Fenton Darien: 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 
Fenton Darien: 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:2531. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to follow that very excellent speech made by the Hon Annette King. One of the things about this bill the Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill that has really shocked me is the derisory approach of this Government. We had a 1-minute speech from the Minister for Social Development in introducing the bill and a 2-minute speech from the junior Minister Jo Goodhew when introducing the second reading. There was nothing in the Budget speech. We pored through the press releases and finally after much searching found a paragraph that was deeply buried in a press release. Nothing was talked about it in the Budget yesterday. This Government has kept its secret. It is the dirty— 
Kris Faafoi 
: It’s a sentence. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Oh it is a sentence. It is a sentence—not even a paragraph—telling the older people of New Zealand that this major change is being considered by this Parliament under urgency. If this is such an important conversation for us to be having why cannot people participate in it? Why cannot people have a say? Why is it that we have to have this debate on a Friday afternoon under urgency when all of the people who will be affected by it—people currently in residential care and people who will be in residential care in the future including most of us in this House I would imagine—cannot participate? Why can they not have a say?  
As I have been listening to the debate I have been thinking about a personal example. My mother-in-law and father-in-law are in residential care. One is in a private hospital and one is in a rest home. My father-in-law is 93 years old and my mother-in-law is 88 years old. They have only recently gone into residential care when it got far too much for them to stay at home. In fact my mother-in-law went in first and then my father-in-law followed. I want to talk a little bit about their lives.  
My father-in-law was an Anglican minister. He was an Anglican minister in the far north. He used to give half of his income to the poor people of his community. My mother-in-law and father-in-law struggled and scraped on a minister’s income year in and year out giving half of it away to the poor people whom they wanted to support because they are good people. They are good Christian people.  
Eventually they were able to save enough to buy their own home. They bought their own home and they paid it off bit by bit. That is the only asset that they have. It is the only thing they own. They are now in residential care they are paying for themselves—they are paying the bills themselves—and eventually they will get to the point where the asset value of their home means that they will have to pay a whole lot more.  
When I think about my father-in-law’s life and my mother-in-law’s life I think it is so undignified—so undignified—that they are going to be listening to this and hearing about this in this debate under urgency in this Parliament on a Friday afternoon in secret. They will say to me at the weekend: “Darien why could we not have a say on this? We have lived and worked hard. We have tried to be good people. We have been good citizens. We have stood by the principles and values that we grew up with.” Love thy neighbour is one of them and treat other people as you would be treated yourself. 
All of those principles they have lived by and worked hard by. Here they are and here they will be in their twilight years in residential care listening to this and finding out that this Government does not believe that they should have any say in this change. I think it is not only undignified but completely disrespectful. The way this Government has gone about this—approaching the Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill in urgency—is just appalling.  
As we know this is a Budget that is picking on kids—and we debated that last night—who do not even earn the minimum wage. They are on $4 or $5 per hour. It is appalling. Students are picked on too and now it is a case of “Let’s get stuck into the older people. Let’s not talk to them and let’s not let them have a say. Let’s forget about them.” The Government does not really care about the people living in rest homes. Do you know what it is? It is peanuts that we are dealing with here. It is absolute peanuts.