Chadwick Steve: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill — In Committee 
Chadwick Steve: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8139] 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on Part 2 of the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill. I must say that when I heard the debate in the Chamber on Part 1 I was quite alarmed by the attitude of members of the Opposition in terms of people with a disability. Opposition members showed that they had an absolutely paternalistic approach to people with a disability rather than an inclusive approach and that they were rather stuck in the Dark Ages about the role of sheltered workshops. No one who knows this sector well would ever put down the work of those great providers in the sheltered workshops. That is not what this bill is about at all. 
Part 2 of this bill is about repealing legislation that is now 47 years old. This Government is certainly not stuck in the Dark Ages. People with a disability have human rights to be included in New Zealand and to have the opportunity to get proper work—not sheltered workshop work as the previous speaker Chester Borrows spoke about for a few bob for a day’s work. These people want to go out to participate in the workforce to the best of their ability and to be paid a decent wage for doing that. Who in this day and age would ever put them down for that? Forty-seven years have gone past since the very noble Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act 1960 was first brought in. Part 2 of this bill now repeals that Act and replaces it with what I think is contemporary legislation. 
I want to talk about our Minister for Disability Issues Ruth Dyson. This Government is the first Government that has committed itself to putting in a Minister in charge of people with a disability. Her reputation has been rather impugned in the House by some members of the Opposition who took a swipe at her and said that she wanted to get rid of sheltered workshops. That is far from the point. 
This Minister worked with this sector during the 1990s when Labour was in Opposition. People in the sector said: “We want to take part in civil society. We want to participate in the economic growth of this country. We may have a disability yes and we are going to need support from the health sector to cope with our disability but we want a decent wage for a decent day’s work. We want to go there and hold our head up and go and do a good job.” 
We see these people now all over our communities—not just in sheltered workshops. They are participating in some mainstream employment where they can. They are also going out into community participation activities and programmes which the sheltered workshops acknowledge is a good thing. 
I think the saddest thing I have heard here about the repeal of this Act is that the Opposition just wants to keep it in stone. The Opposition wants to go back to the Stone Age for people with a disability. Frankly that attitude is patronising in the extreme. If Opposition members had listened to the voices of people with a disability who spoke to Labour members when we went out to talk about our policy  
Pathways to Inclusion 
 they would have heard that people with a disability want to be part of ordinary New Zealand society—and that means going out to work. They can work. They work hard they have a sense of pride and they deserve to be paid the minimum wage—which will go up to $11.25 an hour—and the youth minimum rate. 
We know what the previous National Government did about the minimum wage. There were no movements in the minimum wage from the National Government during the 1990s. This Labour-led Government has put it up seven times. Now we are saying that it is time for people with a disability to take a share of that cake too. Why can they not reap the opportunities rewards and benefits of being a worker in a New Zealand that is on its feet in the workplace? They no longer need to be in protected environments run by people who say—as I know some of the sheltered workshops are saying—that they cannot transition to this legislation and that they want to keep in this mode of working forever. 
I am afraid I was really disappointed to hear Dr Paul Hutchison someone whom I really respect saying that we should delay the passage of this bill until 2009. What on earth will that achieve for people with a disability? It is absurd. As soon as a message is given by a Government—as we did with  
Pathways to Inclusion 
—then the sector follows including the business sector.