Disability advocates frustrated over feedback process for accessibility legislation
Wednesday, 26 January 2022
When Juliana Carvalho moves from Auckland to Tauranga this weekend she won’t be able to shower in her new home. Instead, she’ll need to bathe herself at her work’s office bathroom facilities.
“Anyone without a disability would be outraged with these conditions,” said the wheelchair-user of 20 years, who was unable to find an accessible home in her new home city.
It’s one of the reasons she and other disability advocates are frustrated over a short window for feedback regarding accessibility legislation.
The Access Alliance, which is made up of 12 disability organisations, runs the Access Matters campaign which is working in partnership with the Ministry of Social Development on a proposal for accessibility legislation.
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The accessibility legislative framework would focus on the prevention and removal of new barriers to ensure all people can participate and access the same opportunities on an equal basis with others.
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Access Alliance said it became aware of MSD’s request for feedback on the legislative framework only five days before the deadline.
Carvalho has been a campaigner with Access Matters since 2017 and said having only five days was frustrating: “It's not enough time.”
“Accessibility is about removing all barriers that are in a person’s life,” she said. “It would mean I can unleash my power, and I’d have the time and energy to contribute to society even more because I wouldn’t spend three-times as long to plan, prepare and pay for more in my life.”
MSD acknowledged it was a busy time of year to seek feedback on the accessibility legislative framework.
“However, such a timeframe is necessary to meet the March and July deadlines for the legislation to be introduced to Parliament,” said Julia Bergman, general manager of disability, seniors and international policy at MSD.
“MSD officials sought initial feedback on some key parts of the legislative framework to help with the high-level design of the accessibility system, which requires approval by Cabinet in March 2022 before the legislation is introduced to the House in July 2022,” said Bergman.
She said MSD sought feedback through face-to-face meetings with 11 advocacy groups from November 2021 to February 2022, and through a discussion paper which was sent to around 35 advocacy groups on December 16, asking for feedback by January 28.
The latest request for feedback was a “reminder email sent out to the same groups”.
But the timeframe for feedback is not the only issue advocates have with the legislation.
Warren Forster is a barrister and researcher who worked on a research team putting together a proposal for an accessibility legislative model.
“There’s a massive difference in what disabled people have wanted and what the Government have said they are going to deliver,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of confidence in this.”
Forster said the research team understood Cabinet approved the framework for the legislative model. But over time, what Cabinet meant by the framework for the legislative model had changed, and it was going to have a co-ordinating model where it’s one government agency’s job to co-ordinate the other agencies.
The main problem with that, Forster said, is that there is no central point of contact for disabled people. No central process meant that if someone wanted to report on disabling experiences, they would have to go through all the various Government agencies to do that.
The researchers laid out their advice and report on accessibility legislationto meet legislation design committee guidelines so that a parliamentary drafter could easily draft it into legislation, but instead MSD was going down a path that is “very likely to be ineffective”, Forster said.
“What we’re really seeing is the sidelining of the significant and important process and centralisation of disabled people and a person-centred design system. It's a political decision, and it’s not actually going to work,” Forster said
“We’ve done all the work, we’ve set it all out there in the report, and it’s basically being ignored – I think it’s wrong, and the reason it’s being ignored is entirely political. The system they are creating will work well for officials, it will work well for the Government ministries and agencies, but it’s not going to actually work for disabled people.”
Forster said New Zealand needed a standalone entity to receive notifications from people about their disabling experiences. That entity needed to co-ordinate how to remove those barriers and work with the Government agencies that can make regulations.
The Inclusive Greens, which is the disability network of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, also released a statement saying the level of engagement MSD was asking of the disability community was “token at best”.
“Short Cabinet or government timeframes are no excuse for short-changing disabled people.”
Forster said giving only five days for feedback on such a large piece of legislation in late January was a “bureaucratic person’s timeframe”.
Feedback on the Government’s proposed new accessibility system and legislation should be submitted to accessmatters@accessalliance.org.nz by the end of day on Thursday, January 27.
MSD said there would be an opportunity to provide substantive feedback on the details of the design of the accessibility system through the public select committee process later in the year.