Back in May the Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill was passed that allowed people to get paid for caring for family members with disabilities. This seems like a good idea and it would be if a few things were changed around. This funding does not include spouses or parents, but also we’re not allowed to contest anything in court.
I know this bill was passed a while ago but I’m bringing it up now because in light of the GCSB protests being ignored, it seems like our democratic rights are being ignored.
One of the defining aspects of a democracy is about having the ability to make your grievances and concerns voiced in the knowledge that you will be respectfully listened to. This applies to speaking out against bills that have direct implications on the day-to-day lives of all Kiwis, and when it comes to people that are caring for family members with disabilities, this has a significant impact on their lives.
Parents and spouses often have to take the most time off work to care for their adult child or spouse with disabilities, whether its taking days off, arriving later or finishing earlier due to various reasons. Obviously this is going to impact on their wage, although it shouldn’t, which should make them the ones who are most eligible for funding. Also, only those with ‘severe disabilities’ will get the funding. However, it’s hard to clarify what counts as ‘severe’ and who decides what is ‘severe’ and what isn’t.
Disability advocates say that they will have a hard time trusting the current government after this Bill was quickly passed without allowing for any public input and I couldn’t agree more. The passing of the GCSB Amendment Bill despite widespread opposition will make this even harder, if not impossible.
this Bill was quickly passed without allowing for any public input
Just another totally un-democratic action of this current dictatorship – shame on them.
“This Bill was quickly passed without allowing for any public input.”
Not quite Latifa. On the surface, it appears that this was a kneejerk reaction to a potential nightmare of spiralling costs for non-ACC disability care. It was not.
The “Atkinson Case” was going through the process for nearly a decade, and in the light of the earlier “Hill Case”, the Crown defence was doomed to failure from the get go. They were NEVER going to win.
The two Court hearings were merely stalling tactics, whilst the Governments (remember Labour was in power when this case started) devised a plan, that if one reads the new version of the PHDAct, effectively disentitles a large group of people with disabilities to funded care.
Cabinet did, it appears on the surface, actually consider the option of simply removing the prohibition that prevents the payment of Family Carers. That option would have ticked all the right boxes:
“Involves no discrinmination against family carers, offers the greatest choice and control to disabled people and family carers as they are able to put in place the arrangemnts that best suit them, improves family carers life choices, in many cases result in the best support for disabled people and is administratively straightforward to implement.” (Cabinet Social Policy Committee, signed T.Ryall 9/9/2012.)
So how did the Government go from that option, to the travesty we now have to live with?
If anyone is interested in a real discussion on the why’s and wherefores…let me know.
I am not a political scientist, nor have I any academic pretentions, but this process has been truly Machiavellian.
[…] Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill as brutal to human rights as GCSB By Latifa Daud – See more at: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/08/25/public-health-and-disability-amendment-bill-as-brutal-to-human-… […]
As this situation could crop up for anybody, this is a timely reminder.
But someone once said that if democracy had any real value, it would be abolished – perhaps ‘demolished’ is a more appropriate expression. Like you, Latifa, I’m beginning to realise that such democracy as we have enjoyed in this country – damned limited in my view – is gradually being demolished.
The GCSB Bill (Act) is symptomatic, as was the political decision to cancel the election for ECan in order to ram through dumbarsed expansion of irrigation programmes in Canterbury. Student debt was not merely a failure of successive governments to invest in New Zealand’s future, not just a means of financing education, but a straight-up straitjacket for future generations – a means of distracting future generations from participating in any kind of political discourse. I might have guessed that the Neo-Liberals (Palaeo-Feudalists) would leave no stone unturned to compass their programme of enslavement.
Cheers,
Ion
Comments are closed.