Hutchison Paul: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Hutchison Paul: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:638;Page:8208] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the third readings of the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill and the Minimum Wage Amendment Bill. The National Opposition does want to see disabled people enabled so that they have a real choice in what they can do like anyone else according to their ability and capacity. We agree with the general philosophy behind the New Zealand Disability Strategy and Pathways to Inclusion. We agree that disabled people should not be patronised by central or local government. I was surprised when I heard the Minister say that this legislation ensures that disabled workers are no longer underpaid for their work because unfortunately it does nothing of the sort. It is this practical reality that the Minister refuses to acknowledge. 
However I would like to acknowledge Minister Dyson because I know that she has been working on this bill for many years right back to 2000. I acknowledge that she has been very sincere in her endeavours but I remain deeply concerned that successive Labour Governments tend to bring in changes without carefully ensuring that the practical details are attended to. In this legislation that has very clearly happened both to the detriment of disabled people’s aspirations as well as to the detriment of the workshops they work in. 
The Minister said that the disability community would like to take that name away but we already know that former sheltered workshops have renamed themselves such as the Abilities Group on the North Shore and Workforce Auckland in Mangere. Both organisations carry out altruistic inspiring very important and very well-organised work for disabled people. They provide the reality of choice for those people. Unfortunately the machinery the Minister has put in place to ensure the continuity of that has been put at jeopardy because of her lack of attention to detail. 
It is worthwhile having a little bit of a recap of the situation as it was seen by Carolldu Chateau who recently reported in the  
New Zealand Herald 
. She said: “The argument has been raging since 2001 when Disabilities Minister Ruth Dyson introduced ‘Pathways to Inclusion’—an ideologically driven strategy that contends that even the 
most intellectually disabled should be integrated into the wider community. They should also be paid the minimum wage.” Of course they should be integrated into the wider community if that is practical and feasible. There is no question about it. Indeed they should also be paid the minimum wage if that is a reality. But they should not be given false hopes if it is not a reality. The  
New Zealand Herald  
article continues: “The repeal of the Act means that minimum wage legislation will now include the intellectually handicapped who will only be allowed to opt out through individual exemptions issued by the Department of Labour.” As has been said by quite a few of those who run workshops this will almost certainly double the wage bill while incrementally increasing some workers’ salaries and lowering others. Despite the protestations from the Minister she has not done her homework in that respect. I accept that most of the workers will have minor marginal increases in wages. Others will not. 
The problem I have been concerned about all along is that the Government has not given attention to the detail of the abatement regimes as people come off their benefits and go on to a minimum wage. Nor has it given attention to the details of the support it might give to employers at sheltered workshops. This has just not happened despite 6 to 7 years of flagging this legislation through. So as I said before although we are quite in harmony with the basic philosophy behind it we are deeply concerned at the lack of ability of the Labour Government and the lack of attention it has paid to the details. 
We were also told that the Labour Party supported a funded move out of workshops and into the community participation scheme. With the effort of doing that a dramatic thing happened to the work and the choice of work in sheltered workshops. Although 3 years ago 4000 people were working in sheltered workshops there are only 1000 or even fewer than that now. It has decreased from 4000 people to 1000 people in 3 years. [ 
Interruption 
] There is a slightly ominous aspect in regard to that. The Minister called out a slight expletive. I will not repeat it on the air but it was a four-lettered one. 
The reality is that she put considerable pressure on organisations like IHC New Zealand and we have the evidence to show that in a letter from the chief executive officer of IHC to the parents of a disabled person in which the chief executive said in response to the question of whether IHC has become too politically correct in some areas: “Yes by being a service provider we have bought into the Government’s expectation standards and policies. The $140 million comes with a cost.” And the cost was that IHC would close down every one of its sheltered workshops—every one of them—which meant that something like 2000 disabled people were out of a job. 
What did those people go into? They went into community participation. Although in some aspects that has been a very good thing and I applaud it it has been a mixed bag. The problem is that although we have these grand gestures by the Labour Government of community participation what has happened to some of those people is that they have moved from a situation where they had a job that was very meaningful to them into a situation that does not suit them at all. It is worthwhile quoting someone whom I do know Jane Watts who has an intellectually handicapped son Lee. What did she have to say about community participation in her case? She was very scathing about the new strategy. She said: “The idea’s lovely but the reality’s absolute rubbish. You cannot put Lee in outside employment. He couldn’t do it. No one would pay him $500-$600 a week. We tried to take him down to the supermarket and he scratched a car …”. She went on to say in relation to community participation replacing work: “It’s a waste of money. We do those things—take him to the library swimming bowling—on weekends. If the government wants to spend more money they should provide more caregivers at”—places like—“Abilities”. 
It is important to point out that what the Labour Government has put in place is not all clear. The situation as we see it now is certainly not clear. The workshops have said that they consider there to be serious flaws that are unlikely to be remedied in the next 3 to 4 months. I introduced a significant amendment in the Committee stage and unfortunately it was rejected by the Labour Government. It was a serious attempt to be practical. It allowed the Government an extension time of 2 years so that it could sort out the flaws. 
Peter Brown 
: Far too long. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: It enabled the Government to have this legislation enacted immediately if it sorted out the flaws in time but it rejected it. Unfortunately New Zealand First buckled but at least we had a compromise situation where the enactment date was extended to 30 November. That was only because of pressure from the National Party which at least has ensured a little bit of a reality check to allow time so that machinery is put in place in order to iron out the flaws that were so concerning to sheltered workshops and that were indeed a reality. It means that disabled people will have a real choice. I finish by saying that I continue to be amazed and appalled that the Labour Government does not pay attention to detail when it puts legislation such as this into the House.