Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): E Te Tiamana o Te Whare ā tēnā koe e ngā mema o Te Pāremata i roto i tēnei Wiki o Te Reo Māori tēnā koutou tēnā tātou katoa.[I acknowledge you Mr Chairman and members of Parliament in this Māori Language Week I commend you and us all collectively.]I want to talk about disability. I want to talk specifically about the Disability Support Services. When you have one in four people in this country identifying as having a disability—and I agree with my colleague that that is a vastly improved person in the Chair at the moment—Disability Support Services is very very important for one in four people. I want to talk about an Official Information Act request that revealed that there was a $45 million shortfall—something that the ministry calls an overspend—in Disability Support Services that was forecast in the 2015-16 year. This was due to increased costs in community care and residential support. The Government made cuts of $8.2 million which it called savings" and the rest of the $37 million was reprioritised. Disability Support Services revised its forecast in March 2016 and the shortfall was found to be $25.3 million for the end of 2015-16. Disability Support Services was given an additional $42 million to meet cost pressures in Budget 2016-17. This speaks to me of a Government that has no clue about what it takes to fund Disability Support Services in this country. That is what it speaks to. The Government uses spin and framing such as "overspend" as a convenient way of phrasing an absolute lack of knowledge around what is required. Let us look at what Disability Support Services is supposed to provide to the one in four New Zealanders who is identified as having a disability. It is supposed to provide home help and assistance with personal care. We all know that someone with a disability who needs to get to work for example and who is reliant on someone who comes in to do their personal care cannot get out of the house until that happens. Not being able to access appropriate home help or personal care means that you have created a barrier for that person with a disability to get out there and have a successful employment life. If they cannot get out of the house they cannot get to work and that makes them an unreliable employee. So unless we can ensure that we can support our home help and personal care support providers adequately—that they have enough resource so that they can get to people to have their showers and personal care done early enough for them to get to their place of employment—that creates a barrier for people with disabilities. What else is this supposed to support? It is supposed to provide equipment and modifications to housing and vehicles. Each and every one of the members in this House who have an electorate office will know that there have been people come to them who have said they have had difficulty getting a ramp put at their house and they have had difficulty getting modifications to their car. They say they are a prisoner in their home. If anything happens—if there is a fire at their home—they cannot get out because they cannot get a ramp to get out nor can they get a ramp to get in. I have one constituent who actually died before she got her ramp put into her home. This speaks of a Government that actually does not care about providing all the opportunities that people with disabilities need. The other thing that Disability Support Services is supposed to cover is breaks for carers and respite services. We know that a large cohort of the people who support people with disabilities are family members. Those family members do that because they love their family members their whānau. But they need support. They need help and also the people whom they support need to have respite services. When we have a Government that cannot count up the numbers—that does not know whether it needs more or less or what is going on—you can bet your bottom dollar that it is those people who will be the first ones to miss out on the support."