Lees-Galloway Iain: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10130. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]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.