Dyson Ruth: 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 
Dyson Ruth: 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:2544. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I would not be at all surprised if the next speaker from National is Steven Joyce. Clearly the optics have not been great on this. Clearly the messaging has not been as succinct as Minister Joyce the “Minister of Everything” would wish so the Hon Tony Ryall was sent down to rescue the Hon Paula Bennett who did not make a single contribution through the entire Committee stage of this legislation. During the introduction of the bill the Social Security (Long-term Residential Care—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill Minister Bennett described it as a priority. She said this was a priority. Well the Hon Tony Ryall has just described to us the loaves and fishes of the asset-testing health budget regime. This is a fantastic policy whereby you can save $4.5 million taken from the dressing gown pockets of residents of rest home and hospital care - level facilities. Suddenly you get $4.5 million over here out of their dressing gown pockets—they are already residents; they have entered into that contract and it is being broken by National—and on the other side of the ledger you can put $47 million into rest home care you can put $37 million into dementia care and you can put around $40 million into home support. Wow! That is loaves and fishes in action. Thank you Minister Ryall for that amazing lesson in new maths. No wonder this Budget looks so bad for New Zealanders. If people on that side of the House think that any older person is going to fall for that spin then they are wrong.  
This has been a disgraceful breach of the respect that we should hold older New Zealanders in and a disgraceful breach of proper parliamentary process where urgency should be accorded when it is needed and at no other time. In fact the arrangements of the House—the rules of the House—have been changed so that we do not have urgency just when the Government wants to do overtime. We are now correctly calling that extended sitting hours. This legislation may well have fallen into that category. It may have been that the Government has got a bit behind in its workload and wanted to get a bit more done but at no time ever could this be justified as needing to go through all stages under urgency without any reference at all to a select committee and therefore to the public.  
The arrogance demonstrated by the Government towards older New Zealanders is gobsmacking and I am sure as my colleague Kris Faafoi mentioned earlier this will be mentioned regularly and frequently to members of the National Party by their constituents. I know that as word of this gets out over the weekend and over the next little while many people will be contacting the National Party and asking those members why the Minister for Social Development could not answer a single question during the Committee stage. Why could she not answer the questions of how this bill helps why it was needed and why it went through the House under urgency? There is no justification for it at all.  
I was also surprised that the Hon Peter Dunne did not take a call at all on this bill; nor did the Hon John Banks. I am not sure whether he has realised that he is actually a member of another party now. He is a member of ACT and his vote was cast on his behalf by National. And nobody from the Maori Party took a call despite their votes being cast in support of this legislation as well. So for the entire Committee stage we had opposition raised by members of the Green Party by NZ First and by Labour and not a single contribution from the majority vote that will make this legislation our law and freeze the threshold for the asset-testing regime for older people—freeze it for the people who are already in a rest home who entered that rest home with a clear contractual understanding of how the law was a contract that has now been broken by National.  
The Hon Tony Ryall said: “We’re not changing anything dramatically; we’re just slowing down the increase.” This is a major policy reversal Mr Ryall and I know that that Minister understands that very well. No amount of his spin is going to alter the fact that this has penalised older people who are not able to have a say at a select committee—not just older people but older people who are at the most vulnerable stage of their lives at a level where they are dependent on support being provided to them because they are not able to independently live on their own.  
We know and I am sure everyone in the House is aware of the issues in the aged-care sector. Everyone knows the issues and the challenges. What we have seen from this Government is a total denial of its leadership responsibility in aged care. What it has done is said: “Yes we know. There are lots of issues in aged care and we’re going to change the asset-testing regime for older people.” If that is the answer then the Government has not understood the question. Everyone else throughout the country in this sector understands the issues and the challenges. We should face up to that.  
I recall at the Health Committee when Labour and Green members of the select committee tried and tried and tried to get the select committee to agree to having an inquiry into these issues so that we could across all the parties in Parliament look at the issues in the aged-care sector and develop some systematic responses to them—in consultation and in partnership with the different players. They all care about the quality the affordability the sustainability of home support of residential care of dementia care. But no the National members blocked that inquiry so Labour and the Greens did it themselves and we came up with a lot of tragic stories about issues facing us in the aged-care sector. Grey Power was a partner in that inquiry as well. Grey Power I know and Age Concern New Zealand were told of this change just minutes before it was introduced to the House. They had no opportunity for any genuine debate and they had no opportunity for consultation. They should be feeling very aggrieved and I know they will express their views to the appropriate people at the appropriate time.  
This is a big disappointment to me because in my view it is an opportunity lost. We have every part of the aged-care sector saying that we know there are issues we know there are challenges and we agree on the problems. Why could the Minister of Health and the Minister for Senior Citizens not have taken that opportunity and said: “Let us work together and develop solutions that are sustainable.”? Instead they are penalising a small group of people for a pitiful amount of money that will make no difference to the overall health budget but will penalise just those who have been denied an opportunity to have a say.