Beaumont Carol: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: 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:10188. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): New Part 4A in clause 4 is of course the substantial part of this bill the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) and it is the part where the new provisions are being inserted into the principal Act the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. I want to talk particularly in relation to the provisions in new section 70D(3)(c). They are to do with the provisions around payment for those providing services for those family members whom they are looking after.In the regulatory impact statement—and this is one of the bits that is not blanked out which is good—Hon Ruth Dyson: And rare.CAROL BEAUMONT: —and rare indeed—there is quite a section about consideration about how people would be paid once this bill was passed. There was a debate about the two main options for how family carers could be paid: as employees or by allowance. I am going to be supporting the amendment to clause 4 in the name of my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson that replaces new section 70D(3)(c) which I believe will do a better job of looking at payment.But just before I get into the specifics of that in the regulatory impact statement where consideration was made of how family carers could be paid as I said there was consideration of whether they should be paid as an employee which would then potentially determine their pay rate or by allowance. Thankfully—and it is potentially one of the few things in this that we could wholeheartedly agree with—it was agreedthat in fact the appropriate way to go was to pay people as employees rather than to pay them an allowance or via section 88 notice. The regulatory impact statement does go through that whole debate and talks about why that conclusion was made and quite rightly says that “Paying family carers as employees recognises their contribution by giving them status as an employee.”—for example enabling them to get a formal work record—“It also incorporates mechanisms for assuring service quality and safety ...”. I think that is sensible. But when you look further on at the analysis of that in the table “Analysis of options for how family carers are paid to provide HCSS” there is a whole column that is blanked out. Of course I would be very very interested in knowing what that column contains and whether it has anything to do with the actual rates of pay which is the provision we are talking about here.New section 70D(3)(c) is relating to the actual rates of pay for these family carers. What the bill provides is that “the rates or ways of setting the rates of payment for support services provided to family members which may be”—and this is the important bit—“lower than the rates of payment for comparable support services”—and I underline the word “comparable”—“provided to persons who are not family members:”. In other words and just to be clear to those listening this is saying that these employees these workers would be paid less than others who are not family members. I think that is a really important point. Why should that be the case? Why should they be paid less for comparable work? By virtue of its being comparable we can say that the value is the same. Certainly I think all of us—on this side of the Chamber anyway—would agree that equal work should receive equal pay. It is a concept that is foreign to members opposite of course. It is a concept foreign to members of the National Government because of course they have recently passed legislation ensuring that young people who do equal work are paid less or potentially paid less. So perhaps they want to extend that principle into other provisions.But for those of us who are looking at what is very very hard work and very important work in our society—and as my colleague Sue Moroney said work that is often done by women—we see that it is already low-paid work. The work of carers in our society is vitally important. Carers are looking after people who by definition almost are vulnerable in some way and who need somebody else to look after them and to help them. It is low paid already. What we are providing for in this bill what the Government is trying to do is to say that some carers carers who are family members could be paid less.