Hutchison Paul: Disability (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hutchison Paul: Disability (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18326. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the second reading of the Disability (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Bill. I very much also appreciated the fact that there was unanimity within the Justice and Electoral Committee on the need to put this bill through. In fact all submissions were in support of the bill and in some cases in passionate support of it. I think I see that Wendy Wicks and some people from DPA (New Zealand) are in the gallery and indeed they articulated a most passionate and convincing submission. The DPA submission urged all different political parties to “embody the spirit of the UN by cooperating to ensure that the rights of disabled New Zealanders remain paramount. This will be demonstrable by ratification as quickly as possible.” So indeed it is good that the National Party along with all the other parties in Parliament is able to support this bill to go through. 
National did have some reservations however with the fact that there appeared to be no time for other interested parties to be able to submit on this bill and I will come to that aspect later. It seems to me that if we are going to realistically implement the sorts of things we want to in the way of the New Zealand Disability Strategy then it is really important that organisations like unions businesses around the country and the general public do have the time and opportunity to participate in this process. Unfortunately there was a rush of circumstances and I do not know why that was absolutely necessary because the initial convention was signed I think back in March 2007. But it would have been good if those organisations had had the opportunity to make submissions and to talk to them as well. 
I was particularly struck by the submission from the Human Rights Commission which clearly had put a lot of thought into studying the convention. The Human Rights Commission was set up by the National Government in the 1990s. It says that the declaration is a set of principles designed to “promote and encourage respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race sex language or religion;”. Although the international instruments apply to every person there is no explicit recognition of people with disabilities except in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is so important to have this specific bill go through the House so that the convention can be ratified and the agreement signed. 
The commission also makes the note that ratification of an international treaty is a significant undertaking and that when a State ratifies a treaty it accepts that it will be bound by its terms and accepts an obligation to deliver the rights in the treaty to its citizens. I think that this provision should not be underestimated in its importance. That was one of the reasons I was concerned there was not a greater opportunity for other people as well as for directly interested parties—such as the DPA the IHC and the Human Rights Commission—to participate in the submission process. This convention will undoubtedly raise expectations; it is very important that we have a realistic response in New Zealand and that those expectations do not go unfulfilled. There has been a feeling that the New Zealand Disability Strategy in many respects has not been implemented at the pace or in the way that was originally envisaged and that feeling certainly came out in the submissions to the select committee inquiry on disability services. 
The Human Rights Commission went on to say that the commission shared the concerns about the adequacy of domestic legislation relating to the obligation to accommodate disabled people. It made the very important point that as the definition of discrimination on the basis of disability “includes all forms of discrimination including denial of reasonable accommodation;” the concept of reasonable accommodation is pivotal to the convention. This sort of thing actually happens quite often in everyday life. One of the examples we were given was that an airline had charged more for someone who needed some extra oxygen. One would have expected that any reasonable airline would accommodate a disabled person without having to go to that extra length of making them feel even more uncomfortable by charging them for the oxygen they needed. 
The law around the concept of accommodation as I understand it has not been well developed in New Zealand whereas in the United Kingdom quite a lot of work has been done on it. The commission cited the case of Baroness Hale of Richmond in  
Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of Lewisham v Malcolm 
 where it was stated as follows: “But if the object of the disability discrimination legislation is to ‘level the playing field’ to enable disabled people to do things that they otherwise would not be able to do then simply ignoring their disability and asking that they be treated in exactly the same way as non-disabled people will not do. A reasonable adjustment has to be made for the special difficulties which their disabilities present.” 
One of the other areas that the Human Rights Commission was concerned about was the sustainable transport discussion paper that was brought out several years ago. The commission was very concerned that in actuality little progress had been made on improving the accessibility of public and land transport systems. I remember very clearly when a wheelchair-bound constituent came to me. He had gone down early one morning to the Pukekohe railway station but was left on the platform because the guard was not prepared to help him into the train. This is the sort of thing that apparently happens in practice in everyday New Zealand and certainly we have to make every effort we can to redress it. Hopefully it is the sort of discipline that the convention will impose upon us. 
I do not think that the point I made earlier on about the cost to New Zealand of compliance with the Treaty should go unmentioned. It was of concern to me to see that the report from the Government considered that minimal financial costs would be incurred by New Zealand as a result of implementing the convention. I believe that that is unrealistic which is one of the reasons that I felt it was important that we had realistic economic evaluations of the implications of the convention. In fact the report went on to say that “the primary cost for departments will be in contributing to new reporting and accountability requirements every 4 years. It is considered that existing Government mechanisms will facilitate the new reporting requirement and that it will operate similarly to the existing mechanisms for the other core United Nations human rights treaties. This process can be adapted for the purpose of reporting to the convention thus any additional costs are expected to be able to be met through existing baselines.” Well I think that this is one of the areas where the Government has worn slightly rose-tinted glasses. 
Nevertheless the signing of this convention will hopefully be a start on the discipline to ensure that we address much better accommodation in New Zealand—or much more reasonable accommodation—of disabled people than we have in the past. The National Party is very glad to support this bill in its second reading. Thank you.