Hutchison Paul: Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and rehabilitation) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Hutchison Paul: Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and rehabilitation) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:612;Page:9587] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Part 3 “Needs assessment and care and rehabilitation plans” is certainly one of the very important parts of this bill which by and large I do support. The select committee put great emphasis on rehabilitation. That was explicitly stated in the commentary because members said during the hearing of submissions examples were brought to the attention of the committee of people with challenging behaviour which often reflected poor management and uncertain environment: “If the person is not receiving proper care they will possibly become a danger to themselves and/or other people.” Clearly this part of the bill is extremely important. The commentary goes on to state: “We believe there should be explicit recognition of the importance of rehabilitation where possible to ensure that people do not receive custodial care only.” 
Clause 15 “Needs assessments required for certain care recipients” is fairly prescriptively spelt out. There is always the great danger in this sort of legislation of being overly prescriptive and I want shortly to take up the point of the cultural assessment provisions because that is prescription gone berserk in this politically correct world. Once again this part has been infiltrated by the term “care recipient”. Most people throughout the world who look to the English language to contain relatively simple clear meaning are perplexed as to why we have to double up the verbiage and make it much more obscure but oh no the Labour Government insists on that sort of somewhat inane and totally unnecessary nomenclature. 
Nevertheless I absolutely agree with clause 19 “Maximum period for needs assessment and preparation of care and rehabilitation plan”. It is good to see a time limit put on that sort of thing which is so clearly important. 
Hon Rick Barker 
: What’s the time limit for Bill? 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: There was an interjection by the member for Tukituki over there. Is the member speaking specifically about the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Bill? I certainly hope he is. Clause 19(1) states: “The process of assessing the needs of a care recipient and preparing his or her care and rehabilitation plan must be completed as quickly as practicable.” Fortunately subclause (2) states: “The process referred to ... may not continue for longer than 30 days”. I wonder whether the Minister will take a call and say what will happen if it is not completed within 30 days. It is very important to have time limits explicitly put into legislation like this because in reality it is over that period of initial assessment and preparation of a plan that some disastrous and avoidable tragedies have occurred. 
Again one wonders why on a bill that has been talked about since 1997 and that came into the House in 1999 and is finally before the Committee under urgency at the end of 2003 the Labour Party has suddenly come to its senses and realised that time limits are important. If only it could have done so with regard to the bill itself. 
To go on to clause 23 “Cultural assessment” I cannot but agree wholeheartedly with the points that both Sandra Goudie and Heather Roy have made in terms of the extraordinary length to which the Labour Government is determined to try to legislate in such areas as culture ethnicity language and any religious or ethical beliefs. It seems to me that we live in a day and age—