Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you Madam Speaker. I want to first acknowledge the previous member Jan Logie's comments acknowledging sign language and its place in our week this week. It has been very useful I think for the members in the House to engage and to use sign language and to learn what we can to acknowledge something which is so special about the official languages of our country and of our culture here in New Zealand. Now this bill is very important. The previous speakers have said that it is small and it is technical but it's important because it deals with what I think is the most fundamental of all human rights and that is the right to dignity. We in New Zealand celebrate our right to dignity and it is a right that I think gives effect to all other human rights. Where one group may suffer from a disadvantage in enjoying their rights to dignity then we all suffer. This bill is brought in the context of a Government which is committed to bringing together a team of 5 million to tackle COVID and to stamp it out in this country. Central to that strategy has been the belief that every person in our community has their part to play and that every single person is a contributing member of that team. Central to that belief is that everyone deserves to be treated fairly and that's why it's so important that this change—which again is technical and minor—is about ensuring that every person in our team of 5 million can enjoy that fundamental right to dignity. So I want to address two points here. The first is how this bill does protect that right to dignity and the second is about who the bill protects. I want to then touch at the end on what it doesn't do and the effect that it will not have on lending and repossession of goods. But to this first point about the protections that it offers to disabled people it's really important to acknowledge here that essentials to life are already protected from bailiff seizure for judgment debtors. If a bailiff was to go to the home of a person who was subject to a court order to pay debt that they may owe whether it's for something like unpaid rent or whether it's for something like court fines a bailiff would not be able to seize things that you and I would consider essential to our own lives—things like food things like our children's clothing. But before this bill it wasn't clear whether or not they could take something which was essential to the life of someone with a disability. I'm thinking here about an example that one submitter raised with us which was a spa pool which was essential to care for their child who had a form of cerebral palsy. Those things are essential to our children or to people in our community who have disabilities to be able to live their lives in the way that they see is good and in the way that they see is dignified. So to extend the same protections that you and I have from confiscation of goods and things that we own which are absolutely essential to our lives it's important that we make this step to acknowledge those things which are necessary for the judgment debtor's care support and independence and to promote their inclusion and participation in society. That's at the heart of this bill and that's why it has the support of the House. I think that it's not just about kindness; this is the right thing to do. It makes the rights of those with disabilities equal to those of others in our communities and that's why it's important. If I turn now to the community which this bill would primarily affect and who it protects when the bill came to the Justice Committee the protections added were specifically with regard to seizing property from a judgment debtor with a disability. Now the committee considered that as unnecessarily limiting because many of these situations concern parents with children who they care for who have these sorts of goods in their homes that are essential to their living and also older people. My own father lives with me. He's 88 and he has a number of things around our home which are valuable like mobility aids which could not fairly be taken from him if we were trying to promote his inclusion in our community and to let him live a life that he sees as dignified. But under the old law if I was held to account in a court in that way and I was subject of a judgment order to pay my debts those things around my house would be fair game for confiscation. That's a double whammy of unfairness where a person with a disability by reason of their age or by reason of a disability that they were born with is punished for the debt incurred by those who care for them. That's simply not right and this bill addresses that. I particularly want to acknowledge the submission of Age Concern New Zealand and Auckland Disability Law which put this very clearly. They argued that it could lead to the scenario in which something essential for the care of a disabled person was taken by a bailiff because the carer was in debt and that would be manifestly unjust. I'd also like to touch on one of the quibbles as the member for Tauranga called it which was brought by submitters. I think it was a very seriously held concern about the bill's potential effect on lending and repossession of goods. I want to make it very clear for anyone who may be listening who's concerned about perhaps a chilling effect on lending to people with disabilities that that is not what this bill does. We had a lot of discussion about this at select committee and it comes down to this. The submission as it was put was that lenders or second-tier and third-tier lenders or shops which sell goods to people on say hire purchase arrangements or Afterpay if you're paying online would be disincentivised to sell goods to people with disabilities because they would have to actively ask a person if they were disabled and then wouldn't be able to extend finance to that person. That's not the case and I want to be really clear on that. It's not the case because that's not how judgment debtor orders work. In this situation that the bill addresses a court order has to be made whereby any and all debt that a person has incurred can be addressed by a bailiff seizing any property that they may have under their control in order to pay for that debt. That's not like a situation where if you go to any shop on the main street and pay with Afterpay or with credit that shop can secure the lending against the item. That's called a registration on the Personal Property Securities Register and in that situation that lender will still be able to recover any debt that you owe by reclaiming that particular item. I know there was a lot of confusion in this. There was some confusion at the committee stages. But I thank the officials for their advice on this matter which turned out to be quite simple after all.I'd finally like to comment about this Government's commitment to addressing the economic injustice which arises from unfair debt practices. Predatory lending is something that this Government has taken action against and it disproportionately affects people with disabilities. I want to commend in particular the faith-based organisations and the churches which are also acting against predatory lending practices. I'm thinking here in particular of the Manurewa Salvation Army which I've had the pleasure of meeting with several times now and seeing the practices of their Good Shop bus which goes out to the homes or people in Manurewa. They go to the homes of people who might not otherwise be able to get out to the shops. Often these are people with some form of disability—one of the 1 million to 1.2 million New Zealanders who live with disabilities daily. Their practices have meant that the unfair practices of essentially second-tier or third-tier lenders going out in vans to these people's houses no longer has the same kind of sway that it did. It's those NGOs and those faith-based organisations which are leading in this area. We can take our cues from them by supporting this bill which appropriately acknowledges the right to dignity of all people including disabled people in New Zealand.