Goudie Sandra: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Goudie Sandra: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:638;Page:8211] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I would like to commend my most excellent colleague Dr Paul Hutchison for a very good précis of the time he spent on the original bill the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill. I recall the time that I was involved with that bill some years ago. At that time in actual fact the political parties opposing the bill were United Future and New Zealand First as well as National. I am really quite surprised. I know even Sue Bradford had some misgivings earlier in the piece and one of the comments she made was that in the end this is a political and ideological issue. 
In some respects she is actually quite right. Why was this legislation brought into being in the first place? We are told that it was because not paying these people the minimum wage in a work environment was contrary to the Human Rights Act and that they needed to be treated in the same way as every other worker in the workforce and at least paid the minimum wage. That is fine except that while the Government is looking at bringing in the minimum wage for all these people in sheltered workshops it may find that they may not have jobs and they may be assessed as being exempt from the requirements of the minimum wage. I do not know of any other work environment where workers are actually given an exemption from any form of work payment yet this is happening in this legislation. So on the one hand the Government wants to bring workshops into line with every other workplace environment but on the other hand it is not doing that because it is providing wage exemptions which does not happen in any other workplace environment. 
The whole issue is about how that will affect the viability of sheltered workshops. They provide a workplace opportunity for these people when the only other option for them is community participation. Sheltered workshops—which actually wanted to be called business services—may no longer be able to afford to pay a range of people the minimum wage as well as accommodate and provide for them in their workplaces even though they might be on an exemption. They will not be able to afford to do that in terms of the time and effort required for all of the services they provide to these people. They do not provide just a work opportunity even though it might be for only a few hours a day if that; they provide a whole lot more than that. They provide support in a whole range of fields—budgeting friendship health and even hygiene and just general life skills—and they provide timeout for the family. There is a raft of services and supports provided by people who come under the “sheltered workshop” classification. We are talking about the Abilities Group on the North Shore Southland Enterprises and a whole lot of other places that provide those services. 
So what were the concerns about the legislation? There was no impact study on the effects of it on those who will no longer be employed or have the opportunity to go into a workplace environment like Abilities on the North Shore in Auckland which we classify as a sheltered workshop. There was absolutely no calculation of the additional costs in the event of closures. So what will community participation add to these people’s experiences? Instead of being valued as workers as they perceive it they are going to go out of that workplace environment into what we call community participation. All they do there are activities that we would do on a weekend. That is not being valued as people who are making valid working contributions. They thought they were making valid working contributions when they could rock up to Abilities Group and feel like they were contributing and doing something. Whether they were is immaterial; it is how they felt about that. It gave them self-worth and a feeling of belonging and involvement. It gave them the mana if you like of being classed as workers even though they might not have been paid for that instead just getting an extra allowance topping up their benefits. That top-up was always handy but they will not get that under community participation. Instead they are denied the opportunity of having that type of work environment and of feeling like they are valued workers. 
They are put into community participation and what do they do? They might go to the movies they might do a bit of painting they might sit in front of the television—all of those things that other workers in every other workplace do in their time off and on weekends. There was no assessment of the effects on caregivers and families if there is no other option and the individual cannot remain with his or her current provider. There was no assessment of the effects on caregivers and families. In fact families were constantly complaining about the fact that there was inadequate consultation with them and with those people of whom they were guardians. 
There was an assumption that there would be no increase in the number of labour inspectors. As I read the legislation I understand that the labour inspectors will rely upon the workplaces to do their assessments. Labour inspectors are going to come along and say: “Yes that’s OK.” or “That’s not OK.” We now see that under a new amendment to the Act the inspectors will have the ability to revoke exemption at will so that is a bit of a concern and will certainly be a concern for all parties to that situation. I wonder after an assessment how the result is conveyed to a person who has been assessed. I cannot imagine the situation when someone is assessed and told: “I’m sorry you’re not eligible for the minimum wage.” How do you give that sort of message to somebody who has a limited level of understanding? Imagine rocking up to someone in the environment of this House and saying: “I’m sorry but you are just not up to snuff. We’ve given you an assessment and we have found you wanting so we don’t want you in this environment any more.” That assessment is done by a third party; it is not done by electors. 
Providers of community participation have no long-term certainty. People have no guarantee that they will always be able to go to community participation and that it will operate 5 days a week and take up all of the time in which they were going along to somewhere like Abilities Group. There was no calculation of the additional costs if community participation further increases the demands on caregivers. That is a very real aspect of this legislation. What normally happens is that people go along to sheltered workshops like Abilities Group—I keep mentioning Abilities Group because it is the one I have the most experience with—and they love it. Abilities Group took on board the cost of extra caregivers and the cost of extra people there to provide the additional supports that were needed outside of the sort of work that they might be doing in that environment. The sheltered workshops also organised trips etc. and time off. So the workers had a social club as well. 
We are very concerned that none of those aspects were considered that the consultation with families and the individuals who will be directly affected was inadequate and that the calculation of the impacts of costs was also totally inadequate. National supports the aim of any disabled person who can work in supported employment in the community being able to do so. We are just concerned that those people will not have the ability to choose that for themselves that they will not have the work environments that they have been enjoying up until now and that community participation will take the place of what they used to think of as their jobs. To me that is a crying shame.