SpeechDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a real pleasure to speak on this bill because many of us have got family members we've got work colleagues or we've got friends for whom aspects of the built environment pose real barriers to them living the lives that they want. I just think about my father following his stroke and those three steps that used to go up to our front door the steps we always used to run up without even thinking about. For him they became a significant and almost insurmountable barrier to coming and having dinner with us. I also think about people who have spoken in the public domain about having a vision impairment and changes to the bus timetable that the council has put in place changes to routes changes to timings. And while most of us could read about that in the local newspaper for those with vision impairments if we didn't have an accessible format what it could mean is actually missing the bus entirely or else getting on the wrong bus in the wrong direction and missing an important event. And I'm also thinking about people in wheelchairs who if there's no accessibility there's no ramp at the local cafe are not able to go there and meet with their friends or if they can get up to the counter but there's no accessible facilities it means that their time there gets cut short because they have to go home to use their own bathroom. So this is a really important issue. I think when we're thinking about how we design our built environment it's incredibly important that we have the voices of those with lived experience around the table. And I think we've got a situation in New Zealand at the moment where our approach to accessibility is incredibly fragmented across different Government agencies and we've also got very few formal avenues for the voices of those with lived experience to have their voices put into policy. What this bill does is it takes us much further towards achieving a goal of having an accessible society where everybody can go and participate in the way that they want. And so what this bill is doing is putting in place a framework which we can use across Government and that creates an approach where we identify barriers and we prevent them and we remove them. In doing so we've got the voices of those with lived experience around the table. As we've heard already it establishes a ministerial advisory committee the Accessibility Committee and this is going to be led by disabled people and their whānau their carers. What that is going to be doing is making those recommendations at the highest level to the Minister for Disability Issues on how to address accessibility barriers. And as we've also heard the committee will have eight members who'll be appointed by the Minister. In appointing those members the Minister has got to make sure that the majority of members are disabled but also that the members of that committee have a very sound understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi and also of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and also have experience in preventing and removing accessibility barriers. So it will be an incredibly skilled group around the table to provide that advice but we're also making sure that we've got adequate representation—making sure that you've got the broad range of types of impairment reflected around the committee different age groups and people from different cultural backgrounds and ages but also making sure that we've got whānau and caregivers there to add their voices to where we need to go. It's going to be important that that committee then makes recommendations to the Minister on how we can prevent barriers to access for various Government agencies not only making recommendations but then being required to report annually on their progress at implementing those recommendations. Basically then the Minister will have to present a copy of that report to us here in Parliament in the House. This is really an important part of the ongoing cycle of monitoring evaluation and making sure that that progress is being made. And so alongside Whaikaha which is basically the new Ministry of Disabled People which was only established a month ago this is the important next step in making sure that disabled people and their whānau have that voice and are able to reduce those barriers that prevent them from living the lives they want. I'm really looking forward to hearing from people coming to select committee and sharing their views on the bill about what they feel the bill will achieve for them and any areas they think may need to be strengthened. This is an important bill and I'm really proud to commend this to the House.