Faafoi Kris: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: 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:10192. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]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—