Scott Lynda: Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and rehabilitation) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Scott Lynda: Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and rehabilitation) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:612;Page:9596] 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 It is with pleasure that I rise to support the bill. The Hon Ruth Dyson made the point that one of the major changes to the bill was that the Health Committee took away the non-offender group. There were two groups: those that offended and could come under this bill and receive compulsory treatment and care and the non-offender group. 
I just want to quote from the commentary on the bill which includes a quotation from the submission of Kathleen Taylor who wrote: “For several years now we as parents of a child with special needs have been encouraged to believe that the care of our children should happen in the communities in which they live. We have been encouraged to embrace ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘inclusion’ in education and leisure. We were promised adequate levels of support. Institutions were a thing of the past. Now it appears that our children can be incarcerated if authorities feel that they ‘appear to pose a risk’...”. That is why that section was taken out. We cannot incarcerate someone for compulsory care simply because they appear to pose a risk. 
When we look at individual cases before us such as those of David Stephens and Mr Ryder we can see that the behaviour of those people has been at the level of offending. But those offences have been understood because the person concerned does not have the intellectual capacity to understand the consequences of his or her actions. What will have to happen under this bill is that when a person does assault another person or behaves in a very antisocial way that breaks the law that person will have to come before the courts be found unfit to plead and come under the jurisdiction of the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Bill. If that happens a person can either be placed in a secure facility or be subject to 24-hour community wrap-around services. 
I have to thank the Rt Hon Wyatt Creech who was the principal driver in developing this bill when the National Government was in power and my select committee colleagues especially Paul Hutchison and Roger Sowry who worked well on this legislation to get it to the state where we have all agreed to support it in this House. 
The Hon Ruth Dyson mentioned that hospital level care facilities have been very slow in development and I would urge this Government to get on with it because the people who will now come under this bill need somewhere to go. Some of these people are still in mental institutions or forensic care. They may be at the Kimberly Centre or Braemar Hospital. They need to be placed in special facilities because they cannot be placed in community care—their behaviour has been such that they pose too much of a risk to themselves or to society. It is important that hospital level care facilities are developed. I know that one is being developed at Porirua and another at the forensic unit in Auckland. But that development has been too slow and I urge that it be speeded up. 
The definition of “intellectual disability” was another area the select committee worked very diligently on. It was essential that we manage to have a definition with a broad enough scope to allow for the capture of people who have a low IQ around 70 and who may have some skills in some areas but very poor skills in others which leads to their offending. If they do have very poor social skills or have been trained in inappropriate behaviour then they need to be captured by this bill so that they can go into a care programme to improve their behaviour and to protect themselves and the public. The meaning of “intellectual disability” was expanded to allow this to happen and I think we came to a good conclusion in the end—one that we hope will work in practice. 
The whole purpose of the bill is to ensure that those people who since 1992 have not been covered by the Mental Health Act do have an Act of Parliament that will protect them and the community. It is with pleasure that I support the passage of this bill.