Turia Tariana: Disability (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turia Tariana: Disability (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18332. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker. First of all I acknowledge the members of the Disabled Persons Assembly who are in the gallery—kia ora. I also acknowledge the Minister Ruth Dyson for bringing the Disability (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Bill before the House tonight. The Maori Party has been happy to support this bill throughout its stages in the House. It amends a number of Acts in order to make them consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and as such it receives our full support. As a party we are utterly committed to addressing discrimination and social inclusion and barriers to employment education and access to services; the various amendments in the legislation will enable that. 
Our belief is to ensure that disabled persons and their whanau are able to access support in order to have a life of their own and to achieve that vital sense of purpose that we all need. Many Maori are missing out on entitlements to health and disability support. We in the Maori Party are calling for a review of income support to ensure full participation in family and community life. The Maori Party believes that information and communication that is tailored to the needs of Maori could be highly useful. We would also advocate for the development of a media campaign to address social stigmas around disabilities and impairment. We are committed towards addressing barriers in education employment and access to services to ensure that people with disabilities have the same employment rights as any other people. The Disabled Persons Assembly urged the House to ensure that no barriers were erected to delay prompt gratification of the United Nations convention and the convention allows disabled people to “confidently claim our human rights that other New Zealanders have …”—again we wholeheartedly support that. 
I am pleased to rise in this debate also to bring a very important challenge to the fore. A fortnight ago I was stopped by a woman in a shopping mall in Hamilton. That led us to discover a whole new pathway of thought regarding the relationships of health and disability providers including Maori with our haua—our disabled persons. That woman happened to be the indigenous persons’ representative on the United Nations International Disability Caucus steering committee a solicitor and human rights consultant Dr Huhana Hickey. I could not help but be struck by the anomaly that although in the passage of this legislation we are supporting the United Nations Convention this woman the indigenous people’s representative on a United Nations international disability association remains unacknowledged and unfunded by New Zealand. Huhana has expanded our knowledge of indigenous disability identity issues through the work she has done based on models of disabilities on indigenous well-being. She challenges us in this legislation to recognise how well this convention will take into account the issues of whanau whakawhanaungatanga—family relationships—interdependence within the community and collectivity identities. These concepts she argues are central to indigenous thinking yet are largely ignored by law and policy. 
Collective rights and individual human rights are inter-relational and interchangeable with one another. Within the Maori Party we share that concern. We believe there is a need to review the current organisations within the health and disability sector to assess their effectiveness in relation to Maori clients. It is about valuing the concept of self-determination of a collective wanting to determine their own rights as groups not just as individuals. As an example of such thinking we believe there needs to be integration of disabilities funding as opposed to the current silo approach and an integration of solutions to address issues faced by whanau with disabilities. The question we must then address is whether there is appropriate acknowledgment and recognition in this United Nations convention of the role and status of indigenous peoples. I think it is extremely relevant to bring to the debate the concept that as recently as August 2006 the United Nations International Disability Caucus working group was still debating the rights of women and girls not to be sterilised on the grounds of disabilities. If the issues of identity and whakapapa—or genealogy—are still so current in the international debate that reminds us all to be wary of areas we would not want to compromise on in our own domestic scene. New Zealand’s compliance with the United Nations convention will ensure that any discrimination against a person’s disability is prohibited. What we in the Maori Party want to be assured of is whether the unique and specific issues of indigenous peoples with disabilities are also fully considered. 
In our own land the Disability Strategy has many strengths and positives that might give us a steer as to the international context. However Maori whanau with disabilities want to be able to create their own solutions and to be self-determining. But providers have told us that Maori whanau with disabilities did not have enough input to produce a strategy specific to the needs of Maori. In their view the result is a generalist strategy whose implementation fails to address Maori-specific issues particularly kaupapa Maori services and access to Te Ao Maori including marae. Further providers have said that specific funding for Maori whanau with disabilities is quite inadequate. I heard that the Te Roopu Waiora Trust came to the Justice and Electoral Committee with precise detail as to how the issues of discrimination and marginalisation already identified around indigenous peoples are even more marked in the context of disability. 
We believe that it is essential that whanau Maori determine solutions to address the following issues: one indigenous deprivation including a lack of access to Maori language and knowledge particularly as residents of institutions such as deaf schools blind institutions and residential facilities for people with intellectual disability; two barriers to Government services including the fact that inadequate policies and rigid service menus have not included Maori-specific needs or input in community services both cultural and non-cultural; three lack of access to service and resource knowledge including health and disability supports; four processes that assume comprehension sight hearing and literacy at levels beyond many Maori disability communities; five physical access restrictions to public facilities both internally and externally; six attitudinal discrimination and institutional racism; and seven under-utilisation by Maori of advocacy and grievance processes. Fortunately we come armed with some solutions as well. We believe the solutions lie in working with whanau hapu and iwi and also with the Maori-specific expertise available across this community including groups such as Tamaki Ngati Kapo the Maori community of vision impaired/blind members and whanau; Mana Tangata Turi the Maori deaf community; the National Steering Group of Maori Disability Services; the Aotearoa Whanau Carers Network; and the Taikura Trust. 
In the conclusion to her doctoral thesis Huhana Hickey recommended that one of the aspects of providing full autonomy for those with disabilities was to ensure that Maori with disabilities are at the centre of the decisions around their resourcing. Understanding that disability representation is not only about impairment but also about the representation of all the diverse identities within the disabilities world is key to participation by those groups who have been traditionally under-represented. We must be able to place the choices and direction of life back into the hands of whanau with disabilities. We must ensure that service delivery is whanau-friendly minimising the number of agencies traipsing through their lives. We seek to build the strength of whanau capability and reduce the reliance on formal and specialist support structures. We want to extend the knowledge and strategies whanau can access to give them greater resilience in times of stress. Finally we look to encourage relationships of trust between both services and whanau and between services and the State. Kia ora. 
Debate interrupted.