The Bill’s provisions include establishing an accessibility committee to advise and advocate on accessibility issues and making the Government more accountable for making access to its own services more amenable for all.
Which sounds inarguable, but many strands of the disabled community are wild that the Government is only now beginning to address issues they have been raising for years. They have also loudly and swiftly condemned the proposed committee as a talkfest which will simply re-identify long-existing problems and have little power to rectify them.
On Monday, Parliament’s social services and community select committee, which is considering whether the Bill requires amendment or not before being referred back to the House, was left in little doubt that disabled people remained furious and were not so much looking for a few tweaks here and there but rather wanted the whole thing scrapped or totally rewritten.
Proceedings kicked off in a merry manner as Murchison man Roger Frost burst in to song to begin his submission, but that was where the mirth ended as a sequence of passionate submitters described the challenges that they face daily and how little change the Bill as drafted would make to their lives.
Invercargill octogenarian Victor West, in a wide-ranging submission, touched on the many and varied ways an increased focus on accessibility would aid his life. Those included warning systems on otherwise silent electric vehicles so white-cane-using pedestrians like himself knew that a car is nearby, and the lack of audio information available on election candidates.
"All I got was a print version, so I had to get someone to read the booklet and then fill out the form," Mr West told the committee, which numbers his local Labour list MP Liz Craig among its members.
"All that took away my independence."
Dunedin woman Amy Taylor, who is hearing impaired and lives with dysautonomia — a condition which means she depends on a wheelchair when she leaves the house — told the committee that New Zealanders needed concrete law changes, and ones that were enforceable if standards were not met.
"Disabled New Zealanders have been advising the Government for literally decades, you know what our needs are ... it is not difficult to model accessibility legislation on that of numerous other countries which have already done this.
"It is embarrassing that as a first world country we do not have concrete accessibility laws in place."
In her personal submission, Dr Taylor — a Disabled Persons Assembly national secretariat member — highlighted her own unmet accessibility needs and the cost that self-funding things like ramps, accessible vehicles and home assistance placed on thousands of families with similar challenges to her own.
"It affects me on a daily basis ... and I have no legal recourse."
Former Dunedin lawyer Warren Forster knows all too well that there is alternative legislation available ... as part of Law Foundation-funded research published in 2021, he and his team of Otago alumni drafted just such a document.
"This legislation is one of the biggest disappointments in my career," he said.
"We had the opportunity to be world-leading and to design legislation that would be truly effective in making Aotearoa accessible by designing a piece of legislation that would identify and remove barriers, progressively and in the future. Instead, we don’t have anything like that."
The Bill, as written, was ineffective window dressing without enforceable regulations and standards, he said.
Things did not ease up on the Bill come the afternoon, when National Disabled Students’ Association (NDSA) co-presidents Sean Prenter and Tara Shepherd participated via Zoom from Dunedin.
"In the Bill’s current shape, an accessible and inclusive Aotearoa will not be realised," Mr Prenter said.
"The Bill has no means of enforcement, the review process is not sufficient to uphold accessibility, the Bill only applies to central government and is not applicable to the private sector, the Bill has no standards, no regulator, no dispute resolution process, no obligation or timeframe ... this will only further slow the fragmented system that already exists."
Ms Shepherd followed up and reinforced NDSA’s argument by using three personal stories, as well as her own, to demonstrate both the barriers in front of people and the opportunities that accessibility allows.
"Students are missing out an education due to inaccessibility in teaching ... juggling health and finances should not be a reason why people do not have access to an education," she said.
The consultation process was extended on this Bill to accommodate the number of submitters. By day’s end, the committee should have had no doubt about the public’s view on the legislation.
What was that again?
Confusion aplenty on Tuesday, as Greens co-leader James Shaw tried to let assistant Speaker, Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean, know the stance of the Māori Party — whose proxy votes he was casting — on the Road User Charges (Temporary RUC Reduction Scheme) Amendment Bill (No 2).
Initially, the Maori Party was recorded as voting for the Bill but Mr Shaw raised a point of order to change that to voting against ... an amendment which Mrs Dean double-checked with him before asking the House to agree to it.
Ten minutes later Mr Shaw was back to, shamefacedly, confess that he had been in error, and that he had then compounded it when Mrs Dean sought clarification, and that actually the Maori Party had really and truly voted for the Bill — "so I wonder if I may seek the leave of the House again to actually get it right this time?"
"Leave is sought for that purpose," Mrs Dean said.
"Is there any objection? I might object. There appears to be none."
"I’m pretty sure about that," Mr Shaw said when the amended vote was recorded, hedging his bets in case he had to make yet another correction.
