Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I stand on behalf of disabled people tonight to condemn this Budget for the miserable and miserly Budget that it is. Can anyone else point out one other vote that went backwards in this Budget? Can anyone point out one other vote that went backwards—flush with money—one other vote that went backwards? They picked on the disabled; the disabled vote went backwards. The only vote in this Budget that went backwards: disabled vote $7 million backwards from what it was last year. Hon Dr David Clark: Tell the truth. Dr SHANE RETI: It's absolutely true look at your own figures—$7 million less than last year $1.351 billion compared to $1.344 billion. We know the National Disability Support Network said actually they needed $250 million—$100 million for providers and $150 million for the needs assessment and service coordination (NASC) and they went backwards. Clearly there must be less disabled people. Really? Clearly their need must be less. Really? I don't think so. Certainly that's not what we're hearing from the sector. There is no justification for $7 million less spending in this Budget than last Budget. Where is this $7 million coming from? Well we know where some of it's coming from: the much trumpeted $58 million that went into disability last year. In fact when I say trumpeted I mean that literally because in reply 17179 the Minister wrote to me and said Oh I just want to point out that in Budget 2018 we made an additional $58 million available for disability". Well done yes you did. This Budget—$54 million and decreasing by $2 million to $4 million every year successively. That's where $4 million of the $7 million disappeared from. It wasn't continued. Big item last year nothing this year.What then is going to be the impact of that $7 million across the sector? Well we know several things. We know that before the Budget $90 million of cuts needed to be found by the disability sector. When you explore that and when you sort of find out where could those cuts come from and you maybe ask some written questions you get from Minister Genter something like "I do not believe the expense of answering this question within six working days can be justified"—really? Reply 17174. Well maybe it's different if we say "Can you tell us where the cuts are coming from?" Reply 17178: "I do not believe that the expense of answering this question within six working days can be justified." Really? You don't want to tell the disabled community where their cuts are going to be coming from.But I can actually tell you where the cuts are coming from because in the document disability financial sustainability programme update that is where the cuts are coming from and actually everyone in this House tonight will be interested to know in their region in the people you answer to where the disability cuts were coming from. The $90 million that the Minister and the ministry were pulling from the disabled budget that help account for the $7 million less; I'll tell you in each of your regions where the cuts were coming from.In Northland in my own region they were going to cease previously grandparented day programmes. These day programmes are very important. Forget Me Not take in Alzheimer's patients keep them during the day give them a hot lunch—nope that was going to be removed. If we move to Auckland—what was Auckland going to do? What was their plan to fit this Budget? How did they help take $7 million off the disability budget? Well here's what Auckland was going to do: they're going to not allocate behavioural support to under-five-year-olds. Really? Let's be very clear what behavioural support is. It improves the life of a person with an intellectual impairment whose behaviour is challenging. That's what they were going to remove. Let's also be very clear very specific—they were going to have no referrals for under-fives unless they were medically fragile—wow. Aucklanders in this room that's what your Government was going to do to the disability sector in writing.Let's move further down the island. Waikato: what were your budget cuts going to look like for disability? Well what Waikato suggested they do to meet the Minister's objective was that all community clients requiring personal care and who are continent will have a maximum of three hours per week. That's what you could look forward to if you were disabled in the Waikato and only those clients presenting with very high risk will be referred to Explore over the next three months. The Hawke's Bay—yep you were also targeted. What were you going to have? Well in your residential arm all your clients were going to be reviewed as they moved from the child rate to the adult rate and those who get home management they were all going to be reviewed as well.Whanganui—yes we've got some MPs from Whanganui here—tēnā koe Harete. Let's see what your team were going to do for the disabled. Shower support—half an hour daily as the standard allocation—wow. Reduce showering time to half an hour. Oh and by the way we could potentially make the half-hour the default. While we're there why don't we also remove meal preparation? Let's do that. Let's remove meal preparation from all other packages and offer "prepared meals". That's what Whanganui was going to do to meet this Budget.Moving north to south even further Taranaki—Taranaki you are also going to have a consequence of this Budget. For you it was needs assessment for children with autism under six—needs assessment for children with autism under six; they weren't going to get referrals for further support all to find—in fact it was $90 million they were looking for. In the Waikato what was it that the cuts were going to be for you? The most effective and possibly easiest strategy for achieving the reduction is to reduce the average size of the allocations made at the entry of a new client. This is because no pre-existing client has expectation or dependence. So before they come into the disability service before they get their expectations up set a low bar before they even get there. That was particularly for Hutt and for Tai Rāwhiti I would add—that was how it was going to be for you.Although there is one forgiving moment here: the folks at Tai Rāwhiti actually pushed back a bit and they said "Oh this is too harsh. You just can't do that." All credit to them they pushed back against the Minister and said "We do want to take this opportunity to highlight to you our general concern about the potential impact of Budget constraints and allocation reductions in the Tai Rāwhiti area. As you know Tai Rāwhiti is a vulnerable community characterised by a young population with a high proportion of Māori and higher than average social deprivation." Well done Tai Rāwhiti. At least you pushed back against this madness against what the Budget cuts were going to be for you.Wairarapa—let's reduce coordination delegation. Yeah that makes sense. Wellington—child development services your team referrals; let's increase the threshold so that less of them get referred on. Yeah that's a good idea. Nelson-Marlborough—let's review any of your household management plans so that any over three hours get cut back. Christchurch—Christchurch were quite savage actually. What shall we do with Christchurch? Well let's reduce your support package allocations let's reduce your client packages and let's put new referrals on a waiting list from now on. Yeah a caring Government? I don't think so. Children under a certain age—oh let's not give them household management except in extreme circumstances. They also wanted to get into autism. Let's remove autism spectrum disorder as a condition to receive disability support—wow really? A caring Government? Let's also not add foetal alcohol syndrome to the eligibility criteria. Oh my goodness every region was pinged.I'll conclude with Otago-Southland. Otago-Southland said "Let's take an hour off every single disability support package. Let's take an hour off them all and actually for those in residential care let's see if we can reduce them by two days per year. Maybe they won't notice if we take off two days per year." That's how this Government was planning to meet the $7 million that they chopped off the disability budget. It was $90 million around about February-March. All the needs assessment and service coordination centres were told: "Reduce by $90 million." They came up with these suggestions; it was trimmed down to $7 million. The only vote I would submit that went backwards. This Government has picked on disabled people because they can't fight for themselves. Well this side of the House will fight for disabled people in New Zealand. This side of the House will stand up to them and hold this Government accountable for a miserable and miserly Budget."