Bradford Sue: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:617;Page:13372] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party welcomes the first reading of this short but extremely significant bill tonight. We will be supporting it to the select committee and beyond with the usual proviso that the possibility of improvements will be looked at along the way. There is no question that the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill marks a critical turning point in the history of how we treat people with impairments in Aotearoa New Zealand and it is long overdue. 
Sheltered employment in various forms has been a part of the fabric of New Zealand life since the 1920s. While this history is not one of unmitigated disaster at the same time it is a record characterised by paternalistic attitudes and an underpinning charity model of upstanding citizens doing good for these poor deserving unfortunates in the sense that those labouring in the workshops had better be jolly grateful for the wonderful opportunity that has been given to them. This wonderful opportunity is such that even in 2004—according to the explanatory note to the bill itself—most people in sheltered workshops still receive an average pay packet of $17 a week. The bill also estimates that nearly 4000 people are in these workshops at present. While that might not seem like a great crowd in the overall scheme of things it is still a large group of adults each and every one of whom deserves the same consideration and rights as the rest of us. 
It is fortunate that since the end of 1999 we have had a Government—and in particular a Minister Ruth Dyson—that has had a commitment to begin seriously to deal with some of the more difficult and substantive issues that continue to face people with impairments even in a so-called modern society like ours. The disability strategy released in April 2001 was a major first step with its commitment by Government amongst other things to ensure rights provide opportunities in employment and economic development and to support quality living in the community for disabled people. 
Under the employment objective the Government’s further specific goal is to “enable disabled people to work in the open labour market in accordance with human rights principles and maintain an adequate income.” This goal did not fit at all well alongside the systemic oppression of the old sheltered workshop system and I use the word “oppression” advisedly knowing equally that for many of those who work or worked in the workshops that this is or was their main opportunity to participate in the life of the community. 
However despite the good intentions of those involved in setting up and running workshops and despite the gratitude felt by many who worked and work in them as the decades have gone by this whole system has very much reflected the negative and discriminatory attitudes of employers and wider society to people with impairments. While the rest of working New Zealand has opened up in the last 35 years to new expectations—like the right of women to enter and stay in the paid workforce and to at least be paid the same rate of pay for the same job if not yet the same pay for work of equal value—the dark corner of the working world that this bill deals with has been left in the shade with few voices strong or loud enough to be heard in the wider community. 
Overall it has been an era characterised by low expectations by a sense that this is the best that could be expected by and for those working in the sheltered environment by an acceptance that a certain percentage of people were never going to make it on the open labour market that disabled workers were not capable of organising—nor should they organise—themselves into trade unions or advocacy organisations that they were not full adults and needed other people to speak and act for them and that really these workers should be grateful for the miniscule wage that tops up their condemnation to life in the benefit system. 
Thankfully in 2001 the Labour Government began the process of unwinding the old sheltered workshop system despite the opposition of a number of providers. Finally someone was listening to the increasingly desperate voices of advocacy groups like the Combined Beneficiaries Union in Auckland and the Disabled Persons Assembly nationally who were calling for an end to a system that did not pay real wages even though the work being done was real enough. It did not even attempt to meet statutory minimum employment conditions like holiday entitlements. It did not recognise or include its so-called clients in the management and governance structures of the organisations and it did not offer meaningful work or a wide enough range of work for people with a wide range of impairments. 
As an aside and as just a small example of what the system means in reality Iwonder how many people here in this House tonight with a reasonable intelligence—university degrees in some cases and other qualifications and experience—would like to spend week in week out performing the simplest routine tasks over and over again for a few dollars a day. This has been the fate of plenty of well-educated intelligent people inside the sheltered workshop system in the past and maybe the present and their psychological survival is nothing short of a miracle to me. I feel that as a society we owe enormous reparation to those who have sweated and suffered within the sheltered workshops. Even if the worst years are over now we cannot afford to even think of continuing such a system or of ever going back to it in the future. 
This bill thank goodness finally repeals the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act of 1960. That 1960 Act has a lot to answer for giving as it did a free hand to the people running sheltered workshops to do pretty much whatever they wanted with regard to how much they paid people if anything what employment conditions were like and the extent to which their workforces could be commercially exploited. Workshops were seen as completely outside the normal industrial relations framework and in recent times the punitive abatement regime between benefits and paid work has created an even stronger incentive for workers and operators to keep so-called wages incredibly low. The need for reform is immediate and intense. The new bill will mean that all people with disabilities who are employed by sheltered workshop providers will be covered by the provisions of the Minimum Wage Act the new Holidays Act and other legislation like the Employment Relations Act and the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Act. 
At the same time the bill does acknowledge the particular situation of people with really severe impairments and allows for organisational exemptions to continue but only until June 2007. It also allows labour inspectors to issue what is called a minimum wage exemption permit but only under tight conditions and with minimum wages nominated and agreed to. One concern I do have with this new bill is the extent to which unions will or will not be consulted in terms of exemptions and I will be looking at that closely during our consideration of the legislation in the select committee. 
One further minor concern I also have at this stage is around the relationship between this bill and section 66A of the Social Security Act which deals with benefits for people with what is called a severe disability. Again I will be listening with interest to any submitters on this subject and looking to see how best we can shore up the rights of invalid beneficiaries at the interface between protected employment and the intricacies of benefit administration. 
In conclusion I reiterate my congratulations to Labour and to all of those who have been involved in the long development of this bill on finally reaching this point. I look forward to its passage into law in the very near future.