Roy Heather: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Roy Heather: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
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HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of ACT New Zealand to speak to the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill and the Minimum Wage Amendment Bill. As ACT has done from the very beginning of this debate we will oppose this legislation for a number of reasons which I will go into. 
I will start by saying oh for a perfect world where everyone is born equal. Would it not be great if we were all born able-bodied and intelligent and if everybody was able to fill the potential that all parents when their child is first born would love to see. Unfortunately this is not the case. We do not live in a world that is totally fair and much as we would like that to be the case the provisions in this legislation will not address the things that those in favour of it say it will. 
As a physiotherapist in a former life I was quite heavily involved with sheltered workshops. During my training I frequently visited sheltered workshops and as a qualified physiotherapist I was responsible for sometimes going to sheltered workshops and treating people in the course of their daily life there. I visited many times also. Since this legislation was introduced I have also visited many sheltered workshops around the country such as Abilities Group and the workshop that I presume Ms Soper was referring to in her speech Southland Enterprises. They are doing a great deal of very good work. When we look at them very closely and sum them up I think the differences in this legislation as coming from the two sides of the House are that one group of us considers sheltered workshops to be workplaces only—somewhere where people go to conduct business and to work for their employer—but the National Party and the ACT party consider them to be not only that but also organisations that are philanthropic. They provide a service to their communities and also to the families they support. So in this imperfect world where life certainly is not fair I think it is important to consider just what it is that sheltered workshops have done for the disabled people in this country the role they have fulfilled and how in fact they started in the first place and have arrived at the point where they are now. 
Sadly I fear that as a result of the passing of this legislation—and it seems that the numbers are there to pass it—some if not many of these workshops will fold. They do have to run as businesses so that they can continue to operate. Businesses in order to be viable must be able to make ends meet and forcing the minimum wage on to sheltered workshops for their workers will in too many cases force them out of business. 
From both my working experiences and my visiting sheltered workshops I would like to tell the House a bit about what I see when I visit these workers. I see a workforce that is happy that has a purpose for being that has a sense of purpose and that has a real sense of pride. The disabled workers I see at these workshops—which obviously are very different from some that I have just heard described to me—consider themselves to lead an ordinary life. From Monday to Friday they wake up they get themselves out of bed—sometimes with assistance from their family members—they have breakfast and they get dressed for work. They travel to work and for the most part they are excited to be doing that every morning of the week. They look forward to their weekends off because they go about their lives and pursue their recreational activities with their families. But they love getting up every working day Monday to Friday and going off to work. 
The families I have met are also very happy with the current situation. They are pleased because they feel they do have support. We like many other parties have been lobbied hard by the families of these workers—these disabled people. We have been lobbied because they do not want to see a change in the current system. They think it is important that their family members are supported elsewhere not just by themselves and they are happy that they have work to go to. They feel particularly aggrieved that the consultation as they see it was quite clearly inadequate with regard to this legislation. They think that their concerns were listened to far too infrequently and that when they were listened to they were not given serious consideration. 
This legislation is about money. Those on the left of this House for want of a better term frequently accuse other members particularly National and ACT members of considering only money. In this case it is the other side of the House that is considering only money. There is all this talk about a minimum wage and about it not being right that somebody might be on a benefit and be topped up. Those people cannot actually hold down normal jobs; that is the truth of the matter. Their families know this and in many cases the disabled people themselves know this. Productivity is not something that can be turned on and off if someone is disabled. If someone has only one arm that person cannot do the jobs that somebody with two arms can do. These people deserve the right to work as does every other person in a community. They do deserve that and that is what sheltered workshops provide for them. 
This legislation is being discussed in terms of money—in terms of the minimum wage—and it does not address the other things that make up work such as the mental well-being of these disabled people their sense of well-being their happiness and their sense of pride. So what we will have is community participation on this side and work on that side. Which would each and every one of us choose if we were forced to deal with that? For the most part we would choose work and that is what these disabled people and their families want to be able to choose for themselves. 
It is all very well assuming that every single sheltered workshop around the country exploits its workers. They do not. That assumption is quite simply a very sad reflection on society. To compare sheltered workshops as I have heard in this debate and in the previous debate to sweatshops is wrong and very very unfair. No one forces anyone to go a sheltered workshop. It is a matter of choice and it is a matter of choice because the people who go there like the sense of purpose that it provides them with. They like the fact that they enjoy going to work. They like the fact that they are proud of their work and when we visit them they will very proudly show us exactly what it is they do. So ACT opposes the legislation for these very reasons. 
The sad fact is that many of these sheltered workshops will not be able to sustain what they are able to provide to society at the moment. We will see workshops going out of business and folding because it will not be sustainable for them to stay in business. As a result many of these disabled people will not want to be community participants in the way the Minister envisages community participation will help. They want to be workers in a world that provides them with a sense of well-being and a sense of purpose. Sadly I feel that the passing of this legislation tonight in Parliament will achieve none of that. What we will see instead is disabled people who are relegated to a life at home within four walls with very little offered to them. We oppose this legislation on those grounds.