Logie Jan: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: 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:10146. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to speak again so soon after the first reading in the second reading of this bill New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2). In the first reading I spoke about why this is a feminist issue. I would like to speak just a little bit more about the economic model that this bill is a demonstration of.I was at the Public Health Association Budget day breakfast this morning and one of the economists at that meeting was talking about the counting-for-nothing model and how that has contributed to child poverty and growing inequality in this country. He noted that provision 6.28 inHousehold Surveys and the National Accounts explicitly excludes from our national accounts the preparation of meals the care of children the care of sick and the infirm and transportation.The consequence of that exclusion—and this bill is such a demonstration of the thinking behind that exclusion—is that the Government can focus on the external economic growth model as if it has nothing to do with our families. It can say: “Well if we put all of our focus and our effort into growing business then we may have enough money as a country not to have to introduce these fiscal constraints that deny people their very rights and allow the Government to discriminate.”But that kind of thinking is the same thinking that says that earthquakes and pollution and prisons grow our economy and that the increase in GDP from those evils is something we want to strive for. It separates out and ignores the very well-being of every person in this country in their homes in the places that I believe most New Zealanders feel actually count. The very focus around this means that the impact of any of these little bits of social spending is completely in the words of this economist swamped by the policies that drive social inequality.In this case it is the inequality between men and women and the inequality between disabled and abled people who through their loss of choice and control and funding for their families are entrenched into poverty because this Government and the very model that it is working in says that they do not count. The lives of these people the hours the love and the care count for nothing in the Government’s economic model. I think that is morally bankrupt and I think New Zealanders deserve something better.The Government is saying that this is a good deal. Well it is a bloody good deal for the Government and its model. The Government is getting the benefit of all of these people’s work for nothing virtually—for a token. We see this again in the income support area where the Government has allowed for 7500 people to get the supported living payment for the care of the sick and the infirm—which is care for people who would otherwise be hospitalised—and they are being paid below the poverty line. For those families that is what that means. They are being guaranteed an income below the poverty line so that the Government can save on the extraordinary costs of hospital care because they love their family members and want more for them. That is the economic model that we are being fed as a positive for our communities. What a joke. It is offensive.