Logie Jan: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: 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:10132. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I will just relax. This New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) is a slap in the face to some of the hardest-working New Zealanders and is a demonstration of this Government’s heartless—and I would go so far as to say almost sociopathic—disregard for human suffering and also human endeavour. This bill seeks to reaffirm that people will not generally be paid to provide health services or disability support services to their family members. It confirms that the Crown and district health boards may operate—and always have been authorised to operate—policies in respect of family carers that allow payment in certain limited circumstances or allow for payment at a lower rate than that for carers who are not family members. It stops claims of unlawful discrimination.I would like to take this short call today—and I wish I had more time because there is so much to say but I guess I will get more chances because we are speeding through—and I would like to speak as the Greens’ women’s spokesperson to recognise that this bill is a women’s issue. This bill is a feminist issue. I know that the public face of this bill has been a man and a wonderfully brave man at that. Nothing that I am about to say is to undervalue his work; in fact the very opposite is true. But about two-thirds of family carers are women. As the website of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment points out the higher proportion of female carers in all age groups is consistent with lower rates of employment among females including lower rates of full-time employment. In this country there is a feminisation of poverty. Women are carrying this economy and that is made invisible by this Government. This bill is an entrenchment of that inequality.This bill reinforces what Marilyn Waring described 25 years ago this year as the “counting for nothing” phenomenon. Of course some men are doing this work. Men have now been pulled into this slipstream of women’s inequality and have been caught in that trap which has been created by this entrenched gender inequality. This has come about from the time when male statisticians and economists drew up the current accounts for nations all around the world. They ignored all work within the home. They made work within the home invisible and pretended that it was non-productive. Despite the fact that it would be really easy to make it productive—because it is actually work that is paid for in other contexts and all we need to do is use that counting measure in the home—this bill reinforces that inequality and that male patriarchal system that means that women are bearing the brunt of poverty in this country.History has led us to where we are now. People pretend that we are in an enlightened age of equality and equal opportunity. Well this bill is another bleak reminder to the women of this country that nothing much has changed. Here this Government had the opportunity given to it by the courts to recognise discrimination and to improve the situation for women and people with disabilities. And what has it done? It has chosen to change the law to entrench it.