Hague Kevin: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hague Kevin: Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2516. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I want to first of all make some remarks in response to the contribution from Dr Paul Hutchison. Dr Hutchison’s contribution to the debate indicates I think that perhaps like everyone else in New Zealand he has been left a little flat-footed—and the remarks from my Labour colleagues may indicate why—about what this Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill does. 
He appears to suggest in his contribution that the change is merely a cosmetic one. He draws our attention to the reasonableness of CPI increases—in fact missing the point that actually what this bill represents is a fundamental change to the State’s policy in relation to asset-testing thresholds. Actually we are moving in this bill—which will not be subject to any submissions at all from the public—to a regime in which the current threshold is frozen in real terms. That is what we are doing. We are freezing the current threshold and that is a change from a policy that has been in place since 2004 of actually progressively rolling back the threshold. That is not just a cosmetic change; that is a fundamental change. 
As Ruth Dyson indicated it is a change that older New Zealanders I believe are entitled to have been consulted about because actually if there is one thing that older New Zealanders ask from the State it is some certainty on which to plan their affairs. Effectively they had been made a promise about the asset-testing regime that would be in place at the point that they might need residential care and that promise is now being gone back on. That is what the Government is doing with this bill. Sadly Dr Hutchison does not seem to understand that that is what is being done. Most New Zealanders will have woken up this morning not understanding what is being done. I just hope that through the process of this debate we can actually raise with them what is occurring and the fact that tragically they will not have a say on it. They will not have a say on it. 
Dr Hutchison suggests there is support for the changes being made. The weak basis for that claim is that he has not personally seen a press release from Age Concern or Grey Power about it. Well I have not seen their press releases either but I did hear Roy Reid the National President of Grey Power on  
Morning Report  
this morning around a quarter past 6 saying that he thought it was a very bad idea and talking about asset testing as a discriminatory act against older people. That is the Green Party’s view also. That is the Green Party’s view—that asset testing for aged residential care is discriminatory on the grounds of age against a group of New Zealanders who actually if anyone is entitled to it are entitled to security in their old age. “What is there more important in Christianity than to be our brothers’ keepers in reality? Why should people not have security in their old age or when they are invalided?”. That was Michael Joseph Savage from the parliamentary debate on the introduction of the Social Security Act in the first place. Indeed that cuts to the very heart of this issue. 
Finally Paul Hutchison refers to this bill as being a responsible bill. Well I would say it is not responsible. I would say it is responsive but responsive not to the needs of New Zealanders but rather to the need of the Government to be able spin the health budget. Because the spin is all about $1.5 billion extra for health—health being the big winner from this Government’s Budget. Well it is a struggle to figure out exactly how the Government has reached that $1.5 billion number but it seems to be the total cost over 4 years of what have been announced as new initiatives. Well that is a cost it is over 4 years and it is not about the revenue. So yes it is true; it is true that the Government is intending in the Budget that the Minister of Health Tony Ryall has trumpeted with the press release that is on the Beehive website—and I see that members from the National Party have been displaying it on their iPads—to spend that. It is true that that is the total cost of those new initiatives. But the fact is that in a Budget that at its top line is supplying just $288 million more in Vote Health—and that is barely 2 percent of the Vote Health budget—as an increase that increase is probably not enough to cover even the cost of inflation in health let alone the growing population and let alone the growing population of older people with increased needs. So actually the increase from last year to this year in Vote Health will not even enable the sector to stand still. Just to be able to try to stand still the sector will need to be cutting health services. That is the only way that the sector will be able to do that. 
On top of that we have got a whole series of new initiatives from the Government. Well all of those new initiatives—$434 million in the first year—will have to be funded by cuts elsewhere in the health sector. That is not how it is being spun by the Government but that is the reality when the Budget is not even being increased by enough to cover inflation let alone demographic factors and let alone these new initiatives. So the only way that the Government is able to put more money into elective surgery for example or more money into rheumatic fever or more money into cancer services is to take that money from somewhere else in the health sector. Sadly in this bill we are seeing the machinery behind one of those sources because one of the places that the Government is taking money from to be able to fund those new initiatives and the demographic change in demand is older people. It is from older people. Actually that is the point. 
So what Mr Hutchison says—that this is a responsible Budget—is completely wrong. It is responsive to the Government’s need to find revenue sources to fund its extravagant promises in health and its extravagant spin around health. That is reprehensible because the cost of doing that—and members have referred to the year 1 contribution that this measure will make of just somewhat over $4 million—the amount of money that the Government will peg back by going back on its promise to older New Zealanders over time will increase. In the fourth year it is something like $16 million. Sure it is not a lot in the face of the health budget but what it suggests is a Government that is so desperate to be able to support its spin about health spending and about the $1.5 billion in new initiatives that it is prepared to claw back even that promise that it made to older people. 
There are big issues—there are big issues—in aged residential care. The Green Party and the Labour Party in the last term of Parliament produced a report about what some of those issues are. They are things like ensuring quality of care. They are things like ensuring equitable wages for the work that is done in that sector. And they are things like ensuring the dignity of older people and reflecting the dignity of older people in the type of care that they receive and the type of regime to which they are subjected. In this bill the Government further undermines the dignity of older people by creating once again a discriminatory regime and entrenching that regime. That is not what older New Zealanders deserve. Older New Zealanders deserve that security in the evening of their days as Michael Joseph Savage first promised in the 1930s and that is what this Government ought to be living up to and is not.