King Annette: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10138. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): It has been an interesting debate so far from the members of the Government particularly the Minister of Health who does not particularly like to listen to the debate and so minimises the time that he has to listen. If he wants to talk about politics in this issue I would say that he is a Minister who is well known out there in the health sector as a walking political slogan. Most of what he says is political slogans.I was interested in the contribution from a number of members on this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). Rather than debating the issues they wanted to spread blame around. Well I will give the Minister credit for saying that this is an issue of 20 years’ consideration Mr Hayes—20 years of consideration: 5 under a National Government 9 under a Labour Government and then you have got another 6 under a National Government. So if we are going to throw some blame around about what was not done before Labour became the Government well let us go back that far in history Dr Hutchison. I noticed you did not do that. Let us stick with the issues.Let us start with the regulatory impact statement. I ask the members of the Government whether they have read it. Have they read it? Not one of them has read the regulatory impact statement. Do they know what a regulatory impact statement is for? You see a regulatory impact statement is provided to the Parliament—to the Parliament Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch and you will appreciate this point—to inform members of what a bill is about. It is you would say a neutral way of providing information about a bill to the Parliament. It is something that the public can then read to get a very good understanding of what a bill is about.But when you receive a regulatory impact statement that has been so heavily edited that anything that would give you some of the guts of what this is about has been crossed out then we have a problem. You know this blacked-out page I am holding is just an example from the regulatory impact statement. It would be better used as a draughtboard than the provision of information for the people here in the public and in this House. Probably what it shows is that it was rushed legislation—very rushed legislation. Work had not been finished.The reason I can work that out is that as late as yesterday the Minister was advising the media that operational details of the policy were still to be finalised and would be available by September 2013. So the operational details of this policy are not available to this House. They will never be available to the public of New Zealand. Why?Because this bill is going through Parliament through every stage under urgency today. Does that mean the public have a say? Do they get to look at the operational details? No they do not. They see absolutely nothing about this bill because it will be passed under urgency.Why urgency? I know that the public will ask that. Why urgency when it does not have to be passed until October 2013—this year—and the operational details will not be available until September this year? Why could this bill not have gone to a select committee chaired by Dr Paul Hutchison who I am sure would have enabled people to come and have a say. I suspect he did not have a say on this at all and heard about it at about the same time as everybody else.We have heard from the Minister and others that the sector is pleased with these decisions. Well I think we should read a bit of the feedback that has come in from those who do represent those with disability—a big negative. I will read them out. “Big negative—the minimum wage. Why would those who are caring for a disabled family be paid less than other carers? Are they worth less do they do less? Why would they only be paid the minimum wage?”Secondly they were very upset at the exclusion of spouses and partners from being eligible to do the care. Have members opposite met with Carers New Zealand an organisation that represents hundreds and hundreds of carers around New Zealand? Nobody has met with them. If they met with them they would find out what the average age of a carer is in New Zealand. It is around 80—80 years of age. Let us have a look at Mr Cliff Robinson a man who is caring for his two disabled children. He said he was looking for a half-decent scheme today. He got a half-baked one.Here he is in this photo. Do the members opposite have any idea how old this man is? He is 75 years of age and is the father of two children who are very disabled aged 43 and 40. Spouses or partners would not eligible to look after them. [Interruption] Have a look at your own bill. They could not have spouses looking after them. So Mr Robinson can look after his children but he could not look after his wife if she were in the same situation.The third thing is there is a very high threshold of need. Have a look at the threshold of need that was provided by the Minister’s office to the media—but not provided to this Parliament so that we could look at the threshold of need. In addition let me read this to the members opposite: “In addition the Government did all this without any engagement with carers in the policy design or systems that will be used. One person got on the technical advisory group but they had to only respond to questions from the Minister.” That is what has happened with this bill. It is an absolute disgrace. I just cannot understand why this Government is carrying out this bill in this way.In the few pages that do exist in the regulatory impact statement the Ministry of Health put up a number of payment options. It made payment options under three different categories. What we find is that the Government said it has been very fair. It has taken the mid-point—$23 million a year covering 1600 highly disabled people. That is what it said was being fair. Do you know it had to move down only one column and it could have provided care to 5400 disabled people? The difference in that payment is $17 million a year—$17 million a year—to provide care to 5400 disabled people. Think about it members opposite. Think about those people. Think about what they face every day.Ian McKelvie: That’s $17 million more than they’ve got now.Hon ANNETTE KING: It is no good yelling out now. Think about it because you were not consulted before. I know this is hurting. I know it is hurting because members opposite understand that what I am saying is right. Why for $17 million would you not include 5400 disabled people? That is what I call mean-spirited and so will the rest ofthe community. One thing the community understands is that when you are looking after a family member who needs 24-hour care 7 days a week there is no let-up except for a little bit of respite the Government generously offers every now and then. There is no let-up. It is like caring for the most dependent of young people. The Government could have chosen option 3C—mid-point. Difference from what the Minister chose? Seventeen million dollars.I am also interested—and we will get on to this later in questions to the Minister—in the Attorney-General’s report to Parliament. I did not find it until this morning. I am not sure whether other members did but I suspect that like the regulatory impact statement the Government was not in a hurry to provide it to Parliament. I think it is interesting that on the last page of his report the Attorney-General the Hon Christopher Finlayson said that new section 70E appears to limit the right to judicial review because it would prevent a person from challenging the lawfulness of a decision on the basis that it was inconsistent with section 19(1) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. On balance he concluded that that limitation cannot be justified under section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That is from the Attorney-General—that is what he has said. We will look closer at this because this is Parliament’s Attorney-General a member of the National Government providing that advice and he has obviously not been listened to.