Disability Support Services Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise at the third reading of the Disability Support Services Bill to speak once again in opposition of it. I want to begin by acknowledging the disabled people, tāngata whaikaha, Māori, family carers, whānau, advocates, and community organisations who have fought so hard throughout this process. Thousands of people took the time to submit on this bill. Many came before the Social Services and Community Committee and shared deeply personal parts of their lives with us. They spoke about exhaustion, love, frustration, fear, and the daily reality of trying to navigate a system that is already too difficult.

Some of the most moving moments I have experienced as an MP have happened in select committee rooms. People come into Parliament carrying years of lived experience and hand us a small piece of their lives because they believe that, if lawmakers truly understand what life is like, we will make better decisions. That is how democracy is supposed to work, and that is why this process, the process around this bill, matters so much. This legislation was introduced without any warning and debated a few days later without disabled people and carers being involved in the design changes that would directly affect their lives. It was sent through a shortened select committee process. Disabled people told us clearly that adequate time is an accessibility issue. Participation takes planning, support, accessible information, and often, more time than Parliament gave them. Yet, despite those barriers, disabled people mobilised in extraordinary numbers—almost 3,500 submissions.

The Government did make changes after the select committee process. It clarified the wording around the roles of families, it added more person-centred principles, and it added a requirement for consultation before support programmes are created or changed. Those changes were won by disabled people who spoke up, organised, submitted, and refused to be ignored. But they did not fix the fundamental problem with this bill. The disability community has said for decades “nothing about us without us”. That phrase is repeated so often in this House that there is a danger that politicians start treating it as a slogan. It means disabled people must be involved from the beginning—not asked to react after a bill has already been written; not given compressed windows to make submissions; not thanked for their lived experience after the major policy choices have already been made. Good laws should be written with people, not done to them.

This bill also responds directly to the Supreme Court decision in Fleming v Attorney-General. That case opened a legal pathways for questions about the employment status and rights of people providing disability support, including family carers, to be tested under ordinary employment law. It just makes sense. Two people doing the same job: one is compensated, one is not. When we don’t compensate people for doing a job, that is modern day slavery. This bill shuts much of that pathway down. Under clause 13, whether a person providing Disability Support Services - funded support is an employee of the Crown or a contracted provider is determined by whether there is a written agreement saying so. If there is no such agreement, this legislation makes that conclusive proof that they are not an employee for this purpose.

We are talking about parents who know every medication, every appointment, every tiny change that tells them something is wrong; partners who have learned clinical skills they never expected to need; whānau who rearranged their lives because the alternate is the person they love simply does not receive the care they need. Love is what keeps many families going, but love should never be used as a reason to expect less for people. A person does not stop doing work simply because the person they are caring for is their child, partner, or parent, and carers should not be praised in speeches while Parliament narrows the legal routes available to them to establish and enforce their rights.

The Government says this bill is about certainty, but certainty for who? One of the stated positions of this bill is to explicitly mitigate litigation risk and related fiscal risk to the Crown—disgusting. When the courts recognise a potential right, the response should not simply be to legislate away the risk that people might exercise it; we should ask what injustice caused people to go to courts in the first place. We should ask why family carers have had to fight for years to have their work recognised and valued.

There is another part of this bill that continues to concern me deeply. The legislation allows future support programmes to use income-based or asset-based criteria. The Minister has repeatedly told the House that she does not intend to introduce new means-testing. I have heard that reassurance, but Ministers change, Governments change, intentions change, laws remain. If the Government genuinely intends that supports which are not means tested today will remain protected, put that protection into the primary legislation. Disabled people should not have to rely on the goodwill of whoever happens to hold the disability portfolio in five or ten years’ time. Rights should not depend on ministerial reassurance.

That brings me to the international human rights questions raised throughout this process. I wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs seeking clarity about New Zealand’s international obligation back in July, I think—I still haven’t heard back. I also asked the select committee to seek further advice on these international human rights commitments from Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Attorney-General—that was denied. The committee recommended this bill proceed. I find that deeply troubling. When serious questions are raised about legislation affecting people whose rights New Zealand has committed internationally to uphold, Parliament should be hungry for more scrutiny, not less. We should want the advice. We should want to be absolutely confident that what we are passing respects the dignity, equality, and rights of disabled people, because disabled people are not a fiscal risk to be managed. They are not a problem for families to absorb. They are citizens with the same rights as everyone else to participate fully in their communities, to make choices about their lives, to live with dignity, and to receive support that makes that possible. And families are not an inexhaustible free resource.

Families love, families support, families show up every single day, but families also work jobs, raise children—they get sick, they get tired, they age, and sometimes, they reach breaking point. A sustainable disability support system cannot be built on an expectation that whānau will keep filling every gap left by the Government. Even with the changes made in select committee, I remain concerned about embedding family contributions into a statutory framework in a way that risks continuing that expectation. The State has obligations too. Our job should be to build a system that honours interdependence without turning dependence on family into a prerequisite for dignity.

A system grounded in Enabling Good Lives; a system where the starting point is: what does a good life look like for this person, and what support will allow them to participate in it?

A system that trusts disabled people; a system that respects the expertise that comes from living this every day; a system designed with disabled people from the very first conversation. As my colleague Ricardo Menéndez March did in his second reading speech, I also want to acknowledge that there is no single disability community with one political view. Disabled people are members of every political party. They hold different views about policy, services, and the role of Government. That diversity should be respected, but one message from this process has been overwhelming. Disabled people expect to be participants in decisions on their own lives, like who is going to shower them. They should not have to organise, in their thousands, simply to make Parliament listen. So to every disabled person, carer, and whānau member who submitted, protested, wrote, called, organised, and kept pushing through this process, your advocacy changed this bill. The Government moved because you made it move, but the Green Party does not believe those changes go far enough. We will vote against this bill, and we have been clear that we want to start again, with disabled people at the table from the beginning, and build a legislation based on rights, dignity, choice, control, and genuine codesign. We completely and utterly oppose this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak to the Disability Support Services Bill at third reading. Firstly, I just want to say thanks to the submitters who, again, came before the select committee. I was a member of the Social Services and Community Committee and it was really, really helpful to hear the lived experiences from the families, the whānau, and the individuals who, for them, this is their reality.

I have to be honest, I had serious reservations about how the bill was written and the way it was presented to Parliament. I want to thank the Minister herself for actually engaging with ACT on this issue, and also accepting the changes that the select committee made, because I think that the changes that we have made do address the key concerns of those submitters. But as the previous speaker spoke before me, if those individuals didn’t come forward, and the way in which they had to raise all these issues, this bill wouldn’t be in the position that it’s in today. I think is really important that we do thank the disability community for their work that they’ve done, for coming through to select committee, for raising the issues and those concerns with all of us. That’s also outside of the select committee. I’ve met with quite a few different advocacy groups, individuals, and families that were really concerned about this bill.

There was one little area in the legislation that I still have a concern with and that is around the means testing. I do think that secondary legislation for some of the means testing is out of step with other benefits. If we make any changes to benefits in this House, for example, a lot of that is done in primary legislation if we are changing income and asset testing. So, I think that should still remain in primary legislation. It’s something that I have raised with the Minister, and look, there could be future legislation in the next Government that could actually address this because I think it is concerning.

But I do want to say thank you to the Minister for working with us. Again, thank you so much to the community, for coming forward, for bringing your voices to Parliament. We did hear you. We have made a lot of changes. I know that the speech before me was highly passionate, and I want to thank the member for bringing some of those thoughts and voices through, because they were things that we did hear, but I do want to make it really clear that the system we would be working in, if we didn’t put this bill in place right now, is essentially a 1991 Cabinet paper. And that is not safe or secure for the disability community. This framework is better than what we currently have, and it’s something that we do need so that we do have consistency in the system. I actually think it’s really rich of the Opposition and some of the comments they made about starting again. I actually challenge them because the next time that they are in Government, they will not revisit this because this is the right thing to do. It’s the right direction to head in. There should have been better consultation, but I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First in the third reading of the Disability Support Services Bill. I did canvas a lot of stuff in the second reading and I’ll just kind of go over some of the main points that we want to put in this third reading, but it is a really important bill. For once, we’re getting legislation into one place for our disability community. I fully support the last speaker, where we’ve working off a really ad hoc system with Cabinet minutes and decisions that date back a long, long time and really doesn’t give anyone certainty. I find it very difficult, some of the arguments that we’re hearing from the other side: the Opposition saying that they would actually get rid of what we’re putting in place here, because, for once, we are creating some certainty. Our disability community can go to a place where they can actually look at exactly what the legislation is, but then to roll that back, I find that quite unusual important.

An important part in this bill was the change in language in the bill. I do think the Minister and the Social Services and Community Committee did work really hard on some of the different language that was used from that first reading that was introduced into the House. One important part was the responsibility to contribute to wellbeing. The select committee made that change—that responsibility to contribute to wellbeing—to make sure that the language was the right approach, going forward, for our disability community, and it set the right tone in the piece of legislation.

We also heard that there’s a concern about the lack of possible consultation going forward. We heard also that, now, with the new programmes, if any new programmes come into place, that consultation will take place. That’s really important. Then we’ve got the issue around secondary legislation being used, but you’ve got to ask yourself, what was being used before? We were using Cabinet minutes and old decisions; we have the secondary legislation where there will be consultation. It gives any Minister flexibility in the future, and this is an area where you do want flexibility and you do want the ability to make changes as the world changes.

Also, another big concern was about the disability community or families having to exhaust all their resources. We made clear that this isn’t the case. If you’re entitled to something, you’re entitled to it. You do not have to extinguish all your resources to actually get that entitlement.

Importantly, there’s the mandatory review that’s after five years, but the part I want to emphasise from the New Zealand First point of view is what you are entitled to today, you’ll be entitled to tomorrow. There have been no changes. No one is worse off under this legislation. We’re just putting it in plain common sense in front of people, so you can understand it, you can access it. On that, I commend it to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This call is a split call—Orini Kaipara.

E te Pika, I rise on behalf of Te Pāti Māori to oppose this bill. I want to start with the people this Government seems determined not to see: the māmā and pāpā caring for their disabled tamaiti throughout the night; the nana and the koro who have become full-time carers for their mokopuna; the aunties and uncles, husbands and wives, daughters and sons, and other members of whānau who rearrange their entire lives around the needs of someone that they love. People who administer medication, people who attend appointments, people who assist with feeding, bathing, transport, and daily living. People whose lives are built around manaaki: care.

Tonight, the House is being asked to pass legislation that tells those kaimanaaki or carers that their contribution deserves less recognition, fewer rights, and less protection than other forms of work. One of the primary purposes of this bill is to make clear that caregivers are not Government employees and to deal with the risk of lawsuits related to paid family care. Thousands saw exactly what this bill was doing. Around 3,500 submissions were received, and the overwhelming majority opposed the bill.

Māori know what this means because Māori are disproportionately affected by disability. The advice before us notes that Māori experience disability at higher rates than non-Māori and face compounded barriers in health, housing, employment, education and income. It acknowledges that disability policy has too often ignored whakapapa, whanaungatanga, and collective responsibility. So when this Government undermines carers, it’s whānau Māori who will carry a disproportionate share of that burden.

In our communities, care isn’t a transaction. We know it to be manaakitanga. Care is aroha, care is whanaungatanga, care is what happens when whānau step up for one another when nobody else will, but just because that care is motivated by aroha or by love doesn’t mean it has no value. That’s the fundamental injustice at the heart of this bill. The Government talks about cost; carers talk about people. The Government talks about liability; carers talk about dignity. The Government talks about fiscal risk; carers talk about aroha.

One of the strongest voices opposing this legislation has been Dr Huhana Hickey. She reminds us that disability support is not a luxury. Support allows people to study, raise children, attend appointments, participate in community life, and live safely and independently. Without adequate support, she says, human rights become meaningless words on paper. That is the reality that this bill ignores. Disability support is not some abstract Budget line; it’s the difference between independence and isolation, between participation and exclusion, between dignity and struggle. Dr Huhana Hickey also warned that the Disability Support Services Bill “will affect real people in real homes in communities across Aotearoa. Parliament needs to hear that reality direct from us.”

Well, we should listen. We should listen to carers like Victoria Coleman, the full-time carer of her disabled son, who described the Government’s amendments as “tokenistic” and said they failed to address the parts of the bill causing the most harm. We should listen to disability advocate Jane Carrigan, who said family carers are taking responsibilities that belong to the Government, and who described this legislation as “the worst piece of legislation I’ve ever seen.”

As the member for Tāmaki Makaurau, I can’t ignore what is happening in my own city right now. Just days ago, RNZ reported that more than 1,200 Auckland home support workers could lose their jobs following a Health New Zealand contracting decision. Those providers currently support approximately 4,500 older and disabled Aucklanders. One provider spoke of workers who had supported the same people for decades. Another revealed that 30 percent of its workforce had been caring for people for more than 10 years. Think about that: a decade, two decades. Relationships built on trust; people who know their clients so well they can tell something is wrong even without a word. That is what real care looks like. That is the real care that needs investment, not this bill.

Te Pāti Māori believes all work has value. If someone is carrying out responsibilities that would otherwise fall to the State, they deserve dignity, recognition, and protection. That principle is reflected throughout our analysis of this legislation, and we will proudly oppose this bill.

Disabled people deserve a life of dignity and full participation in their communities. Legislation should reflect that. One of the greatest failures of this bill is not only that, in my view, it does not genuinely take a rights-based approach but that it was assigned without the full participation of disabled people across the country. It wasn’t just because there wasn’t adequate consultation prior to the bill being introduced, or even just because of a truncated select committee process that excluded countless disabled people in oral submissions; it is because, even in the bill itself, the co-design of these programmes is not really entrenched. It’s not even a real requirement.

I find it galling to hear people on the other side claim otherwise. Even if you look at Part 2 of the Bill—clause 11(4A) and (4B)—it’s made so clear in front of us that apparently, “Before approving and establishing a programme under subsection (1), the Minister must also consult such representatives of disabled persons as the Minister considers appropriate. … However … the Minister may amend a programme approved and established under subsection (1) without complying with subsection (4A), if the Minister is satisfied that … the amendment is minor in effect or corrects a minor or technical error; or … no eligible person will be adversely affected by the amendment; [or] (b) a failure to comply”—and here’s the key bit —“with subsection (4A) does not affect the validity of any programme approved and established under subsection (1).”

Apparently, consultation must happen, but nothing happens if it doesn’t go ahead. Again, how are disabled people supposed to have confidence in the Minister and a Government that says they care about hearing about the lived experiences of disabled people while, at the same time, writing in a bill and voting for a bill that can completely disregard co-design and participation of disabled people? Again, you don’t have to believe me, because this is the bill as written. When we have disabled people coming to the Social Services and Community Committee pleading for the Government to start over and genuinely take this right to full participation on board, they mean it. They mean it, because people are seeing a bill that completely disregards the participation of disabled people.

The Green Party also wants to acknowledge that care work is work and should be recognised as such. The economy is made up of all of us, and care work is some of the most undervalued, under remunerated work out there. It sustains life—not just of disabled people but of all of us—so when we have bills that prevent caregivers being able to further expand their rights or seek conditions that reflect the modern times that they may be living in, through the courts, I also see a disregard for the wellbeing of caregivers in this legislation.

I think that this is particularly concerning due to the fact that caregivers have told us, both in select committee and across media and different spaces in our society, that they’re struggling. Many caregivers are burned out, unable to do the work they want to do to live interdependent lives with the disabled people that are part of their family structures and livelihoods. That risks the safety and the wellbeing of the disabled people that they are interdependent with. This bill, in my view, both fails the right that disabled people have to full participation, as well as the recognition that care work is critical to upholding our lives and the economy that we are all a part of.

The Green Party has made it clear that, if in Government, we would redesign and restart the process of this bill, making sure that disabled people have a fulsome say on what the future of disability support services should look like. We should all care about this—able-bodied or otherwise—because all of us could become disabled at any point in our lives. Dismantling ableism across our legislative frameworks ultimately benefits us all. It improves the living conditions of us all, and we would do better to heed the calls of disabled people, for us to genuinely hear them, support them with participation, and redesign this bill.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in the third reading of the Disability Support Services Bill. I just want to acknowledge and just shout out, really, to all of the disability support folk all across New Zealand, and all of the communities and people who are living with different disabilities, which this Government strongly supports.

This bill establishes for the very first time in New Zealand a legislative framework for disability support services that’s aimed to improve the consistency, the fairness, the transparency, and the sustainability of the system. This is the first phase of establishing a foundational legislative framework, and this will be the first time it can be really clear for people what that framework is and is accessible for them to see for themselves.

It also introduces a mandatory review of this law within five years to ensure it is doing that. That adds, obviously, to this Government’s agenda to support people with disability support services. Actions speak louder than words; this Government has committed $2.1 billion in additional funding, in its term in Government, to the disability support sector. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. What’s really clear from the speeches that we have heard from this side of the House tonight, with a few more remaining, is that tāngata whaikaha and their whānau cannot afford three more years of this National Government.

I will be repeating some of the main points that others have made in their contributions not just for the sake of repeating them but because they actually came through so strongly in the submission process. I was one of the members on that select committee and had the privilege of listening to the many submitters that submitted on this bill. With a shortened time frame, there were still more than 3,000 submissions on this bill, showing just how important this bill is to tāngata whaikaha and their whānau. Our committee heard from over 120 oral submissions. I have been in Parliament for nine years. I have sat on many select committees. Many serious issues have come before our select committees, but this bill is one that had me often emotional, listening to the harrowing stories of tāngata whaikaha and their whānau and just what it takes for them to be able to live, to survive, and the genuine fear amongst them about what the changes in this bill could mean for them as tāngata whaikaha and for their whānau. I highly recommend that others go back and watch those submissions to understand, straight from those who are most impacted by this bill, what it means to them.

We met many of them outside who came to Parliament to be able to express what these changes mean, and I do think, by them coming here and their advocacy and unwavering belief and challenge in this, that some changes were made through the select committee process. But I want to highlight a couple of points and submissions. I referred to the submission by TAMA, Te Ao Mārama Aotearoa, in the committee stage and also in my second reading speech, because they represent a pan-iwi, pan-impairment, umbrella disabled people’s organisation for

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disabled Māori and their families, and they make excellent submissions and points on the various parts of the legislation and a number of recommendations. But I want to read out 1.4, where TAMA says they impose this bill in its entirety. They said, “We have long called for a clear legislative foundation for disability support. A legislative foundation built without disabled people, encoding open-ended whānau obligation, overriding employment law and a unanimous Supreme Court decision, barring access to human rights accountability, and erecting the architecture of means testing by ministerial notice is not a foundation. It is a regression, and tāngata whaikaha Māori will bear its heaviest weight.” That summarises many of the concerns, in a very succinct way, that other submitters had—not only tāngata whaikaha Māori but all tāngata whaikaha.

First I want to turn to the point about the lack of consultation in the development of this really important legislation. Like TAMA said in the submission, this legislative framework—a legislative framework—is supposed to provide the foundation. Everybody knows the saying about making sure that nothing without us—do nothing for them without them. But we know through the regulatory impact statement and through the submissions that we heard through the committee of the whole House stage that there was not proper consultation undertaken in the development of this really important legislation.

It was rushed. It was a truncated process. For something as important and significant as this, that truncated process means that it was not developed with the sector, that it was not co-designed as many of them had called for it to be, and that people were having to rush to be able to make their submissions and have their voices heard. Nothing for us without us was completely disregarded and thrown out the window.

We know what happens when legislation is rushed. We’ve had examples of it today: the winter energy payment—15,000 superannuitants and veterans did not receive their winter energy payment in the coldest months of this year because legislation was rushed through urgency. Here is another piece of rushed legislation.

We also heard from submitters that this undermines Te Tiriti o Waitangi and whānau Māori are concerned about that. That was highlighted by many submitters and by the Human Rights Commission and other organisations.

The means testing: we heard presentations in the House tonight that that is not the intention of this, but that is the very real fear that families shared with us. It is all too loose. In fact, the most common fear raised across the submissions was the concern regarding who means testing could extend to. Aotearoa Disability Law’s submission asked the questions that the Minister can’t seem to answer: whose income and assets count given how broadly family member is defined? We tried to tease that out in the committee of the whole House stage. I raised the point that for Māori and Pacific families, where family structures tend to be wider and more collective, they face legislation that does not adequately define means testing, layered on top of an undefined whānau responsibility principle. This leaves families with significant amounts of uncertainty and fear about what is expected of them and how they will cope.

Carers: the Government likes to talk about fairness for carers, yet its own figures don’t compare well with the schemes of others where family members are paid for care. This bill narrows the protection of the Minimum Wage Act for these workers. Submitters were right to be uneasy that already vulnerable workers are being placed in an even more precarious position. The Minister has not explained why family carers, under this system, should have fewer protections than others doing the same work.

There was no good reason to rush this bill through. As I said, we have seen what happens when you rush legislation through. On this bill, disabled people, carers, advocates, and experts asked for more time, for genuine partnership, to co-design this framework, but they did not get it. The Government did not listen to that request. They did not heed that advice. And so I stand here tonight and I cannot commend this bill to the House, and I reiterate the message that tāngata whaikaha and their whānau cannot afford three more years of this National Government.

It is very sad witnessing members of the Opposition once again using our disabled community as a political football.

Yes, there were aspects of the bill that, as first introduced, raised concern, but the Minister for Disability Issues has endorsed the changes made in the Social Services and Community Committee, changes made because of the feedback received from public submissions, changes which address many of the concerns raised by Opposition members as well, and yet they continue to spread fear and misinformation for their political point scoring, and that’s a shame. This bill will essentially establish a legislative framework for disability support services that’s fair, consistent, and transparent, and I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe te Māngai o te Whare . I stand to speak in opposition to the Disability Support Services Bill. Labour does not support this bill. What we have had from this Government since they came into office is more uncertainty, more exhaustion, and more anxiety from our disabled communities. I am not a member of the disabled community, and I won’t speak as if I know what they are going through, but what I can tell you is that I have had multiple conversations with many people in part of the disabled communities who have expressed their concerns to me with this bill. What we reflect here today is not our view of how legislation should be created for disabled communities, but the view of our communities, having had countless conversations with them over many years about what it would mean for them to live with dignity from a legislation point of view.

This process has been truncated and disabled communities have not had adequate time to consider the legislation that is being proposed. Despite that, we have had thousands of submissions, and I commend our disabled communities for standing up and putting their views forward in the face of adversity. The cost of living is affecting everybody. Luxon promised to fix it, but he has made it worse. New Zealanders cannot afford three more years of National, and our disabled communities cannot afford three more years of National.

From coming into Government, this Government has taken an axe to the dignity of disabled people, their self-determination, and the control that they have over their own lives. In March 2024, the changes to flexible funding meant no consultation with disabled people or their carers were implemented with immediate effect. There was no consultation and it left disabled people and their whānau uncertain, exhausted, and anxious about the future and what that meant. This was followed by the reduction in the Total Mobility Scheme fare subsidy. So many disabled whānau rely on this subsidy and it was reduced in a cost of living crisis by this Government. Then they decided to abandon the Enabling Good Lives roll-out, which gives disabled people more choice and control over their lives.

Now, with a truncated select committee process, and an undemocratic process, this bill has been introduced. It’s important that we look at the context of this bill and what our disabled communities have faced over the last three years in order to consider what this bill and what this legislation really means. This bill was not drafted with input from disabled communities. It doesn’t count to draft the bill and then go and ask them what they think. I understand and accept and agree that many changes have been made through the select committee process, and I commend the disabled community for standing up and making their views heard. However, that doesn’t go far enough to fully address the issues within the bills.

This bill creates reduced flexibility for disabled people who want to live with dignity, it provides less certainty for disabled people and their carers, and it codifies into law a fragmented and uncertain process. The bill does not consider Te Tiriti o Waitangi, nor does it consider the concepts of Enabling Good Lives—self-determination and person-centred decision making. The Government has decided that they know what is best for disabled people and carers and have ignored the community’s rallying cry. Today, I stand to be clear that Labour will not support this bill in its current form. We support disabled communities living with dignity.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real privilege is rise to take a call on the third reading of the of the Disability Support Services Bill. I did not have the privilege of serving on the Social Services and Community Committee, but in listening tonight, it is obvious that it was a very emotive and well thought through process, and the submitters were listened to and changes were made, and I commend the committee and the Minister for Disability Issues for that.

I think, just to make it very clear, the bill doesn’t change existing services, funding allocations, or who can receive disability support services. Eligible disabled people and their whānau and carers will continue to receive the support they rely on, but the bill makes it clearer what disability support services provides and how it fits with other supports. It confirms family and whānau remain an important source of support alongside publicly funded services. With that, I commend this build the House.

Well, the disabled community cannot afford another three years under this Government, and New Zealanders cannot afford another three years of being gaslit in the way that these members are doing tonight. I sat on a panel just before coming down to the House with members from the Government who spoke on another health matter and talked so earnestly about putting people at the centre. They talked about caring for the carers; they talked about the profound need for respite for people who work for others and for family members; they talked about the incredible work of the informal workforce; and they repeated the fundamentals around co-design, nothing about us without us, and all of this lip service, and those people tonight are sitting in this House passing this abominable, shameful, useless, terrible piece of legislation.

It is such a bad law, and I agree with the previous speaker who said that this is one of the worst laws they have ever seen this House pass. That comes for all sorts of reasons. The first, which is that when we have a group who are the most marginalised in society, who need the greatest protection in their human rights, we do not see any of that in this bill. That is out the window. Secondly, that group who you think would then get the respect of being able to be consulted, and to have the time to be able to be consulted because of the special needs they might have, that was utterly thrown out the window. Thirdly, just the terrible lawmaking with secondary legislation and with all sorts of things left to the future, and yet members come in here tonight, read from their phones, read from their notes, and read their platitudes, because they’re whipped into voting for something that they haven’t bothered to engage with.

I want to actually commend Laura McClure, because she did engage with it and she actually said what her reservations were. She has decided to come out in support, but she’s at least thought about it, and she’s at least thought about what changes were made at the Social Services and Community Committee. Now, that’s her judgement to say that she can live with those changes, and that is her judgement to say that those changes go far enough to appease the disabled community, and I do want to tautoko the community for getting that far. But on this side of the House, we know they don’t go far enough, because they open the door so wide to future changes that are keeping the disabled community up at night and worrying about what is going to happen, worrying about their children when they pass away, and worrying about what another Government might do through that secondary legislation to make their family burden and responsibility bigger, to asset test and to change and diminish the dignity in the lives of their loved ones.

That is what we are doing in this House tonight. Make no mistake, this is not some flimsy little thing that deserves just a little bit of time—we’ll shorten the select committee process, and we’ll whack it through before the election—we are making a very, very big mistake tonight passing this legislation. I am so pleased that, when we change this Government and when Labour comes in, we will repeal this. We will repeal this because we cannot have our disabled community living for another three years under this law.

We’ve heard that this bill is about certainty, but how much certainty is there when the fundamentals of it are put into secondary legislation? That’s no certainty. We have heard about the rights and the voices of disabled people and the wonderful submissions they made, but there is nothing in this bill that gives them safeguarding. We’ve heard platitudes that have come from some of the international instruments, but they don’t translate to legislative safeguards. They’re just words put in to window dress a fundamentally bad bill so that it will be a little bit more acceptable to the community that is going to be impacted by it—the same community that wasn’t consulted, the same community that came and gave petitions outside this Parliament, even though it took a huge amount of effort for many of them to get here because they do have additional challenges than the rest of us, and yet they did that.

There are no safeguards there. There is no rights-based approach. There is no reference to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It does not enable good lives in any way, shape, or form, and there is no reference to Te Tiriti. What it does do is it leaves open a yawning gap that can change family responsibilities. Can you imagine what that is like for family members who love people they care for? Or maybe they don’t, but in most cases they do. Then they have the complexity of going, “How do I now navigate the new dynamic in this relationship? Because if I get closer to them and if I’m available or if I take on a different job, or if I come and live in the family home, or if I leave the family home, what does that mean for the State-imposed relationship and responsibility on my loved one?” Can you imagine the indignity that that creates for the person who we want to enable their good lives, and yet they are made to feel like a burden. They are made to feel like the problem. That is what we are doing in this House tonight, make no mistake about it, and it is shameful that we are doing it.

There were some changes around consultation. Well, I’m sorry, it’s wonderful that the disabled community got that, but consultation without accountability is like the scraps. Consultation is a hygiene factor when it comes to lawmaking. Consultation is the bare minimum. And yet there wasn’t consultation on this bill. And yet, when they said, “Please can we have some more time for the truncated select committee process?”, nobody bothered to think about the additional challenges that they had. If anything, the disabled community should have had a lengthened consultation period, just to have an equity lens on the ability to be able to submit. But they put in a marathon effort, and they did submit, more than 3,000 of them. That shows the level of feeling across that diverse community.

They are worried about means testing. They are worried about asset testing. They are worried about their weakened human rights, about their weakened sense of control over their own lives. They are worried about choice, to make their own decisions about equipment that they use. They are worried about their participation, and they are very, very worried about what this will mean for the relationships within their whānau and their extended whānau. To think of the wording that has been used to describe disabled people and the fiscal risk that they create, it is just so undignified. To think that the Minister sat in this House and accused that community of scaremongering, or that one of the members tonight has said that all of the real fears of this community is scaremongering—that is such an undignified approach. It is so out of touch, and it is disdainful of people who live with these realities every single day. It has been an arrogant process, and it has been a process that has turned people into a burden rather than into people who we see as our fellow citizens, who deserve the same good lives that all of us enjoy through an enabling environment.

This Government should stand on its track record, and the disabled community know it is lip service. We have seen them reduce—and cut, actually—flexible funding. They did it abruptly. They did it, and it came into effect the day that they did it—no consultation again. And then guess what! They’ve reversed a lot of that in April 2026. Well, funny that; it’s an election year. Do they really think that disabled people aren’t going to remember the way they were treated, the way that Whaikaha was subsumed into the Ministry of Social Development, that institute they fought so long to create so that they could actually have some equity in the system? We have seen the pausing of the nationwide roll-out of Enabling Good Lives. We’ve seen the freeze on residential disability care funding rates, even when some of the homes were sitting idle and empty and yet people could not access them. We have seen restrictions kept on equipment and housing modifications, so that other people get to tell our disabled whānau what equipment is best for them and how they should do their homes, because it’s not as if they know how to do it themselves! They’ve lived with themselves their whole life, but no, no, no, this Government knows better!

This is a shameful, shameful night. I feel apologetic to the people at home that are watching. I want to say to them: sorry that we’re doing this, sorry for your fight, sorry for the gaslighting, thank you for your care, thank you for your kaha and your aroha and your patience. Please keep believing in us, because we cannot afford another three years of this Government, but when Labour comes in, we will repeal this terrible bill.

There’s probably only two points that the previous speaker, Ingrid Leary, mentioned that actually I agree with, and that is that this population is the most vulnerable and does need protection, and they also need certainty. And, apart from that, I think the rest was unbelievable.

This bill, at its very heart, seeks to do something very important and overdue. It produces, for the first time, a clear statutory framework for our disability support services. Prior to this, it was based on a patchwork of policies and guidelines. How can we protect our most vulnerable that need the most protection, and give them certainty, when we have a framework based on a patchwork of guidelines and Cabinet papers. We need a statutory framework; therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

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

Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 28 August.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): I believe that New Zealand First have the next call, No. 5.