Roche Denise: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Roche Denise: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2509. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DENISE ROCHE (Green) 
: 
 This week is Youth Week. It is quite ironic really that this Budget delivers such a harsh deal for young people. If we look at the reduction in allowances for postgraduate study and if we look at what is happening with student loans it really is quite a savage deal for our younger people. 
It is quite distressing as well to see the Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill which attacks our older people in front of the House. The Green policy is to oppose asset testing for our senior members. We have this policy for several reasons and my colleague Kevin Hague has already outlined some of them. One reason is that we see asset testing—and this legislation seeks to increase the threshold basically—as discriminatory. It is discrimination against older people because there are no other health care services for which you have to front up and be asset tested on in order to access them. 
We also oppose it because it is unevenly spread. I think the previous speaker the Hon Trevor Mallard referred to the fact that people who are quite well off and who are used to placing things in family trusts will be able to rort the system. They will not be as savagely dealt to as those who are less well off but who still have their own assets. It goes against sensible reasoning. We have already heard from a previous speaker that this actually delivers just $4.5 million in savings which is not much when you consider the lifelong contribution that our senior members have made to our society. 
The bill also goes against what we see as the current policy for the care of the elderly which is about ageing in place. We are moving to a situation where older people will be picking up residential care only episodically if you like and where they will move into residential care for respite and then come back into the community. It is going to be very difficult to do that if they have already had to sell their family home. 
The capping of the threshold makes it harder for people. I live on Waiheke Island. It is a really beautiful place to live. It has been a haven for older people and quite a large number of our community are beneficiaries. Most of those beneficiaries are superannuitants. People retired to Waiheke because it used to be cheap. It was a great place to live out your last years in good health in the sun and go swimming every day and people bought cheaply in order to fund their lifestyles. What has happened in the last 10 to 15 years is that the property boom has meant that our older people are now asset-rich. They are asset-rich because the property prices have increased because there has been quite a lot of property speculation. The property speculation has meant that the cost and the value of people’s homes have gone up. What that means for our older people is that they are now at stages where they are having to access residential care. 
In the case of Mr Jones who actually was the president of Grey Power—and a serial submitter who is going to be seriously hacked off about not being able to submit on this—his wife went to a rest home some years ago. He has been asset tested and this will mean that he will suffer more hardship because his bach that he bought 30 years ago is now worth half a million dollars. That means he has to pay for the quality of care that his wife receives. He treks over to the North Shore every day of the week to see her. He does that because that is the commitment he made when he married her. I cannot believe this Government is being so cruel to our older people. This is a stingy and unpleasant piece of legislation.