Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise and speak in support of this bill the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill in this second reading. I do want to congratulate Ricardo Menéndez March on his good fortune in being able to bring this bill to the House. And also I want to make mention of Mojo Mathers and the work that was done back in 2015. The two previous speakers Angie Warren-Clark and Ricardo Menéndez March have spoken about the submitters and I also want to acknowledge the individuals and the organisations who submitted on this bill. They talked about particularly the individual submitters their very personal experiences and it absolutely brought home how important this bill is and how important the disability assist dogs are to people living with a disability. The support and the independence that these dogs give them is just something that was wonderful to be able to listen to the examples. I guess the thing that was very sobering listening to the individual submissions was the level of discrimination that had been experienced by a number of people living with disabilities around access with their dogs whether it was housing or access to public transport to public buildings or things like cafes or movie theatres which we might take as granted. To be denied access because of your assist dog is not only distressing but incredibly debilitating for New Zealanders living with a disability being able to live what should be access to normal life. So we certainly are very supportive and know that we need to work diligently to remove a number of these barriers. Certainly the first part of the legislative change replacing a guide dog" with a "disability assist dog" is a very simple part of the legislation. The bit that I do want to flag that I wonder if we've got some more work to do on and I'm very keen to see if we might be able to get some cross-party agreement on is the definition of the assist dog being a dog certified by an organisation specified in the Act as being a dog trained to assist a person with a disability. There are a number of organisations that are authorised to do this training and certainly all of those organisations we absolutely support as organisations that are appropriate to be doing that training and we certainly support each of those. But I just want to flag that we may be able to improve the legislation by making it more enabling because we know that demand routinely exceeds supply and there are quite extensive waiting lists with every existing recognised training agency. We also know that there are several agencies that require applicants to personally fundraise quite significant sums of money ranging from $5000 to $20000 before they can receive training or receive a dog. And so that further constrains just who can get access to disability assist dogs. The other complication is that most recognised training agencies work with only one specific type of disability i.e. visual impairment or auditory impairment and also there are some restrictions geographically meaning that individuals with perhaps rare or multiple types of impairment have no way in which to access a dog trained specifically to their very unique needs. And so one of the things that we want to flag is that we may want to put a Supplementary Order Paper forward that looks at altering the definition of a disability assist dog from a disability assist dog being a dog certified by an organisation specified in the Act as being a dog trained to assist a person with a disability to a disability assist dog being a dog that has been or is being individually trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability. The tasks performed by the dog must be directly related to the person's disability. This is in no way wanting to constrain the legislation but rather to broaden and provide greater enabling of more agencies to be able to train. So it would enable suitably qualified and experienced private trainers and disabled individuals to be able to customise that training. That would also align the legislation with best practice disability assist dog legislation which exists in other jurisdictions which we would often compare ourselves to and particularly the US Canada Australia and the UK. So we would welcome the opportunity—and I apologise that it is at this late stage but it is as a result of some further consultation—to have that discussion which might provide greater freedom of choice a greater range of options and also a greater supply of recognised trained assist dogs. We are very very supportive of the intent of this bill. We certainly want to work closely with other parties to see if we can improve the legislation even at this late stage and we are delighted to be supporting it. I know that there's a range of issues that New Zealanders living with a disability have to contend with every day and I'm reminded of that saying that you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time. I guess this is one bite one small bite. There are many many other issues that we need to be looking at to remove discrimination and to help improve the lives of New Zealanders living with a disability. One that comes to mind is one that is very dear to my heart and that is respite care and the ability to get access to respite care for people living with a disability and their families dealing with caring for family dependents with a disability. This is a good piece of legislation. I compliment the member for bringing the legislation to us but I remind members of the House that there is certainly quite a lot of work for us to continue on with to be making the lives of New Zealanders living with a disability and their families better and things that we can do and should do as we work diligently to improve their lives. So I commend this bill to the House.Debate interrupted."