Logie JanHUMAN RIGHTS (DISABILITY ASSIST DOGS NON-DISCRIMINATION) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingJAN LOGIE (Green) on behalf of Ricardo Menéndez March: I move That the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I—SPEAKER: I'm just going to interrupt the member and say that she moves on behalf of—JAN LOGIE: Oh great—thank you.SPEAKER: —Ricardo Menéndez March. The member can continue now.JAN LOGIE: Thank you Mr Speaker. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill. It is a huge honour for me to stand in the House today and present this speech for Ricardo Menéndez March whose name this bill is in. Firstly on his behalf and my own I want to acknowledge former Green MP Mojo Mathers who drafted this bill in 2015 after hearing from disabled people with disability assist dogs of the discrimination they faced. One of the stories that Mojo heard over five years ago now was the one from the late Murray Whittington and his dog Frodo who faced discrimination when looking for rentals. Murray spoke to the New Zealand Herald of his challenges and we want to acknowledge him and the many others for sharing their stories and fighting for an accessible society.It is a pretty simple bill in fact that will make a small but nevertheless tangible difference—as I would say a perfect member's bill. When Mojo first launched this bill she said—and I quote—We [still] have a long way to go to make New Zealand a fully inclusive accessible country where people who have disabilities can live free from discrimination. I was determined to create my … Member's Bill after hearing stories of New Zealanders being denied rental accommodation purely because they have a disability assist dog. This sort of discrimination should not be happening in 21st century New Zealand. Finding somewhere to live is already hard enough but to have your rental application turned down time and time again purely because you have a disability assist dog is just wrong. "Disability assist dogs are more than just your average mutt. [They] perform many different tasks such as retrieving objects for people in wheelchairs or alerting deaf people to fire alarms or door bells—they are … critically important [to] their owners' lives. New Zealanders with disabilities should not be discriminated against because they need a disability assist dog to make their lives easier and more fulfilling. The law should unequivocally support New Zealanders living with disability and prevent discrimination—my Bill is the next step in that process and I hope there'll be widespread support for it [when] it's drawn." It has now been drawn and I am hoping for that support today.This bill was written by Mojo to address discrimination for people with disability assist dogs with an amendment to the Human Rights Act 1993 to include a definition of "disability assist dog" to make it clear that any individual organisation or business that discriminates against a person—for example by denying a service to that person on the basis that they have or use a disability assist dog—then they are in fact denying the service to a person on the basis of their disability and therefore illegally discriminating against them. A "disability assist dog" is helpfully set out in the Dog Control Act as a dog certified by an organisation specified in that Act as being a dog trained to assist or being a dog in training to assist a person with a disability and while the Dog Control Act says an assist dog can enter and remain in any public space there's no clear way to seek resolution under the Dog Control Act like there is with the Human Rights Act and the Human Rights Commission. Rentals are one of the greyer areas as they are not a public space so are only covered by the insufficient protection in the Human Rights Act. So this bill in practice replaces "guide dog" in the Human Rights Act with "disability assist dog". It's pretty simple. At a high level this change is needed because those disability assist dogs perform an invaluable service to many New Zealanders living with disabilities who rely on the skills of their disability assist dog to enable their participation in society on a daily basis. Trained disability assist dogs are able to perform a wide variety of tasks depending on their owner's particular disability. It could be that a dog alerts someone with hearing loss to noises such as an alarm clock a telephone kitchen timer doorbells or fire alarms; alerts or protects somebody who's about to have a seizure or is having a seizure; or retrieves objects for a person who uses a wheelchair. These are just some of the examples of the many ways in which disability assist dogs play a critical role in enabling many New Zealanders to participate fully in society. Their purpose is quite different to a pet or everyday domestic animal and because of their crucial role in the lives of many disabled people it is essential that they are viewed and treated differently by the law. The areas that will be covered by this amendment to the Human Rights Act will be Government or public sector services; employment; access to public places vehicles and facilities; provision of goods and services; land housing and accommodation; and education. So this bill would mean no person can be discriminated against while applying for rental housing solely on the basis that they have and use a disability assist dog. What Murray went through would be illegal and he would have had legal recourse to challenge those denials of his rental.New Zealand signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2008. Back then it reflected a shift in the understanding of disability from the medical model focused on disability as an impairment as the cause of social exclusion to a human rights model. As the Human Rights Commission put it in a recent submission to this House "This means seeing persons with disabilities as rights holders rather than subjects in need of protection." While this bill won't fundamentally change the landscape for all disabled people it does help us recognise the rights of people with disabilities and when only about 2 or 3 percent of our housing stock is fully accessible it's I believe particularly important to remove any grounds of discrimination that may present a further barrier to getting into one of those rare precious spaces. But it's also clear that we need to do more than this—right?—and as Mojo and many campaigners have acknowledged to me this bill is only but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to creating an accessible society. There is much more to do but I do look forward to the support in this House for making this small but tangible and important change."