Dyson Ruth: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: 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:10148. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call in the Committee stage of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) and I hope that the Minister of Health takes the opportunity to answer some of the questions that were foreshadowed during the truncated debates that we have already had on this bill.Can I first of all agree with one point that the previous speaker Dr Paul Hutchison made and that is that for some family members who have been denied access to payment for caring this bill does progress that issue and that is a good thing. It is massively outweighed by the frame in which the Minister has put this resolution. The Minister has quite clearly said in his press statements and in the introduction to this bill as well as in the questions and answers from the Ministry of Health that accompanied it that it is the total responsibility of family members to care for their disabled other family members. That undermines the whole point of this bill.The point of this bill should be to say that under the public health and disability responsibilities that the Government has a family member who is performing a support service that would otherwise be performed by a paid caregiver should be entitled to be paid as well. So the whole framing of this debate has been that a Minister was dragged kicking and screaming from the Court of Appeal and into Parliament to address the issue that was raised by the Atkinson family. The Minister knows that when Labour was leading the Government the matter had not been resolved by the courts. It was resolved by the courts during his term of Government and for the last 12 months he has been working out how he could get out of the responsibility of paying for family caregivers.The other point that I want to raise in relation to the issues that Dr Paul Hutchison raised is that it would pay the member well to read the regulatory impact statement because that has accurate costings rather than the drivel that he reported to the House. The accurate costings are that it would have cost only an additional $17 million per year to include all people who are family caregivers who are currently not being paid. That is a miniscule amount of money within the total health budget and if the Minister wants to fix the situation then he should have fixed it.So the remaining 3000 or so—2800—families for whom the Ministry of Health in its regulatory impact statement has presented this information to Parliament will be feeling very angry and very let down by the promises that the Minister has made to solve the situation. Not only did the Minister promise to solve it he then attacked Annette King and other members of the Labour Government for not solving it and he has not done it either. He has not done it. It has just slipped through his fingers. He had the opportunity. He had the court case. He had it resolved during his time as Minister.After taking it to the High Court and then it going to the Court of Appeal the Minister did not fix the situation. This bill does not do it.On page 11 of the regulatory impact statement it says quite clearly that having no targeting and paying all family carers who are providing home and community support services would cost at mid-point $65 million per annum with the range going as high as $75 million. That would ensure that the 5400 family members of disabled people who are currently providing that home support would in fact be paid for it. So there is a smidgen of good in here and why on earth the Minister did not do his work properly and get the entire package sorted is beyond belief. But he has made it worse than that. Not only has he denied access to payment for so many thousands of family caregivers but he is also in this legislation extinguishing their right to take a case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal on the grounds of discrimination. That was the basis on which the other families won this concession. Had the Atkinson family—or any of the other families actually—taken that action under the criteria that the Minister has laid down I do not think they would be entitled to payments still. They are getting it only because they have been through the legal process and the Minister has finally agreed to settle.The Minister has agreed to settle with those families but under the criteria that he is laying out in this legislation for very high and complex needs disabilities those families would not be entitled to the payment that they have won through the courts. So why would the Minister disentitle other family members from taking what is their legitimate case? That is the very question that is answered in this report which is also on the Table from the Attorney-General the Hon Chris Finlayson. He takes quite a long time to say it but it is from the Attorney-General. On page 3 of his report he says at point 17: “It is important to note that a savings provision … preserves the position of the parties in theFamily Carers case and one other case … That litigation may continue or be settled as if the Bill had not been enacted.” So regardless of this legislation those families would have reached a settlement with the Minister or the Ministry of Health.Then point 18 says: “New section 70E appears to limit the right to judicial review because it would prevent a person from challenging the lawfulness of a decision on the basis that it was inconsistent with s 19(1) of the Bill of Rights Act.” He goes on to say in point 19 of his report to the House: “On balance I have concluded that limitation cannot be justified under s 5 of the Bill of Rights Act.” So why would the Minister want to do that? Why would the Minister want to trumpet the fact that he has finally resolved an issue that has been a public policy debate for over two decades according to him? Why would he want to resolve that issue by creating another clear—and confirmed by the Attorney-General—discrimination while at the same time extinguishing the rights of those families who have confirmed this discrimination created by this legislation and prevent them from taking the matter through any system of human rights to redress? That undermines the whole point of this legislation.There are further negative aspects to it. There is the fact that the Minister has not determined that a family member should not be paid perhaps at the average rate that other caregivers are being paid at but only at the minimum wage—so family caregivers’ work is worth less than for somebody who is not from that family. I do not agree with that. If a person is doing the work then they should be paid at the same rate as anyone else who is doing it.I do not think that the sector has been involved in the discussions on this final piece of legislation. I agree that if there was a roll-out of this provision for payment of family caregivers then those with the highest needs would be a priority and that is correct. But this is not a roll-out. This is the beginning and the end of the situation. This is legislation that is not being brought in incrementally. This is legislation that is being done through all stages of this Parliament under urgency with no consideration at all—not even one day—by a select committee. None of the families involved none of the caregivers not Carers New Zealand and no organisations that are involved in the provision of this support for disabled people are being allowed one word of input into this legislation. It is being passed right through all stages under urgency without any public scrutiny.I think that is an immoral position for the Minister of Health to take. To have such a significant piece of legislation affecting the rights of so many families of disabled people—to have those rights extinguished without them having an opportunity to have one say—is an outrage. I am beside myself with surprise that the Māori Party with the Minister for Disability Issues as one of its members with the Minister of Māori Affairs as one of its members is supporting this legislation. We know very well that many many Māori families are particularly impacted by this legislation because many Māori families refuse to have anyone else support their family members because of their cultural priority that they look after their own members. So for the Minister for Disability Issues and the Minister of Māori Affairs to be supporting this legislation beggars belief. It is the price of the baubles of office I guess but it is a great surprise to me. I think that the Minister could well rethink the strategy.