Flavell Te Ururoa: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill Minimum Wage Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:638;Page:8215] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
Tena koe Madam Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tatouiteneiahiahi. As I was doing some research to try to find a lead into this particular legislation I came across a statement made by the president of the New Zealand Wheelchair Tennis team—a lady by the name of Marilyn Stratford—who wrote recently about her life experiences in a way that I believe informs the intent and provisions of the two bills before us this afternoon the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill and the Minimum Wage Amendment Bill. She said: “If I ask myself did my own disability shape my life I would have to say yes it probably did. Not because I have a problem with it but because other people do. It’s very much that visual thing: they see the disability before they see me.” 
This legislation enables people with disabilities who are employed in sheltered workshops to be seen as employees who have the same conditions rights and entitlements as other people at a comparable level of productivity. They are to be seen as workers rather than as disabled people. The Maori Party believes that in matters of hauora—our health and well-being—it is all about creating the optimum conditions for our full potential to be realised. Given this wider context we are firmly committed to a focus on the determinants of health and well-being including poverty housing income discrimination and the environment. It is a matter of rights and of well-being and a responsibility of good government that opportunities should be provided for disabled people to work in the labour market and to earn and maintain an adequate income. We are therefore happy to support this legislation to repeal the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act of 1960. 
During the course of this legislation we have heard from many sheltered workshops. My colleagues Hone Harawira and Tariana Turia have visited the Abilities Group which takes as its mission the goal of enriching the lives of people with disabilities through meaningful employment. Hone Harawira has also visited Access Ability a private sheltered workshop. We have met with People First DPA IHC Advocacy and New Zealand CCS. We have heard from Te RoopuWaiora Trust a kaupapa Maori disability support group and from Te RoopuTaurima o Manukau the largest residential provider for whanau with learning disabilities. 
In my electorate I know of Te Whare Manaaki i te HungaHaua in Te Teko which was the first kaupapa Maori home providing a base for our disabled people to live an ordinary life in their own community. I know of the work of Te PouWhakaaro in Whakatane which has over 70 percent Maori service users. A centre opened in Kawerau as well which supports our whanau in contributing to their communities through paid work and voluntary work. 
I am sure we all have within our whanau the experience of whanau members living with disability. My own sister Hine lives with us in my home town of Rotorua. She has suffered three strokes over recent years. On a daily basis we admire her as she faces the difficulties of things like memory loss and physical challenge. My sister spent some time in a residential home as she adjusted to the impact of the strokes on her health but as a whanau we were always keen for her to be able to come home and live an ordinary life. It is a worthwhile goal as the National Health Committee report declared to have an ordinary life—kia whaioranganoa. It is a simple wish but the desire for an ordinary life it seems is not one that everyone understands to be such a priority. 
For much of the history of this country people thought that the best way to care for people with disabilities was in institutions separated from their communities and focused on their disabilities with their opportunities defined and restricted by the services they could access. For disabled Maori the marginalisation of being disabled as well as being Maori saw them surrounded by a whole host of professionals but segregated from their marae and whanau and from their right to find real work for real pay. Yet we know the value of whakawhanaungatanga and that the continuation of vital relationships and connections with whanau hapu and iwi provide the ultimate safeguard to our health and well-being. 
Disability rates for Maori adults are higher than disability rates nationally. We know that one-third of Maori aged between 45 and 64 years report a disability compared with one-quarter of the total population in that age group. So there are more of us yet despite having higher rates Maori access disability support services less than any other population group in New Zealand. 
So what do we do with all of this? I like the momentum behind the whakatauaki “He manako te koura e kore ai.”—“Wishful thinking will not get you the crayfish.” We need to have the wish and the vision but we also need to take action to make it happen. So we support the intention to remove provisions in existing legislation that have been regarded by disabled persons as improper and abusive of their human rights. We believe that disabled persons have the right to work and that the repeal of the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act is a way of expressing manaakitanga of including disabled persons and their whanau in being able to participate in the community and to be seen as valued and contributing members and of ensuring that the services are aligned to whanau needs rather than driven by the preferences of service providers and policy makers. Supporting the repeal of the Act is in line with our commitment to rangatiratanga—a means to ensure that disabled persons and their whanau are their own experts who should be supported by organisations that employ care and develop them in ways that enhance their lives. 
We know that the requirement for workshops to be commercially viable will create additional pressures that may mitigate against their capacity to be community minded. It is for this reason that we supported the amendment by Dr Paul Hutchison to see whether it was possible to extend the time frame within which the legislation was to be established. We had hoped that with more time all parties could give due consideration to the ways and means of protecting the needs of both those providing the service and those directly affected by this legislation namely the whanau. 
The key issue for us however is how disabled persons and their whanau are able to take up their right to work and to benefit from their due entitlements covered by the Minimum Wage Act 1983 and the Holidays Act 2003. So when the question is put as to whether we support initiatives that can honour minimum wage and holiday provisions we will say we remain fully in support. 
We are pleased that those whose productivity is not sufficient to earn the minimum wage can apply for and be granted a minimum wage exemption permit. We also know from our talks with disabled persons that so many whanau are happy with what we might see as crumbs based on the rationale that if there are no alternatives to the value of work for the sake of work it may mean that individuals put up with conditions that are less than ideal. We know that most of the work obtained by sheltered workshops is of low value with low profit margins and that a comprehensive funding model is essential if we are to transform these workshops into social enterprises that can comply with legislative requirements. So we remind this House that under the existing Act people with a disability are the only people in Aotearoa to whom sweatshop rates can be paid without breaching the law. The low pay has been justified purely and simply on account of their disability—“they see the disability before they see me”—and it has nothing to do with productivity. 
Finally I leave the last word to Carole Williams who has lived with epilepsy and cerebral palsy since having an injury as a baby. She said: “Just being Maori is a good thing which I’m lucky to have … all my whanau around me I love that. I wouldn’t want to be without them. There’s not much I’d swap. I’d swap my body—to have a body that would let me do things—but I wouldn’t ever swap who I am.” This legislation in repealing the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act 1960 enables people like Carole to continue to enjoy being Maori to continue to enjoy her whanau and to continue to enjoy who she is. For those opportunities the Maori Party would not swap anything. Kia ora tatou.