SpeechJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to speak on the Accessibility for New Zealanders Bill. I too before I get into the context of the bill want to contextualise this discussion as others have before me where as has been noted I can't imagine that there's a person in this House who doesn't either have a family member or a friend or a colleague who has a disability. It's estimated at least 1.1 million New Zealanders have a disability and then at any time any one of us may have an access issue as a result of an accident on top of that. So this is an incredibly important issue for us as a country because we know there are barriers upon barriers upon barriers in the way of full participation in our society for disabled people. That comes out of a history where there was a time where disabled people were thought to be wrong—that actually they needed to be hidden away in institutions or in back rooms of houses because they were a source of shame to families—and it's actually only in very recent times that there have been structural systematic attempts to change that and to move from a model of fixing people versus recognising that diversity adds to our strength in our communities. Disability is part of our diversity and is something to be celebrated. That shift from a medicalised model to a social model of disability—we're a long way from living in the enlightened world of seeing disability as the barrier as opposed to the person and that history shows up in a really real way in some of the examples we've heard already this afternoon about inability to get into cafes or catch public transport or even shower within your own home. We know that only 2 percent of our houses are accessible. We know that there's double the number of disabled children living in poverty than non-disabled children and that there's a much higher likelihood of poverty when there's a person with a disability in a household that a child is living in. We know the unemployment rate and underutilisation rate for disabled people is double what it is for non-disabled people. This is not the fault of our diverse communities. The fault is that our world was created in a way that thought and worked on an idea of a norm that does not exist that does not reflect our diversity and that has actively locked disabled people and our children out of participation in society. So this is so important and our activists and advocates have been working with members in this Parliament and Government for years—at least five—to get accessibility legislation that would systematically identify and remove those barriers on that systems level. When New Zealand signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities we signed up to take appropriate measures to develop promulgate and check the implementation of minimum standards and guidelines for the accessibility of facilities and services open or provided to the public including those provided by private entities. It's pretty obvious we don't have that and yet we signed up to the convention quite a few years ago now. The only mechanisms that we've got for disabled people to address their exclusion because of decisions made by this place and individual businesses and institutions in our community is on an individual basis through the Human Rights Act—but that doesn't address or resolve the systemic issues—or through the New Zealand Disability Strategy and the Disability Action Plan. I am really struggling to see if I'm really honest how this legislation takes us much further than the Disability Action Plan which is also supported by a ministerial committee on disability issues that reports to Cabinet and receives advice from Cabinet and reports on a regular basis and sets the priorities for cross-Government action and reviews progress by Government agencies. I can see the point of difference in that this will set up committees to enable disabled people to appoint to in effect the equivalent of that committee. There's a bit more structure around identification but that work programme still has to be signed off by the Minister. The reporting timelines are slightly different but this has nothing in it that identifies the need for standards or enforcement or even the complaints or disputes resolution mechanisms that have been seen as essential and part of accessibility Acts in other countries. So today I do on behalf of the Greens want to bring in—we acknowledge we're really looking forward to the select committee stage and we will actively engage in that process but we won't be voting to support this. We will today be bringing through the voice of frustration from disabled people who have worked for years to get something that will be a step change in removing those barriers and not just at worst window dressing or at best an incremental movement towards acknowledging their rights which are rights—they are not nice to haves". I want to at this point bring in the words of Jonathan Mosen who is the CEO of Workbridge—a very well-respected I think analyst in this area—who said "This is the sort of bill you get when there is no accessibility caucus demanding progress. It's the sort of bill you get when a political calculation is made that there'll be little media interest no matter how much disabled people object. It's the sort of bill you get when the answer is always to form yet another Committee and put disabled people on it without giving us any real power to make real change. The bill is simple. The Government's going to form two committees to nominate a committee. The committee nominated by the committees is going to talk about stuff we already know about that desperately needs addressing. When it's had those discussions Committee nominated by the two committees is going to advise the Minister who will tell Parliament. The best thing we can do now is start again and demand a New Zealanders with Disabilities Act." I also bring in the voice of Warren Forster who has worked with communities right across the country bringing in disabled people's voices about how we could actively create legislation that would work to speed up the removal of those barriers. He sent me a message in response to this bill saying "Effectively they've wasted four years to announce a committee that will be in place in two years' time—six years to form a committee. Nothing I have seen suggests this will be effective. When I first met with officials in 2018 they said they wanted a bill. And I said 'If you want to set up a committee I can draft a bill today and you can put it in the House tomorrow and you have a bill to set up a committee.' But as I explained you don't need legislation to establish a committee to advise the Minister to ask other Ministers to use their regulation-making powers to improve accessibility. There are some positive noises in there but this is largely ineffective window dressing." and disabled people deserve more. We as allies and family members and friends and colleagues deserve more than window dressing. The time for pale ambition and glacial progress was in the 1950s. This is the time to actually listen and progress real change. The Green Party would like to see legislation that has enforceable standards; an independent disability commission that sets barriers set standards and removes barriers; and a programme of work not signed off by a Minister but independently led and approved by disabled people with enforcement powers covering the private sector with safeguards against the risks of centralising power. This bill is not it but we will work as constructively as we can and encourage disabled people to send the Government a message: you deserve more."