Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill

We have to ask just how far Labour wants to go in pushing this philosophy on to those people who do not want it. “We know what is best.” are the words that come from those Labour members constantly in respect of this matter—“We know that the system is working fine but we know what is best.” So as we have it at the moment, people who are attending the sheltered workshops and working there, no matter what level of output they have, are receiving a little bit of money each week.

A little chappie in my electorate, who is getting about $50 a week, is getting enough to keep him in fags and to pay for Sky, and he is pretty happy with that. But we are finding out that he will be assessed as to how much of a fully productive unit he is by the people there, so he will be paid a fraction of what the minimum wage would be. It could well be that he will receive somewhere around $25 a week for the work he is doing. We have to ask ourselves whether that is really fair on him, and whether it is in line with where Labour wants to go on this particular policy.

The other problem we have is that there will be a huge number of exemptions. There is an expectation that almost everybody within the workshop will receive an exemption at some period.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

As I was saying before the dinner break, when it comes to this legislation, members of the Labour Party and the Labour Government say: “We know what is best; we do not care less; eat that!”.

I am pleased to take a call on Part 2 of the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill. I must say that when I heard the debate in the Chamber on Part 1, I was quite alarmed by the attitude of members of the Opposition in terms of people with a disability. Opposition members showed that they had an absolutely paternalistic approach to people with a disability, rather than an inclusive approach, and that they were rather stuck in the Dark Ages about the role of sheltered workshops. No one who knows this sector well would ever put down the work of those great providers in the sheltered workshops. That is not what this bill is about, at all.

Part 2 of this bill is about repealing legislation that is now 47 years old. This Government is certainly not stuck in the Dark Ages. People with a disability have human rights to be included in New Zealand and to have the opportunity to get proper work—not sheltered workshop work, as the previous speaker Chester Borrows spoke about, for a few bob for a day’s work. These people want to go out, to participate in the workforce to the best of their ability, and to be paid a decent wage for doing that. Who in this day and age would ever put them down for that? Forty-seven years have gone past since the very noble Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Act 1960 was first brought in. Part 2 of this bill now repeals that Act and replaces it with what I think is contemporary legislation.

I want to talk about our Minister for Disability Issues, Ruth Dyson. This Government is the first Government that has committed itself to putting in a Minister in charge of people with a disability. Her reputation has been rather impugned in the House by some members of the Opposition who took a swipe at her and said that she wanted to get rid of sheltered workshops. That is far from the point.

This Minister worked with this sector during the 1990s when Labour was in Opposition. People in the sector said: “We want to take part in civil society. We want to participate in the economic growth of this country. We may have a disability, yes, and we are going to need support from the health sector to cope with our disability, but we want a decent wage for a decent day’s work. We want to go there and hold our head up and go and do a good job.”

We see these people now all over our communities—not just in sheltered workshops. They are participating in some mainstream employment, where they can. They are also going out into community participation activities and programmes, which the sheltered workshops acknowledge is a good thing.

I think the saddest thing I have heard here about the repeal of this Act is that the Opposition just wants to keep it in stone. The Opposition wants to go back to the Stone Age for people with a disability. Frankly, that attitude is patronising in the extreme. If Opposition members had listened to the voices of people with a disability who spoke to Labour members when we went out to talk about our policy Pathways to Inclusion, they would have heard that people with a disability want to be part of ordinary New Zealand society—and that means going out to work. They can work. They work hard, they have a sense of pride, and they deserve to be paid the minimum wage—which will go up to $11.25 an hour—and the youth minimum rate.

We know what the previous National Government did about the minimum wage. There were no movements in the minimum wage from the National Government during the 1990s. This Labour-led Government has put it up seven times. Now we are saying that it is time for people with a disability to take a share of that cake, too. Why can they not reap the opportunities, rewards, and benefits of being a worker in a New Zealand that is on its feet in the workplace? They no longer need to be in protected environments run by people who say—as I know some of the sheltered workshops are saying—that they cannot transition to this legislation and that they want to keep in this mode of working forever.

I am afraid I was really disappointed to hear Dr Paul Hutchison, someone whom I really respect, saying that we should delay the passage of this bill until 2009. What on earth will that achieve for people with a disability? It is absurd. As soon as a message is given by a Government—as we did with Pathways to Inclusion—then the sector follows, including the business sector.

It is with delight that I rise to speak on Part 2 of the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill. You know, let us be clear on what message we are actually wanting to get across tonight. If this bill truly intends to achieve a fully inclusive society for disabled persons, what work has been done to conclusively determine that the unintended consequences of this bill—as predicted by many—will not result in the very opposite, which is exclusion from society? Because this bill is totally unrealistic in its objective.

It is telling indeed that the Social Services Committee, having examined the bill, was unable to reach agreement and did not find ways to make it more acceptable through amendments. It is telling also that the Minister Ruth Dyson has moved the commencement date further out from June, to November. That says that the message is becoming clear to the Minister that things are not all rosy in this particular garden, that the people who will be affected most by this bill are not comfortable with it and nor are their families.

This bill is a chilling example of vulnerable people being dealt to by a Labour Government whose philosophy is the dogma of control. How many people are affected? Members may believe that it is just 3,500 or so individuals but it is their families, as well. Those families care deeply about these people and have responded to press releases—for example, from my colleague Dr Paul Hutchison—by saying that problems with this bill have not been resolved. A lot of people who are included in this bill have impaired productivity. Their work in sheltered workshops is something they live for. Let us not be mistaken about what it means to them and to their lives to be able to work in a sheltered workshop. It is about their self-esteem.

💬 Steve Chadwick: Paying them with a normal hourly rate.

No, it is not about their hourly rate; it is about their self-esteem. It is about the way they feel about themselves. In talking about hourly rates the member demeans these people.

I say to Labour members that until the unintended consequences of this bill are worked out and addressed as they should be, the Government has no right to dictate to these people how their lives should be lived—no right whatsoever.

My colleague Dr Paul Hutchison has made some important points that I wish to reiterate. The way in which this bill is implemented is paramount. We do not want to see people sent home because they cannot be employed any longer in their sheltered workshops. That will do dreadful things to their self-esteem. Therefore, it is good there is some more time for consultation on this particular bill and the implementation of it—some more time, which the Minister has decreed in her Supplementary Order Paper is needed.

There are costs associated. Although the Government is well used to what the explanatory note of the bill describes as transition and management costs, adding to the burgeoning growth of New Zealand’s State sector are scores of people to handle such eventualities. Of less importance, it seems, is the cost to providers of the apparently wholehearted ripping apart of disabled people’s lives.

I finish by saying that caution is required with this bill, because we are talking about people, not just a mandatory minimum wage. We are talking about people and their lives, their self-esteem, and their feelings of worth in our society. Let us get it right for these very important people. Thank you, Mr Chairperson.

I rise to support my most excellent colleague Jo Goodhew. We need to spell it out in probably simple terms—“Jack and Jill” language—so that those members opposite can understand what is really being said here.

Members should consider the case of little Annie. She rocks up to the sheltered workshop because she has a place to go to and a job to go to. She goes in there, gets support for her budget, and meets her friends. She might do a little bit of what she calls work, and what she values as being work, and she has a really good time. She wanders from one department to the other and she has a bit of fun. She might do a bit of baking and she has morning tea. Then she might do other things like paint a picture. All of these different things happen within her sheltered workshop environment.

But what will happen to little Annie when this Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill is passed? A labour inspector will go into the workshops—a labour inspector does not go into the workshops of Labour MPs—and make some sort of assessment as to what little Annie is capable of doing. The labour inspector will have absolutely no expertise whatsoever in being able to make those sorts of judgments and assessments.

One cannot make an assessment in a little snapshot of half an hour or even an hour, because the capabilities of people like little Annie vary from hour to hour. At one minute she might be feeling really energised, and she can get out there and do a bit of work. But an hour later she might crash and need to have a lie down. She might be in a bit of a tizz because something has happened and it has thrown her out of whack, and she may even have to go home. So how will a labour inspector be able to go into a sheltered workshop and give a qualified and proper assessment of someone’s work capability?

If the inspector then decides that little Annie cannot work and does not have much working capability, how can he or she tell Annie that she cannot be entitled to a minimum wage? She may be able to work inside that sheltered workshop, but she has to have an exemption because she is not capable of work. [Interruption] As I have just explained to the member, the process of an exemption can be quite horrendous for that individual, and labour inspectors do not have the expertise to make those sorts of judgments.

How do we make Annie understand that she has been deemed incapable of working, and that she has to have an exemption from being paid the minimum wage? I do not know how we do that. I do not know how we can blow people’s self-esteem away like that and tell them in any way, shape, or form that they would be able to understand and appreciate. They feel fulfilled, they feel they are making a contribution, and the sheltered workshop is supporting them in a whole raft of other areas apart from just making them feel valued as a working member of that organisation.

The other part of that equation is, how many of these people the sheltered workshop can support on exemptions, if they have to pay the bulk of everybody else a minimum wage. They cannot do it. It is quite clear that none of these things have been taken into account.

I was very concerned to hear that labour inspectors are looking at readdressing their involvement in the assessments. I would be interested to know just what they are expecting to do. The Department of Labour has recognised that people with disabilities “may have trouble finding a job”. If those people cannot get a wage exemption, or the sheltered workshop cannot afford to look after them even with a wage exemption because of the minimum wages they have to pay to the bulk of the other people who go to the sheltered workshop, then there is a problem.

So I put it to members that this legislation in no way looks after people who have disabilities. Even if they have an exemption, it does not provide them with the sorts of choices that we have in life. Here we have, yet again, the nanny State making these decisions for people who are not being given the opportunity to make them for themselves.

Consultation was a very, very real issue. One of the concerns people had was that the consultation process on Pathways to Inclusion was never completed, and much of the consultation that was cited as being done in regard to the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion (Repeal and Related Matters) Bill was ineffectual.

That was an eloquent contribution from the member of Parliament for Coromandel, Sandra Goudie. I say that she is a National member of Parliament, just in case it was not obvious by the tone, style, and philosophical underbelly of her speech. I would ask her whether she supports the Government’s disability strategy called Pathways to Inclusion. Does Sandra Goudie support the strategy or not?

💬 Dr Paul Hutchison: Absolutely.

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.

💬 Sandra Goudie: 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?

💬 Sandra Goudie: No.

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.

💬 Dr Paul Hutchison: Obviously, we didn’t mean you to take a call literally.

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.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): 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.