Street Maryan: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: 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:10172. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to take a call on clause 3 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) which simply says that this Act amends the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 the principal Act. I wish it were that simple. I am deeply concerned having listened to my colleague Ruth Dyson talking about those items in this bill that directly contradict the principal Act that there were other alternatives given to the Minister of Health rather than simply amending the principal Act but we have not heard any explanation of why this option has been chosen.One could argue perfectly well that this could have been a stand-alone piece of legislation that it could have been something that required provisions unique to itself and of its own and yet the Minister has chosen to tack it on as an amendment to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. But we have not heard any rationale for that. In fact quite persuasively in the last 5 minutes we have heard the opposite. This brings us back—although I am talking only about clause 3 Mr Chair this point is still pertinent—to the fact that this bill is not going to a select committee. It could have been a stand-alone piece of legislation with all the names to it that my colleagues offered when we were discussing clause 1 of this piece of legislation.When we were talking about the title a number of suggestions were made such as the “Pull The Wool Over The Eyes Of People With Disabilities and Those Who Care For Them Bill” and that could have been a possibility. But seriously why was this seen as an amendment to the Public Health and Disability Act when it in fact contravenes it? As the chair of the Regulations Review Committee I say that if this had been passed as a regulation the committee would have immediately sent it back to the ministry and the Minister saying: “This is a ‘Henry VIII’ provision. It allows the principal Act to be amended by stealth and it is not legitimate for those reasons.” But we have it here in the bill as an amendment to the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act. It could have had proper scrutiny if it were a separate piece of legislation with separate stand-alone provisions a proper regulatory impact statement that was more white than black and a proper debate at a select committee. In the end the Minister of Health has chosen not to do any of this properly but simply to add this as an amendment as clause 3 says to the principal Act.Again I do not wish to sound like a broken record but the Minister compels me to do so. This is not good enough—this is not good enough. This is no way to introduce legislation of this sort which has not nearly the major impact it could have had. If there had been a proper debate about it this bill could affect 5400 people with disabilities and their families instead of just over 1000 as it is going to. It could have justified a stand-alone provision but the Minister has chosen simply to amend the principal Act and slide it in in that way. Not only does it offend against the purpose of the principal Act—and as I have said if it were a regulation it would be sent back to the Minister—but it also offends as we see from the Attorney-General’s report against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Nothing about this bill has been done properly.