Borrows Chester: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Borrows Chester: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7734. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I rise to speak against the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill as it is at the moment. It is no surprise to me to find that this bill is promoted by the Labour Party. Labour members pat everyone on the head and they tell us that we are the patronising ones—the paternalistic ones. Yet they are the ones who are deciding what is best for people who are currently working within the sheltered workshops system. They will decide what is best for us and they will make that decision no matter what we say. They will not bother consulting with anybody. They will not bother talking to parents or to the people who are involved in working away day to day with their loved ones their children who attend these workshops. They will not bother to listen even to them but they will make a decision in any event. 
The people who administer the schemes are worried sick about how this legislation will affect them. One of the things they have to do is to assess what part of a full unit the particular person they are assessing is from a productivity point of view. For instance if a person is assessed as being one-tenth of a full unit then he or she will get one-tenth of the minimum wage. Some of these people will get somewhere between $1.25 and $2.50 an hour. 
It is interesting to read an extract from the  
New Zealand Herald  
on 10 February where Mr Jones the Chief Executive Officer of IHC New Zealand as I understand it obviously believes he is selling his soul on this one. When he was held to account by a Mrs Armstrong from Nelson who was worried about the situation in respect of her family his response was: “Has the IHC become too PC in some areas? Yes by being a service provider we have bought into the government expectation standards and policies. The $140 million”—those are the 2005 figures that the Government was funding to IHC—“comes with a cost.” And the cost is that one has to swallow a rat. 
Well the people around this place have been swallowing a few rats lately and will continue to do so especially as we look forward to the consideration of the anti-smacking bill. But they have looked for some sort of help from the Minister as to how things would go—some sort of assurance that things were going to go really well. The Minister is quoted as saying: “If I wanted the sheltered workshops closed I would’ve closed them. But I don’t. We’ve put substantially more money into them.” That is what she is saying but let us see the proof of it. 
She goes on to say that workshops must absorb the cost of at least the first round of payments and that the workshops cannot be funded for salary increases. And then she is quoted as saying: “I can see their problem … But I don’t think it is going to be a problem. I can offer no more assurance than that.” Well whoop-de-doo! The people working in the sector are saying: “You’re not here day by day.” 
Chris Auchinvole 
: “We know how you feel!” 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: “Yeah we empathise with you greatly.” Whoopie! Ironically while the workshops will be paying significantly more most workers will be marginally better off at best and the paper shifting involved could quadruple. A Mr Freyer who is working in one of these enterprise workshops has found that the Department of Labour inspector who was going to come along do all the assessments and work out just how much of a full labour unit these people were going to be worth in the eyes of the Labour Government has managed to do six assessments. He has to do them with a representative of the family there and with someone else to audit. It has to be done over time and then it has to be signed off. 
Progress reported. 
Report adopted.