Alliance Party Media Release - For Immediate Release - February 11th, 2009

Alliance Party Shares Disability Sector Outrage Over National Government's Select Committee Report Response

The Alliance Party has today voiced its shared outrage with the disability sector over the National Government's response to the Parliamentary Social Services Select Committee Report into the Quality of Care and Services Provision for People with Disabilities released yesterday.

"This report was requested after former National Party disability issues spokesperson Dr Paul Hutchison made such a song and dance about the state of disability support services and the abuses that went on within them. At the time, he and the National Party raised a number of salient issues that had remained unaddressed by successive Labour and National administrations including the low pay and lack of training of support workers to a lack of co-ordination surrounding support services for individual disabled people within the community," said Alliance Party disabilities spokesperson, Chris Ford, today.

The National Government's response to the select committee report calls for a new Disability Issues committee to be formed at cabinet level to co-ordinate discussion of disability issues in place of what the government perceives to be a "costly" Disabilities Commission, an idea advocated for by DPA, the national organisation of disabled people and supported by the Alliance Party.

"So this is what the disability sector gets - another promise from Health Minister Tony Ryall to do more work instead of engage in concrete action to improve the funding levels and quality of disability service provision within our community. The report flies in the face of what disabled people and their supporters were saying in that more attention needs to be paid to heeding the voices of disabled people and their families/whanau in service delivery and design."

Mr Ford also sought to remind National "that it made strong promises before the election to engage in 100 days of action. So far these days of action have constituted nothing but a continuing attack on low-paid workers and other vulnerable groups and this announcement continues that trend. Furthermore, isn't National the party of trying to cut down on the amount of bureaucracy that goes on instead of requesting more reports from state agencies like the Ministry of Health? This is a ministry that it sought to rage about the size of before the election. The new government should be aware of these ironies and inconsistencies in its statements before they come back to haunt them. And one more thing- why did Paula Bennett as Disability Issues Minister play second fiddle to Tony Ryall in yesterday's statements? One wonders as to whether she has a grasp on the Disability Issues portfolio yet."

Mr Ford called on the disability sector to "maintain the rage" against National as things won't get any better without grassroots action.

ENDS

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