Lees-Galloway Iain: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: 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:10209. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Can I start my final contribution on this New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) by acknowledging the families and the people with disabilities who have been fighting for so many years to get some progress in this area. I want to acknowledge those who will be better off—slightly—as a result of this legislation and I want to acknowledge those who will be left out by this legislation. It will be a particularly sad day for them because the Government gave them hope that finally the solution was going to be found and then it pulled that hope away by bringing this bill to the House. Some people have called it half-baked. I think it does not even make it to being a third baked actually. It is a very very poor solution. It is not even a solution to the need to support families who are looking after people with disabilities who make that commitment 24/7 365 days a year for year after year after year. It is a commitment that those of us who do not experience that cannot possibly imagine. We cannot possibly fathom what it takes to look after with that degree of care someone with that level of need and everything that goes with it.The other aspect of this bill has been the astonishing way in which the Government has been prepared to trample on democracy and human rights. This regulatory impact statement is starting to become quite famous actually. I think it is more famous than the bill.Catherine Delahunty: The risible RIS.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: The risible RIS as Catherine Delahunty said. There is a song related toThe Wizard of Ozin there somewhere which might be worked on later tonight. But this really is an astonishing display of how poorly this Government considers the need for openness transparency and democracy. The regulatory impact statement is supposed to be the advice that we MPs can receive—impartial advice so that we actually know what the bill is about. We can take that advice to the select committee and submitters can have a look and they can come and tell us what they think about it. Well of course there has been no select committee process. That actually makes this document even more important in the absence of a select committee process.Members of Parliament need even more information than what we would ordinarily get because we do not get the opportunity to hear from the people whom the bill will actually affect to hear what the impact will be on them. And this is what we get. This is what we get from this arrogant arrogant Government which thinks it knows best and that it has the right to trample on democracy and on people’s rights. It is bad enoughthat we have pages blanked out like this in the regulatory impact statement but what is even worse is that the bit that is blanked out the most is the section titled “Risks arising from other agencies’ policies” about risks associated with enacting this legislation.Surely members of Parliament the only people in New Zealand who get an opportunity to vote yay or nay on a bill should have a full understanding of what the risks associated with that legislation are Mr Macindoe. Surely we at least should get a full understanding of what the risks are but we do not even get that. That is just the approach that this Government takes. Who cares about democracy as long as the Government can get the politics right and convince people that it has done the job and actually settled this issue.The second bit of course is the human rights factor. What this bill does is it says that people can no longer take their concerns to the Human Rights Commission. They could up until yesterday but from today onwards no it cannot be done. So people no longer have the right to actually refer cases to the Human Rights Commission to ensure that there is no continuing discrimination. But of course what we know is that this bill actually establishes a new discrimination by saying to people that if you were lucky enough—if you were smart enough quick enough—to get a complaint in before 16 May you are OK; after 16 May that right has been taken away from you. I think these are aspects of the fact that it is not being extended to all the families and that there is some arbitrary measure of what “high need” actually is and that has not been fully explained in this bill. That will be something that the Minister of Health I suppose will calculate at some point in time and it will be calculated based on cost not on need. The fact that these rights to refer to the Human Rights Commission have been taken away from people and the fact that carers will be paid less for looking after a family member than they would if they were looking after someone who is not a family member are more discriminations that are built into this legislation. It just makes it all the more disappointing.It would be one thing if people’s immediate reaction to this bill was that it was a bad thing that it was introducing something that was anathema to the Opposition that it was something that people had not been seeking but it is even worse that it purports to be a solution to a problem that has been around for 20 years and that it was introduced as something that should be hailed in the disability sector and that the families should be really pleased to see. We know that simply is not the case. The little bit of response that we have been able to have—because we have not had the select committee process the only opportunity that people impacted by this bill have had to respond has been to email and call MPs through the day. The response we have had has been exactly that that initially they thought this looked quite good but then as the hours went by it just looked worse and worse and worse as people started to grasp what the bill was actually about. I think that is sad and an absolute travesty because people expected more. The worst bit about it is just how little—