King Annette: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10202. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): We commenced debate on the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) at around 9.20 or 9.30 this morning. We have gone from an introduction of a bill right through to a third reading in 1 day. It has been a truncated debate by the Minister of Health. It has been truncated by the National Government which voted for closure along the way and truncated by the Chair who took a closure motion on the most significant part of the bill when there were a large number of amendments put forward by the Labour Party in the short time frame in which we had to examine this bill.We have had little or no debate from the Government at all. There was a contribution from the Minister of Health on the first reading and the second reading and the third reading and there was one contribution from him when he was in the chair. We had no contributions at all to speak of from the cannon fodder muzzled backbenchers who have sat there sitting in their seats and keeping them warm for the day. They had read neither the regulatory impact statement nor the statement from the Attorney-General on this bill. They read none of the amendments. They just went along with whatever theywere told and voted when they were told to. What a mockery this has made of Parliament today. This is one of the worst processes on a bill which has been 20 years in the making as the Minister said. This is an incredibly complex issue where it is hard to find the balance. It is an area where we ought to have taken the time to work across Parliament and have taken up the offers that were made by the parties in the Opposition to work together to get an enduring solution to this longstanding problem. That was ignored and we had the bill introduced under urgency and debated and passed in 1 day.The public of New Zealand who may have followed this debate today will have no say. They will not have any input at all. We were told that we should accept that there was a technical working group that looked at this bill and that it came up with the ideas. Well when we heard about the technical advisory group we found that those who are the carers had very little input at all. Would you not have thought that you would involve in a very proactive way the very people who care for disabled adults in New Zealand? Would they not have had a lot of information? Would they not have had real meaningful experience about what it means to care for a family member 24 hours a day 7 days a week with brief periods of respite? What we found out was that the technical advisory group had one member from Carers New Zealand but she did not get any say on the policy that was developed. The only input she had was when the Ministry of Health called her and asked her to answer some questions. That to me is not a technical advisory group—well maybe it is technical but it certainly is not advisory. So the input into making this policy was almost devoid of those whom it affected the most.What I found interesting in the Minister’s third reading speech was what his expectations of New Zealanders are. That was very very enlightening for me and puts into perspective where the National Party comes from. His expectation he said is for New Zealanders to look after their own children and that they should be expected to look after their own family. Well in the main New Zealanders do but we have always been a society that has said that the most vulnerable those who are at the most risk those who need support in the society we have would be picked up and looked after. That has been a fundamental principle of New Zealand for my lifetime and well before my lifetime. But what we heard from the Minister today is that it is dog-eat-dog—you look after your own and when we have to do something about it and we are forced to we will make a few concessions. That is not the New Zealand that I want to live in. That is not the New Zealand that most people expect. They expect us to look after the most vulnerable in our society and the most vulnerable we could have at this stage are those who are so handicapped that they cannot look after themselves.We closed the institutions around New Zealand and it was a darned good thing we did too. We closed them because we knew we could look after them better in the community. The closing of institutions was sold to the people of New Zealand that people would live better lives in the community and that they would be supported. Those were the principles that underpinned the closing of the large institutions in this country. But that is not what we heard from the Minister. Perhaps he does not know that actually we do pay grandparents to raise grandchildren now. But he said that we should not pay and help people look after other people’s children or their own children. ACC pays for carers to look after people but we cannot pay these people who have not had an accident but who by some fate have ended up being disabled. I believe that we have finally seen the face of the National Party and the underpinning philosophy of the National Party and it is not a pretty one at all.There was insufficient time for consultation and we have had to rely very heavily on the regulatory impact statement. It was not available until this morning when we started this debate and as has already been said throughout the day we were shocked at whatwe received. The regulatory impact statement—maybe this is an issue that you Mr Speaker might like to take up—is there to provide information to this House for us to be able to debate a bill with some knowledge and confidence that we know what we are talking about. It is a regulatory impact statement that the public can read. They can look online to see what the bill is about. Firstly the regulatory impact statement was not online and secondly it was so redacted that you could not read it. I called it the “blankety-blank-blank-blank-blank regulatory impact statement”—page after page after page of blacked-out information that may have helped this House. That was not good enough. I have not seen that before. I have never seen a regulatory impact statement of that order in my time in Parliament.I often criticise the Hon Dr Nick Smith but I will give him credit for this: when the regulatory impact statement came out on Better Local Government he did not go through it and do this to it. He did not go through and cross out all the things he did not like. We at least had the information to be able to debate it.We have heard today of the many people who care for families and we know from the feedback that has been coming in to us as we debate it that there are many people who are disappointed. In fact Mr Cliff Robinson a 76-year-old man—Ian McKelvie: This is the fourth time you’ve used the same man.Hon ANNETTE KING: —is caring for two children—and I will say it again for the member for Manawatū. Mr Robinson is caring for two disabled children a 43-year-old and a 40-year-old. A 76-year-old is looking after them. What did he say? He has waited for a half-decent scheme. What did he get today? A half-baked one. The feedback we have got has been disappointment. The feedback has been that they cannot believe having made a decision that the Government would pay only the minimum wage for these families who will be looking after disabled family members. The question we have asked all day is why. Why would we pay these people less money than we would pay other carers? The Ministry of Health recommended $16 an hour and they are to be paid $13.75. They are not working a 40-hour week; they are working 24 hours a day 7 days a week and they are told by this Government that they are not worth the same as what other carers are paid. We cannot understand that.We moved an amendment and I put it to the members opposite to vote against it and they did—and they did. Every one of them is culpable because they have said that those carers out there looking after family with highly disabled family members are not worth being paid the same as other carers in our society. This bill is a disgrace. The process is a disgrace. We could have done so much better but for the arrogance of this National Government.