Franks Stephen: Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:9573] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 Throughout this bill the Health Committee has inserted references to rehabilitation so that at least the title does reflect what the bill now contains. The reason why I support my colleague Heather Roy’s amendment to omit the word “rehabilitation” from the bill is relatively simple. I am a humble man. I do not like to see Parliament pretending to do something that science and doctors tell us is impossible. It is a little bit like Wellington City setting up a sign outside the airport that says “Earthquake-free Zone”. It is just as useful. Although “rehabilitation” may be a word that everyone likes—and it makes a warm fuzzy feeling for a select committee that was busy sticking warm fuzzy bits into the bill—as I understand it the key thing that distinguishes people who are to be subject to this Act from those who are insane and subject to other provisions is the realisation that they are not capable of rehabilitation and that their illness is a permanent disability. Of course the symptoms can be ameliorated and of course behaviour modification may improve the way in which they are cared for but the criterion has been set because they simply are not capable of rehabilitation or under current medical knowledge there is no prospect of rehabilitation. They will stay with whatever quotient they are given that categorises them in these forms. 
Parliament should not be legislating a scientific nonsense. Of course if we accept the amendment and restore this bill to the more realistic objectives in its title and reject the wishful thinking that has gone into it then there are a number of provisions that would have to follow through. But they too would make the bill more honest. If we take the word “rehabilitation” out of the title we can then go through each of the five or six places where I have seen the word “rehabilitation” inserted and we would no longer have the prospect of some poor caregiver or institution at some stage being required by a judge to give effect to a provision that is incapable of being given effect. As we go through we will see that the plan for care which previously was a care plan now has to be a care and rehabilitation plan. The title is the first place where this nonsense appears. There are a number of clauses where that ridiculous word should be taken out. It is not defined. From my understanding the select committee did not know what it was talking about. It just thought it would be very nice to look pious and well intentioned so it stuck in some references to rehabilitation. 
The select committee’s comments under the heading “Emphasis on rehabilitation” on page 7 of its report are about programmes to meet needs and the recognition of the importance of rehabilitation. We can recognise the importance all we like but if the whole bill is founded on a view that these people are not curable that rehabilitation is not what is done—or maybe it is. This is one of the words that Labour members like to redefine from time to time. It is a little bit like the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi or any of those other slogan words that mean whatever they want them to mean. Rehabilitation once was a respectable word that meant to restore people to the living state that they had previously. These people are going to be restored or rehabilitated to their former condition but the fact is that their former condition was probably worse. They have never had a good state to be rehabilitated to. The word “rehabilitation” is a nonsense and it should not be in this bill. It simply makes the title longer. It is inserted only to make people with woolly minds feel better and it will cause legal problems if anyone takes it seriously. The provisions in which the word “rehabilitation” have been inserted throughout the bill where it is added after the word “care” can mean nothing if this bill is truly to distinguish the state of these people from those who are— 
Edwin Perry 
: What’s your solution? 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: My solution is simply to take the word out. If we want to have something nice in there we can put in a substantive provision that says people are entitled to all the care programmes that can ameliorate their condition so far as is reasonably practical with the resources available. That is what I think members of the committee probably wanted it to mean. But they did not say that. Instead they plucked out of the air a word that they thought sounded nice stuck it in the title and stuck it throughout the bill. Interestingly in all the criteria for care and rehabilitation plans nowhere does it actually say that a care and rehabilitation plan has to have a plan for rehabilitation. It is just stuck in as a title matter.