That whooshing sound is the sound of new laws flying thick and fast from the coalition government. Which isn’t surprising, in itself.
We’ve reached the middle of this parliamentary term, and in a three-year parliament, that’s bill passing time.
What is unusual are the high number of bills skirting Select Committees, without even a whiff of public consultation.
According to Radio New Zealand’s Phil Smith, of 79 bills passed by the coalition only 40 have been considered by a committee.
“Across recent parliaments the use of extra sittings and urgency seems to have accelerated,” he says. “Urgency in and of itself is now barely newsworthy.”
So what are all these ‘urgent’ bills whizzing by, too important for us to know what’s in them?
One is a little-reported bill called the Social Security (Mandatory Reviews) Amendment Bill, about to become law. From now on, those receiving certain benefits will need to re-apply for them every year. On the government end, humans won’t be doing all the work slashing a benefit here or imposing a sanction there. To quote the bill: “Automated decision making will be used to administer aspects of these reviews.”
The benefits affected include the supported living payment; the accommodation supplement (except for those getting young parent payments or youth payments); the disability allowance and New Zealand Superannuation ‘with a non-qualified partner’.
The bill is yet another blow for disabled people and their families. People like my adult nephew James, who receives three of these benefits. Many disabled people might be able to explain to the ministry (or its AI bot) why they need food, accommodation and doctor’s visits. James is a character, but he is not one of them. He has a profound intellectual disability, and that is not going to go away.
Like the parents of many disabled children, my sister is an expert form-filler. She teaches disability studies, and her work is informed by her experiences as the mother of two sons with Fragile X Syndrome (a genetic disorder).
“At its best,” she told me, [the new bill] “will mean lots of paperwork. There is a real likelihood that people will be cut off – because having an intellectual disability means they miss the importance of doing the paperwork. In some cases, doctors may need to sign forms. This will cost money, and people with an intellectual disability often have no money”.
Before middle-age, intellectually disabled people are twice as likely to live in hardship or severe hardship than other Kiwis. This gap increases with age; disabled 40 to 64-year-olds are three times more likely to be in severe hardship than their non-disabled friends and neighbours.
We know this thanks to The Cost of Exclusion, a report out this week from the IHC, a New Zealand organisation which has long supported and advocated for people with intellectual disabilities. Spokesperson Shara Turner told RNZ, “We are all feeling poorer now. But [it is important to understand that] this research is data from a couple of years ago. Increases in the cost of living are really hitting [those families] now.”
The report found that “families with intellectually disabled members are much more likely to face extreme material deprivation, including reliance on borrowing, emergency grants, and selling belongings to manage debt. Government support is inadequate”.
Intellectual disability is impoverishing families in New Zealand. That is unfair and unnecessary.
Many of the stresses experienced by these families come from the government itself. The Cost of Exclusion concludes: “Disability services require repetitive applications. Families navigate complex systems, often feeling like they are ‘running a small business’.
Instead of sorting this mess out, the government is busy making things worse. The new bill is another burden for families still reeling from the sadistic, inept cuts of 18 March 2024.
This was the date disability support funding was thrown into complete disarray. “This day is remembered by all in the disability sector,” my sister tells me. “People remember where they were when the government upended their lives.”
Yet another punitive measure was introduced in August 2024. When people with disabilities move regions, it made sure their funding didn’t follow them. If you care for a person with a significant disability and move to another city, perhaps to be closer to family, to find cheaper rent or a better job, you are put on a waitlist of unknown duration until you are, eventually, granted your old funding back. In practice this traps disabled people and their families in place.
People with an intellectual disability on average die far earlier than the rest of us – 10 to 23 years earlier than other New Zealanders. The life expectancy for a Māori man with an intellectual disability is just 62 – a shocking figure.
In a possibly not unrelated statistic, children with an intellectual disability are twice as likely as other children to lack daily access to fresh fruit and vegetables.
The IHC thinks the government should be figuring out how to make life easier for the intellectually disabled, not harder.
I do too. Instead of introducing red tape, the government should be dismantling it. The child disability allowance should be tripled and superannuation paid earlier to the intellectually disabled, when research shows it is needed.
“We don’t talk about [disabled people] in poverty statistics”, IHC spokesperson Shara Turner said on RNZ.
“We don’t really talk about them at all.”
That needs to change.
• Jenny Nicholls
