Goudie Sandra: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill — In Committee 
Goudie Sandra: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8151] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 This is the “Disabled Persons Unemployment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill”; that could be its new title because that is what it is actually going to do. It is what the legislation has been doing and it is what it will continue to do. Here are people who cannot be employed in any real capacity and what happens is that they move into what is called community participation where they get taken to the movies they do artwork they might play sport and they go on outings; they no longer go to a workplace environment and feel valued. They have been taken away from that workplace environment and as a consequence have become what would be called unemployed. 
Why was this bill introduced? We have been told by other members of the House why it was introduced. It was because the legislation was deemed to be contrary to the Human Rights Act provisions and it was unlawful to discriminate in employment by offering less favourable terms and conditions of employment based on a person’s disability. The Human Rights Act provisions require that the conditions should be not less favourable. Yet here we have a situation found in no other work environment where a labour inspector comes in to assess these people. Now that does not happen in any other work environment so would that not be contrary to the Human Rights Act? Why is the Government doing that? Hello—hang on—it is because it suits its purpose because the reality is that it has to have some way of allowing for people who cannot work at a full rate of employment to have some sort of exemption to allow them to continue in those workplace environments. 
That is of course if those workplace environments can afford to keep them in there. Affordability of those places to keep going is a very real question. Ruth Dyson acknowledged that some contracts might not be viable even at that rate and they might be lost to China costing the jobs of some disabled workers. So we have to ask ourselves why here on the one hand the Government is saying that the Human Rights Act makes it unlawful to have disabled people operating in work conditions that are not the same as everybody else’s yet it is imposing a work condition that is not the same as everybody else’s. It is requiring a labour inspector to give those workers an assessment about their work capability and that does not happen in any other single environment. The only reason it is being done is so that these people have the opportunity to stay within the sheltered workshops that they might be currently enjoying. 
It is interesting to note that since this legislation was first introduced it has hardly changed at all. At the outset New Zealand First and United Future opposed this bill so I do not know what has happened. Even Sue Bradford had misgivings at the beginning. She has been won over and somewhere along the way New Zealand First and United Future both capitulated and now support this bill. Yet at the outset they did not and nothing has changed. One has to wonder and ask why. 
What has happened to those 3500 people who were in sheltered workshops if indeed the number has gone down to 1000? What has happened is community participation. How does that make them feel valued and worthwhile and as though they are participating in a work environment? People will lose their jobs if there is no way for an organisation like the Abilities Group to have the ability to pay minimum wages and also keep occupied the people who have exemptions. 
I challenge the Minister to take a call and tell me how people are not discriminated against in employment by being offered lesser terms and conditions of employment because the Human Rights Act provisions require that they are not meant to be discriminated against. How are labour inspector assessments not discrimination when they do not happen in any other workplace environment? 
The other thing I would like to mention is the lack of consultation. Many of the families we spoke to were very aggrieved that they had not been consulted nor had individuals been consulted; that was very clear. Clients and their families and providers had numerous questions around the system of wage assessments and how those were meant to be implemented. They still were not clear and they were loath to endorse a system that focuses on a person’s skills and not on his or her competencies.