Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill

It is no surprise to me that Paul Hutchison would understand what we are talking about here, but Sandra Goudie remained mute and quiet during that question—a luxury and a privilege she did not afford us during her speech, sadly.

The reason the disabilities strategy is called Pathways to Inclusion is that the Government is actually serious about making sure that people with a disability live a full, equal, and proper life. I would have thought that in National Party philosophy, the principle of equality is quite important. In fact, in recent years National has gone to some extremes to denigrate some groups in society, under this myth of “We believe in equality for everybody.”

Part 2 repeals the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act of 1960—legislation that is nearly half a century old—so it is probably a good time for Parliament to come back and look at it. But there was a time when the National Party spent a lot of time targeting Māori. Anything done for Māori was considered to be bad, and this was National’s way of garnering votes, particularly in rural and provincial New Zealand, as it went around peddling that message. But now, of course, National has decided to be far more inclusive because it is trying to cosy up to the Māori Party, and I am confident that that party will see way beyond that kaupapa, in that regard.

When we are talking about legislation that is 47 years old, I think it is fair to say that attitudes in New Zealand have moved on a little from what they were 47 years ago. National members come down to the Chamber and say, as they do in respect of any piece of social change: “Shock! Horror! This has to stay the same. We cannot possibly have a change. We cannot possibly change the legislative environment from what it was 47 years ago, when Walter Nash and Keith Holyoake brought the bill to the House.”

So when Labour brings along a policy nearly 50 years later and says it wants to achieve its Pathways to Inclusion, National members say this will be terrible. They really mean that this will be a disastrous thing for the remaining number of employers who are paying below the minimum wage, so they will sack all the people with disabilities who work for them. Let me tell those members something. That will not happen, because people always rise to the occasion. It is time in New Zealand that people with disabilities are not paid a lesser rate of pay simply because they have a disability. That ain’t fair! That is not right!

In my constituency of Otaki there are a lot of people with disabilities. I see them out there working and making just the same contribution, with the same love of their job, that others have who work alongside them. Just as this Parliament has legislated for other workers to have those minimum protections and standards, I think we should do the same by repealing this 47-year-old legislation, the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act.

Tell us about the people it affects.

I tell Sandra Goudie, who is parroting away, what will happen. What will happen will be exactly the same as when she gave her speech in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and now 2007. Every single time we have moved the minimum wage for ordinary workers in New Zealand—for everybody else—we have heard the same speeches. We have heard that there will be unemployment. We have heard that businesses will close down on the back of it. National has all of these lines, but none of these things ever happen.

If we are serious about Pathways to Inclusion, we have to find ways of removing the last vestiges of discrimination against people with disabilities—and here we have one. We have one here that one would never look at. I would ask Sandra Goudie this. If this law did not exist, would she introduce it? If this law was not on the statute book right now, would she introduce it?

No.

Dr Paul Hutchison Link to this

The member says she would not. The member does not actually support the bill; all she supports is the fact that it is there now. This is the ultimate conservative position: “I am against what the policy is, but, because it is there, I do not want to shift it.” Well, that is not good enough.

In Part 2 we will get rid of a piece of legislation that singles people out on the basis of their disability. We have stopped doing that in New Zealand now, and I think that that is a great thing. We have actually started to say that there will be real ways of achieving the disability strategy and making sure that people can get a decent go, whether it is their working life or whether it is their residential setting. National members oppose deinstitutionalisation, as well, with the smarmy words they use around it. In effect, they do not support that, but once it is brought into place, they will adopt their conservative position and keep things the way they are.

We are very serious about making sure there is vocational change. This is a long-signalled change that the Government is making, through the 2001 vocational information the Minister released.

Dr Hutchison is asking me a question, I will give him the charity of asking what it is.

Obviously, we didn’t mean you to take a call literally.

Power Simon Power Link to this

Oh, you did not want it literally? The National members on that side of the Committee do not like the hard facts, do they? They like to be able to talk about people with disabilities and be able to make waffly comments about them, but they do not like the truth.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 96 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to Part 2 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question,

That the amendments be agreed to.

Ayes 71

Noes 48

New Zealand National 48

Amendments agreed to.

Robertson The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) Link to this

The amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 71 in the name of Dr Paul Hutchison to clauses 7 and 8(b) are out of order because they are inconsistent with the previous decision of the Committee.

Link to this

A party vote was called for on the question,

That Part 2 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 71

Noes 50

New Zealand National 48
ACT New Zealand 2

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Part 3 Minimum Wage Act 1983

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) Link to this

Thank you, Mr Chairman, for the opportunity to speak on Part 3 of the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill, which deals with the Minimum Wage Act 1983. This is one of the pivotal parts of the bill—a bill that Labour clearly does not understand. The workshop community has said very clearly that there are major flaws in terms of the implementation.

This bill was introduced in 2004. The Government was not able to get it through because of the deep concerns that most other parties had. One would have thought that during that time it would sort out the flaws in the machinery. However, the workshops say that the flaws are certainly well and truly there. This is what Workforce Auckland said: “Our support for Dr Hutchison’s amendment stems from our concern that the system proposed to replace the DPEP Act contains serious flaws.” It went on to say: “We cannot be confident that these flaws will be remedied in the remaining 4 months of the transition period, given the dismal lack of progress in the nearly 3 years since they were first identified.” There was a “dismal lack of progress” made by the Labour Government in sorting it out. This is what the Labour members do; they stand back and forget about the important machinery things that have to be done in order to implement things properly.

Sloppy.

STEVE CHADWICK Link to this

“Sloppy” is what my colleague Simon Power, the excellent member from Rangitikei, says. Unfortunately, sloppy is what the Labour Government has been. The timeline relating to this bill goes back to 2001, when the review of vocational services first started. By 2004 concerns had been raised with officials, who acknowledged those concerns, but nothing was done. Later in that year the select committee obtained a report extension and asked officials to undertake more consultation, which they said did not happen. We come to 10 March 2005, when the Hon Ruth Dyson acknowledged the lack of progress, and Department of Labour officials said that Workforce Auckland’s concerns were recognised and would be addressed. Two years later and the concerns are still there.

In fact, a letter from only 3 days ago says that despite the fact that the Labour Government has extended the commencement date from 30 June to 30 November—after pressure from the National Party to try to get the machinery in place—these issues will not be resolved. The letter states: “We aren’t totally confident that these issues will be resolved over the next 9 months, given the failure to resolve them over the past 3 years. A change in attitude by the Government would help greatly, addressing the real issues, undertaking proper consultation, and stopping blaming sheltered workshop providers for spreading misinformation about being paternalistic. Attacks like the one that Russell Fairbrother made in his speech on Thursday are very counterproductive.”

This is an indictment on the Labour Government. It does not look at the basic requirements to put legislation like this through so that disabled people may indeed have the opportunities that are due to them through the New Zealand Disability Strategy and through Pathways to Inclusion.

I will make one more point about the changes to the Minimum Wage Act. Section 8(2), inserted by clause 13, states that an exemption permit “remains in force for the period stated in that permit”. Well, the Hon Ruth Dyson has put in an amendment that means that Department of Labour inspectors can revoke an exemption permit at any time they like. That is absolutely against all the principles of good faith, but it has been welcomed by the unions, which have pushed Ruth Dyson into putting it in the bill. I ask all members to vote against this very, very inappropriate amendment, which allows an exemption permit to be revoked at will by a Department of Labour inspector.

One of the great concerns has been the ability of Department of Labour inspectors to come around and work with the workshops to ensure that these exemption permits are put in place. The exemption permits take a great deal of work assessment sensitivity, and they should be in place for a set period of time. One of the points made by the workshops is that this bill actually engenders a quadrupling of the paper shifting—something that no one helping to organise a business to run efficiently wants.

This Labour Government is, as always, increasing bureaucracy and increasing the load on people who are altruistically doing everything they can to ensure that disabled people have a choice of where they work. Government members might say that people do not want to go to sheltered workshops. What we hear from places like the Abilities Group is that disabled people line up outside before work starts because they enjoy it so much. They come back from holidays early because they enjoy it so much. The manager said to us: “Look, we’ve got no locks, and we’ve got no bars; indeed, they come here because it is a very, very valid choice.”

So it is particularly disappointing that the unions have once again pressured the Labour Government to bring in an amendment that allows the labour inspectors to, at whim, revoke an exemption permit. That does not help those who have the very difficult charge of organising sheltered workshops to go about their business—who have to efficiently run these wonderful, altruistic organisations.

We have heard from Labour Government members that paternalism is implied in the National Party’s stance in terms of wanting to extend the period until the machinery is appropriately in place. I say to the Labour Government that nothing is more paternalistic than putting in a bill that just cannot, in any circumstances, ensure the smooth running of organisations that give choice to the disabled. I am very sorry that the member for Rotorua did not understand the fact that the amendment I put in would allow the implementation date of the bill to be extended for a maximum of 2 years, but that if Government members organised things, put them in place, and took out the flaws, the bill could commence immediately. That was the beauty of it, and it seems such a shame that this Labour Government was not prepared to respond to common sense. Once again, we see in Part 3 machinery problems imposed unnecessarily by the Labour Government.

STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) Link to this

I want to take a short call here. I think the debate in the Committee tonight is really rather sad. The Opposition has already said that it supported the policy of this Government when it came in, in 1999, of a focus on people with disabilities, and having a Minister responsible for the portfolio. Opposition members said “Well done!”. In 2004 when this measure was first proposed, which is now 3 years ago, the Opposition began its fearmongering throughout the sector about change. Of course this is big change. It is big change because it is a commitment from this Government that everybody in society enjoys the fruits of his or her labour. Dr Hutchison says I got the amendment wrong, but I believe that is all just a sideline activity. This Government has from 2004 been prepared to go that little bit further in relation to transitional management to get this measure properly in place for people with a disability.

I cannot understand the lenses through which Opposition members view the world. They want to keep protectionism and to wrap a safety envelope around people with a disability. I listen to the Disabled Persons Assembly and other sector groups that represent the voices of people with a disability, and that is not what they are asking for. Those disabled persons who turn up to sheltered workshops and love the work—and I have seen it, too—would also turn up early at a supermarket, love the work, do it well, do it loyally, work hard, and enjoy being part of a workforce.

This is about change. The Opposition cannot stand it that we are seeing through the strategy that we focused on in 1999. We went to the public on the Disability Strategy and the public mandated it. We are now putting the nuts and bolts around it, which we began in 2004. Yet Opposition members are still flagging that they want implementation dates to be blown out to 2009. Well, that is absolutely gutless. There is an election next year—

Robertson The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) Link to this

No, no. The member will withdraw. It was a personal reflection.

I withdraw and apologise. It is absolutely spineless, because with an election next year we are sticking to our principles—

Power Simon Power Link to this

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

Robertson The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) Link to this

I know what the member is going to say.

STEVE CHADWICK Link to this

I will withdraw and apologise for “spineless”, but people with a disability know what we are talking about.

Robertson The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) Link to this

No, the member will be seated, please. The member cannot add anything at all to an apology. She must stand, withdraw and apologise, and continue her speech.

STEVE CHADWICK Link to this

I withdraw and apologise. We are all aware that there is an election next year. This sector knows that this is a Government that puts its money where its mouth is and does not filibuster. We have said that transitional arrangements have to be there.

I will finish by talking about exemptions. I see that the Department of Labour has also been impugned by Opposition members, who have said that officials will revoke an exemption at whim. That just shows that Opposition members do not understand employment relations. How is it in the interests of officials from the Department of Labour to revoke an exemption at whim? That is rubbish. Exemptions for those in real need will remain.

It is vexatious for the Opposition to say it will be up to officials, who will get it wrong and be high-handed with people with a disability. That is rubbish. It is about training those officials in the interests of the sector they will be working with. The exemption process is relatively straightforward. I have seen it; it is just a flow chart that has to be worked through, and it will be put in place for those with high need. It is wrong to say that it will be revoked at whim. It is absolutely vexatious.

This is a wonderful bill. Part 3 repeals the right for sheltered workshops to have protection against any increases in the minimum wage. The minimum wage is a basic human right. As a decent and fair country, it is something that we are signatory to. I believe that it is great that the people who work in this environment will also receive the benefit of increases to the minimum wage, as they ought to do. They are valued employees. Members should go and ask those who have taken the step—because they know this bill is coming—of employing people with a disability what they think about their employee who clears the trolleys in the supermarket. The employee loves it, the employer loves it, and this Government does.

Guy NATHAN GUY (National) Link to this

It is great to take a call. I have had people in my office who have been particularly concerned about Part 3, “Minimum Wage Act 1983”. My office is located in Levin, and listeners will know that we have had the closure of the Kimberley Centre. Some of its residents are now out in the community and are doing a very good job working in certain sectors of our community.

Recently I visited Jimmy, a young fellow working in a horse stable. He was doing a very, very good job, cleaning out the stables and feeding the horses. I must say that he was getting a small amount of pay—about $4 an hour—but in respect of the work he was doing, his employers said that his productivity levels were not as great as those of other people. Yet he turns up every morning bright and early, he enjoys his work, and his employers love the work he does for them. He is very much part of their business and he has high self-esteem. Although it would take Jimmy a lot longer to do the job than others would take, he feels very much rewarded by the work he does.

The concern out there in the community of Horowhenua, in moving through this Part 3, is that some employers will actually not employ these people. That is a real concern. It is a concern that a lot of people who have been through my office have about this bill. Although this is Labour’s ideology—it is all about its ideology, is it not—the reality is that people are really concerned, particularly about Part 3. This bill has taken 3 years to be put through, because Labour has not been able to get consensus around the House. That is how long it has taken for the bill to go through and for Labour to get the bill into the Chamber tonight to be debated in the Committee stage.

It is interesting that the Labour Party has caved in to the union movement. The real concern I have is that labour inspectors can turn up at whim and revoke the exemption permits. I do not think that that is on, and the parents who have been to see me do not think that that is on. We have some real concerns in our community about that. There will be a lot more paperwork involved for employers, and although I accept that it is great to have these people out working in our community, I think the biggest concern is that their productivity levels may not be as high as those of other people. There are jobs out there, but the concern for these people in our community is all around the Minimum Wage Act and whether there will be opportunities for them if they have to be paid $11.25 an hour. That is the real concern we have about Part 3.

Hughes DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) Link to this

We have just had a member of Parliament from the National Party get up and tell us that if we do not want someone to be paid $4 an hour in New Zealand in 2007, that means we have caved in. That is an extraordinary thing to say. He said that if we do not want to pay any more than $4 an hour for someone with a disability to work for us, we have caved in to the union movement. He says that it is dogmatic, that it is Labour Party ideology gone mad. That is the approach we are hearing tonight from the National Party. I just ask Nathan Guy, who claims to have had somebody come to see him about it, how many have come.

Guy Nathan Guy Link to this

Several.

How many is that—seven, eight? I will tell the member how many people have been to see me about it—two. I have had two people; two parents have been to see me about it. I ask the member how many have seen him. Oh, the member will not answer the question; the member who got up and said he was very concerned about the community he lives in, and all that sort of thing, will not tell us how many people actually have been to see him. I suspect that it has been one; I think it has been one.

You see, what has happened is that the member is saying we are caving in by getting rid of the Minimum Wage Act 1983 exemption in the principal Act for people with disabilities. But I am just saying, as the member of Parliament for that area, for that constituency, that I do not want people in my constituency working for four bucks an hour simply because they have a disability. I do draw a line in the sand at that and say that it is not good enough for somebody to be paid $4 an hour. We can say, well, they are a bit slower and their productivity is not very good. But there are people who turn up for work after a hard night out whose productivity is not very good—some of them are members of Parliament—yet we still pay them exactly the same rate of money. We do not draw a line in the sand there.

This part of the bill gets rid of those Minimum Wage Act provisions and makes it very clear that people have to be paid $11.25—as the minimum wage will shortly become in New Zealand. Of course, when Labour became the Government in this country, the minimum wage was $7 an hour; today it is $11.25. Next year, working with United Future and New Zealand First, we hope to get that to $12 an hour. If we can do that it will mean that workers on the minimum wage in New Zealand will be, on average, 200 bucks a week better off because of the changes made to the minimum wage. [Interruption] Does Sandra Goudie think that it is a good idea or bad idea that people will be 200 bucks a week better off, if they are full-time workers, after the Minimum Wage Act changes that Labour has made?

They won’t have a job.

What if they don’t have a job at all?

Well, there is a lot of noise from Sandra Goudie, and a lot of noise from Maurice Williamson—the sort of dream team of the National Party. But they will not tell us whether they are actually in support now of the minimum wage changes that they have opposed every single year. We are now saying, in relation to the small number of people with disabilities who are working below the standards in our country, that we are going to bring them in and make them part of the tent. I support that; I think that it is absolutely fantastic that we are doing that.

Another point I make is in reference to residents of the Kimberley Centre. Those final few residents of the Kimberley Centre are not covered under this legislation for getting out and working in the community. We are talking about people who are already working out there in the community right now, not people who have come out of a residential setting. We are making sure that these people will have the minimum rights and protections that our minimum wage legislation allows for in New Zealand. I think it is fantastic; I think it is a great thing for New Zealand. I think it is good that we are saying that people cannot work for $4 an hour any more. I am amazed that today, in 2007, we have National list MPs getting up and saying that $4 an hour is a great pay rate if someone has a disability, because that person might be a bit slower than some other workers. That is a very hard position to accept—

This member should be on $1 an hour.

Maurice Williamson thinks that $1 an hour is a good rate for people to be paid. I think it is even worse. Of course, the National Party’s problems when Don Brash was leader were all fixed by returning Maurice Williamson to the front bench. Well, if Maurice Williamson is the answer to National’s problem, it must be a pretty bad question, when he is held up as the strategic genius and returned to National’s front bench.

But all I want to say is that Part 3 is a very, very good part.

That was so vicious!

What was more vicious, I tell Mr Williamson, was when the member was first put on the front bench by Mrs Shipley, then sacked, then put back to the third row, then kicked out by Mr English, then brought back, then rehabilitated after a pinch when the good Dr Brash left. That was the cruel attack—it was not from me. What I said was absolutely kind compared with what the member’s own colleagues did to him. That left him with quite a big disability in terms of Part 3 of this bill—that is what happened when he became a disabled person for the purposes of the National Party caucus.

But I want to say that the minimum wage ought to extend to every single worker in our country. There is no reason, in this day and age, for people not to get it simply for having a disability.

Get real!

Power Simon Power Link to this

Sandra Goudie, who is a kind of advertisement for the other side of the argument—I accept that—says we should be able to pay people less. She supports the Nathan Guy approach of $4 an hour if people have a disability. I will never support that. I will demand that people in my electorate are paid a decent rate of pay, even if they have a disability, because I do not discriminate against people. I believe in Pathways to Inclusion. I think that this is a great part of the bill, and I support it.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 96 in the name of the Hon Ruth Dyson to Part 3 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question,

That the amendments be agreed to

Ayes 71

Noes 50

New Zealand National 48
ACT New Zealand 2

Amendments agreed to.

Link to this

A party vote was called for on the question,

That Part 3 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 71

Noes 50

New Zealand National 48
ACT New Zealand 2

Part 3 as amended agreed to.

Clause 1 Title

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) Link to this

Firstly, I want to say that the title of this bill, the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill, does indeed fit in with what this bill is doing. I think it is very important for the public out there to realise that all, or most, of the amendments the Labour Government has put in up until only 2 or 3 days ago would have had the commencement date as 30 June 2007. However, at the very last moment, the Hon Ruth Dyson put in an amendment to extend the date to 30 September. Why did she do this? She did it because the bill was flawed. The machinery to ensure that the sheltered workshops would indeed be able to employ disabled people and give them the real choice they wished for was just not in place.

We have heard time and time again that none of the workshops were confident that those flaws would be remedied in the remaining 3 to 4 months. In many respects, it is a victory for the National Party and for common sense that at least we have pushed the Labour Government into seeing a tiny bit of common sense, if not a complete bit of common sense, which is something it should have.

This bill undoubtedly should have been called the “Ruth Dyson Let’s Steamroll the Legislation Through and Forget About the Practicalities of Implementation Bill”.

That’s a long title.

It is a slightly longer title; that is absolutely true. Let us look at one of the other names it could have been called. It could have been called the “Labour Government Let’s Decimate Sheltered Workshops Bill”. Three years ago, at the time that this bill was first brought into the House in 2004, something like 4,000 disabled people were working in sheltered workshops, but due to the pressure that this Labour Government has put on sheltered workshops they now number only about 1,000.

You’re joking!

There are only about 1,000. There were 4,000 in 2004; there are 1,000 now.

Labour should be ashamed. They should be ashamed.

Dr Paul Hutchison Link to this

They should indeed, particularly when we hear what a woman I know—Jane Watts, whose son Lee so benefits and enjoys working at the Abilities Group on the North Shore—said when she heard about the replacement opportunity of community participation. Her words were: “It’s a waste of money. We do those things—take him to the library, swimming, bowling—on weekends. If the government wants to spend more money they should provide more caregivers at Abilities to help people get their shoes on, open their drink bottles. They could build a little gym there, or send taxis for Lee so we wouldn’t have to struggle and worry so much about getting to work.” That was from the mother of one of those disabled workers who absolutely loves what he is doing.

One of the other names that we could call the bill is the “Labour Government Put Pressure on the IHC to Buckle to our Will Bill—the classic thing that this Labour Government has been doing. We know that the chief executive officer of IHC wrote this: “Has the IHC become too PC in some areas? Yes, by being a service provider we have bought into the government expectation, standards and policies. The $140 million … comes with a cost.” We know that in these 3 years we have seen sheltered workshops go from 4,000 workers down to 1,000. Hence the name the “Labour Government Put Pressure on the IHC to Buckle to our Will Bill” indeed fits this title perhaps more aptly than what we see there now.

The real concern is about the commencement of this bill. At least it has been extended by a few months. The other day in the House I asked the Minister whether she could guarantee that no disabled employees or sheltered workshops would be worse off after 30 November as a result of her bill. She said: “No. I cannot guarantee that.” That has to be the ultimate test, because it is difficult to bring in such a bill as this—and the Labour Government has not done it very well, at all.

Goudie SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) Link to this

This is the “Disabled Persons Unemployment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill”; that could be its new title, because that is what it is actually going to do. It is what the legislation has been doing, and it is what it will continue to do. Here are people who cannot be employed in any real capacity, and what happens is that they move into what is called community participation where they get taken to the movies, they do artwork, they might play sport, and they go on outings; they no longer go to a workplace environment and feel valued. They have been taken away from that workplace environment and as a consequence have become what would be called unemployed.

Why was this bill introduced? We have been told by other members of the House why it was introduced. It was because the legislation was deemed to be contrary to the Human Rights Act provisions and it was unlawful to discriminate in employment by offering less favourable terms and conditions of employment based on a person’s disability. The Human Rights Act provisions require that the conditions should be not less favourable. Yet here we have a situation, found in no other work environment, where a labour inspector comes in to assess these people. Now, that does not happen in any other work environment, so would that not be contrary to the Human Rights Act? Why is the Government doing that? Hello—hang on—it is because it suits its purpose, because the reality is that it has to have some way of allowing for people who cannot work at a full rate of employment to have some sort of exemption to allow them to continue in those workplace environments.

That is, of course, if those workplace environments can afford to keep them in there. Affordability of those places to keep going is a very real question. Ruth Dyson acknowledged that some contracts might not be viable even at that rate and they might be lost to China, costing the jobs of some disabled workers. So we have to ask ourselves why here on the one hand the Government is saying that the Human Rights Act makes it unlawful to have disabled people operating in work conditions that are not the same as everybody else’s, yet it is imposing a work condition that is not the same as everybody else’s. It is requiring a labour inspector to give those workers an assessment about their work capability, and that does not happen in any other single environment. The only reason it is being done is so that these people have the opportunity to stay within the sheltered workshops that they might be currently enjoying.

It is interesting to note that since this legislation was first introduced it has hardly changed at all. At the outset New Zealand First and United Future opposed this bill, so I do not know what has happened. Even Sue Bradford had misgivings at the beginning. She has been won over, and somewhere along the way New Zealand First and United Future both capitulated and now support this bill. Yet at the outset they did not, and nothing has changed. One has to wonder, and ask why.

What has happened to those 3,500 people who were in sheltered workshops, if indeed the number has gone down to 1,000? What has happened is community participation. How does that make them feel valued and worthwhile, and as though they are participating in a work environment? People will lose their jobs if there is no way for an organisation like the Abilities Group to have the ability to pay minimum wages, and also keep occupied the people who have exemptions.

I challenge the Minister to take a call and tell me how people are not discriminated against in employment by being offered lesser terms and conditions of employment, because the Human Rights Act provisions require that they are not meant to be discriminated against. How are labour inspector assessments not discrimination, when they do not happen in any other workplace environment?

The other thing I would like to mention is the lack of consultation. Many of the families we spoke to were very aggrieved that they had not been consulted, nor had individuals been consulted; that was very clear. Clients, and their families and providers, had numerous questions around the system of wage assessments and how those were meant to be implemented. They still were not clear, and they were loath to endorse a system that focuses on a person’s skills, and not on his or her competencies.

Hughes DARREN HUGHES (Labour—Otaki) Link to this

I rise to speak in support of the title clause that sets out the name of the bill, the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill. The bill is well named because it sets out exactly what the Labour-led Government has been trying to achieve since 1999, which has been around ensuring, under our Pathways to Inclusion disability strategy, that people with disabilities are able to participate in mainstream New Zealand life, be that in education, in health services, or in employment.

This bill honours our manifesto commitment to review the 1960 legislation. We have also set out to review the funding and the support systems that are available to help people who have disabilities into work, which is what our bill will do, as well. The title of the bill is well named. It sets out our priorities very clearly. We have listened throughout the entire debate to National members basically not telling us very much, apart from the fact that because the law has existed since 1960, we should keep it.

I asked Sandra Goudie whether if the law did not exist, she would introduce it, and she said no. So here we are, trying to repeal legislation that the Opposition spokesperson on disabilities—I think it is Sandra Goudie; it is always hard to keep up—

No wonder your majority is going down.

Tanczos Nandor Tanczos Link to this

I would not have thought that was the reason in respect of Sandra Goudie. She seems to be the person who does a lot of the thinking around this area for the National Party, and perhaps that is why we heard some of the speeches tonight in that regard.

Hard to believe.