because it is a solid concept that all members should be able to sign up to. I do not understand what it is about having a familial relationship with the person whom you are caring for that somehow changes the nature of the work. It is just as hard and just as much commitment is required.Tony Ryall is rolling his eyes and tut-tutting. He does not understand why it is that people who are caring for someone who is a member of their family should not have the ability to get the same rate of pay that they would get if they cared for someone else’s child. Tony Ryall does not understand that. Tony Ryall thinks that those carers should just work for whatever the minimum is that the Government is prepared to give them. He thinks they should be grateful that the Government is even prepared to cover them. In fact of course as we know many people will not be covered by this. This is not the comprehensive response that people were expecting.So I suppose in Tony Ryall’s mind if you are lucky enough to be one of the 1600 who qualify for this—and goodness knows exactly how the Government is going to determine whether or not a person qualifies to be one of the 1600—you ought to be grateful. Those people ought to be grateful if they are lucky enough to be one of the chosen 1600. I suppose that is where Tony Ryall is coming from.Well we come from quite a different perspective on this side of the House. We believe that this should have been the comprehensive response. We believe that the approximately 5400 people who could be covered by this legislation should be covered by this legislation and we think that the rates of pay that are acceptable in the care sector ought to be given to these families low as those rates are. I think we all accept that the rates of pay in the health and disability care sector are not what they ought to be but let us start at least at that starting point.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.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I moveThat the question be now put.LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): I was just contemplating the judgment that the Court of Appeal made in May last year. What I want to highlight is this definition of the plaintiffs. They are “either family with adult disabled family members or adults with disabilities. The disabled family members have been assessed by the Ministry of Health as requiring support services.” So that group was discriminated against and we know that there are 5400 people in that group. And what we now know through this bill is that it will hopefully help 1600 family members. So basically 30 percent of the families that the Court of Appeal highlighted as requiring support are going to be supported.I will read through clause 4 and just look at the principles that are ingrained in this bill. New section 70A(1) says: “families generally have primary responsibility for the well-being of their family members.” New section 70A(2) says: “permitted by anapplicable family care policy or is expressly authorised by or under an enactment:”. And the third part of that in new section 70A(2)(c) is that it “stops … any complaint to the Human Rights Commission and any proceeding in any court if the complaint or proceeding is in whole or in part based on an assertion that a person’s right to freedom from discrimination” has been breached.The Court of Appeal assessed that 5400 New Zealanders were being discriminated against. What this legislation is trying to address is 30 percent of those 5400 New Zealand families. But in doing so the Government is going to say to the 70 percent of New Zealand families that will not be supported: “Hard luck. Sorry about that. In fact we’re not going to let you use the tools that brought us to this place in the first place.” which was to go through a court process that started in 2000. Really that is what this bill is all about.I guess what we on this side of the Chamber really care about is the 70 percent of New Zealand families who are being discriminated against in spite of the Court of Appeal decision. We on this side of the Chamber think that those 70 percent of New Zealand families have the right to be supported. I guess when you look at it within the context of overarching Government prioritisation it will give a little bit of money to families and people with disabilities and we all—the communities and everyone else out there—should say: “Hey thanks very much.” So actually to the Minister in the chair thank you very much for the 30 percent of New Zealand families of people with disabilities that this bill will assist.But I guess the challenge is this: what about the other 70 percent? What are we going to do as a Government as a society about meeting the needs of the other 70 percent? I guess in meeting the needs of the 30 percent what we have said is we will give them a minimum wage. Is that sufficient? I think you know of when I hear the pleadings of my colleague Catherine Delahunty particularly. She has been into these houses. She has worked with these families. She understands the circumstances that our most vulnerable members of our communities are living in. I think really that is the test of this House. That is the test of the tolerance that we have as a Government as a society in helping address the needs of one of our most vulnerable communities in New Zealand.That is what I really wanted to highlight in my contribution because I think the select committee process would have enabled a more thorough discussion and analysis about whether or not the needs of 30 percent of the families being met is sufficient. We could have talked about other things: not only giving them a minimum payment but actually yes valuing and acknowledging the work that our family members do. The alternative—institutionalised care—as we all know is so much more expensive. But rather than support families to the degree that they need so that they can live in dignity they can live with respect and they can live and can be valued and cared-for members of our community we think that they should be happy and satisfied.So Minister thank you for going part-way to meeting this community’s needs but I think we could have done better and I think that the process of Government would have enabled our communities to have a say so that we could actually hear about the consequences of this bill for their lives. That is what really is a travesty that we have not allowed the New Zealand people to have a say on this bill. Kia ora.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to clause 4 of this bill. As a number of speakers before me have noted this is the major part of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). As some people would say it is where the money is at—or in this case is not. The point has been made many many times around the need for this bill to have gone through a select committee process. We know hours into this debate that it has not and that is unfortunate because one of the things that the public of New Zealand could have givenmore scrutiny to was the rates at which family members who care for those who are disabled in their families are paid. That could have been looked at closer because there seems to be an inequity in one of the parts of clause 4 and the Hon Ruth Dyson has put forward an amendment to that effect. It talks about new section 70D(3)(c). I think my colleague Carol Beaumont has already spoken about this.Essentially what this part of the bill says at the moment is that if you are a family member caring for someone who is disabled in your family not only is the rate that you will get paid going to be the minimum wage but you can actually through this paragraph get paid less than the minimum wage. That is our understanding of the bill. That is something that would have been given some closer scrutiny if this bill had been put to a select committee. The Hon Ruth Dyson has studiously put in this amendment that would amend new section 70D(3)(c) to read “Any lower rates set may not be lower than the minimum adult rate of wages payable to workers set under section 4 of the Minimum Wage Act 1983”—that is to follow the words in new section 70D(3)(c) “persons who are not family members:”. That would make it fairer we on this side of the Chamber believe to those who have taken on the real commitment of looking after those people in their family who are disabled—as my colleague Louisa Wall said fair is fair to the Minister—and who have been recognised in this bill to get some form of payment because previously they have not. But we do not believe that has been done in a fair way.The Hon Annette King said in her first contribution on clause 4 that we will not see the operational details around the changes that are made in this bill until September. That is of great concern to us in the Committee and on this side of the Chamber given that when this bill will come into effect is 1 October. That is when the Government wants this to start being effective. So we will find out how this works maybe late September and then the next month things will get moving. That is another concern that we have on this side of the Chamber: that we will not find out how these changes are going to operationally work how things are going to be done until September and then a matter of weeks later it will be law and in place. That should have been looked at with closer scrutiny at the select committee. At that select committee I am sure Dr Paul Hutchison—a man who on this side of the Chamber is very well respected someone who definitely during my time on the Health Committee looked at a whole raft of issues related to health in a thorough manner and in a fair manner—would look at this and I think he would be concerned that there is a very short period of time between when we find out how this piece of legislation works and when it comes into effect.I go back to new section 70D(3)(c) in clause 4. Because the regulatory impact statement has been referred to many many times during this debate I wanted to have a sift through the regulatory impact statement just to see what kind of impact new section 70D(3)(c) as it stands now would have in terms of operational details. But again it is not pretty. We do not know what it would mean because it seems that the significant—Hon Annette King: Read it out.KRIS FAAFOI: Well I would love to but maybe the Minister in the chair the Minister of Health could tell us what some of the significant legal issues and risks are arising from the Government’s preferred response which it has in this bill especially around new section 70D(3)(c) because we have no idea—JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I moveThat the question be now put.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The question is that the question be now put. Those of that opinion will say “Aye”—Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Could you please explain to the Committee how it could possibly be in order to accept a closure motion atthis point during the debate on clause 4 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) which is the substantive part of the bill. All of the substance of the bill is contained in clause 4. This bill is being passed under urgency. There has been no select committee consideration. There has been no opportunity for the public to have a say on this piece of legislation. The regulatory impact statement is one of the most redacted impact statements that this House has ever seen which has limited the information that members of Parliament have had available to them. We have the Hon Ruth Dyson with 10 amendments. She has had only one call so far and has had a limited opportunity to speak to those amendments. This bill and this clause of this bill have not in any way had sufficient scrutiny by Parliament. I think it is completely out of order to accept a closure motion at this point.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The Committee will decide whether it accepts a closure motion. Just in regard to what the member has mentioned this debate on clause 4 has gone on for an hour and a quarter. There have been 12 Labour calls. There has been one Government call. The Greens—[Interruption] I am on my feet. The Greens have taken two calls. When we started this debate the debate on clause 1 was very wide ranging and many of the points that were made in that debate are now being canvassed in debate on clause 4. On the basis of a debate that took an hour on clause 1—as I said earlier because it was a wide-ranging debate there—many of the points are being canvassed in debate on clause 4 I have decided to accept the closure motion.Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I accept the ruling—well I understand your rationale that you have just outlined to the Committee but I would stress to you the somewhat extraordinary nature of this debate in the sense that it is under urgency it is being pushed through as a Budget measure it is going through all stages and members of the Opposition have had this bill for only a very very short period of time. We were given it literally an hour or two before urgency actually started so people have not had a chance to go through it in detail. The fact is that there are a significant number of amendments and the person who is sponsoring the amendments indicates that the Opposition has to the best of our ability engaged with the detail within the time that we have had. I am aware that there is a New Zealand First member who does want to have a call on them who probably had not anticipated that the debate was going to be drawing to a close quite so quickly. We have no ability to vote down a closure motion as you will be aware. The only protection the Opposition has in these matters is the protection of an impartial and neutral Chairperson. Once this question has been put to the Committee if it is passed by the Committee the rights of the minority will be overridden by a majority vote.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I hope the member is not implying that I am not an impartial Chair. That is what the member said and I am sure he did not mean that. When I accepted the closure motion everybody at that stage who had wanted a call had been given a call. All right? And there are members who have been sitting in the Chamber for some time who during the course of the last hour that I have been sitting here have not gone for a call. Those who wanted calls at the time were given calls. Everyone got a call. It was only when I accepted the closure motion at the end that other members got to their feet. On that basis I think it has been a fair debate so I am putting the question.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:in new section 70C replace “unless the payment is—(a) permitted by an applicable family care policy; or (b) expressly authorised by or under an enactment.” with “if the payment is prohibited by an applicable family care policy or enactment.”A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:insert in new section 70D after subclause (2):“(2A)The Crown or DHB may not change cancel or replace an existing family care policy without first consulting the other affected parties.”A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:delete new section 70D(3)(a)(i).A party votewas called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:replace new section 70D(3)(c) with “(c) the rates or ways of setting the rates of payment for support services provided to family members:”A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:in new section 70D(3)(c) after “not family members” insert “but any lower rates set may not be lower than the minimum adult rate of wages payable to workers set under section 4 of the Minimum Wage Act 1983:”A party votewas called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:delete new section 70E(1)(b).A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:replace new section 70E(3)(a) with “(a) was made after the day after the date on which this Act receives Royal assent; and”.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:add the following new section 70E(8): “For the purposes of clarity nothing in this Act prevents a person from making a personal grievance under the Employment Relations Act 2000 for a breach of the Human Rights Act 1993 or New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.”A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:delete new section 70E.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to clause 4 be agreed to:delete new section 70G(4)(b).A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 4 be agreed to.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Clause 4 agreed to.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I wanted to raise a point of order just before we leave the Committee ofthe whole House to seek your guidance as we go on to the next couple of pieces of legislation that will come before the Committee under the urgency motion which are similar to this bill. They are pieces of legislation that will not be going to a select committee. They are bills that were provided to Opposition parties only moments before the urgency motion in one case and after the urgency motion in the other case. I want to seek your guidance on the approach that Chairs of the Committee of the whole House will take when there is legislation of that nature. Is that something that is taken into account by a Chair in terms of the length of time spent on particular parts? Is it something that the Chair will recognise?The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I thank the member for his comment. The Chair takes into account the range of debate that has happened over the course of the time and at that stage the Chair will determine whether a question is put and for how long the debate will go. The Chairs realise that of course these bills have not been to a select committee and are being dealt with under urgency but that is given consideration. I would hope that overall we have reflected that in the nature of the debates that we have had. That I hope will continue. It certainly will under my chairmanship. I will report this bill without amendment.Bill reported without amendment.Report adopted.Third ReadingHon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): I moveThat the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time. I would like to start by thanking the members for their contributions today even those who sought to rewrite history and demonstrated former ministerial amnesia. They all made a contribution. They are all people who I think genuinely want to do something to help those with very high and high needs. I think they may have though struggled during the best of times to give the priority to this issue that they now want to demonstrate they do have.This bill is the Government’s solution to theAtkinson case. It does shift the boundary between family and taxpayer responsibility but it has landed in a fair and reasonable place. Today New Zealand becomes only the third country in the world that will pay a wage to some family members for caring for other family members. Only Sweden and the Netherlands have done so before today. This bill makes it clear that it is the policy of this Government as it was of the former Government that families have primary responsibility for the well-being of each member within their families and the Government should not interfere in that responsibility. The role of the Government is to support family members in their care and support role assisting where families are not able to meet the needs of their loved ones.Society expects that we care for and support our family members society expects parents to support their non-adult children and society expects spouses to care for and support each other. That is because of love affection and responsibility. However the courts inAtkinson have found that it is beyond society’s usual expectations for family members to care for adult family members who are living with lifelong disabilities. So change is needed.This bill allows the Ministry of Health and the district health boards to establish family care policies that allow them to choose on a number of bases how those supports will be provided to adopt policies and to make payments to specified family members. As I have said in this debate it is not the intention of this bill to extend the Government’s responsibilities to support all family members in their caring roles.People will not generally be paid to provide health and disability services to family members. This is particularly so for parents who care for non-adult children and spouses who care for each other. Targeting for those most in need is the fairest approach.In today’s Budget we announced $92 million over 4 years to implement the family carer policy. The ministry will allocate funding to disabled people in high and very high needs situations as assessed. Within the principles articulated here there will be some flexibility within the policy to consider in particular circumstances disabled people who do not meet the eligibility criteria but where payment is clearly desirable. The case that I gave during the first reading was of those who live in very remote rural areas where they are unable to get support.This has been a very complex issue. Ministers have taken considerable legal advice. It is this legally privileged advice that caused so much of the debate and discussion in the House about the regulatory impact statement. In coming to this policy decision the Government has undertaken a very robust consultation process which I outlined in the Committee stage. The Government has also considered very very deliberately a whole range of matters that should have been taken into account when making this decision.We know that other Governments have also considered these matters and chose not to change policy. That is a decision that they will have to defend to New Zealanders. It is also a decision that they will have to defend that they oppose the progress in this bill because this does make New Zealand only the third country in the world to provide for paying for some family members to have a wage to care for others. This does not happen in Australia. This does not happen in Britain. This does not happen in Canada. It does happen in Sweden and in the Netherlands. New Zealand today will become the third country in the world to adopt that position.I think all members of this House do feel and admire the huge contribution that family carers provide throughout our country. They have a huge responsibility and so many of them undertake that responsibility quietly and are accepting of that and willing. Where those families cannot provide that support or need additional support our welfare State provides that support. Not only may the adult disabled child be receiving income support but also the parents receive additional support in terms of home support workers providing support to not only the disabled person but also the parents themselves. The Government does fund carer support and it does fund respite support for those carers. So supports are there.The Government accepts its responsibility. Today we move that balance slightly in accepting that we will pay a wage to those family members assessed as being able to get that in the way that they support their disabled family member in the circumstances outlined in the family carer policies that the ministry and the district health boards will adopt.Can I thank the members of the technical advisory group and the many hundreds of people who made submissions. Can I also thank the many officials who have worked so hard in the development of this policy. I want to thank my ministerial colleagues particularly the Associate Ministers of Health and Mrs Turia in particular for the many hours of work that we have undertaken as we have sought to find a fair and reasonable balance to make sure that we have protected the interests of the person who is being cared for of the families who are doing the caring and of the taxpayers.I think today that this solution lands in a reasonable place a fair place. It certainly is progress. The Government accepts the indications given by the courts about the need to change policy and this bill is about that. I certainly commend this bill to the House. I hope that the many people who will benefit from this will recognise that the Government and indeed the Parliament is acting with the best intentions to balance the interests of so many involved in this matter.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): It is with considerable disappointment that I rise to continue to oppose this legislation the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). As the Minister of Health quite rightly said parts of this legislation progress an issue that has been around for two decades. I want to put on record again the offer that Labour made some time ago to the Hon Tony Ryall and that was to have an approach that ensured that this policy was sustainable—a policy that all parties signed up to that we could get agreement on and that we could have a lot of input into. Instead the Minister in an arrogant way and in a detached way has ridden roughshod not only over the family members and people who wanted to have an input into the detail of the policy but also over all other political parties in this House and indeed proper process.We have seen a process that is totally unacceptable as part of a Budget process. This is not a Budget confidence and supply move that required urgency. It did not require the urgent attention of the House. It did not need to be rammed through all stages under urgency. In my view the only reason that that was done was in order to secure the votes of the Māori Party. It has been covered up as a confidence and supply measure. It has been put through under urgency to avoid public scrutiny rather than to progress the substantive part of the legislation. I think that is something that the Hon Tony Ryall should be embarrassed about as should the members of his party.In terms of the substance of the bill we have had a pretty abbreviated debate on it frankly. It is very disappointing for example that I was not able to get a call on any one of my 10 typescript amendments to clause 4 because the Chairman of the Committee accepted a closure motion. That is very disappointing given that they were quite substantial amendments and it really reinforced the concerns that Labour had about this legislation.My amendments talked about for example the need for district health boards or the Ministry of Health itself to always consult with affected parties in the future if there was going to be any change to agreed family care policy. We talked about the rates that family caregivers would be paid and proposed that family caregivers be paid at the same rate as most other home support workers are paid. They are doing the same job and they should be paid at the same rate rather than the minimum wage.We talked about removing the extinguishing of rights that the Minister of Health has in the legislation so that the family members who are not covered by this legislation—the family members who care for disabled members of their own family who are not going to be paid—will now not be able to take a legal challenge to that continued discrimination. Labour wanted to have that extinguishing of rights removed from the legislation. There is no need for it.We wanted to make sure that people were still able to take a personal grievance case under the employment relations legislation. That amendment was thrown out as well. In fact I watched Tim Macindoe—I think he is the junior whip; one of the junior whips—rally his numbers to vote in opposition to my amendments and it was clear that he had not read one of them. It was clear that he voted on behalf of the entire National Government without a blind clue as to what he was voting on. I think that should be an embarrassment to the current member of Parliament. He may always do it but he should give his colleagues the credit of his position and read the matter on which he has been given the responsibility to vote. He is short-changing the position of junior whip.Also the Minister of Health refused to answer the many questions that we raised with him in the Committee stage of the bill. When we leave this place tomorrow night when we have finished urgency we will go back to our home centres—David Bennett: We’ll be here on Sunday.Hon RUTH DYSON: On Sunday? The House does not sit on a Sunday Mr Bennett. On Monday I am sure we will have approaches from families saying: “We heard that Parliament passed the family caregivers legislation. We want to know when we will be getting paid.” We will not be able to tell them not only when but whether because we have no idea from this legislation whom this is going to apply to. All we have got is a random number and then information in the advice that was given in the regulatory impact statement and the options given to the Minister which makes it clear that the Ministry of Health does not have a clue about the figures. They are a best guess. I am sure that the officials tried really hard but there is no way that we could rely on their figures.They are a darned sight better than what we got in the regulatory impact statement though. In my few years in Parliament I have never seen a regulatory impact statement of this quality. Look at this Mr Speaker. You missed some of the debate but just in case you would like to see it there are big areas blacked out. But wait there is more. Look at this page. Fantastic! The whole page of the regulatory impact statement is blacked out. And here is another one—an entire column blacked out. Go over the page and the entire section that would give this Parliament the information it needs is blacked out. On the next page the whole column is blacked out. On the next page the whole column is blacked out.Ian McKelvie: No!Hon RUTH DYSON: Page after page after page. The member of Parliament for Rangitīkei thinks it is funny. Well I want to see that member front up to the families of disabled people in his electorate on Monday morning and say that this is good information—that this is good information. It is blacked out the very information that members of Parliament need to determine whether or not this is a robust decision.Dr Paul Hutchison—I have always thought more highly of that member excepting this. That high expectation has now been shattered. National Party members one after the other after the other like sheep going to the slaughter are voting for legislation refusing to look at amendments and leaving family members who have been waiting for this decision waiting for this legislation in limbo yet again because not one member of this House including the Minister will be able to tell anyone next week or the week after or the week after or the week after who will be getting the payment.We know from information from the Minister—the only bit of information that he has shared and not directly to the House; we got it indirectly—that the operational decisions about who is going to get this money will not be made until September. Regardless of the fact that we have got the wrong day on the wall—because Parliament does that under urgency—I know it is May and I know there is a big space between May and September. That is another confirmation point that there is no justification for this legislation going through the House under urgency let alone going through all stages under urgency and not being referred to a select committee at all.So we have had a shonky process a process that has completely ignored all the parties who deserve respect and who deserve to have a say in this legislation. They have been cut out. We have had National members who are so keen on getting out of this building that not one of them even bothered to read any of my 12 amendments—not one of them. I could have put anything in those amendments and National would have voted against it. I could have had an amendment proposing to double the salary of National members and they are so stupid and so lazy they still would have voted against it.It is demeaning of the parliamentary process to have that sort of disregard lack of integrity and complete lack of respect for the families of disabled people. They are whom we are talking about. This is not a technical bill that fiddles around with some machinery; this is a bill that has a huge impact on New Zealand families who havedisabled members who went to the huge personal effort of taking their claim of discrimination through the Human Rights Review Tribunal to the High Court—Scott Simpson: Blocked at every step by Labour.Hon RUTH DYSON: —and to the Court of Appeal and won. That member should close his mouth breathe through his nose and wait till he gets a little more information about the truth instead of repeating the spin. Spin does you no good. You can have a robust debate only if you bother to find out the facts yourself—Scott Simpson: We don’t need that member pushing—Hon RUTH DYSON: And it is quite clear that that member who is another one who is going to be going to his home electorate Coromandel should be hiding his head in shame—should be hanging his head in embarrassment—because he knows zilch. He knows nothing about what has gone on in this process and has no ability to front up to families in his electorate and tell them the truth because we had no truth from the Minister. We know that no determinations will be made—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): Thank you for giving me the opportunity and privilege to speak on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I too want to acknowledge all those family carers around New Zealand who for years have given themselves so selflessly for others.Despite Opposition members saying that they did not want to talk politics they have done directly the opposite over the last few hours and I think that is a great shame. Fairly and squarely the Human Rights Commission made its ruling back in 2001 and in times of plenty the Labour-Greens coalition had plenty of time if those members had wanted to if they had really wanted to—even though there was a court process going on—to come to an earlier solution. But they explicitly failed to in 2005 and they explicitly failed to in 2008.Targeting high and very high needs people was supported by 68 percent of all submitters and 71 percent of family carers. This was a thorough consultation process. Changing the policy to pay all groups of family carers rather than carers of high and very high needs people would result in unmanageable spiralling costs and I believe that the thoughtful contribution from the Attorney-General indeed explained that and explained that the courts often do not take into account the fiscal constraints of the time which is absolutely what Labour and the Greens so flagrantly forget about.This policy adds an extra $94 million over 4 years on top of the $100 million extra the Government is spending on disability support. This is a fair solution to a challenging and complex issue and it makes New Zealand the third country in the world—no other countries have done this before—to achieve payments in such a way.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): We commenced debate on the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) at around 9.20 or 9.30 this morning. We have gone from an introduction of a bill right through to a third reading in 1 day. It has been a truncated debate by the Minister of Health. It has been truncated by the National Government which voted for closure along the way and truncated by the Chair who took a closure motion on the most significant part of the bill when there were a large number of amendments put forward by the Labour Party in the short time frame in which we had to examine this bill.We have had little or no debate from the Government at all. There was a contribution from the Minister of Health on the first reading and the second reading and the third reading and there was one contribution from him when he was in the chair. We had no contributions at all to speak of from the cannon fodder muzzled backbenchers who have sat there sitting in their seats and keeping them warm for the day. They had read neither the regulatory impact statement nor the statement from the Attorney-General on this bill. They read none of the amendments. They just went along with whatever theywere told and voted when they were told to. What a mockery this has made of Parliament today. This is one of the worst processes on a bill which has been 20 years in the making as the Minister said. This is an incredibly complex issue where it is hard to find the balance. It is an area where we ought to have taken the time to work across Parliament and have taken up the offers that were made by the parties in the Opposition to work together to get an enduring solution to this longstanding problem. That was ignored and we had the bill introduced under urgency and debated and passed in 1 day.The public of New Zealand who may have followed this debate today will have no say. They will not have any input at all. We were told that we should accept that there was a technical working group that looked at this bill and that it came up with the ideas. Well when we heard about the technical advisory group we found that those who are the carers had very little input at all. Would you not have thought that you would involve in a very proactive way the very people who care for disabled adults in New Zealand? Would they not have had a lot of information? Would they not have had real meaningful experience about what it means to care for a family member 24 hours a day 7 days a week with brief periods of respite? What we found out was that the technical advisory group had one member from Carers New Zealand but she did not get any say on the policy that was developed. The only input she had was when the Ministry of Health called her and asked her to answer some questions. That to me is not a technical advisory group—well maybe it is technical but it certainly is not advisory. So the input into making this policy was almost devoid of those whom it affected the most.What I found interesting in the Minister’s third reading speech was what his expectations of New Zealanders are. That was very very enlightening for me and puts into perspective where the National Party comes from. His expectation he said is for New Zealanders to look after their own children and that they should be expected to look after their own family. Well in the main New Zealanders do but we have always been a society that has said that the most vulnerable those who are at the most risk those who need support in the society we have would be picked up and looked after. That has been a fundamental principle of New Zealand for my lifetime and well before my lifetime. But what we heard from the Minister today is that it is dog-eat-dog—you look after your own and when we have to do something about it and we are forced to we will make a few concessions. That is not the New Zealand that I want to live in. That is not the New Zealand that most people expect. They expect us to look after the most vulnerable in our society and the most vulnerable we could have at this stage are those who are so handicapped that they cannot look after themselves.We closed the institutions around New Zealand and it was a darned good thing we did too. We closed them because we knew we could look after them better in the community. The closing of institutions was sold to the people of New Zealand that people would live better lives in the community and that they would be supported. Those were the principles that underpinned the closing of the large institutions in this country. But that is not what we heard from the Minister. Perhaps he does not know that actually we do pay grandparents to raise grandchildren now. But he said that we should not pay and help people look after other people’s children or their own children. ACC pays for carers to look after people but we cannot pay these people who have not had an accident but who by some fate have ended up being disabled. I believe that we have finally seen the face of the National Party and the underpinning philosophy of the National Party and it is not a pretty one at all.There was insufficient time for consultation and we have had to rely very heavily on the regulatory impact statement. It was not available until this morning when we started this debate and as has already been said throughout the day we were shocked at whatwe received. The regulatory impact statement—maybe this is an issue that you Mr Speaker might like to take up—is there to provide information to this House for us to be able to debate a bill with some knowledge and confidence that we know what we are talking about. It is a regulatory impact statement that the public can read. They can look online to see what the bill is about. Firstly the regulatory impact statement was not online and secondly it was so redacted that you could not read it. I called it the “blankety-blank-blank-blank-blank regulatory impact statement”—page after page after page of blacked-out information that may have helped this House. That was not good enough. I have not seen that before. I have never seen a regulatory impact statement of that order in my time in Parliament.I often criticise the Hon Dr Nick Smith but I will give him credit for this: when the regulatory impact statement came out on Better Local Government he did not go through it and do this to it. He did not go through and cross out all the things he did not like. We at least had the information to be able to debate it.We have heard today of the many people who care for families and we know from the feedback that has been coming in to us as we debate it that there are many people who are disappointed. In fact Mr Cliff Robinson a 76-year-old man—Ian McKelvie: This is the fourth time you’ve used the same man.Hon ANNETTE KING: —is caring for two children—and I will say it again for the member for Manawatū. Mr Robinson is caring for two disabled children a 43-year-old and a 40-year-old. A 76-year-old is looking after them. What did he say? He has waited for a half-decent scheme. What did he get today? A half-baked one. The feedback we have got has been disappointment. The feedback has been that they cannot believe having made a decision that the Government would pay only the minimum wage for these families who will be looking after disabled family members. The question we have asked all day is why. Why would we pay these people less money than we would pay other carers? The Ministry of Health recommended $16 an hour and they are to be paid $13.75. They are not working a 40-hour week; they are working 24 hours a day 7 days a week and they are told by this Government that they are not worth the same as what other carers are paid. We cannot understand that.We moved an amendment and I put it to the members opposite to vote against it and they did—and they did. Every one of them is culpable because they have said that those carers out there looking after family with highly disabled family members are not worth being paid the same as other carers in our society. This bill is a disgrace. The process is a disgrace. We could have done so much better but for the arrogance of this National Government.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. It has certainly been a long day but it is nothing like as hard as it is to take care of a family member with complete absence of mobility and nothing like as hard as it is to be that person trying to live a good independent and self-determining life without money coming into your family that actually reflects what you are needing. That is much much harder than listening to this debate.I just want to comment briefly on the Minister of Health’s speech because it was very interesting and one of his core points was that the State or the Government should not interfere in family life and it was a definition of neglect. I would not call it benign neglect; I would call it discriminatory neglect and unfortunately this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) under the guise of improving things—because of the caps that it has set and because of its refusal to allow people to complain to the Human Rights Review Tribunal—is actually perpetuating a form of benign neglect. I hope that the families who are able to get that $14000—the 1600 families—will benefit from that $14000 a year.It certainly is not a living wage but at least they might get some money. It is certainly not going to meet their needs though and it will be worrying if they then lose some other forms of support because they have been given this money. That is why this is a crazy mosaic. If you are involved with trying to patch together the funding to support a family who has disabled members sometimes more than one—in the Robinson family there are two and I know other families where there are at least two family members because some of the disabilities come from inherited genetic conditions—the financial burden is phenomenal.There is a research document by Auckland University that talks about the cost that family members with disabilities actually pay. It talks also about the contribution that if supported they actually make to our economy. But with what the costs are they pay so much more for everything and I think the rest of us are immune to that. We are immune in our privilege of being able to walk talk and access resources without the discrimination that we are currently actually increasing.Let us go back to those people because for me it is not about which party did what. Nobody did anything good enough—none of us. I do not think there is any point in pretending. I do think it is the responsibility of Parliament to take on complex issues. I do not think it should have taken us all these years. Whenever I talk to people like Cliff what I hear in their voices is the bewilderment of being ignored. They want to know why we took so long and I cannot answer that question. They do not understand why there have been so many barriers put in their way and why they had to go to court and why they had to go to another court and another court because the Government kept appealing the decisions—that was clearly discriminatory.They are bewildered that the package is so messy and unfinished and that we still cannot answer the question about who is going to get what and yet time after time after time it was obvious that the Ministry of Health was going to lose in court. It was blatantly obvious. There were no arguments. If you read the judgments you see that the judges in the High Court and the Court of Appeal said that the Government was not putting up arguments; it was reinforcing discrimination.So it is not like there has been no time to prepare a package and no time to work through this issue with the sector; there just has not been the courage and political will. We will not pay the price but the people out there who will not be part of the 1600—it could have been 5000—will pay the price. It is for them that I am standing here saying that we could have done better in the past and we should be doing better now.Let us have another look at some of the aspects of the process and the bill. The Government is not doing this as an attempt to enter into international leadership on disability rights and carers’ rights issues. That is disingenuous in the extreme. The Government is doing this because it ran out of time and because the court ruled that it had to do something. If you look at the very first page of the bill—the explanatory note—it says very clearly that the Government had to do something. It says: “In the absence of legislation the Government’s policy would be unlawful and the Government could face a very large number of claims. The only feasible way of managing these risks is through legislation.”I am not sure that that is a heroic stance for human rights that will be regarded by the international community as a recognition of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I am not sure that we are going to be heralded as a country where the rights of people with disabilities and their nominated carers are being upheld in a magnificent way in a way that we can be proud to show the world. Kicking and screaming the Governments of the day have fought this issue until there were no more places to go. In order to shut down debate the Government has capped it and it has put the bill in Budget legislation to get it through the House under urgency withouta select committee process so it did not have to hear unpalatable truths and then it will become impossible—impossible—to complain.I am not sure that that looks like a great international success in terms of human rights. The international community on disability rights which is a strong community is not really naive enough to imagine that allowing carers to be paid—some of them but there is a definition in this law that they can be paid less than other people who are not family members—looks like human rights. I am not sure that looks like human rights and I am not sure that those people who fought so very very hard for disability rights to be centre stage in this nation are clapping for us tonight. In fact I know they are not.So let us have a look at the process that resulted in this bill. The technical advisory group was a very short-term group and it was actually quite a limited number of people who were involved and most of them were from the Ministry of Health. I wrote to Mr Ryall in June 2012 and asked him to consider with urgency the need for genuine experts in that group who understood the family care issues and to have a creative and innovative approach to developing a fair framework for payment. I asked him to appoint a representative of the Human Rights Commission because it has demonstrated a strong understanding of the rights issues. I also asked him to offer a place to families who had been through this process because I was trying to applaud him for recognising that “Nothing about us without us.” is the disability catchcry. So people with disabilities and their families should have been at the table.I said to the Minister that there are vested interests who want to determine the policy framework and that the voices of the disabled and the carer parents must be here if practical solutions are to be negotiated. It would not be useful if the panel was dominated by Ministry of Health officials given their failure to find creative and cost-effective solutions that did not discriminate against families. The answer I got was four lines: “Thank you for your letter. Members of the claimant group are not on the group because they are still involved in a legal process which involves a remedy hearing. The remedy hearing will deal with the claimants’ issues.” That was 3 July 2012. The remedy hearing is yet to take place. So not only are the narrow issues in terms of one set of families not yet addressed and they were not allowed to be part of the solution but in fact everybody else is equally confused about where they are at as well.I just want to step back and acknowledge a particular group the organisations known as the disabled people’s organisations the truly “Nothing about us without us.” people. They came to see me and talked about some of the complexities. Some of them were very concerned and very genuine about the power of people to choose who their carer was. I think that they had very good points to make. I said to them: “Rather than stopping this through the legal system let’s have forums and debates where we the disabled people and their carers actually debate this issue and create a framework with the political parties.”So if you are talking about solutions what the Green Party wanted to see and what we still want to see is a cross-party approach to this. Having a war about who did nothing is not attractive to the people of New Zealand. They do not care that we have not done anything properly on this issue. What they care about is what we are doing now and what they want us to do is to work constructively together to find a solution that is not just determined by the cheapest possible solution. “By all means” the disabled persons organisations and carers groups have told me “have some restrictions.” We need to negotiate fair restrictions but you cannot do that in isolation in a dark room and you cannot do it in a regulatory impact statement that is actually risible. It is completely risible. An example of a risible regulatory impact statement is what we saw today and that is not what the people expected of us nor what they wanted.So there were solutions; there still are. We need to negotiate and set agreed boundaries but like any issue of discrimination negotiations should be with the most affected. Those are the people who know best what their needs are. So unfortunately justice delayed remains justice denied. I really do believe that the shocking discrimination in this bill is not just the cap on the money and the refusal to pay the minimum wage. The real disgrace is the attack on people’s right to complain.Why do we have a Human Rights Commission if its status is going to be undermined in this way? It stood there alongside the families at every step of the way. That was its job. Its job is to be there when people are marginalised systematically and cannot get any form of help. It is no good being romantic about what the health system delivers and how contract caring works because it does not. What we need to do is to give them justice and now justice has been denied. I really believe that Parliament has failed these people and could do much better. Kia ora to the families. Kia kaha.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure to rise in support of the third reading of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). The bill is in the name of the Hon Tony Ryall and I commend him for his efforts in bringing it to the House as part of Budget 2013. The bill of course responds to the Court of Appeal’s decision inAtkinson a case that was initially started in 2001 in the Human Rights Commission. That is where it had its genesis and it was fought at every step of the way by the then Labour Government and its health Ministers.Minister Ryall said in his third reading speech that we have landed in a reasonable place a fair place with this legislation and on that I wholeheartedly agree with him. I said in my first reading speech on this bill that it was a proud day for the National Party and a proud day for the National Government. Well actually it is a proud day for New Zealand and all New Zealanders because we are only the third country in the world to provide legislation of this sort and as a National member in this Government it makes me proud to be part of it.So congratulations to Bill English and Tony Ryall who have brought this measure in under the tight fiscal conditions that we are facing in the country. We have got the balance about right. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to oppose the third reading of this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). It is with great disappointment that we do so. We had thought that there were some reasonable parts in this bill when we first saw it but on closer inspection we found that there were not.This bill in itself is a total contradiction. On the surface it looks good but it is not even nearly right. It is not near enough; it is so far out that it is absolutely terrible. I feel very sorry for all of those people who had such high hopes. We all know that near enough is not good enough and this bill shows that totally. New Zealand First has always said that we recognise the right of every New Zealander to equality of opportunity. We know that in many cases the real handicap to full participation in society for people with disabilities is not the disability itself but environmental barriers ill-informed attitudes and inadequate support services and this bill smacks of all of the above.The legislation is a lost opportunity. The fairness in this legislation is an illusion. It is a little bit like smoke and mirrors. Caring is a very important issue in the disability sector and we were looking forward to seeing this issue finally settled. It has been around on the agenda for many many years and we wanted a fair solution. We think it is a sad day for families providing care for their loved ones. It is disrespectful to the carers and to our disabled community. I know of families who were initially quite excited when they heard about this bill but it severely limits the rates that carers can bepaid for the very important job they do. What they have ended up with as theDominion Posthas said is a “half-baked” scheme with a start date in October and there is nothing really specific to work out what families are going to get. The opportunity was there to do more but actually nothing has been done and now nothing can be done.The bottom line is that the Government has not got this legislation right and I think that was shown by the number of amendments that the Hon Ruth Dyson actually placed on the Table. Unfortunately the Hon Ruth Dyson did not get the opportunity to even discuss those amendments which is something that usually happens in this House. The fact that the regulatory impact statement had so many pages that were blanked or in this case blacked out is not the regular practice of this House and definitely does not reassure anyone—especially not the Opposition—that what we are looking at is all of the facts on this particular issue. I know that the Government members themselves if the same situation was presented to them when they were on this side of the House would have screamed loud and long. This is not the usual practice we have to bring legislation into the House. It is just amazing to us on this side of the House that the regulatory impact statement was tabled only this morning and basically it has been of little use to anyone—anyone at all.The second issue that is very perturbing about this particular piece of legislation is that the democratic process has been totally ignored. The process for this legislation needed to be fair and just. The bill needed to go through all of the stages and have public input and have consumer input as well—something that has not been done. We in New Zealand First would have liked to see the Parliament—all of the Parliament—support this particular bill.Disability is an issue that we all feel very strongly about and we want the best for carers and for their family members. It is a very complex issue and the bill did not deserve to be pushed through this House under urgency. The bill needed to go to a select committee. The Health Committee is a good committee for a bill like this to go to so that people who are affected by the bill could have actually had some input. We would have liked to hear from family carers. We would have liked to hear from people who are directly affected by this bill. We know that family carers play a very important role in caring for their disabled family members. The focus should have been on ensuring that the outcome was positive for carers and for their loved ones. The high threshold that is required for this payment is not really fair in this case.The third big negative is that carers will be paid less than the minimum wage when one works it out which is totally unfair. We would always stand up for people who are paid less than the minimum wage. Spouses and their partners are excluded which presents challenges. We know that people get very protective about the people whom they look after and they do not like others to look after them. Those aspects of life that we all hold precious such as privacy do need to be respected. Will $14365 per carer really meet their needs in today’s day and age? I do not really think so.The measures that are actually proposed by this bill are totally inadequate. They are not enough. Carers are hard-working. They are compassionate people working in a very demanding role. Quite often—very often in fact—they get no thanks for the roles that they are carrying out. It is not an easy role to be a carer. You have to provide a great service 24/7. The carers actually give up every aspect of their lives. I know of one couple who have got a 24-year-old disabled daughter. The father works from home has not got a job out in the community and to survive the mother goes out at night and works during the night hours. It is not easy.Then we read in the general policy statement that in amending the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 the bill allows the Government to “reduce the on-going litigation risks while allowing the Government to implement policies of payingfamily carers …” where it wishes to do so—where it wishes to do so. I think that is a real cheek a real hit in the face for those families who are working so hard and doing such a great job for their disabled family members.New Zealand First cannot support this bill. We would have liked to but we feel that disabled people and their families have been really short-changed in this instance.Dr JIAN YANG (National): I want to emphasise that the National-led Government has been working extremely hard to provide better services to disabled people. The Ministry of Health spends over $1 billion a year on a wide range of disability support services. What is more support and payments from a number of other agencies are available to disabled people. Thanks to our most capable Minister of Health the Hon Tony Ryall New Zealand is leading the world in looking after disabled people. Not only that but also we are leading the developed world in developing our economy. Only by developing our economy will we have more funding for public health and disability services. This New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) will provide better services to disabled people and help develop our economy. I commend the bill to the House.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Can I start my final contribution on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) by acknowledging the families and the people with disabilities who have been fighting for so many years to get some progress in this area. I want to acknowledge those who will be better off—slightly—as a result of this legislation and I want to acknowledge those who will be left out by this legislation. It will be a particularly sad day for them because the Government gave them hope that finally the solution was going to be found and then it pulled that hope away by bringing this bill to the House. Some people have called it half-baked. I think it does not even make it to being a third baked actually. It is a very very poor solution. It is not even a solution to the need to support families who are looking after people with disabilities who make that commitment 24/7 365 days a year for year after year after year. It is a commitment that those of us who do not experience that cannot possibly imagine. We cannot possibly fathom what it takes to look after with that degree of care someone with that level of need and everything that goes with it.The other aspect of this bill has been the astonishing way in which the Government has been prepared to trample on democracy and human rights. This regulatory impact statement is starting to become quite famous actually. I think it is more famous than the bill.Catherine Delahunty: The risible RIS.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: The risible RIS as Catherine Delahunty said. There is a song related toThe Wizard of Ozin there somewhere which might be worked on later tonight. But this really is an astonishing display of how poorly this Government considers the need for openness transparency and democracy. The regulatory impact statement is supposed to be the advice that we MPs can receive—impartial advice so that we actually know what the bill is about. We can take that advice to the select committee and submitters can have a look and they can come and tell us what they think about it. Well of course there has been no select committee process. That actually makes this document even more important in the absence of a select committee process.Members of Parliament need even more information than what we would ordinarily get because we do not get the opportunity to hear from the people whom the bill will actually affect to hear what the impact will be on them. And this is what we get. This is what we get from this arrogant arrogant Government which thinks it knows best and that it has the right to trample on democracy and on people’s rights. It is bad enoughthat we have pages blanked out like this in the regulatory impact statement but what is even worse is that the bit that is blanked out the most is the section titled “Risks arising from other agencies’ policies” about risks associated with enacting this legislation.Surely members of Parliament the only people in New Zealand who get an opportunity to vote yay or nay on a bill should have a full understanding of what the risks associated with that legislation are Mr Macindoe. Surely we at least should get a full understanding of what the risks are but we do not even get that. That is just the approach that this Government takes. Who cares about democracy as long as the Government can get the politics right and convince people that it has done the job and actually settled this issue.The second bit of course is the human rights factor. What this bill does is it says that people can no longer take their concerns to the Human Rights Commission. They could up until yesterday but from today onwards no it cannot be done. So people no longer have the right to actually refer cases to the Human Rights Commission to ensure that there is no continuing discrimination. But of course what we know is that this bill actually establishes a new discrimination by saying to people that if you were lucky enough—if you were smart enough quick enough—to get a complaint in before 16 May you are OK; after 16 May that right has been taken away from you. I think these are aspects of the fact that it is not being extended to all the families and that there is some arbitrary measure of what “high need” actually is and that has not been fully explained in this bill. That will be something that the Minister of Health I suppose will calculate at some point in time and it will be calculated based on cost not on need. The fact that these rights to refer to the Human Rights Commission have been taken away from people and the fact that carers will be paid less for looking after a family member than they would if they were looking after someone who is not a family member are more discriminations that are built into this legislation. It just makes it all the more disappointing.It would be one thing if people’s immediate reaction to this bill was that it was a bad thing that it was introducing something that was anathema to the Opposition that it was something that people had not been seeking but it is even worse that it purports to be a solution to a problem that has been around for 20 years and that it was introduced as something that should be hailed in the disability sector and that the families should be really pleased to see. We know that simply is not the case. The little bit of response that we have been able to have—because we have not had the select committee process the only opportunity that people impacted by this bill have had to respond has been to email and call MPs through the day. The response we have had has been exactly that that initially they thought this looked quite good but then as the hours went by it just looked worse and worse and worse as people started to grasp what the bill was actually about. I think that is sad and an absolute travesty because people expected more. The worst bit about it is just how little—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The House is suspended for the dinner break. I will resume the Chair at 7 p.m.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Let me just begin the final snippet of my contribution on the bill by saying to all those members opposite who have spent the day saying what a wonderful deal this is for the families of people with disabilities that I can highly recommend the item on3 News this evening where I think you will get the facts about how the families actually feel about this. I am afraid that for the Government it is all bad news because as we predicted the families have seen right through the politics they have seen right through the spin and they are not happy with you Mr Ryall.I just want to finish up by saying that this is a really really unfortunate day for those families. They have been waiting for so long for this to happen. They have been waiting for so long for justice. They have been waiting for so long for the Government to respond to the court case that occurred last year and to come up with a full solution. What the Government has actually done is thrown them a few crumbs and then blocked anybody—any of those families—from trying to pursue this any further in the future. It really is an insult to those families who have worked so hard. I just feel sorry for them. I want to say to them that we in the Labour Party thought that the Government had done the right thing. We heard as everybody else had that the Government was prepared to act and it was going to pass legislation. But just as everybody else has done today as the day has gone on and we have looked at this closer and closer we have realised that what has actually occurred today is a travesty. It is anti-democratic it tramples on human rights and it has taken away the opportunity for those families to actually pursue this issue further. It is a very very sad day and Tony Ryall should hang his head in shame.IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): It is a shame the member Iain Lees-Galloway did not watchOne News. It gives me great pleasure to speak for—[Interruption] Yes that is quite understandable. It gives me great pleasure to speak on the third reading of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). I hope everyone listened to Minister Ryall’s speech at the commencement of the third reading. It covered the intent of this bill perfectly.I have listened with sadness to the criticism of this bill and the attack on the motives of the Government and I can hold my head high knowing that this will make a difference and that this groundbreaking bill will lead eventually to a new environment for disabled people and their loyal caring families. Those who live with and who work with and for the disabled know that this is progress. I look forward to this bill becoming law shortly.CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): I rise to make a final contribution on the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). This bill is a response to the Court of Appeal decision onMinistry of Health v Atkinson which was essentially about family carers of disabled adults. I think something that we probably would agree across the House is that caring is a critical issue in our country and that increasing numbers of us are caring for other New Zealanders.I want to acknowledge tonight all the carers paid and unpaid in this country who do an amazing job in looking after somebody else. Caring is work; whether it is paid or unpaid it is work and often very difficult work. It is often undertaken by women in addition to everything else that they are doing. But I also want to acknowledge tonight the families who have worked so hard to get justice and to challenge discrimination. That has led to this bill but sadly this response is flawed and limited.It is a limited response because it limits who can access payment as a family carer. It talks about “very high need” and “high need”—the definitions are still unclear and apparently to be further worked on. Looking at the bit of the regulatory impact statement that does have some information in it it would seem that at least 3800 families are excluded because of those definitions.The extra cost of including those people as my colleague the Hon Maryan Street indicated this morning could be as little as $16 million. It is about priorities. It is about priorities. Do we want to put more money into private education or do we want to fund people who care for their family members? It is also about the Government having the resources to do important social measures like this one. I recall—as do many others I am sure—that this National Government deliberately reduced the ability of the Government to pay for initiatives like this by cutting tax rates for the wealthiest NewZealanders and reducing Government income as a consequence. So it is a limited response.It is also limited because the payment that family members will get is potentially lower than that provided to comparable support service workers. I would acknowledge—one positive thing in this bill—that those workers have been deemed to be employees versus a possibility of them being given an allowance or being employed under a section 88 notice under the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act. But these family employees can still be discriminated against. They can be paid less than other carers who are not family members and who are doing a comparable job.People on this side of the House believe in equal pay for equal work and this includes the situation we are talking about tonight. We know across the House that that concept is not one that the Government believes in. We have just recently seen youth rates introduced which clearly indicates that it does not believe in equal pay for equal work. Why is work done by family members of less value? Why should it be paid less? If we had had a select committee process that is one of the sorts of issues that could have been discussed and that the people doing the work could have had their say on.The bill is a limited response but it will also extinguish the right to challenge discrimination under the Human Rights Act and that is a very serious loss indeed. There are many questions that this bill raises. We have tried to raise those questions today in this House but the process is fundamentally flawed. Instead of a collaborative process as was offered by Opposition parties the Government has rammed this through urgency without full information. Everybody I think who is listening to Parliament now knows just how inadequate the regulatory impact statement is—it is full of pages like this with no information. That is disgusting. This should have gone to a select committee where those questions could have been answered. We should have had the information. This has been rushed through under urgency without full disclosure. We got the regulatory impact statement only today so it is not a surprise that people are questioning the Government’s motives.JAN LOGIE (Green): I would like to start my final speech on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) tonight by acknowledging the fourth respondent Laurence Carter and the first respondent Susan Atkinson who have both died in the process of this coming to Parliament. I want also to acknowledge those of you out there who have been fighting for your family and your home and also for the rights of so many others in this country. Your work is something that we should respect and I share my colleague Catherine Delahunty’s sense of disappointment and shame in our system for not having acknowledged your need and acknowledged your rights under the law which made you have to go through the Human Rights Review Tribunal the High Court and then the Court of Appeal to have it acknowledged that actually you had the right—you had the right—in our law to be paid and acknowledged for the caring work that you are doing which is saving all of us in our society and is benefiting every one of us. I want to deeply acknowledge you here tonight in the face of this terrible bill which is actually undermining that right that was existing in law.This Government has stood up and told us that we should be proud of this bill and that we are the third country in the world to do this. Actually no. Our law our courts told us we were doing that. Our law gave that right. Our policy was out of step with the law because that right existed in the law and the legislation that is in front of this House tonight repeals those rights. There is nothing to be proud of in this piece of legislation.This bill in its intent confirms that people will not generally be paid to provide health services and disability support to their families. That is what this bill does. Further it goes on to say that the families who have lodged complaints to the Human Rights Review Tribunal already who have those cases lodged with the Human Rights ReviewTribunal can now get only an acknowledgment. The only remedy that they will be entitled to for the discrimination they have experienced through policy is a declaration that the policy is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That is extraordinary. And the families who have not taken a case are now no longer able to take a case. Basically we are saying that there is no right of redress in this country for this discrimination. That is a shameful shameful act towards the people who are making so much difference and towards the people living with the disabilities who are fighting such barriers to get their ability to participate in this society—and that requires care for some people. The right to have choice over who is going to provide that care is surely a fundamental right.In response to this legislation I have heard on Facebook from people with disabilities who are feeling devastated by this and who are feeling as if they are losing hope because they had the convention we had a sense of progress as a country in a commitment to human rights for people with disabilities and we now have a disability commissioner. And now along comes this piece of legislation that undermines that very right and that tells them that actually our Government thinks its current accounts or its books matter more than their ability. The Government says this is too expensive but those families cannot afford this burden. We as a country can. Those families cannot afford to carry this burden any longer and they should not have to. It takes us nothing as a country to do it.LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): I am really pleased actually to be the final speaker in the third reading of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) because there seems to be one fact that really has got lost in the Opposition’s argument. It is saying that parents who care for disabled adult children are out there losing hope but the simple fact is that this is the very first time a Government is paying them—$23 million. This side of the House is going to pay those parents when Labour and the Greens never paid a penny and that is the guts of it—not one penny. So some time in the future if you get to be in Government then you make the commitment to pay every single parent to look after a child an adult a parent a spouse—actually every child full stop—and then we will see where the country is. Thank you.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes55New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Bill read a third time.