Dyson Ruth: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dyson Ruth: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7729. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister for Disability Issues) 
: 
 I thank the member who has just resumed his seat Dr Paul Hutchison for his contribution. It has been an interesting debate over the last 5½ years. I am very interested to address first of all the member’s Supplementary Order Paper. He is requesting that members support a move to delay the implementation of the repeal of the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act. 
I want to contrast him with his “cheer man”—that is what he has been doing this evening—Simon Power. He spoke in this very same debate on 26 May 2004; we could hardly be accused of ramming this legislation through without adequate consideration. Simon Power said on 26 May 2004: “It lacks conviction because … [it has] a long-drawn-out period before coming into full force so indeed does this bill create a transition period until 2007.” The member went on to accuse me of lacking conviction in implementing a move towards an inclusive society despite his supporting the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill. He said: “she should crack on and get this legislation with a commencement date that reflects the courage of that conviction.” Well good on Simon Power. That was a very commendable speech and it is a shame that Dr Hutchison did not read his colleague’s comments before he moved his Supplementary Order Paper. 
I do not think that any legislation before this Committee for which I have been responsible as Minister has been subject to more misinformation and scaremongering. I exclude the member who has just resumed his seat from that because I do not believe he has been part of it in the main but some of his colleagues and members who fortunately have left Parliament since then were. Some of the scaremongering has been genuine and political—an attempt at point-scoring at the expense of people who I consider worthy of better treatment—and some of it has been based on a lack of information. I hope that through the Committee stage we can place some of those facts on the record and give the reassurance that people in sheltered workshops their families and providers are seeking. 
First I will talk about the number of people who are currently in sheltered workshops and the current legislative regime under which the workshops operate. About 3000 people are currently in the many many sheltered workshops around our country. About two-thirds of those people will not be affected by this legislation because they are not classified as being in work—they are not working in any sense of employment or in an employment relationship. They are doing either what is now called as the member who resumed his seat referred to community participation—what we used to call day activities—or some sort of training. So about 1000 people are categorised as being in what we would call employment. Currently those 1000 people because they are in a sheltered workshop have no right to any minimum wage sick leave holiday pay or basic employment rights at all regardless of the quality and quantity of work they do. That is—and no other word is appropriate—wrong. 
It is just wrong to have a blanket exemption without any regard for the work a person does. It is not acceptable. It was not acceptable in 2001 when I announced this policy—on the day the World Trade Center in New York was hit —it was not appropriate in 2004 and it is no more appropriate now. Instead of saying that therefore the blanket exemption would be removed entirely and that we hoped the market would just work it out I said that that was not an appropriate response to what was clearly a changing labour market and to what was for many people who have been in sheltered workshops for a long time a significant change. I said we would not remove the blanket exemption and have no exemptions although that has been actively proposed by many including some in this Chamber. I said that people would now have an individual assessment of their capacity to work and that on that basis they would be entitled to apply for an exemption to the minimum wage. In my view that is a fair and pragmatic way of moving the sector forward—and it certainly has moved forward. 
Ten years ago when I started working with the vocational services sector on this policy the sector was frankly very fragile. It was very poorly funded quite poorly managed and in many instances quite poorly governed. People worked in substandard environments and there were no resources for training or for advancing their capability. We have put very good money into the sector and we can see the results. We can see the results of support for infrastructure. Some workshops are in new buildings some have had their buildings altered to make them more appropriate and some have moved into new facilities. I have been recently to two workshops in Canterbury that have moved premises and they are now very impressive. Nearly all workshops have had staff training including management training and a large number have had governance support and assistance. 
So ensuring that the sector itself is robust and strong has been an important part of this. The sector has received additional funding for its direct contracts and for its workshops as well. Many have seen the face of the future looked at the aspirations and ambitions of their clients and said that they need to change not just to take account of the changing aspirations but to take account of the changing labour market. Many people have moved from what were quite repetitious not very stimulating day activities into either community participation or supported employment. We now have three times the number of disabled people in supported employment than we had 5 years ago and that is a very significant move forward. 
So in my view this is not just a fair approach but a pragmatic one to dealing with the changing aspirations and therefore with the changing responsibility of central government to support disabled people in our workplace. If people are doing a job the very minimum this Parliament should offer them is minimum wages and conditions protections. We have taken the pragmatic approach to individual exemptions in this case and many people will still be entitled to continue. 
The final point I make in this part of the debate is to correct the factual inaccuracies that I am sure were unintentionally demonstrated by Dr Hutchison in his contribution. He said that people in sheltered workshops who received minimum wages would be worse off financially than they would have been. That is not correct. At the conclusion of the debate on this part I will seek leave to table a graph that shows hours of work rate of pay net wage net benefit and the comparable income for people earning wages. People would be better off financially under any regime than they currently are by being on a benefit. Thank you Mr Chairman.