Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act Repeal Bill

on behalf of Hon Nicky Wagner (National—Christchurch Central): I move, That the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act Repeal Bill be now read a third time. I am very pleased to take a call. If I might, before I begin, I want to acknowledge the role of the Governor-General. We celebrated his service to the Realm of New Zealand today at a State luncheon, and I just want to put on the record, to him and to Lady Janine, my gratefulness for what they have done. Amongst many things, I think they have been very good on accessibility to Parliament in terms of their work as a viceregal office.

Moving to the bill itself, it is clear that I am not the Hon Nicky Wagner. She is unable to be able to speak at this exact moment in time as she has ministerial duties, and she has asked me, as the chair of the Health Committee, to speak on her behalf. She has strongly and proudly spoken on this bill through all other parts, and here we are now at the third reading. This bill, as has often been mentioned, is relatively simple, but it is relatively significant as well for the Royal Foundation of the Blind.

Fundamentally, what this bill seeks to do is, basically, remove the foundation, now known as the Blind Foundation, from the statute book. It has, basically, been constituted for many years under statute. That has served it very well, but in recent years—in fact, I think, back on 10 January 2012—the foundation registered itself as an incorporated society. It was felt—not that I can speak on behalf of the foundation, but only from what we heard at the committee—that becoming an incorporated society was a better fit for its purposes, so that it could be fit for purpose in this modern environment, and, ultimately, that has made the current Act defunct, unnecessary. In order to make those changes, it has had to come to our select committee, which it has. It was a relatively easy process. The bill was only a few clauses, ultimately, and so it is going to seek that the foundation be removed from the statute book, and it will be able to govern itself accordingly.

I was there recently, actually, at the Blind Foundation in Parnell. Most people know of the foundation and the work it does, but most people in Auckland will know of the Jubilee Building. Although that building has now been handed over to the council, the buildings around it are run by the Blind Foundation for about 12,000 New Zealanders—not all in Parnell, but that is the main office. I think it would be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the Blind Foundation is only for those who are blind. Actually, it is also for those with low visual impairment, and the services it provides really are quite remarkable and broad-reaching. I suppose I want to put on the record—and I know this is from the Minister as well—our grateful thanks for the service it provides to fellow Kiwis.

My own visit to the foundation was a really good learning curve in terms of its particular needs. I was there in my capacity as chair of the Health Committee, and it wanted me to talk it through how the political process works, which I was happy to do. I mean, what politician is not happy to get up and talk. But, at the same time, it was a valuable opportunity for me—[Interruption] Oh, the humility coming from the other side. It is quite striking.

The opportunity was also there for me to hear what its various needs were. One of them was—and I think it is important to put it on the record today—around greater accessibility. I am not going to take too much of the House’s time explaining that, other than to encourage people to go back to the Youth Parliament debates, because of one of the bills that was before the House and our youth parliamentarians. I am proud to say that the Youth MP for Tāmaki, Aaron Dahmen, gave one of the speeches strongly in support of the need for greater accessibility, particularly for those with visual impairment of some sort. So, again, I encourage the House to understand that this bill is only an organisational change. The organisation itself would be encouraging us as a Parliament, as representatives of the people of New Zealand, to look at other ways to better engage and assist those Kiwis with visual learning difficulties.

Important too—and the Minister was keen that I draw out this particular, effectively, semantic issue—is that the Blind Foundation moved from being the Foundation for the Blind to the Foundation of the Blind. It is probably no surprise to this House that I believe words are important, and, fundamentally, that change—going from “for” to “of”—is a little bit like the bill. It is quite simple but also quite meaningful: the foundation is now “of the Blind”. This is self-empowerment. This is the community itself—the blind and visually impaired community—being able to lead its own efforts, provide care within the community, and ask society to support it. This is no longer a passive “for”, if you will. This is not a community that needs everybody else to come in and help it. I think too that it is an important signal of how we approach disability issues in this country.

I want to begin wrapping up and say thank you to everyone involved. Again, it was a relatively simple process, including through the select committee, but any bill, as members will know, has a number of people involved. Thanks to them, and particular thanks to the Blind Foundation for seeking to continue to be a modern group servicing the needs of its people as they require it today.

On a personal note, I would certainly encourage the foundation to keep up its royal patronage. I think that is in keeping with what we heard from the Governor-General and Lady Janine today—not about them in particular, but the value of royal patronage.

I also want to wish the foundation a happy 126th birthday. It is 126 amazing years of service. Long may it continue, and now, through the passing, I trust, of this repeal bill, it will be able to do that as an incorporated society. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to take a short call on the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act Repeal Bill. I do want to put on record a little bit of the whakapapa of the foundation in this last reading—my last opportunity to do so.

We know that the foundation actually began its days in 1890 as the Jubilee Institute for the Blind in those lovely buildings in Parnell. In its early days, it provided sheltered workshops and was also a hostel for people with serious vision impairment. These days, of course, the definition of blind and low vision impairment has meant that there is a greater catchment of people that the foundation actually serves. It phased out a lot of the work that it was doing around the sheltered workshops and was in favour of mainstreaming so that people with low vision and blindness could actually get a greater sense of integration into their community. Then in 2002, I believe, the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act was instigated, and this allowed the foundation to become an incorporated society, which it did do in January 2012. Then, of course, the need for this particular legislation was no longer required, and that is why we are now in the process of repealing that particular piece of legislation.

Along its journey, the foundation, which is now called the Blind Foundation, has had a really strong kaupapa of being membership driven—it is about its membership—to the extent that every single member of its board of directors is either blind or has vision impairment. They really understand and are able to put in place services and programmes applicable for their membership. It has been something that I have been quite struck with, because they are so strongly encouraging of people who have low vision and vision impairment to be integrated in the community. The foundation has been a role model, really, to other disability organisations, given its length of time in the work and the fact that it is so strongly driven by its members.

Today we know that it offers a range of services. It offers services around ensuring that people with low vision can communicate with other members of the wider community and amongst themselves. It offers counselling, supported employment, and financial assistance. We know that it offers mobility assistance, and we all know, of course, the guide dogs. The other pieces of—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to interrupt the member and remind her that we are on the third reading of the bill. All that can be discussed is the bill as it emerged from the Committee of the whole House. You can make an odd passing reference, but, actually, you cannot get a bill much narrower than this. Although the history of the foundation has been given in the second reading and in the first reading, and its general work, all of that was relevant then; it is not relevant now. I just will remind members that there is no obligation to use the full 10 minutes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I welcome your guidance. Obviously, there were limited submissions, and the only one came from the foundation itself. The foundation, of course, is very grateful that this bill will now go through the House. It will allow it and its governance structure to continue the work of the Blind Foundation, including work in advocacy for people with blindness issues. If I could just make one plug, one of the board members was actually talking about the discussion around the Marrakesh VIP Treaty and wanted to ensure that this Government signed up to the treaty—which it has done—to ensure that we get access to suitable content for people with blindness and vision impairment. On that note, I commend the bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to take a call on this bill. I totally support the work of the Blind Foundation. It was really fitting that today, as the emails came through earlier on this afternoon, an email about Blind Week was asking for volunteers to go out with their buckets and help with the collection week. It is certainly something well worth doing. I noticed on the letter that came today that it was actually talking about giving people the gift of freedom. It is about going to school with confidence. It is about being able to cook and to make a cup of tea. It is about being able to use new technology and equipment. All of this stuff actually goes into the fantastic work that the people at the Blind Foundation do. It is great to be able to see the foundation being separated from where it was in the past around a piece of legislation. It is quite capable of doing what it needs to do in the interests of its people.

I just also wanted to make mention while I am here and while we are talking about disability groups and those who work for people with impairments that just recently I also visited where they actually train hearing dogs for the Deaf. Again, it is about giving the people freedom. If you ever want to go into a place where you are going to be made to feel totally welcome, go to Taranaki and visit the Hearing Dogs for Deaf People New Zealand. The dogs will lick you to bits when you walk in, but they are the ears for the people. They hear the phone ring. They hear the doorbell ring. They know when somebody is around. I have always been intrigued by the guide dogs, and going and visiting the hearing dogs gave me a whole new experience.

I do want to make mention here, also, of Dr Hugh Blair. I remember back late in 1999 when Dr Hugh Blair from Massey University came to our farm. It was part of judging in a farming competition, and he saw a picture of a guide dog sitting on the mantelpiece there and he happened to make comment about the guide dogs. Although I had done a whole lot of work around genetics in dairy animals, Dr Hugh Blair was one of the people who actually did a lot of work around genetics in guide dogs, and so there are certain traits within guide dogs that actually make them better guide dogs.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): As I did with the previous speaker, I am going to interrupt and say that it is really interesting but it is not relevant. I will ask the member either to become relevant or to stop.

OK, thank you. Really, yes, you are right—thank you for that, Mr Assistant Speaker. All I really wanted to say today is that it is a pleasure to be supporting this bill. I do support the great work of the foundation. I do encourage people to get out and collect for them. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I rise in support of the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act Repeal Bill. This is a relatively common-sense bill. It removes a law from the statute book that is no longer required. I do not see any need to prolong the debate unnecessarily, so I simply lend the Labour Party’s full support to the bill.

I also would like to give a relatively short speech, on behalf of the Green Party, in support of the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act Repeal Bill at this, the third reading.

The Green Party, along with every other single member in this House, is supporting this bill because it makes sense. It is not a complicated piece of legislation. What it does, as has already been mentioned, is remove a piece of legislation off our statute book because it is no longer needed. When the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind changed its name in 2002 from the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind, in the new Act was a provision that if it established itself as an incorporated society, it would be able to take the Act off the statute book.

It has come time and the foundation has chosen to do that, for two key reasons. One is to emphasise the foundation’s status as completely independent from Parliament, and also just to avoid any confusion that might arise from the statute remaining on the book. It is a very sensible thing.

We in the Green Party absolutely want to acknowledge the work of the Blind Foundation, its very, very long history, and its leadership of people across disability communities. We are also acknowledging, again, the reflection of the change in social values that happened with that changing of the name from “for the blind” to “of the blind”, which really clarified its status as an organisation controlled mainly by and for people who are blind or vision-impaired. That reflects a shift away from seeing people with disabilities as objects of charity, to being people with inherent capacity, the same as anybody else—able to act for themselves when provided with the right supports by society, like any of us. That is a philosophy that we certainly buy into, and it is nice to see that rounded off in this piece of legislation. Thank you.

It is very good to see the Blind Foundation so forward-looking, and the fact that this House is universally endorsing the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act Repeal Bill, which is a member’s bill in the name of Nicky Wagner, is the final step for the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind to really launch itself on that forward-looking journey and leave the constraints of this piece of legislation behind it.

I want to pay tribute, particularly, to those Blind Foundation volunteers in all our communities, but, perhaps, in particular in my community, because I know them a little better. They do reach out into the community. They do provide professional services not only for people with vision issues but also for other members of the community, with a view to the integration into our society of people with vision impairment. So it is interesting to know that the Blind Foundation now supports over 11,000—in fact, nearly 12,000—New Zealanders who are blind or who have low vision, which is many of us in this House. Actually, I could not do a single thing without my glasses, so the issues to do with vision impairment are wide reaching throughout our society. The Blind Foundation recognises that and it is reaching out into society, and I commend it for bringing this bill to the House.

I am going to make only a very short contribution to this debate on this very short but, nevertheless, very necessary bill. It is good to see it coming now to its final stage. The Blind Foundation does do wonderful work throughout New Zealand in many and various ways and has widespread community support. So I just want to say that we in New Zealand First wish it well for its future.

In 2012 it became an independent incorporated society under the Incorporated Societies Act, so its original legislation, the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act 2002, is therefore redundant and it is necessary to repeal it. New Zealand First will have pleasure in adding our votes in favour of the bill at this last reading.

I too want to join with others across the House in supporting this third reading of what is a member’s bill initiated by the Blind Foundation, which has again shown to the House and to its stakeholders and to the whole nation its level of innovation and credibility in terms of keeping itself modern, keeping itself relevant, and keeping itself focused on the future.

Others have spoken at length about the history of the foundation. I do not want to go there, but I do want to just reflect for a couple of minutes on the matters that came before the select committee. Firstly, there was a short, but quite important, initial briefing from our ministerial advisers. I think it is worthwhile just noting that the ministerial advisers supported this bill wholeheartedly. They did not offer any further drafting suggestions. They did not offer any changes, and they did not recommend any to the committee.

What they did do was highlight the fact that this is one of a number of private Acts of Parliament that provide for the incorporation of single entities. The problem with these historical and largely traditional pieces of legislation is that for the most part they are, by today’s modern standards, not what we would call high-quality pieces of legislation. They are not high-quality statutes. As a general rule, they fail to provide or address what we now consider to be quite important issues relating to governance and rights and obligations of the governance holders, and they fail to address things like officers’ duties. I think it is very laudable and creditable that the foundation took it upon itself to address these sorts of issues through bringing this member’s bill to the House. There are probably a number of other worthy, creditable organisations that, like the Blind Foundation, need some improvement to their governance, and to their legislative status as well.

There was only one submission to the select committee, and it came from the foundation itself. The foundation was very keen to highlight in its submission two key reasons for this legislation to proceed. The first one was that by keeping the Act on the statute book it causes confusion to the foundation, to its stakeholders, to its members, and to the other people who contract to it, do business with it, and support it in its good work. So although the foundation is still a statutory body, it is not going to be one that is reflected in the way that it used to be under the existing legislation, which is now completely out of date.

The Blind Foundation’s second point was that it wanted to repeal the Act because it wants to make sure that it can communicate to all and sundry that it acts independently of Parliament—that it is not a creature of Parliament—and the foundation’s rich history, I think, will be well served in the future by this new piece of legislation.

There is one technical point that was raised in its submission that I do think is of merit and does need a little bit of focus, and that relates to a copyright matter. The foundation does an enormous amount of good work in terms of providing audiobooks for people who are blind or who have low vision. There is an issue that relates to copyright rules and regulations, which means that under this legislation, when the foundation does that good work of providing audiobooks for its members and stakeholders, it will be exempt from the Copyright Act under Part 5 of that Act.

So this is a good piece of legislation. It is a worthy piece of legislation, but I think the most important thing about it for the foundation is that it is forward-looking. It builds on its creditable, creative past and will set the foundation up for a long and prosperous future doing enormously good work for more than 12,000 New Zealanders who are either blind or have low vision. I join with others in commending it to the House. It is a very good piece of legislation.

In previous contributions on this bill, I have spoken of my admiration for the foundation and its considerable good works. My father-in-law is a regular consumer of the services of the foundation. With the blind dogs, talking books, computer-based services, and a variety of others, his globe—the way he actually perceives the world—is largely through the services that the foundation provides.

But in this contribution I want to talk specifically about the central idea that is in the bill that is before us. That is around, essentially, the evolution or the conception of what the foundation is and its legal status. Other speakers in this debate have talked about that history—of moving from an initially kind of 19th century idea of charity, from a time when we had a small State and the role of the State was not constructed in a way that actually saw these services as being part of the State. We moved from that charity model to a more paternalistic model of the role of the State. This change to the status of the foundation that is in the bill before us is effectively sealing into law that next stage of the foundation’s devolution towards an empowerment model.

Others have spoken about the importance of that, but I want to speak about the importance of that from my own experience. As members will know, I used to be the executive director of the AIDS Foundation. In the 1980s, when the HIV epidemic was first striking these shores, the Government of the day—indeed, the Parliament of the day—faced a very difficult choice about how to respond to that pressing and urgent problem. What it chose to do—actually showing some foresight—was not to centralise the response to the epidemic in the ministry on the Treasury benches, but, rather, to empower those groups that were most affected.

That is the parallel that I see between the response to that epidemic and what we are doing with this bill, because the courage shown by the Government at that time was to say: “OK, we don’t know how best to work with gay men, injecting drug users, and sex workers, so what we’re going to do is actually empower groups from those communities to work with people from those communities.” That response was something that was completely alien to the way we had gone about responding to that sort of problem previously, but it worked. Our country, Aotearoa, has one of the best records of achievement in responding to that epidemic. Injecting drug use—we have had virtually no infections amongst injecting drug users for many years now.

The best way to respond to the needs of people who are blind or have low vision is to say: “You know best how to work with your own community, and, as a Parliament and as a State, we will do what we can to empower you to respond to the needs of your community.” That is the way that those needs will be best met. I am really pleased that in this bill that is precisely what we are achieving today. I commend the bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to speak to the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act Repeal Bill. The purpose of this bill is to enable the Blind Foundation to modernise its structure. Others have commented very fully on the history, so I will not go into that any further, but I do want to highlight a few points of the foundation’s function.

The foundation has a presence in Whangarei, along Kamo Road, and earlier this year I had the privilege of attending its annual general meeting. I would like to highlight one of the activities that it undertakes. The foundation in Whangarei operates a newsreader service from the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). The recording device itself is housed at the YWCA and locals volunteer as newsreaders to read local news headlines and components of the articles into the recording device. People with impaired vision are then able to dial in every day and hear the news headlines. This is particularly well received by people with impaired vision across Whangarei and in Northland. So, amongst other things, I would like to thank the YWCA, the newsreaders, and the foundation staff who organise the roster.

I would also like to note Health Informatics New Zealand’s (HINZ) Clinicians’ Challenge from 2015. The winner of the active project/development category was Dr Hong Sheng Chiong and his team, with their contribution to the visual impairment domain. The HINZ challenge is a joint initiative between the Ministry of Health and Health Informatics New Zealand. Dr Hong and his team developed an attachment that clips on to a smartphone, and that gives the user a 40-degree view of the retina—the back of the eye. That view can then be imaged, it can be stored, it can be monitored, or it can be transferred to other professionals. Normally, equipment of this sort is worth tens of thousands of dollars—a slit lamp is what you are talking about—but Dr Hong’s team has been able to go into production mode with this attachment for several hundred dollars.

At the recent 2016 Talent Unleashed Awards, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak singled out this device and awarded it the Best Start Up - Social Impact award. Devices like this make it much more likely that the greatest cause of blindness in New Zealand, macular degeneration, will be detected earlier. Of everyone in this House over the age of 50, one in seven will get macular degeneration. This, then, is a vote of thanks to the Blind Foundation, thanks to volunteers, and thanks to those using their skills and time to advance and improve the quality of life for those with impaired vision. I commend this bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to be able to take this opportunity talk to the third reading of this wonderful bill, the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act Repeal Bill, put forward by the Hon Nicky Wagner. First of all, I would like to say that I had a very good friend who was on the board of the Blind Foundation and was, I believe, one of the supporters of this. I think this is a very good bill in terms of repositioning the foundation more appropriately to its future vision. I just want to acknowledge that last year the foundation celebrated 125 years of excellent service, and, of course, this bill is about repealing the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act to recognise the foundation’s status as an incorporated society, which, as many of us know, is a much more appropriate structure for voluntary organisations.

The main provision—as I think we are all aware, but just to recap—is that it repeals the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act 2002. It also replaces the foundation’s name in the Copyright (General Matters) Regulations 1995 with the “Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Incorporated”, which, of course, is a very good name and an appropriate name.

I think the key thing about this bill is it seeks to deal with the statutory inconsistency that we have at the present, which is that the foundation is no longer a statutory body. By moving to an incorporated society, what this bill does is reinforce that independence. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a third time.