Disability Support Services Bill

I move, That the Disability Support Services Bill be now read a second time.

I want to acknowledge the Social Services and Community Committee on their work on this bill. I also want to thank every one of the 3,000 submitters who took the time to make a submission during this process.

The bill aims to make the current system clearer and creates a solid foundation for which future improvements can be made. It clarifies that the key purpose of disability support services (DSS) is to contribute towards disabled people being able to live their everyday life. I strongly believe that people should be able to easily understand what the disability support services system does and what they can access. The bill was always intended to do that; however, as I’ve already acknowledged to representatives from the disability community, our initial drafting wasn’t clear enough. We have listened to the feedback and we are acting with important changes.

The bill as it is being considered today will provide improved consistency, fairness, and transparency about how the system operates and how decisions are made. The bill continues to reflect current practice and settings. It does not result in any changes to current eligibility, entitlements, or support.

The bill also responds to a December 25 Supreme Court case relating to paid family carers by clarifying employment relationships and putting in place measures to reduce Crown fiscal and litigation risks. It affirms that it is the Government and Parliament who set policy and funding, and not individual court decisions. My intention is that appropriated funding for DSS goes to quality disability support services and not to further costs from litigation.

The bill has been amended to further align with the Enabling Good Lives principles and to ensure that decision making is more person-centred. Any decisions about funding must also take into account a disabled person’s choice and preference, immediate and long-term needs and circumstances, and their safety and dignity. It has also been amended to make clear that a disabled person is not expected to exhaust family support before support from Disability Support Services (DSS) is provided. DSS remains a contribution alongside the support that is currently available from family. The Social Services and Community Committee has also recommended, which I strongly support, amendments to require consultation with key stakeholder groups when significant changes to DSS support programmes are being made.

The committee considered almost 3,000 written submissions and heard from about 140 oral submitters. Many submitters shared deeply personal experiences about their disability, care, family life, and their interactions with DSS. This was critical to inform the committee’s recommended amendments. The key concerns I heard during the process were that the bill will place additional caring responsibilities on families and extend to wider family members, might directly reduce allocations or trigger reassessments, and didn’t include processes to involve disabled people, the disability community, or carers in determining policy or funding settings.

I want to acknowledge that disabled people’s needs and circumstances vary greatly. This extends to their families and wider support networks. Where appropriate, families make a contribution alongside DSS-funded services. The bill does not establish new or unbounded obligations on family. It does not require family to be a disabled person’s primary source of support. I’m pleased the committee recommended clarifying the bill’s family provisions. These provisions now emphasise consideration of individual circumstances and preferences. We do still have work to do to support carers, and that’s why, in consultation with key community representatives, we are also developing a new carer support package.

I’m pleased that the select committee has recommended amendments that strengthen support programme provisions in this bill. These changes provide a clearer framework for future decisions and make support programmes publicly available through secondary legislation, which, of course, improves transparency and accountability. Importantly, the committee has clarified that the needs and outcomes of disabled people must be at the heart of decisions to establish or amend support programmes. The amendments reinforce the principles of independence, choice, safety, and dignity. They ensure disabled people are supported to make decisions about their everyday lives, participate in their communities, and pursue their goals they choose.

Consistent with my commitment at first reading, I support the committee’s recommendation that disabled people be consulted through their representative organisations when support programmes are established or amended. This is in line with New Zealand’s obligations under the United Nations’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Disabled people and the organisations that represent them bring invaluable expertise, insight, and lived experience, which are essential to the ongoing development and improvement of DSS.

Many submitters spoke about the bill introducing means testing or moving away from needs-based services. While most funded disability support isn’t income or asset tested, some DSS service lines already are. This has long been the case, and the bill reflects current practice. I do not intend to expand the use of income or asset testing beyond where it is already used. The consultation requirements recommended by the committee means representatives of disabled people must be consulted before any support programme or any amendments to a support programme involving means testing is made.

There’s a lot of work to do to develop support programmes, and I want to work with the sector to get them right. The committee has recommended extending the transitional period from three to five years to allow time to consult. The committee also recommended including a provision to require the Minister to review and present a report to the House on the operation of the Act within five years of its commencement. This bill was always intended to be the first phase of providing a legislative framework for DSS. The next phase, including a second bill, will focus on addressing important matters such as safeguarding, information gathering, and appeals and complaints processes. I will continue to work closely with the sector and seek input from the community on proposals to inform the development of the extended legislation.

A clear legislative framework for Disability Support Services is needed to ensure there is a fair system rooted in certainty, transparency, and consistency. I’ve heard the concerns around the bill, and I’m pleased that the committee has proposed changes to improve it. That’s exactly how the select committee process should work. These changes will ensure the needs, interests, and views of disabled people are key to the development and provision of fair and sustainable support, and, very importantly, the opportunity for us to continue to improve DSS for disabled people. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill was considered by the Social Services and Community Committee. I am not a permanent member on that committee but I was able to sub on to listen to a number of submissions and be part of the process of this bill, and I thank colleagues on this side of the House for the opportunity to be able to do that.

Just before I get into the substantive report-back, or the select committee report and recommendations to improve this bill, I do want to note that this was a shortened select committee process. It was not anywhere near the full six months that is usual for a bill, particularly complex, technical pieces of legislation that have the potential to have a significant impact on people’s lives. This was under three months in total and three weeks for the submission period, and yet there were many who had their voices heard.

I want to, right at the start, acknowledge the close to 19,000 people who had their voices heard, who made their views heard; close to 16,000 through a petition by Victoria Coleman; 3,382 who wrote in to the select committee, provided written submissions; and the committee heard from about 140 of them—143 oral submitters in total. Many of them shared a very personal and poignant stories of their lives with us. Their submissions spoke to the daily struggles that disabled people, whānau, and carers experience; the exhaustion that many of them continue—that all of them, actually—to experience; and they spoke of systems that have bent them to almost breaking point. I want to thank everyone who shared their lives, or glimpses into their lives, with members of the select committee.

I also want to register that the Minister for Disability Issues said in a stand-up that she had not read or listened to any of them. I would not expect a Minister to sit in on select committee hearings, but I would expect Ministers who are making decisions that impact people’s lives to read, at least, or to watch some of those submissions, and many have expressed to me that they were disappointed too that she did not do that.

I want to now get into the substance of this bill, plus some of the changes that the select committee has recommended, and I will also lay out why Labour will not be supporting this bill at the second reading. A lot of what I draw on will also be bringing in the voices of the disabled people, carers, and organisations who had submitted. I was hoping the Minister would listen to that, at least in the House.

Just before that, I want to also acknowledge Stew Sexton, the senior accessibility adviser for the New Zealand Parliament, and members of select committee staff and the Office of the Clerk who went out of their way to make the hearings or the sessions more accessible for those who were submitting in person as well. I want to acknowledge their care and their work today.

A lot of what I’m saying or what I will be sharing in my contribution today in the House is taken from an excellent piece by Dr Huhana Hickey. Anyone who is interested in the details of why we don’t support this bill should read her Substack article, and there are others as well who have provided a fair bit of analysis into this bill as reported back from the select committee.

The first is around the rallying cry of disability communities, “Nothing about us without us.” The Minister said that the select committee process is where the voices of those who have a stake in legislation should be heard. However, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities states quite clearly that disabled people should have a much higher level of participation when it comes to the development of legislation, and that did not happen with this bill.

One of the clauses that a number of submitters shared their concerns and their anxiety over was clause 8. The original clause said that families and whānau had responsibility in the first instance for family members’ wellbeing. Many shared with us that the legal interpretation of that would be that families had to provide support to disabled people before the State would step in with funded supports. Many pointed out why that was deeply problematic, and I want to share some of that in the House today.

Le Va pointed to this and said very clearly that family and whānau support must not replace funded Government support. They’ve said—and I quote—“It is important to recognise that not all disabled people have access to family or informal support networks. Reliance on family care alone risks reinforcing inequities between those with available whānau support and those without. Assumptions that family will fill gaps in formal services may reduce disabled people’s independence, choice, and control over their own lives. Family circumstances vary widely, including geographic distance, relationship breakdown, carer health needs, and safety considerations. Where older parents are primary carers, there is also a risk of future uncertainty regarding continuity of care. Disability support policy therefore needs to recognise that family capacity is finite and dynamic and cannot be assumed as a substitute for appropriate funded supports.”

Also, Debbie Hager, who has done a huge amount of work in both the spaces of disability and violence prevention, talks about how the legislation in the original clause would lead to more disabled people being subject to abuse and emotional violence, potentially. Now, the select committee did suggest a recommended change to that. The amended clause says that families have a responsibility to contribute. That is a meaningful improvement, and all of these changes, frankly, are testament to the strength of the submissions by disability communities to the committee. However, the bill still does not contain a clear guarantee that family care will always be complementary rather than a substitute for funded support, and we are deeply opposed to that lack of clarification in this bill for the reasons that submitters have stated.

The other point that I would like to make is one made by many, including the Ombudsman, that appropriate safeguards—robust, transparent, accessible safeguarding—and a complaints and appeals process is fundamental to this legislation. The Minister has indicated that that will come later in phase two. We disagree with that. It should be in this legislation. Disability support services legislation is woefully inadequate if it doesn’t contain those safeguards.

Means testing: the Minister has said that she doesn’t intend to expand it to more than what is already means and income tested. In that case, our view is that primary legislation should clarify that. Legally, this could lead to more means testing. Again, I want to point to what Huhana Hickey has said. She says the opposing concern—that is, the concern of many disabled people—is valid because this framework legally equips future Ministers to alter important settings without passing another primary Act. The amended bill does not prohibit extending means testing beyond its present use. If that is not the Minister’s intention—I said this in my first reading contribution as well—if that is not this Government’s intention, they should clarify that in primary legislation.

That then leads me to my next point. I have always held this view and it has not altered as a result of select committee recommendations. There is way too much detail that is in secondary legislation rather than primary legislation. This bill enables ministerial programmes to contain eligibility and allocation criteria, income-based criteria, asset-based criteria, conditions on funding, and rules about how services may or must be delivered. A lot of the substantive part of this legislation that I believe and Labour believes should be in primary legislation is in secondary legislation. That does not give disability communities any greater certainty or transparency around the support services that they are able to access.

Finally, this is rushed legislation. We have just seen today 15,000 pensioners who have lost the winter energy payment because of this Government’s reliance on urgency and rushing legislation through—more than any other Government since 2008. This should not be rushed. It should have had a proper select committee process, and it should have been, right from the start, drafted with input from disability communities. The changes are the bare minimum that the Minister should have known to include in the legislation in the first instance. It has come back; she claims it has been improved as a result. It has, but not enough. For those reasons, Labour cannot support this bill.

Thank you so much, Mr Speaker. Can I first begin by acknowledging the thousands, tens of thousands of disabled people who stood against this bill, who not only stood against this bill but stood against the process that this bill went through—the lack of consultation, the lack of active invitation to participate and co-design a bill that is so integral to the wellbeing, the safety, and the future of disabled people across the country.

Disabled people mobilised and sent a clear message to the Government that the process that this bill followed through was not good enough from the get-go, let alone the truncated select committee process that saw countless disabled people being excluded from being able to give an oral submission. I had the privilege, like the previous speaker, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, to sit through some of those oral submissions, and the message was really clear: disabled people were angry—angry at a Government that just does not seem to listen nor care.

I want to also give a shout-out to the disabled people who were part of this process outside and inside the select committee for putting enough pressure on the Minister to actually come and front up to a half apology and present some changes that I think were a very well earned concession for everyone who rallied against this bill. But the message from people across the country, who I want to also put a bit of a footnote about, is that we cannot claim that there is such thing as a monolithic disability community across this country. There’s a diversity of political views that I think we also need to honour and we need to make and hold space for. By and large, the feedback I have seen has been one of calling for Parliament to actually start over and actually co-design disability support services legislation that actually actively seeks the participation of disabled people from the first moment, which did not happen.

I want to comment on some of the key things that have been covered in the previous contribution and have been noted by people who have submitted and commented on this bill past the select committee process—this onus on the family to provide support before the State adequately steps in and takes a rights-based approach to the sort of services that are given to disabled people to enable their full participation in the communities that they are part of. I think this consistent approach of trying to put family as the first resource before the State gets involved is deeply problematic. It risks the safety of disabled people who need the support, particularly because families are often having to juggle, for example, multiple jobs or their caregiving responsibilities. Families are often not adequately equipped with the competency to provide the care that the disabled person needs, as opposed to people that the State can deploy that could be adequately trained and adequately equipped to provide that very same support.

Ultimately, even if families are trying to do their best, when you put someone under so much stress—financial or otherwise—you can break them, and you put everyone involved in the situation at greater risks of harm. This creates a situation where disabled people could be left still, as we’ve been told by disabled people over the decades, in a position of their livelihoods being at risk, and carers feeling like they’re simply not adequately supported, which we also heard plenty during the select committee process and outside these four walls and in the streets, where carers have been really, really clear that they do not feel like the mahi that they provide is adequately valued.

I find it really interesting that the Minister both tries to acknowledge carers and their contributions, while, at the very same time, presenting a bill that closes the door for future litigation in the courts to further enhance the rights of carers, which I think really contradicts some of the well-meaning words in relationship to how the Minister deems to present her views on carers. I just want to sort of point to that contradiction that I think we’re seeing in this bill.

The other element that I want to note is the opening of the doors for further means testing of the programmes that are available and support that’s available for disabled people in need of disability support services. I support and echo the submitters across the country who continued being concerned about the opening of the door in secondary legislation for further means testing. I echo and support the comments from disabled people who have told us that the reassurances from the Minister are nothing but empty words, because this Minister will not be in this job for ever. When we’ve got senior Government politicians throwing slurs at disabled people, it tells us that we cannot take these words for granted.

The provisions that could have stopped further means testing and asset testing should have been put in primary legislation. If that’s what the Minister intends to do, there is no reason why this could have not been put in primary legislation to make it extremely clear to the public that no matter who is in charge, this will be safeguarded. Because there’s nothing stopping a future Government—and particularly when I look at the National Party’s coalition partners, who seem to either actively campaign on preventing disabled people on the benefit from getting on to the supported living payment by adding additional restrictions, or other coalition partners throwing literal slurs at disabled people. There’s just simply no guarantee, and we cannot take this for granted, which is why a rights-based approach is the way to go, and actually and genuinely honour our commitments we have made to the world and to disabled people in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which this Government just seems to continuously pretend that it’s not there. I see this every day in the mahi that I do with my immigration portfolio, where I’m fighting against disabled people being actively discriminated and deported within the immigration system, despite us signing up to these conventions internationally.

Finally, I want to comment on the fact that I think part of our vision of starting again and redesigning this bill is to build a disability support services legislative framework that honours the interdependence that we have to one another, that honours the fact that disabled people have a right to full participation, have a right to a life of dignity, to be treated with respect, to be co-conspirators in the legislative process, and for their voices to actually be front and centre. The select committee process we undertook, in my view, continues being a disservice to the experience that I think should have been given to disabled people.

I too want to none the less commend the staff in the select committee ,who I know—as has been said—went above and beyond to accommodate the process that was given to us by the Government parties by way of numbers. So, once again, I want to finally reiterate our position, which is that if in power, we will repeal this bill and start again with the vision and goals that disabled people have told us over and over again, which is that “There’s nothing about us without us.” I know that that has been said so much in this Parliament that it can feel, I think, in this room, as empty words when the legislative process, I would say, in successive Governments has not been the case. But I do think that, if anything, this process has shown that people will not be silenced, that people will not be told what their rights are—that rights are fought. There is power in numbers.

So I want to continue encouraging disabled people across the country to continue their fight and their campaigns for better rights, because this isn’t the only piece of legislation that threatens the rights of disabled people. Even this week, we’re supposed to debate a bill that will deem people who are perhaps struggling with mental health or battling cancer, disabled by health conditions, who are going to be stripped of income support. So when I see a Minister giving us empty platitudes on how much she deems to care about disabled people, yet that very same Minister with other roles continues pushing a legislative agenda that tramples on those very same disabled people, I just don’t buy it. So, again, the Green Party will keep fighting against this bill.

I want to mihi to disabled people across the country. I want to mihi also to the fact that there’s a diversity of views from disabled people. We’ve got disabled people who are active participants in every political party. That is exactly what it should be about. So to any politician that claims that they have consulted with the disability community, I invite them to honour the multitude of voices and political views that exist within it—in this case, many who have told the Government that they need to start over and make this bill right.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to firstly also thank all of the submitters that came before the Social Services and Community Committee. I’m a first-term MP, so some of the submissions that we heard were very moving. It was really hard not to feel the concerns that were coming to us. So I just want to say thank you so much to those disabled people and their whānau that came through to let us know their thoughts on this piece of legislation. I also want to thank the select committee staff, because they made accommodations for us to be able to hear submitters. We used a larger select committee room. We made sure that, where possible, we could have an interpreter to do sign, which I think was great. That was all done pretty last minute.

I do want to say that I do have concerns that the disability community weren’t consulted in advance with this bill. I know that this bill came as a bit of a shock. I also know that no matter what we do at this point in this bill, nothing is probably going to be enough. But I think it’s also really fair to say that there’s been a lot of accusations from the opposite benches thrown at the Minister and this Government, but they’ve had since the early 1990s to put a disability support services (DSS) framework in place—successive Governments have—and nobody has done it thus far. Right now, without a framework in place, a Minister could quite literally make changes overnight. So it is important that we have a framework. So I do actually want to acknowledge the Minister in trying to fix this issue, because what is going to create the most certainty for those that are receiving DSS is to actually know that there is a legislative framework around it.

There were a couple of things that I’ll note that submitters raised that was the most important, and I think the select committee has done a good job at taking on the feedback and actually changing the wording in the bill. We’ve added some amendments to the bill. I want to thank the Minister for also acknowledging these amendments, and also noting that these are really important for those that submitted. So clause 8(2)(a), as introduced, said that “families … have responsibility in the first instance for … well-being of their members:”. I know that that wording was brought up with us a lot during the process, and there were concerns that that meant that the main burden or financial burden would fall on families. That was not the intent of the bill, so we thought it was really important that we clarified that. So we have changed the wording to say, “a responsibility to contribute to”, as opposed to it actually being in the first instance. Where I think that is important is because not all family is able to contribute. Actually, the person with the disability has a right to be able to live their life the way in which they want to. Actually, sometimes, family aren’t in the best-placed position to be able to provide care, for example. So I think that this is a better reflection of where we are actually heading with that.

In clause 8, we have actually also added a requirement for decision makers to take account of eligible disabled persons, and there’s a list there of principles, choices, and preferences, including support required to communicate to them, safety and dignity, immediate and long-term needs and circumstances, what are their own resources where appropriate, support available through other publicly funded sources, and support available through family or community where appropriate. I think “where appropriate” is a really important differentiation that we’ve made.

The committee has decided that these elements are in line with the principles of Enabling Good Lives. I think it’s important that any framework that we have does actually align with this, because many members of Parliament across the House have agreed that this is the direction of travel that we need to be heading in.

Some of the other things that we did and some of the other things that we heard were around consultation and around secondary legislation to do with regulation-making powers. There was a concern that some details—things like means testing, for example—would be left to secondary legislation, which would mean that a Minister would be able to change these quite easily and, potentially, without consultation. The select committee has put in some safeguards to ensure that there is consultation with the community when making these decisions, and I think that that alleviates quite a lot of the fears that people had around secondary legislation.

It is important that we do have something in regulations as opposed to primary legislation because we need to be able to be agile and to move quickly with new policies which benefit our disabled community the most. I do think that it is important, though, that, as everyone who has spoken before me has noted, and also the submitters—they were concerned that with a change of Minister or a changeover of a Minister, we may see some new regulations made and they may not be in line with what the community desires. That adds an important safeguard, and, look, I think that we’ve just got to come back to the fact and remember that at the moment, we don’t have a safeguard, and this could actually just be done right now. In fact, I was really surprised to know that the DSS system was set up on a Cabinet minute or a Cabinet paper from 1991, currently. That is not a safe situation that we’re in right now for those receiving DSS. Any Minister could come in and make changes without this framework.

While I know that it’s not perfect, I think that it’s really important to note that this is actually a better change. I challenge the Opposition members who say that they would go back to square one and start again, because I think that they had possibly tried to look at a DSS framework when they were in Government and hadn’t done it themselves, and yet we have managed to commit to that and made that happen, and get it across the line.

I want to again thank those who did come forward and talk to us, and I also acknowledge the hard work that the select committee has done. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Disability Support Services Bill in its second reading. Like many speakers who have already spoken before me, I found that it was quite a moving time in the Social Services and Community Committee, hearing from submitters. We did receive a large number of submissions: over 3,000. But those 140-plus submitters whom we heard from—as a first-time MP, I think that after hearing directly from the disability community, a lot of those submissions in those hearings will be things that I’ll take away with me in future dealings because they were very, very moving.

We’ve heard about the way that in the past, decisions have been made by Cabinet minutes or decisions of Cabinet. You could only call that process an ad hoc kind of system. Up to this point, you couldn’t go and physically find in a piece of legislation for people with disabilities what they were entitled to, and so it makes a lot of sense to put it into a piece of legislation and bring together historically a lot of decisions over decades and over a long period of time. This bill is also intended to confront the other issue around clarifying the employment provisions, and that was a very important part of this bill.

From having the committee hear those submissions, there has been a change of language in this bill, and I think that for families who have family members with disabilities, there was a huge concern about what their responsibility was. The bill now reads “a responsibility to contribute to” wellbeing. That wording, I believe, will give some relief to families and a better understanding of what the bill is trying to achieve.

We’ve just heard from the previous speaker Laura McClure about the Minister being able to make secondary legislation and we heard from many submitters their concern around the lack of consultation, and this bill now deals with that. Consultation will take place when new programmes come into place, and so that consultation will be a very important, vital point, which was missing from the initial draft.

The Minister for Disability Issues also said that disabled people should be able to access what they’re entitled to, and this bill doesn’t change any of those existing entitlements. I think that that is an extremely important point. Under this bill, the entitlements that you were entitled to before, you are still entitled to now, and so nothing has changed.

We have heard from previous speakers about the framework of the Enabling Good Lives principles, which we fully endorse. Another important point that I took was that families were very concerned about the fact that they may have to exhaust all their current resources. Again, this bill now tells us that you don’t need to exhaust all those existing resources—you are entitled to what you’re entitled to. The bill does make some other important changes, including a five-year mandatory review of the Act—and so every five years, the legislation will be reviewed—and the transitional period is being amended from “3 years” to “5 years”.

In closing, New Zealand First does support this bill because we want to be sure that the regulatory framework is strong. On that, I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): This is a five-minute split call.

When a tāngata whaikaha—a disabled person—spends five years fighting the Crown just to be heard, the system isn’t supporting them; the system is disabling them. That’s the reality of Adam Rangihana, living within my electorate of Tāmaki Makaurau with a severe, traumatic brain injury, and he has put directly those words before me.

For more than five years, Adam Rangihana says he has tried to get answers and help from ACC. ACC held hospital evidence of his catastrophic brain injury. He needed a process that was clear, accessible, and accountable, but instead what Adam Rangihana got, he says, was that the burden was put back on him. He had to find the information and he had to navigate the system, follow the process, and chase the complaint, all with a traumatic brain injury. Five years later, he says that there has been no meaningful investigation, no written outcome, and no resolution. His message to us here in this House today is very blunt: “I’m not asking for sympathy or an election slogan. I am asking for action.”

That is why Te Pāti Māori is opposing this bill. The disability community is not asking this Parliament for sympathy; it is demanding—we are demanding—the rights of our tāngata whaikaha. They have told us that this bill takes us all backwards.

More than 16,000 people signed Victoria Coleman’s petition calling on Parliament not to pass this bill. Disability organisations warned us, tāngata whaikaha Māori warned us, and even whānau and carers warned us, and yet here we are.

This bill says that the responsibility for a disabled person’s wellbeing sits with family and whānau “in the first instance”. Absolutely not—kāo. Whanaungatanga is not permission for the Crown to outsource its responsibility. It means another māmā having to leave work to provide care, it means another whānau who has to carry the cost, it means another disabled person fighting a system that was meant to support them, and whānau cannot be that system. We can’t expect the family to be the system.

There is also Fleming v Attorney-General. Family carers challenged discrimination and fought for recognition of their work. What does this bill do? It protects the Crown against certain liabilities, extinguishes some proceedings, and restricts avenues for challenging past discrimination. You don’t fix discrimination by making it harder to challenge discrimination; you fix the system. The Wai 2575 Health Services and Outcomes Kaupapa Inquiry exposed serious barriers experienced by tangata whaikaha Māori. Te Tiriti requires better, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires better, and our people, the people of Aotearoa, absolutely deserve better.

Te Pāti Māori would establish a Māori-led mana hauā authority so that tangata and whānau whaikaha hold real power over the services affecting their lives. We would build a whānau-centred support grounded in whakapapa and whanaungatanga. We would recognise unpaid carers, invest in a kaupapa Māori disability workforce, and demand accessible Crown services, including systems such as ACC, because accessibility isn’t just ramps, it’s not just doorways; it’s being able to understand better: to understand a letter, to navigate a process, to reach one accountable person, and to get an answer—that’s what our whānau are dealing with on the daily—and challenge the Crown when it gets things wrong.

Adam Rangihana is of Ngāpuhi descent. His experience raises a simple question for every member of this House, and that is: how many more tangata whaikaha Māori are trapped inside Crown systems we designed and are unable to fight their way out? They should not have to fight at all. Tangata whaikaha are not liabilities. Justice is not something the Crown gets to ration when accountability becomes inconvenient. Mana hauā is mana tangata. Fix the barriers, fund the support, and give our people power—they deserve nothing less. We oppose this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Green Party strongly opposes the Disability Support Services Bill because this bill will make the lives of disabled people and tangata whaikaha worse here in Aotearoa. But let’s go back to why this bill came to the House in the first place. This is to do with the Supreme Court decision ruling in Fleming v Attorney-General in 2025. Now, you will hear the Government gaslighting the disabled community, saying nothing is changed, none of the entitlements will change, but that was not the intention of the Supreme Court ruling. The intention of the Supreme Court ruling is to expose the issue that our disabled people and their whānau face on a daily basis. It exposes the issue that the current setting, the status quo, simply is not good enough in addressing the needs of our disabled communities. That is the reason why the Supreme Court made that ruling. So this bill that we see here, and for Government to say that this changes nothing—it’s fundamentally the issue that the Supreme Court tried to address, fundamentally the issue that disabled communities are trying to address, fundamentally the issue of why we’re not upholding our international obligations.

Now, when this bill was introduced, we didn’t see a section 7 report on it. However, subsequently, the Attorney-General’s office confirmed that this bill breaches our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That is significant, because we have seen, over and over and over again, legislation that affects our disabled communities undermining them, undervaluing them, and underpaying them. We’re seeing through the select committee stage whereby most of the people opposed this bill, most of our disabled communities opposed this bill, and yet you have a Minister and you have a Government that come in here and tell us how they have been heard. That’s disingenuous.

With this bill, one of the things that we are going to be seeing, and what the disabled communities are concerned about, is what it would mean for the ability for them to look after their whānau. Now, we have seen this Government constantly on one hand pulling the rug from underneath our whānau through the changes to the Ministry of Social Development. We’re seeing the fact that you have a Government that says that it is the parents’, it’s the whānau’s responsibility to look after their children if they’re sick, we’re seeing them sanctioning and removing benefits to sick 18- and 19-year-olds with severe mental issues or with cancer because they’re saying that they cannot afford it. We’re seeing them cutting the benefits and removing entitlement eligibility left, right, and centre. We’re just seeing that today in terms of 15,000 pensioners who are not getting the winter energy payment because of rushed legislation, such as this one, going through this very Parliament. That’s simply not good enough.

The disabled community has said in the select committee—their voices are loud and clear—“Nothing about us without us.” If you want to create a system that truly values our disabled people, truly allows them the dignity and autonomy that they rightfully deserve, every part of that needs to be co-created and collaborated on with the communities, not just simply at a presumed secondary legislation stage, as suggested by the department report.

This is why the Green Party is incredibly firm and staunch in our support of the Enabling Good Lives approaches. This is why the Green Party’s incredibly staunch in our call to build more accessible public housing that provides warm, dry homes for our disabled community. This is why the Green Party has been championing changing ACC into an agency for comprehensive care which covers our disabled communities and those who are chronically ill. The Green Party will not support this bill because it will not help our disabled communities.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Thank you for your indulgence. I rise to speak on the second reading of the Disability Support Services Bill as the chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee. I firstly just want to acknowledge and thank those 3,382 interested groups and individuals who made submissions; the 143 submitters who gave oral evidence; to my colleagues on the Social Services and Community Committee—we worked long hours to do that—to the Office of the Clerk, who provided sterling assistance and also worked long hours to ensure this could make its way comprehensively through the process; Ministry of Social Development advisers and the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who assisted with legal drafting; and those who provided the interpretation. We spent a lot of time on this. We listened very carefully to the submitters and their submissions, and the committee has recommended a number of quite substantial changes, which I’m very pleased the Minister for Disability Issues has accepted and those changes are going to be made.

I just, at the outset, wanted to say that there has never before in New Zealand been a legislative framework for disability support services. This will be the first time there has been one. The current system distributes billions of dollars of funding per annum on the basis of Cabinet minutes that date back to the 1990s—to letters—and our committee was told, in fact, that some of the original instructions are probably sitting in a desk in a rubbish tip somewhere. There’s a lot of complexity and a lack of ability for people working at Parliament, let alone those in the community, to actually understand the rules that are guiding decisions that have been made. So this is providing, for the very first time, a very clear, transparent legislative framework for everyone to understand the process and for there to be accountability and transparency.

Notwithstanding that, I should also note that this Government over the past two years has increased the amount of funding for disability support services by $2.1 billion—$2.1 billion of new money for disability support services over the last two years. So I just put that in context with some of the speeches we’ve heard tonight from the other side of the House, which, unfortunately, have not been considered.

But we did hear, like I said, some very compelling submissions, which we listened very carefully to, and we thank those submitters for making those submissions. We have recommended some key changes. I won’t go through all of them tonight; I’ll just touch on a couple of particularly important ones, and those are around clause 8 of the bill. This is the “Principles that [the] Ministry and contracted providers must take into account when making decisions about [the] provision of [Disability Support]-funded disability support services”. The original legislation said that “families, whānau, and other culturally recognised family groups, where appropriate, have responsibly in the first instance” to contribute to the wellbeing of their members. We heard a lot of concern that that could be misconstrued that family members could be required to provide the equivalent of disability support services before the State provided them.

So we have made a recommendation to change that to: where appropriate, they have a responsibility to contribute to the wellbeing of members, not a responsibility in the first instance. It’s a significant change, and it reflects the reality that family members of course contribute to the support of their disabled family members around the country but it’s making it really clear that the focus is on not only that but it’s, most importantly, on the State in providing these disability support services.

We have also—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The member, obviously, is intending to make a full speech, so the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the meal break. The member can resume after 7.30. The House will resume at 7.30.

Sitting suspended from 6.02 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The House is resumed. When we broke for the dinner break, we were on the Disability Support Services Bill, second reading, up to interrupted speech No. 7, and Joseph Mooney has five minutes and 43 seconds remaining.

JOSEPH MOONEY: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I was just about to start talking about the second tranche of clause 8, and the committee’s recommendation was that we thought it was important that the principles would include aspects specific to the disabled person rather than focusing solely on the wider system surrounding them. We recommended that decision makers should take into account any eligible disabled person’s choice or preferences, including whether the person requires support to communicate and make their choice and preference, safety and dignity, immediate and long-term needs and circumstances, their own resources where appropriate, support from other publicly funded services, and support from family, whānau, or other culturally recognised groups in the community where appropriate. This was in response to submitters’ suggestions that we heard throughout the hearings on this bill, and we took elements for these principles from the Enabling Good Lives principles in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

One of the most important things that we heard repeatedly from submitters was in clause 11 of the bill and what’s often called “ministerial programmes”. We heard the importance that the community placed on consultation. Submitters expressed concern about leaving the details of such important programmes for secondary legislation. We note that in the absence of this bill there is nothing currently prohibiting the Minister from introducing changes to means teasing without notification, but we thought it was important to recognise this consultation concern. Again, I understand the high standard of communication is consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the New Zealand Disability Strategy, and so we recommended inserting a new clause to provide that the Minister must consult such representative disabled persons as the Minister considers appropriate before making such a support programme. We note that the bill does not change eligibility entitlements or support.

Finally, the last and most important substantive change that we recommended is that we recommend a mandatory review of the Act’s operation within five years of the Act’s commencement, noting the various concerns that were raised, but also noting that this is the first phase of establishing a foundational legislative framework for disability support services, and a further phase is envisioned that will address things such as safeguarding information gathering, and appeals and complaints processes.

I conclude my comments by thanking again all those who worked very hard on this. I think we’ve got it to a very good place. I want to thank the many members of the disability support services community and disabled people who came and spoke to our committee and informed the changes that we now recommend to the House. I thank the Minister for taking these and indicating that this will be amended accordingly. With that, I support this bill to the House.

Well, Christopher Luxon promised to make life better for New Zealanders, and not only has he made it worse for the disabled community but he’s made it able to be worse in the future, going forward. I can’t imagine many disabled people across New Zealand tonight watching this, thinking that this is any kind of a good bill, regardless of the things that have been done to it at select committee.

Think about what it must be like to have a disabled child, to fight all the time to try and get your child the same level of rights and opportunities as other children, to be able to afford them dignity that every New Zealander deserves, and then also to lie awake at night sometimes thinking, in particular cases, “What is going to happen to my child when I leave this earth? Who is going to look after them?” That is the nature of some of the submissions that were made to the select committee—harrowing submissions. That is what brought more than 16,000 people to this Parliament to protest against this particular bill. The Government’s own documents admit that most people were against this bill, so I don’t know why members opposite think that it’s suddenly been knocked into shape.

If we look at the bill, it tells us exactly what National thinks about disabled people. Look at the language. It describes disability support as a “contribution to care”. It focuses on the responsibilities of families and whānau, it gives Ministers power over programmes governing eligibility assessments and conditions on funding, and it explicitly legislates to manage the Crown’s fiscal and litigation risks.

So here we are talking about the different and diverse disabled communities across New Zealand who are now being characterised, as “fiscal and litigation risks”. Where is the dignity in that? Where is the dignity in that? Disabled people are worried about risk to their independence; brothers and sisters are worried about what is the level of so-called responsibility that they will have to carry for their siblings, regardless of how much they love and care for them; family carers are worried about their rights; and National is just worried about fiscal and litigation risk.

This shows that this Government doesn’t listen, because we’ve heard in this House tonight that the disabled community have said “Nothing about us without us”. They’ve made that very clear. They made it clear at the handover of the petition which I attended. They were angry. But this Government introduced a bill that most submitters opposed, and disabled people are frightened by this. And I know why they’re frightened: because they know their way around the disability system better than anybody—better than the officials, better than the Ministers. They have navigated it all their life. They know which bits work and which bits don’t work, because they are motivated by looking after their lives, looking after their loved ones, and especially looking after their children.

Then, on 26 June, in this House, this year, the Minister said that their fears were scaremongering and misinformation. She characterised the real fears of that community as misinformation. Now, those families are not confused—they understand how much is at stake—and legislation isn’t just about what the Minister Louise Upston promises she will do tomorrow; it is about what is going to happen in the future. That is what they’re nervous about, because the bill allows support programmes dealing with eligibility to have different assessment requirements, conditions on funding, and how support can be provided, and it allows ministerial directions about how powers and discretions are exercised. Even after select committee, the Minister must only consult with representatives of the disabled people “only as the Minister considers appropriate”. Where is the dignity in that and what gives the Minister that level of discretion? What part of “Nothing about us without us” and what part of the power imbalance that is going on here is served by that little tweak at select committee? Yes, it’s better than it was, but it’s still not good enough to support.

The bill says that a failure to comply with those consultation provisions would not invalidate the programme, and then look what happens when families fight back, because families have already fought all the way to the Supreme Court over paid family care, and they won.

So what does the bill do? It limits employment claims. It extinguishes unresolved claims. It bars certain claims from relating to past decisions. This is all about the Crown wanting to manage its fiscal and litigation risk, once again dehumanising the many disability communities across the motu. That is so undignified. It is so unfair to the families who fought. It is so unfair to the families who went to court. It is so unfair to the families who won. All they want to do is legislate away the risk to the Crown; that is not putting disabled people at the centre of the response.

Then there’s a question that keeps many parents up—questions from parents of disabled children, with their parents thinking, “Maybe my kid’s going to be all right, but I’ve been the one fighting this fight for so long, who is going to be there for them?” There were submissions—there was a father who had a seven-year-old disabled son and a five-year-old disabled daughter, and his fear is that, one day, responsibility for his son’s care could fall on the little girl. That is because, despite the protestations from the other side, that gate is still wide open for legislative changes to be made about where the level of responsibility lies. It is not enough just to put the word “responsibility” and think that’s been handled. There is still a duty and a burden on those families that is fundamentally different from where we were before, that says that because you have a familial relationship, the State is able to walk away from its duty of care to you.

Dana Kirkpatrick: No, it doesn’t say that.

INGRID LEARY: It absolutely does say that. It absolutely does, and that is what will happen in the future. It may not happen now, but that door has been opened. Also, because it’s a framework, there’s plenty of scope for regulation, as this particular Government is so wont to do. Let’s look at what this means around the disability community and its relationship—

Joseph Mooney: You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.

INGRID LEARY: —with the Government. I can see the member for Southland, Joseph Mooney, laughing in his seat. Wait till you get the emails tomorrow from the disability community because guess what, Government! They don’t trust you. They do not trust you with those powers. They don’t trust you with those regulations. They don’t trust you with the eligibility. They don’t trust you with the funding. They do not trust you with their children’s future. Guess what! Neither would I—neither would I.

Labour has listened. I want people at home to know loud and clear, we will repeal this bill. We will repeal it because disabled people are not a fiscal risk to be managed. I was just on a committee before around the seniors poverty report. I heard a member from the Government parties talking about the fiscals of seniors. This Government sees people as fiscal risks and fiscal opportunities. That’s how it measures the world. It is dehumanising. Disabled people are New Zealanders. They have rights. They have dreams. They deserve dignity. They deserve choice.

What the Government’s doing is frightening the very people it should be protecting. We heard that loud and clear at the handover of the petition. It’s all very well for the members over there to sit there and snort, but I didn’t see any of them at the handover. They were not listening to the disability community and neither, apparently, was the Minister, who admitted that she did not listen to the submissions.

The broader question then is, given what this Government is prepared to do to the disability community, who are already one of the most marginalised groups, what will it do to other New Zealanders? The disability community quite rightly has said it doesn’t trust this Government. It’s lived through the trauma. It knows what this Government’s capable of. It has seen many, many cuts and many of their rights taken away. I deal with constituents all the time who tell me about this, who tell me about the fact that they can no longer have choice over how they spend some of the money or they can no longer buy materials or equipment that is going to help their children.

They don’t trust this Government, but to other people watching, take this as a lesson and wonder what would happen to New Zealand and what would happen to our disabled community if there’s another three years of this kind of treatment from this Government. They don’t deserve another chance. They are happy to kick people to the curb. If they can do it to one of the most marginalised groups in society and then try to say, “Oh, we’ve taken responsibility. We’ve made some tweaks at the select committee and we promise you that we’re not going to change things in the future around means testing. Trust us.”—that is their mantra, and we’ve heard that in the House tonight—then imagine what they could do with another term of Government.

It’s good to see some of the changes at select committee. It’s good to see other members of the House acknowledging that we are not dealing with one community here; we are dealing with many different diverse communities across New Zealand, many of whom are seniors who I speak to all the time in my seniors spokesperson capacity. But disabled communities, regardless of where they fall and where they live, are deserving New Zealanders and they deserve better. They do not deserve to have this Government in for another three years. They do not deserve to be treated with such contempt and such disregard. I do hope that the rest of New Zealand, if you can’t decide for yourself, do it for our disabled community. Do not give this Government, this cruel and heartless Government, another three years. They’ll just make things worse.

Well, honestly, I’m almost speechless at that nonsense that I’ve just heard from the member of the Opposition. I would just like us to get back to a few facts. This is the Government that invested $2.1 billion extra in disability services to support the disabled community. Yes, there’s always more work to do; we understand that. I’d like to thank the Social Services and Community Committee members who spent a lot of time deliberating and talking and discussing the issues in this bill and made significant changes at the behest of the submitters. We listened and we heard and we talked at length about the themes that came through very quickly and we made some significant changes.

But there are some things that just need to be repeated for the people of the other side who have clearly missed the memo. Until now, there has been no legal framework for disability support services. The bill provides a clear legislative foundation reflecting how the disability support services operates. The bill does not change current eligibility, entitlements, or support. The changes we made strengthen the bill by providing greater clarity. Our priority in this Government is that disabled people and their families can now understand how the disability support system works and have confidence in how decisions are made. I commend the bill to the House.

Mālō e lelei and happy Tongan Language Week. I rise to oppose the Disability Support Services Bill at second reading. I would like to state what we on this side of the House know. Disability support services has needed a proper legislative foundation for years. Families and whānau, disabled people themselves, and the sector organisations that support them have said so consistently over the years. Nobody on this side of the House is defending the status quo of confusion about who qualifies for what and how decisions get made.

But a bill that fixes a real problem can still get the answer wrong, and this bill gets it wrong in its process and in substance. On the issue of process, this bill was referred to the Social Services and Community Committee under urgency, with roughly half the normal time to report back. There was no community consultation before it was introduced. The Government’s own regulatory impact statement admits this, citing sensitivity of the proposals, but sensitive to whom? It’s most definitely not to the over 55,000 disabled people and whānau who rely on the system every single day.

Parents told the select committee that this approach may breach our obligations as a Government under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to closely consult disabled people’s own representative organisations on matters that affect them directly. When your own statement flags a likely breach of a United Nations convention, that is not a technicality; that is a warning.

Now, in substance, three things stand out. First, most of what actually matters in this new system will sit in regulations, not in this actual bill—regulations that a future Minister can change with far less scrutiny than this House can apply towards primary legislation. CCS Disability Action, the largest pan-disability organisation in Aotearoa New Zealand, has told the committee plainly that this bill could reshape disability support for decades, and most of the detail sits outside this bill itself.

Second, this bill embeds language of natural supports and family responsibility that risks shifting more unpaid care on to families who are already stretched to the breaking point, and it does this while sidestepping a Supreme Court ruling that recognised some family carers as employees.

Third, Blind Low Vision New Zealand put it better than I ever can. They said that this bill builds the fence around the budget before it builds the doorway for our disabled people. It leads with funding constraint, executive control, and risk management, and it trails behind on rights, autonomy, and participation. This is a reversal of everything that the Enabling Good Lives approach was built to achieve. The Enabling Good Lives approach was something that was developed across parties. It was something that both of the major parties agreed on and it is an approach that Parliament has invested in across parties over one decade.

I have to note that there is something else that’s missing from the Government’s report on this bill. There isn’t one word about Te Tiriti o Waitangi—not one word about tāngata whaikaha Māori. If a bill this significant to tens of thousands of disabled New Zealanders cannot even acknowledge Te Tiriti, that tells all of us everything about the priorities behind it. Over 3,300 submissions came in on this bill.

Thousands of people also signed a petition. This House owes them more than a rushed process and a bill that manages them as a fiscal risk, rather than recognising them as people and citizens with rights. As it stands, this bill does not deserve a second reading. It was rushed. It was not properly consulted on. It leads with control rather than rights. I urge members across the House to vote it down and to send the Government back to do this properly, in partnership with disabled people, not about them: “Nothing about us without us.” I do not commend this bill to the House.

The Disability Support Services Bill establishes a legislative framework for the disability support services for the first time. It’s intended to improve consistency, fairness, transparency, and the sustainability of the system. It is also aimed at providing a stronger voice for disabled people in future decisions. I commend this bill to the House.

Mālō e lelei. I want to pick up where the last speaker stopped, because he talked about how this is a bill about improving sustainability. I want to take issue with the use of a word like “sustainability”. Because what we’re really talking about here is that there was a case that suggested that people should be paid for the work they were doing 24/7 with caregiving responsibilities for disabled people. As a result, this Government has brought in a piece of legislation that cuts across any discussion of those rights, any exploration and any finding that they had rights to that kind of payment—that’s what actually is happening. That’s what we’re calling “sustainability”. So it’s no wonder, when we talk about language like that being used, instead of talking about how we’re actually cutting financial cost, that people don’t trust this Government. It’s absolutely no wonder, when we abuse words like “sustainability” when we do that.

I was on the select committee. I note that the chair was suggesting to Ingrid Leary that her speech was not compelling because she wasn’t on that committee. I listened to Ingrid Leary’s speech, and I agreed with what she said, and I was on that committee. I was on that committee, but I was also here when the House decided that that matter needed to go to our select committee, along with several other matters—other law changes that were significant. It had to go and we had to meet in the time of the usual sessions of Parliament, which means I cannot do my job in this House in the same way I usually would. I had to go and sit on that committee in those times, and submissions had to be rushed, and they have to be in very, very quickly.

Nevertheless, we had many submissions. We had to get through that process. I rose and I objected at the time. I said, “This is going to be really hard because (a) we have other work that the committee has been sent to do in this period of rush, (b) we have people who are disabled and it’s going to be really important that they’re heard on this, and it’s going to be harder to make that possible and to make them feel heard on this.” Actually, that was all dismissed. When we got into the submission process, we heard repeatedly from submitters, telling us that they were distressed by the fact that it had been a rushed process. They were distressed by the fact that they hadn’t had much time to come to this House, where they belong, to give submissions. I felt ashamed. What got mixed up in the message, again, was, “You don’t understand. This isn’t urgent. We’re hearing submissions.” We were hearing submissions in a big rush, and it did impact on those submitters and it did impact on the quality of what we heard, but it also impacted on the trust that people had in us.

I will never actually forget one of those submitters coming in and talking about looking after his disabled family members. He was pretty eloquent, actually—he gave a pretty good account of what was going on for him. The heaviness of some of the responsibilities he had—and I don’t think he meant any disrespect to the love that he had for the people he was looking after at all, but when he got into the corridor, he just burst into tears. And there was a howling from the corridor. It was one of the moments I was most ashamed of in this House, because we were whipping through submission after submission. We had to have a subcommittee so people could only meet with half the committee. That’s what we do when we’re in a rush. It was to get this piece of legislation back here.

It sure as hell was not coming back because we urgently needed a framework. What we urgently needed to do was actually cut the rights of people to go through a legal process in the Supreme Court. So if anybody is listening here and they’re confused about why this is here tonight and why we are going through this process, it is not because it is a more sustainable system; it is because this House did not want to face up to the reality of the cost—the actual value of the work done by those family members.

Now, I want to get on to why people feared that there would be further changes in this piece of legislation. That is because a lot of the detail isn’t in this piece of legislation at all. Yes, it has a framework and it has an enabling of things like asset testing. We’ve heard the Minister tonight, and I wrote down what she said, and she said, “I do not intend to expand asset or income testing”. Well, the Minister may be prepared to make that commitment herself, but she might not be the Minister in a few months—she might not be the Minister. There may be the same Government and she might not be the Minister. That’s the way that Ministers work—they flip from place to place. Another Minister won’t have made the same commitment. Actually, it will be possible for that to happen. So it’s cold comfort to have that kind of assurance.

What you could actually put in the legislation is you could put some promises and binding obligations. It could have in the primary legislation that there are not to be regulations or secondary legislation that takes this further. There could be that, but that’s not here. So I am not reassured by those words. In fact, I think they are a response to what was the outpouring of anger and grief and frustration that was undeniable by those people who were heroes. We had these people come into our select committee room who were actually managing disability in a heroic way—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Oh, come on.

HELEN WHITE: —and we had people come in who were managing their family member’s disability in a heroic way. I just heard the Minister Goldsmith make a comment which was, “Oh, come on.” I urge him to have a look at some of those submissions, because this is New Zealand. New Zealand families have people who are disabled in them. In fact, the Minister could be in that position one day himself. It happens within our families.

What I want is a New Zealand that supports those families, that actually supports them, and that puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to this. It’s not an “Oh, come on.” situation. I was genuinely moved by seeing those submitters and understanding, from what I was hearing, just how much they were doing for our community, because they’re our people too, and our community needs to take responsibility. It’s not just a case of foisting all responsibility on to biological families, which is, effectively, what has been slightly softened in this legislation, but it is definitely happening. We are foisting on to people huge burdens, and this is only one of them. We are doing this over and over again. We are talking up self-responsibility, instead of talking up community responsibility. I want to be part of a New Zealand that’s better than that. I think we’ve got a much, much better future than that. I think we have to face the fact that caregiving in this country has not been given the value it deserved.

We’ve had an argument, in the last few years, about pay equity for the same reason. A lot of the workers who had their pay equity claims dismissed by this Government were the same people. They were our caregivers, and they are not being valued. We have to decide as a society where we’re going from now, because we are breaking our families. They are ending up in trauma as a result of the way that our society is structured. That’s a big question, it’s a big idea, but we have to have it. We absolutely have the capacity, in a First World nation, to look after our families and our caregivers. This is another step in the walk-away from that kind of society, and I’m not happy about it whatsoever. It’s why I am a proud member of the Labour Party, because the future in this country is not going to look like this. We’re lucky we’re having an election, and it’s people’s chance to decide whether they’re going to have a better future than the one that Minister Goldsmith wants for them. Thank you. I do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In this second reading of the Disability Support Services Bill, I think it’s useful to clarify that the legal framework that is being laid out by this bill is a new situation and enables the ability to make the funding programmes much more clear. Now, that is a useful thing, and I commend the bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Social Services and Community Committee by majority be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Disability Support Services Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill

Legislative Statement