Hon Christopher Finlayson

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) : I am delighted to take a brief call in the third reading stage, when we analyse the legislation as it has emerged from the Committee stage. The Committee stage tonight was fairly brief, but it is worth mentioning just one or two things.

The first is that we had an extraordinary contribution from Mr Chauvel toward the end of the Committee stage. It is worth noting. He took exception to something Dr Hutchison had said about the provision in the Human Rights Act 1993 to prevent discrimination on the ground of disability. He said that the provision came not from the National Party but from Kathy O’Regan, who was then the MP for Waipa. He failed to acknowledge that Kathy O’Regan was the National member for Waipa, and that it was the National Party members who pushed issues of discrimination.

The next issue from Mr Chauvel’s funny little outburst that I want to address concerns his suggestion that we on this side were focusing on the words of statutes, rather than on concepts. I know that an analysis of the words of statutes is not exactly Mr Chauvel’s strong suit, but when we look at the words of, particularly, the statutes contained in Part 2, we see how pervasive discrimination against disabled people has been, and why there needs to be detailed analysis of statutes to enable that discrimination to be overcome. The point is that the amendments in Part 2, which I referred to briefly in the course of my first reading speech, are primarily concerned with statutes that seek to disqualify certain people from public or fiduciary offices in a wide variety of ways, be it from juries, from boards, from river boards, or from the various other institutions that are created by the statutes referred to in Part 2. We all know that most statutes creating those sorts of bodies provide for automatic disqualification on grounds such as bankruptcy or criminal conviction, but another common ground that pervaded all those statutes was disqualification—automatic disqualification—where a person was mentally disordered, and there was reference to the Mental Health Act 1969 and, more recently, the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992. What the changes seek to achieve is to do away with automatic disqualification for mental disorder, and, rather, to replace it with a test based on the exercise of certain powers under the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act of 1988.

That is why, for example, the officials undertook a detailed analysis of the various sections of the Juries Act where this discrimination was pervasive—for example, section 8, which prohibits certain people from serving on a jury. The legislation removes the prohibition on people with a mental disorder serving on a jury, but retains the prohibition on people with certain other disabilities.

So the words are very important. Of course, if we as parliamentarians are to do our job justly, we need to focus on the words, because it is the words that matter and it is the words that create the discrimination that the United Nations convention seeks to address. As we ratify it into our domestic law, we have to deal with those pieces of legislation.

I found it incredible, as I was reading through the legislation in the course of the select committee hearing, to note that the discrimination even extended to regulations, as Mr Auchinvole said. The issue, of course, is not trout, as Mr Chauvel would have us believe in that rather demeaning manner of his; the Freshwater Fish Farming Regulations 1983 actually contain extraordinary regulations that allow the manager of a licensee’s estate appointed under the Mental Health Act 1969 or the Aged and Infirm Persons Protection Act 1912 to transfer and operate a licence in certain circumstances. That is the kind of thing that needs to be swept away, and it certainly happens with this legislation.

I once again congratulate all those who have been involved in all stages of this legislation, from those in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade who represented the New Zealand Government and people when the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was being discussed, to the Ministry of Justice officials who dealt so carefully with the various pieces of legislation to ensure that this good-quality product was achieved.

I end by saying that, yes, National members had some concerns about process, but we swept those to one side because we were more interested in dealing with the substantive matters, and out of deference to the good people who made very powerful submissions to the select committee—and I do not think there was one member on the committee who was not very interested in those submissions and did not follow them closely. But there were shortcomings. For example, the closing date for submissions was 21 July 2008, but the original bill was referred to us only on 22 July. The proper analyses that should have been done were not done.

Putting all of that to one side, the National Party was supportive of this legislation because, in an incremental way, it sweeps away some of the law that has formed the basis of discrimination against disabled people over the years. But that is only the first step, as Mr Auchinvole said. One can deal with the words in a statute or the words in regulations, and that is the foundation on which we can move from statutes and regulations to practices, to the way that people with disabilities are able to contribute to New Zealand society to the fullest extent. National members are pleased to support the third reading of this legislation, and the sooner it is passed into law the better. In fact, a very good argument could be made that because the convention was ratified in March 2007, the Government could have moved much more quickly on this matter, and it could have been law before now.