Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Kia orana e Te Vaa Tuatua. Thank you Mr Chair. I stand to speak to this Estimates debate in the social services and community sector this afternoon. My focus today will be on the area of disability issues. The Minister appeared before the Social Services and Community Committee last month—the month before actually on 20 June—and we covered off a wide range of votes on that day including disability issues. Over the last few years New Zealand has made huge and very important progress internationally and nationally in the way that we manage treat and think about our disabled people and how disabled people actually live in this country.We are a country that's been at the forefront of some of the changes in relation to disability issues. For example we were instrumental in passing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.Now it would be remiss of me if I did not pay tribute to the former Minister the Hon Nicky Wagner for her innovation in this area and her absolute passion for wanting the very best for people with disabilities to enrich their lives in whatever way they could—initiatives like Enabling Good Lives where more choice and control was given back to those who knew exactly what services and support they needed so they could go out and purchase the services that they wanted. During the Estimates hearing we actually heard the Minister say that she recognised that this programme does provide huge opportunities for disabled people.There was also the initiative that was enacted for the new design of the high-level parts of the disability sector and system. Alongside the Minister her team worked very closely on it for several months. Another major success came with Project 300 and I recall this project and the enthusiasm with which it was debated here and talked about. It had a goal of achieving 300 workplace positions for people with disabilities. Well that programme was so successful that 584 disabled employees were matched with employers. That project led to another rollout in the Bay of Plenty called EmployAbility and it helped those employers build strong teams and stronger communities by assisting those people with health conditions and disabilities into employment in that area. This is now a nationwide programme and it is rolled out to individual communities and is tailor-made for them.Now there is a great role model for us to look up to in this field and the person's name there is Robert Martin. I've mentioned Robert in this House before and I think he's a living example of what can happen when a person with disabilities is given support and opportunity. Robert sits as a member of the United Nations and he represents New Zealand in Geneva and I think that's an outstanding achievement. So it's heartening to see in the Estimates that support for Robert to continue working in his role at the United Nations is funded in these Estimates.Only 25.2 percent of disabled people are currently participating in the labour force compared to 72.6 percent. There are 1.1 million people in this country that have some form of disability; so it is not an insignificant number of people and every one of them deserves a fair go. Now we know that there's already a lot of support and advocacy that is done for people with disabilities but it's important that we do continue to innovate and invest because there is absolutely no downside if we do so.So it was with huge disappointment that we see in the Estimates that this Government a Government that thinks it owns the franchise on compassion that talks a big game—but then talk is cheap—in actual fact decreased the funding for disability assistance. The tragedy of that is that there is no signal in the Estimates for any new initiatives over the next four years and so the question has to be: for the last nine years what on earth have they been doing? The answer is obviously nothing. What's worse is that for each of the next four years the amount of the investment going into disability assistance is lower every year than it was under a National-led Government. Now it's an insult to the sector and another example of where real compassion sits.