Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill

on behalf of Ricardo Menéndez March: I move, That the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I—

💬 SPEAKER: I’m just going to interrupt the member and say that she moves on behalf of—

Oh great—thank you.

💬 SPEAKER: —Ricardo Menéndez March. The member can continue now.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill.

It is a huge honour for me to stand in the House today and present this speech for Ricardo Menéndez March, whose name this bill is in. Firstly, on his behalf and my own, I want to acknowledge former Green MP Mojo Mathers, who drafted this bill in 2015 after hearing from disabled people with disability assist dogs of the discrimination they faced. One of the stories that Mojo heard over five years ago now was the one from the late Murray Whittington and his dog, Frodo, who faced discrimination when looking for rentals. Murray spoke to the New Zealand Herald of his challenges, and we want to acknowledge him and the many others for sharing their stories and fighting for an accessible society.

It is a pretty simple bill, in fact, that will make a small but nevertheless tangible difference—as I would say, a perfect member’s bill. When Mojo first launched this bill, she said—and I quote—“We [still] have a long way to go to make New Zealand a fully inclusive, accessible country, where people who have disabilities can live free from discrimination. I was determined to create my … Member’s Bill after hearing stories of New Zealanders being denied rental accommodation purely because they have a disability assist dog. This sort of discrimination should not be happening in 21st century New Zealand. Finding somewhere to live is already hard enough, but to have your rental application turned down time and time again purely because you have a disability assist dog is just wrong.

“Disability assist dogs are more than just your average mutt. [They] perform many different tasks, such as retrieving objects for people in wheelchairs, or alerting deaf people to fire alarms or door bells—they are … critically important [to] their owners’ lives. New Zealanders with disabilities should not be discriminated against because they need a disability assist dog to make their lives easier and more fulfilling. The law should unequivocally support New Zealanders living with disability and prevent discrimination—my Bill is the next step in that process and I hope there’ll be widespread support for it [when] it’s drawn.” It has now been drawn and I am hoping for that support today.

This bill was written by Mojo to address discrimination for people with disability assist dogs, with an amendment to the Human Rights Act 1993 to include a definition of “disability assist dog” to make it clear that any individual, organisation, or business that discriminates against a person—for example, by denying a service to that person on the basis that they have or use a disability assist dog—then they are, in fact, denying the service to a person on the basis of their disability and, therefore, illegally discriminating against them. A “disability assist dog” is helpfully set out in the Dog Control Act as a dog certified by an organisation specified in that Act as being a dog trained to assist or being a dog in training to assist a person with a disability, and while the Dog Control Act says an assist dog can enter and remain in any public space, there’s no clear way to seek resolution under the Dog Control Act like there is with the Human Rights Act and the Human Rights Commission. Rentals are one of the greyer areas, as they are not a public space, so are only covered by the insufficient protection in the Human Rights Act. So this bill, in practice, replaces “guide dog” in the Human Rights Act with “disability assist dog”. It’s pretty simple.

At a high level, this change is needed because those disability assist dogs perform an invaluable service to many New Zealanders living with disabilities who rely on the skills of their disability assist dog to enable their participation in society on a daily basis. Trained disability assist dogs are able to perform a wide variety of tasks, depending on their owner’s particular disability. It could be that a dog alerts someone with hearing loss to noises such as an alarm clock, a telephone, kitchen timer, doorbells, or fire alarms; alerts or protects somebody who’s about to have a seizure or is having a seizure; or retrieves objects for a person who uses a wheelchair. These are just some of the examples of the many ways in which disability assist dogs play a critical role in enabling many New Zealanders to participate fully in society. Their purpose is quite different to a pet or everyday domestic animal, and because of their crucial role in the lives of many disabled people, it is essential that they are viewed and treated differently by the law.

The areas that will be covered by this amendment to the Human Rights Act will be Government or public sector services; employment; access to public places, vehicles, and facilities; provision of goods and services; land, housing, and accommodation; and education. So this bill would mean no person can be discriminated against while applying for rental housing solely on the basis that they have and use a disability assist dog. What Murray went through would be illegal and he would have had legal recourse to challenge those denials of his rental.

New Zealand signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2008. Back then, it reflected a shift in the understanding of disability from the medical model focused on disability as an impairment as the cause of social exclusion, to a human rights model. As the Human Rights Commission put it in a recent submission to this House, “This means seeing persons with disabilities as rights holders rather than subjects in need of protection.” While this bill won’t fundamentally change the landscape for all disabled people, it does help us recognise the rights of people with disabilities, and when only about 2 or 3 percent of our housing stock is fully accessible, it’s, I believe, particularly important to remove any grounds of discrimination that may present a further barrier to getting into one of those rare, precious spaces.

But it’s also clear that we need to do more than this—right?—and as Mojo and many campaigners have acknowledged to me, this bill is only but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to creating an accessible society. There is much more to do, but I do look forward to the support in this House for making this small but tangible and important change.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real delight to stand and speak in support of this bill. The Labour Party will be supporting this bill because it certainly aligns with our views and values. The Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill is a bit of a mouthful, but it is nevertheless quite a simple bill that does a very important small change to the legislation.

I want to acknowledge the member Ricardo Menéndez March for having this bill pulled from the ballot. I’ve got my own bill sitting in the ballot. It’s an exciting time and we all like to have these things happen. I also want to acknowledge Mojo Mathers, who originally put this bill in over five years ago—December, she put it in, five years ago. So it’s been a long time sitting there in the ballot, and I think it’s really, really important that we now have it drawn and we are now discussing it.

As the chair of the Social Services and Community Committee, I’m delighted that this bill will be referred to us for investigation and development. I’m looking forward to the community giving us lots and lots of feedback for us to support and enhance this piece of legislation in any way that we can so that it better supports our disability community.

What will this bill do? Essentially, I think the member Jan Logie has explained it extremely well in that this bill seeks to, I guess, modernise some language where we talk about a guide dog in the legislation and extend the definition of “guide dog” to include disability assist dogs. Now, one of the things that I’ve been particularly interested in is around this whole area of disability assist dogs in that we are now seeing more and more dogs that are highly trained—it’s somewhat expensive, but that’s because of the years of training that goes into them—being out there in the community. I’ve been quite interested in ensuring that those dogs have access alongside, I guess, their masters—I’m not quite sure, or their “person”; I think that’s the term—or their person so that actually these dogs can be the most effective and perform their function.

So, for example, recently I met with a family in Ōmokoroa, and that family had an assist dog. They called that dog a service dog, so I would be interested in looking at the different definitions. There are three kinds of definitions. There’s a service dog, a disability assist dog, and an assist dog. So we should have a look at the definition when we’re looking at this legislation.

But anyway, I met with this family and I got to see their new training dog. Unfortunately, the previous assist dog had passed away, and the family were very bereft and it was devastating to the family to lose that dog. The young woman has a diagnosis of autism and the dog calms her. The dog helped and supported her to be calm in public, to be relaxed, and to be able to carry out the everyday functions of life, which is tremendous, and this dog passed away. So the family were now needing to have a further dog given to them or purchased for them, and it was just remarkable to watch the difference that this young dog had actually made to this family. It was just, just lovely.

I had the conversation with them about how does it work at school, and the previous dog had gone to school really well trained. Many, many need, I think, at least two years’ training, and that dog was amazing in the school environment. It had not only helped and supported this young woman but it also helped and supported to keep the rest of the class calm and, in fact, other children read to the dog and were more comfortable reading to the dog, and that assisted their learning. It was quite lovely.

That started my journey around the thinking about what we’re looking at here, which is, previously, we just had guide dogs, and those guide dogs are amazing. My grandmother was entitled to have a guide dog, but she felt that she couldn’t properly exercise and care for it in a rest home, and so she chose not to have one, which I do think was quite sad. But I do know that the changes that that would have made and supported her to be able to see better would have been amazing.

Now, back to the bill—sorry, I was getting carried away there, Madam Speaker. So this bill changes the definition in the Human Rights Act to include disability assist dogs. The bill aligns with our values, as I’ve said, and changes the definition under the Dog Control Act. It protects the basic rights of disabled New Zealanders to live free from discrimination in that we must and should always support these families to have their best lives and to live the best lives that they can.

So what do these dogs do? The member Jan Logie has talked about that, and I certainly have as well. One of the things that I wanted to talk about, though, is the difference between an emotional support dog versus a disability assist dog. I don’t know if any of you have ever seen this, but in America, sometimes you’ll have a route they’ll be able to go on to—you know, a train or a plane—essentially as an emotional support animal. However, we’re not talking about emotional support animals; we’re talking about appropriately trained animals.

In reference to that, I’d just like to go through the organisations that have the appropriate accreditation in New Zealand for training of those dogs. So there is the Assistance Dogs New Zealand, the Hearing Dogs New Zealand for deaf people, the K9 Medical Detection New Zealand, the K9 Search Medical Detection, the Mobility Assistance Dogs Trust, the New Zealand Epilepsy Assist Dog Trust, Perfect Partners Assistance Dogs Trust, and Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind.

I think that what we could look at here is we could make sure that the appropriate training is in place. We should make sure that people aren’t, I guess, getting a dud dog or buying a dog that’s not fit for purpose, so perhaps we could extend some of what we look at to ensure that these assist dogs are fit for purpose. I think we could also maybe think a little bit about how do we identify these dogs in the community. Perhaps they need to wear a cape or they need to wear a vest, and they probably all do, but maybe we need to put that in the legislation. There are all sorts of parts to this legislation that we can actually explore.

I think it’s really important that when we go out to the community, we seek submissions from the disabled community, because I firmly believe in what that community says, which is “Nothing about us without us.” I think that that will in fact help us better shape this legislation as we take it through the select committee process. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it is an absolute pleasure to be standing here today to speak in support of the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill in this first reading. I want to acknowledge the heartfelt introduction of it by Jan Logie, and I also want to acknowledge Ricardo Menéndez March and, of course, Mojo Mathers who first introduced this in 2015. Certainly, it must also be acknowledged that this was inspired by the late Murray Whittington and his assistance dog, Frodo. So it’s really important that we appropriately acknowledge all those people.

This is a very easy bill to support because it has that purpose of ensuring that all persons who need assistance from dogs are protected from discrimination on the basis of their disability by that simple act of changing the words “guide dog” to “disability assist dog” and then aligning the definition of “disability assist dog” with the Dog Control Act 1996. It’s really a small amendment, a small change in the legislation, but it will make a big difference to those that are affected by it.

I want to acknowledge, as Angie Warren-Clark, the speaker before me, did, those organisations who train an assist dog, and it’s really important for members of the public to know that these are dogs that are specifically trained by organisations that are listed in Schedule 5 of the Dog Control Act. So they are organisations that are reputable and do a wonderful job of training these dogs. There’s around eight of them, but within those organisations there’s hundreds of people and hundreds of families that take dogs in as puppies to train them for these roles, and you will often see them out training in the public. What an incredible selfless act that is—to take a puppy into your home, into your family, and spend a number of months or sometimes years training that dog, knowing you’re going to be handing it on to someone else. But what an incredible privilege to do that, knowing what a difference you’re going to make in someone’s life.

It’s really important that we acknowledge that we’ve gone further than just the guide dogs—that dogs are used as hearing dogs, mobility dogs, epilepsy dogs, assistance dogs, medical alert dogs, and those who are trained to do specific tasks. They are not pets, and they are not just companion dogs or emotional support dogs, as important as those dogs are, and we see that in a number of different ways, but they are beyond that. They are highly trained to specifically support people who are living with disabilities to live a better life, a more accessible life. So it is a small amendment, but with a much bigger aim.

I note that Mojo Mathers launched this on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities with the aim to create a more inclusive and accessible New Zealand, and I would have to say that we haven’t got there. I agree with Jan Logie when she has said that we haven’t got anywhere near there.

The COVID situation has stripped bare a number of the covers of how we deal with people with disabilities. When we had a situation of almost 70 percent of the general population that had been vaccinated for COVID, at that same time, only 37 percent of people with disabilities had been vaccinated. Arguably, those who had the most compromised health were left vulnerable. So we do not have an inclusive or an accessible New Zealand yet, and COVID has stripped bare that situation. Those people who have not had their COVID vaccinations have been held back—

The member’s time has expired.

💬 Penny Simmonds: Oh, Madam Speaker, I think I may have had 10 minutes. Point of order, I think—[Assistant Speaker raises five fingers] Five.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call in support of the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill.

We are living in strange times and Zoom is obviously a regular part of our lives, and I actually had a real panic 15 minutes or so ago when I couldn’t see him. I’d been in a meeting this morning with the Social Services and Community Committee with Ricardo Menéndez March and he wasn’t in the Chamber, and I was panicking—where was he? But, of course, he’s in Auckland, so our respect and our aroha goes out to you there in Auckland and to all the Aucklanders. So thank you very much to Jan Logie for hosting us this afternoon and for walking us through this bill, which is very simple, but it’s really meaningful. I also want to say thank you to Mojo Mathers, who we’ve already mentioned, who originally brought this to the House back in 2015.

This bill, as has already been said, is around building a more inclusive and a more accessible society for all people. It’s ensuring that people with a disability have the same rights and have the same opportunities as all New Zealanders. It’s around removing stigma. It’s around removing prejudice, as we’ve heard about, and it’s around normalising disability so that it’s just a part of everyday life. In fact, one in four New Zealanders has some kind of disability.

This bill is simple, and they’re often the best. It’s a really simple piece of legislation, and it does just two things. Obviously, as we’ve heard, it removes the words “guide dog” and changes that to “disability assist dog”. Now, this is really basic, but obviously it makes quite a difference, because when this was first brought to the House, when this legislation was first formed, obviously guide dogs were the main disability-use animal that was used back then. But now, it’s extended in many ways and spaces, and we’ve heard already around supporting people with different disabilities: those who have hearing impairments, medical conditions, mobility issues, epilepsy, and the list goes on.

So this piece of legislation just ensures that disability assist dogs are in the Human Rights Act, right there for them. Now, this fits in for me personally but also for us, as the Labour Party, in our values around protecting the rights of our disabled New Zealanders, ensuring that all New Zealanders in our disability community live free from discrimination.

I have a good friend in my electorate of New Plymouth—

💬 Hon Member: Really?

—I do, I have several, actually; not just my husband—and he was the editor of the Taranaki Daily News. He was on the district council, and for a long time he has headed up the Disability Action group for New Plymouth, ensuring that New Plymouth is a disability-friendly city. Now, Lance Girling-Butcher—and this story is around a dog for a person who is blind or low-vision—has told his story around how he did struggle early on when he got Yogi, his beautiful Labrador, and people didn’t quite cope with this at times. But then, slowly, over the last 10 years or so, it became far more normal to see Yogi sitting around the council table, to see Yogi in meetings, and to see Yogi on Air New Zealand flights, to the point that when I was in a taxi going to the airport several months ago and the taxi driver was chatting away and discovered I was from New Plymouth, he said, “Oh, I know a guy from New Plymouth. There was a guy who used to come here and he used to bring his dog.” I was like “A dog in the car?”, but, of course, this was Yogi, and he’d been in the very taxi I’d been in.

So we’re in a place, and, no doubt, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, the Minister for Disability Issues, supports us and supports all people. So I’m really excited, as the deputy chair of the Social Services and Community Committee, to be able to take this bill on to the select committee process, to take it on for submissions, and to ensure that all people are valued and all people are respected and that disability assist dogs are a normal part of our society.

I stand to take the call on the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill. This bill makes a very small change in the term from “guide dogs” to “disability assist dogs”. With many people in our community that have disabilities—more than just blind—that need the assistance of their dogs, it’s very disheartening to hear that people have been discriminated by having these dogs that people perceive are pets. As we all know, it takes many hours and a lot of money to achieve the training in these dogs.

We have a sad situation that this bill has had to be brought to the House to be put here, but one question I would like to know is whether or not we could have probably proceeded from just going through this whole process, and maybe have had a quick change with a letter to the Ministry of Justice asking if it could be amended via the Statutes Amendment Bill because it’s such an important bill. Maybe we could have got it through just a little bit quicker than having to sit and discuss—and, yes, there may be some more things that will come out of the select committee, but to speed the process up for people that may be disadvantaged. At this stage, it’s still going to be a process for us to get through.

So to go through all this, I am happy to say that ACT supports this bill, and we hope to see it get passed very quickly through select committee, so if anyone that is incurring any discrimination, it is done and got rid of fast. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. What a good bill to talk about.

Earlier today, I spoke to my 12-year-old daughter, Livia, and she said, “What are you going to be doing in the House today, Mum?”, and I said, “I’m going to be talking about this and speaking in support of the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill.”, which really means taking the term “guide dog” and calling for the words to be put in that this is going to be for disability assist dogs. She asked the question, “What’s the difference between a disability and an assist dog?”, and my colleague Angie Warren-Clark spoke before and said that it will be good to talk about the difference in those names and what they mean.

But one of the things that Livia talked to me about was “Isn’t this a good bill to learn about how we go about things in Parliament?” We will see this go through with pace, but it’s also going to be a good bill for people to engage in. It’s one of those ones that I actually think that for people who are maybe even interested in Parliament—we’ve got Youth Parliament coming through—we might see the serious side as well around discrimination with disability.

Man’s best friend being a dog, I was surprised to actually understand when I read this that there was this level of discrimination in a time like this, where we can have dogs on buses, but to then hear about people who are looking to rent a property and being discriminated about because their disability assist dog can’t come with them. To me, man’s best friend does a lot of good work for us. They’re an animal that we have learnt over generations to guide us, train us, and work with us, whether they’re farm dogs, whether they’re guide dogs, or whether they are working in areas of even border security.

This is the first reading of this bill. It’s going to be one that I do think will get a lot of interest. It’s great to see in the House today that everybody is speaking in favour of this bill. It’s good to see those points that are going to come through: what this bill will practically mean, what it will mean for our wider conversation around disability and working with people and ensuring that discrimination is no longer. We do have a way to go, and this will be an opportunity to talk more and more about those issues, and as we go through that process, it will be good to see, hopefully, a few of the dogs come in to select committee. Wouldn’t that be fun? It would be good to see.

We have dogs in Parliament, and I’m sure that the people that come through will be welcomed with the dogs. We’re not going to the dogs. I mean, there might be some people across the House that are going to the dogs, but when it comes to this debate and this bill, it’s going to be one that’s going to bring unity to the House. It’s going to be one that I think we’ll see interest in from all walks of life, and that’s what’s going to be great about this bill.

In doing so, I know that when I go back and talk to Livia, it’s going to be one that she will watch with interest, because sometimes when we’re in Parliament we talk about very complicated matters, but Livia is going to enjoy this one. In fact, I’m going to encourage her and her friends to write a submission, because wouldn’t it be great? These 12-year-olds that are getting jabbed for COVID and protecting the country; next thing, they’ll be making submissions on things like this, and we’re going to see that younger generation engaging in good policy and practice.

It’s a good bill. I’m absolutely pleased to see that it’s finally come in here, that it’s been pulled out of the ballot, and that we can have a good, positive debate. Thank you for that. I’m looking forward to the Opposition, as well, taking part in this positively.

Thanks for this—thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I learnt to take my face accessory off a bit earlier today. I was really interested in the last speaker, because we are—

💬 Hon Member: As long as your teeth don’t fall out.

💬 Hon Member: Leave the dentures in, brother.

They’re very expensive ones. Now, I was just intrigued by the last speech. I think this bill, in all seriousness, is a very good bill, and I commend Mojo Mathers all those years ago for bringing it to the Parliament and I think it’s just unfortunate that she’s not here to see it on its way through the House. But, of course, if I was like the Greens, I’d oppose this bill on principle, because, in fact, I had a bill called the dog control amendment bill—which amends one of the same Acts this is amending, actually—which actually gave the power the courts have to some JPs to do some pretty simple work. The Greens voted against it. I don’t know why; they didn’t know why, but they did. So I would have thought that on the same basis, we’d vote against this too, but I’m not going to suggest we do that for a minute.

This bill, it does two pretty simple things. It amends the Human Rights Act by changing one definition in it, and it also amends the Dog Control Act 1996 by changing, basically, one clause in that. But the interesting thing about this bill for me is that it’ll be very interesting to see where it gets to at select committee because there is potential for it to go further than Mojo Mathers envisaged it going at the time, if you think about companion dogs and the use of companion dogs now, and there’s all sorts of other dogs that aren’t necessarily disability assist dogs but that have the same impact on people’s lives. I, in the Rangitīkei electorate, in Cheltenham, in fact, have a dog trainer who trains dogs to do all sorts of extraordinary things. So there are medic alert dogs and all sorts of things like that that, effectively, take the place of those little bracelet things that we wear with “MedicAlert” written on them, and the dog does the job for you.

So I think it’s pretty amazing what dogs can be trained to do, but, of course, they’re not only trained to do these jobs—so I think it was Penny Simmonds that said earlier that they’re not necessarily pets—but, in fact, they are, effectively, pets to the extent that they become companion dogs. So they’re extremely valuable to the people that own them. I remember not very long ago having significant arguments, again, in my electorate, with tenants of council flats who weren’t allowed to have dogs in the council flats. All those people in those council flats are, effectively, pensioners. Most of them, or many of them, are living on their own, so they’re challenged by loneliness and all sorts of things.

So there’s a whole lot of things that could come up in the course of the select committee process which may well, I guess, change the original intent of this bill and, in fact, expand it, and there’s potential for that to happen. I find that quite interesting.

Now, the other challenging thing about dogs, and I suppose they’re pets, but many buildings around Wellington have a no dog policy in them. I know in the building I live in, there was a woman there for quite some time who had a very small dog, actually. She carried it down in her purse each morning, and you’d catch it sticking its nose out the top of the purse each morning she carried it down the lift. I’m pretty sure it was illegal—well, according to the building rules it was illegal—but, anyway, she carried it down each morning and carried it back at night, and it lived in her handbag and it was quite an interesting thing.

But I think, all nonsense aside, this bill is a good bill. In fact, in my view, it’s what the members’ bill thing that happens in this House was designed to do, because it enables a member like Mojo Mathers to bring something that was dear to her, put it into a very simple Act, actually, but actually make a difference to quite a lot of people as a result of it. So the National Party certainly supports this bill to the next stage and we look forward to the select committee process, which I think will be quite valuable.

Just one last word, I guess, on the disability sector, which, in fact, this bill is designed to assist. I spent quite some time, I suppose you’d call it, working in that sector, and it’s a challenged sector at the best of times, but there’s a whole lot of areas that will benefit significantly from a piece of legislation like this, so the potential is unlimited. So we commend the bill to the House, and thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to contribute in this debate about the incredible animal called the dog, domesticated from wolves an estimated 15,000 years ago. Look, it really is quite significant, the role that dogs do play in our lives, and so I think that it’s certainly important that we take the time on a Wednesday afternoon to talk through that, particularly in reference to this member’s bill, the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill.

I’d like to acknowledge the sponsor of this bill, Ricardo Menéndez March, who will no doubt be watching from Auckland, and I’d like to say congratulations to the member, building on the work that former MP Mojo Mathers did. I’d like to congratulate the member for having the full support of the House, which is often quite rare, but well done to that member.

I think this is a good example of the role that members’ bills play in this House, whereby there might be a piece of legislation which has either become outdated or may be an anomaly in the piece of legislation. I mean, legislation is seldom perfect. Society is constantly changing and evolving, and the member Ricardo Menéndez March has picked up on this small change, which will have a significant impact, as we’ve heard from previous speakers.

It’ll be interesting to hear the submissions on this bill. I expect, as the previous speaker Anna Lorck said, there will be quite a bit of interest in this bill from a wide range of New Zealanders. Also, Anna expressed interest in having some dogs coming to the select committee, which would possibly be an improvement on some of the language in the select committees, but we’ll certainly wait and see, and I’ll certainly welcome that as well. But, look, great to have that support across the House for this bill.

I’d just like to touch briefly, for the benefit of those members and those either watching or listening at home, on a little bit of the history of assist dogs. As I said at the start, dogs are incredible creatures with a huge propensity to undertake various tasks for humans. They’ve been called man’s best friend. In fact, in the 1700s, guide dogs were first used in Europe, particularly in Austria, and after World War II, dogs were employed to provide support to soldiers.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: How much did they get paid?

Probably not a lot, Mr Bridges. Mr Bridges is asking how much they got paid. Look, it probably depended on which Government was in power at the time, Mr Bridges.

💬 Hon Member: They would’ve got paid under us.

Yeah, yeah, and I’m sure they were. There was some sort of union for the dogs, I would hope, Mr Bridges. But getting back to the bill, Madam Speaker—excuse me for that small distraction—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Grand idea.

—after World War I, soldiers were supported. We move forward to today, where we have assist dogs providing a number of important support roles for humans: hearing impairments, epilepsy, autism, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even, as I’ve researched this afternoon, helping people to do practical tasks, whether it’s opening doors or whether it’s actually loading the washing. I actually just watched a video of a dog actually loading the washing. It was incredibly impressive. It was impressive, and I think I could do with one in our house when our children don’t always support with their tasks, but I’m not sure I’d qualify along those lines. But it was an impressive video, and I would encourage people to have a look. So we’ve heard about dogs in handbags and dogs loading the washing this afternoon.

This bill highlights the difference between a guide dog and a disability support dog. So the guide dogs have been with us for quite a long time. In fact, disability support dogs have too, but there’s been much more focus on the guide dog aspect rather than on the disability support dog aspect. So a guide dog is a dog that has been trained to lead a blind or partially sighted person, whereas the disability support dog—which is what, as we’ve heard from previous speakers, this bill brings the change in the legislation to include—is a dog that is trained to perform specific tasks for people with disabilities. I mentioned some of those tasks before, and, look, it’s absolutely incredible what these dogs do in society. Excellent piece of legislation, and I commend the bill to the House.

I need to thank the member Jamie Strange from the other side of the room for that short history lesson. It was fascinating, thank you. Oh, to be a Labour Party MP who can spend all day watching YouTube videos. Wouldn’t that be nice?

My first confession to this House is I’m actually a cat person, so I’m really going to struggle to extol the virtues of dogs for a wee while. Our former colleague Nicky Wagner, I think, at one stage held the disabilities portfolio—correct me if I’m wrong. This House may or may not know, but I’m actually blind in one eye, and I told her about this one day, and she said—

💬 Hon Member: A one-eyed Cantabrian—I thought as much.

I am a one-eyed Cantabrian, and I don’t shy away from that. But I told the former Minister this, and she said, “Oh, you could potentially get a guide dog.”, and I thought, “I don’t like dogs. I’d rather a pony, thank you.”, but I’m not sure that the pony would trot around this building very easily.

But, despite my obvious bias, we are here today to recognise that disability assist dogs do provide a valuable service to many New Zealanders who experience disabilities and other issues which require assistance, and like other speakers before me, I’d also like to acknowledge the work that Mojo Mathers put in all those years ago. She identified a shortfall in the law and has done the groundwork to go about making a change that really will impact many New Zealanders.

It is an amendment that just makes two very small changes, but I think the power in that is that they will have a great impact on very many people. I think, in this House, we must never forget that as legislators, we should take every opportunity we can to reform laws that do improve the lives of New Zealanders. Because words matter, the first is replacing “guide dog” as a prohibited ground of discrimination with “disability assist dog”, and I do agree with previous speakers that perhaps even that wording could be bounced around and changed a bit. Perhaps just “assist dog” is even easier, and doesn’t, therefore, have any derogatory connotations around people with disabilities. But that will be for the select committee to canvass and discuss.

The second amendment is aligning the definition of “disability assist dog” with the Dog Control Act of 1996 so that dogs trained to service other needs are included. We have heard that that will also include hearing dogs, mobility dogs, epilepsy dogs, assistance dogs, medic alert dogs, and dogs who are trained to specific tasks. Also, a disability assist dog is a dog who is trained by an organisation specified in the Dog Control Act as being a dog trained to assist a person with a disability.

So, all up, the National Party is very happy to support this amendment. It is a bill that will introduce the necessary legal backing to ensure that these highly trained service dogs are viewed and treated differently from pets and domestic animals under the law.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As the co-chair of the cross-parliamentary PCAL, or the Parliamentary Champions for Accessibility Legislation group, I stand here in the House today in support of the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill put forward to the House by Green Party MP Ricardo Menéndez March.

Section 21 of the Human Rights Act lays out the prohibited grounds for discrimination enshrined at the heart of our human rights framework. Specifically, it identifies guide dogs under the clauses that relate to the discrimination against disabled people. This term, however, is very narrow. Disabled New Zealanders are assisted by a much wider range of support dogs than guide dogs alone.

The bill in front of us today amends the Human Rights Act 1993 to enhance the protections from discrimination for people who rely on disability assist dogs. Currently, section 21 of the Human Rights Act references guide dogs in its definition of disability. The bill here changes this wording to the broader term of “disability assist dogs” as defined in the Dog Control Act 1996, ensuring that those who rely on other kinds of disability assist dogs are afforded the protections that currently exist for people with guide dogs. This will help ensure that Kiwis are protected from discrimination under the Act.

Disability assist dogs provide vital support for the disabled New Zealand community that rely on them across a range of areas. The exact nature of the support is diverse, depending on the dog and its owner’s needs, as my colleague Jamie Strange mentioned. The exact nature might be related to, for example, a deaf person who might need help with hearing sound alarms or doorbells. There might be somebody with epilepsy who needs management with seizures, or somebody in a wheelchair who needs retrieval of objects for them. Disability assist dogs significantly enhance the quality of life of those they help and can support disabled people to lead more independent lives. In some cases, they can even save lives.

Now, if this bill had come into the House maybe last year, I would have probably wondered about whether I sit on the fence or not, because when I was three years old, I was actually bitten by a dog, so I’ve been quite scared of all dogs. But, over the last year, working during the election time, I got to walk the streets of Hamilton with quite a few of our members who had dogs, and I realised how good they are in terms of providing therapy, and none of those dogs were actually guide dogs. So it goes to show that there is a wide range of definition for dogs that are able to provide support to New Zealanders who need it.

I also want to mention that this specific Act also amends the section 2 of the Dog Control Act 1996, which outlines that a “disability assist dog” is one “certified by one of the organisations [the Act specifies] in Schedule 5 as being a dog that has been trained (or is being trained) to assist a person with a disability”. There are eight organisations outlined in the schedule as being able to certify dogs. It is important to note that this definition still sets a very high standard for a dog to meet the criteria to be included in the Human Rights Act. They must be certified by one of these eight organisations I mentioned and must meet specific criteria in order to be certified.

This Government is committed to building a more inclusive and accessible society and to ensuring disabled people have the same rights and opportunities as the rest of New Zealanders. Progress on disability issues continues to be realised through disability-focused funding across many Government portfolios such as ACC, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Social Development, and the Ministry of Education, and I specifically want to mention Minister Carmel Sepuloni, who has done a lot of good work in the disability space, in between her various portfolios in this Government and in the last Government as well. In the disability issues portfolio, the Government aims to progress the rights and opportunities for disabled people through the New Zealand Disability Strategy 2016-2026. The strategy and the Disability Action Plan are the key mechanisms for progressing New Zealand forward and realising the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The Disability Action Plan is the primary vehicle for implementing this disability strategy over the next four years, and I believe that moving this bill forward will make a huge difference in the lives of New Zealanders who for a long time have been discriminated just because of the way the Human Rights Act defines the kind of dog they can use to get assistance with their everyday activities. So I would like to highly recommend the bill to move forward in the House. Thank you.

In reply, Jan Logie.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. What fantastic unanimity across this House in support of this very simple bill. In conclusion, I want to specifically acknowledge—we don’t usually acknowledge when members are not present. But these are unusual circumstances, so I do particularly want to do a shout-out to Ricardo Menéndez March—noting for people that there’s three syllables in the “Menéndez”, for future reference—but also to acknowledge that he chose for me to give this speech on his behalf because he wanted to see this piece of legislation come into law faster. He put his ego second to prioritise the needs of the community, and I think that’s worth acknowledging. It’s a special thing to get a bill drawn from the House and to have the mojo to do that, and to put that aside and let somebody else do the first speech I think is awesome.

Also, I know he wanted me to acknowledge all of the staff and volunteers working in the organisations who are certifying our disability assist dogs. That is a wonderful effort and they play a really vital role in our community. I also want to acknowledge the fact that, now that we have such unanimous support across the House, I’m going to anticipate the passing of this bill and acknowledge that this will be the second piece of legislation that Mojo Mathers drafted and then saw through into law, with the first being the election access bill, and to me, it’s a real power of lived experience and people holding that lived experience proudly in their work as a representative in this House. I want to acknowledge her for that and encourage all of us to do more of that kind of work.

What Mojo said five years ago resonates today still: there’s a long way to go to ensure the decisions made in this House help create a truly accessible society. Disabled people continue, rightfully, protesting outside this Chamber for better representation and outcomes. Only a few months ago, we had the hīkoi for hope where campaigners called for an independent body to be established to advise the Government on policy through a disability lens. Dr Huhana Hickey explained why she was calling for that, saying, “Give us the power to make the decisions in our lives, and let us drive what’s safe and what’s right.” So, really, that feels to me to be consistent with the thrust of this bill, and I hope that people with lived experience of having disability assist dogs will come in and submit on this legislation and help us make this as strong as possible.

I will note the enthusiasm in the House for having more dogs around the place—enthusiasm, while being a cat person, I also share for the dogs in this House. But I would remind those who may be watching and may not be familiar with disability assist dogs: not being pets, we really should not be talking to them or patting them when they are working. They are work animals at that time, and we do have to hold ourselves back.

I also just want to acknowledge, while we do not have anybody in the gallery today—and I know that there would’ve been people here if circumstances had been different. But within the parliamentary precincts, I know somebody—Joe Boon—has come in with his disability assist dog, and he is watching this speech in this House and has been supporting the progress of this bill right from the inception. I want to acknowledge how much this means to people who are affected. I look forward to this passing as it moves smoothly through the House, and also to seeing all the support that we’ve had this afternoon also translate into support for a much braver agenda to ensure the rights of all disabled people in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill be considered by the Social Services and Community Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.