Clark David: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clark David: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2522. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I was not going to rise to speak in this debate on the Social Services (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill but I feel compelled to given some of the aspersions Mr Woodhouse was casting earlier in the first reading. Mr Woodhouse was casting aspersions on me for wanting the elderly people of Dunedin to have their say. He did not want the elderly people of Dunedin to have their say. In fact he was apoplectic with rage at the thought that his own constituents—well they are not actually his constituents to be fair; let me say the elderly of New Zealand—should have a say on this legislation. 
Old folks do deserve a say on this legislation. It concerns the assets that are in their care. They are the assets that enable them to have a sense of independence and a sense of being their own person even as they go into aged care and to have the opportunity to pass something on to their wider family from the hard work that they have done throughout their working lives. Those same old people also have a concern for intergenerational equity. The older folk whom I talk to—certainly at the moment—are concerned about their children and particularly their grandchildren as they see that their generation has many of its assets still intact but those younger folk are missing out on educational opportunities that the older folk feel should be afforded to them because of many of the miserly changes that this Government is making around tertiary education policy right now. 
So I want to challenge Mr Woodhouse to go out and perhaps have a chat to the people at the Montecillo rest home and tell them he does not want them to have a say in terms of how these decisions are made. I want him to go out and talk to the people at Ross Home. 
Clare Curran 
: I’ll go with him. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: I have my colleague Clare Curran saying she will take him there if he does not know where to go. These rest homes in Dunedin have people in them who care about their own situation and care about the situation of their grandchildren— 
Clare Curran 
: Oxford Court. 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: —and they feel they should have a say in these pieces of legislation. Mrs Curran is offering to take him to Oxford Court as well. There we go we have got a programme of visits for Mr Woodhouse if he wants to hear whether old people should have a say in or have an opinion on this legislation which his Government is trying to ram through following the Budget because those members believe that stealing—I should not say stealing; please excuse me—taking money from the elderly and taking money from the paper boys and paper girls of this country is their most urgent priority. They do not want to have a debate about what is going on in the world outside of those easy targets. They do not want to have a debate about real people’s lives. They do not want to have a debate about the pro-growth tax measures that they could be putting through instead of this kind of grab. They do not want to have a talk about pro-export measures. In the previous bill we saw that they were actually more concerned about putting red tape on business and we have seen that they are just taking the money where it is easy to get. 
So my challenge is and remains for Mr Woodhouse to go and ask those people whether they are really happy to miss out on having a say in this regard. This bill does affect real people and this process is simply wrong. We have a select committee process for a reason. It would allow people to weigh up the trade-offs that are being made in this bill and the very real effect that those trade-offs would have on different people’s lives. I challenge Mr Woodhouse to get out there talk to those people and see whether they really would rather have a say. My view is that I think they would.