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10:11 pm, July 5th, 2026 - 1 comment
Categories: disability, discrimination, equality, greens, human rights, inequality, labour, law, marama davidson, Parliament, petition, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, Social issues -
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On Thursday 2 July, Victoria Coleman stood on the steps of Parliament and handed over a petition calling for the Disability Support Services Bill to be scrapped — 16,458 signatures, gathered in five weeks, organised while she cares full-time for her seven-year-old son Levi. Building a national campaign on top of that responsibility tells you everything about the stakes.
Something else happened on those steps. Labour’s disability issues spokesperson, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, accepted the petition and committed Labour to repealing the Bill. She called it a terrible bill. She was right. For the first time, we have aconcrete political commitment to undo this legislation.
I spoke at the handover, and I repeat it here: this Bill is a direct attack on disabled people, and it does not stand alone.
It follows a series of attacks from this Government: the gutting of Whaikaha, the restrictions on flexible funding, the cutting of Total Mobility, and now legislation that reverses a Supreme Court decision, shifts responsibility for care onto families, and hands the Minister sweeping power over eligibility and funding with almost no parliamentary check.
Every one of these decisions was made about us, without us. So we must resist this at the ballot box. Petitions and submissions matter. But this Bill’s fate will be settled by voters. Labour has committed to
repeal. Hold every party to account on it, and vote accordingly.
The Bill is still before the Social Services and Community Select Committee, where public hearings began last week. Submissions have now closed.
The Bill reverses a Supreme Court decision that around forty families fought for. If the Government insists on doing that, those provisions shouldn’t take effect until a proper carer support package —
funded, real, independently reviewed — is actually up and running. Not promised. Operating.
Finally, on accountability. Disabled people need a genuine, independent right of appeal against funding and eligibility decisions, written into law. Any ministerial programme that changes eligibility or funding should need a vote of the House before it takes effect. And we need an independent Disability Support Services Commissioner reporting to Parliament every year on whether the Government is keeping its word — on the Convention, and on Enabling Good Lives.
The Government has the numbers to ignore the evidence, the petition, and the community. That is exactly why the ballot box is now the deciding arena. Victoria Coleman built a petition with sixteen and a half thousand people in five weeks. The least we can do is see it through. Nothing about us without us. Not this Bill. And come election day, not this government either.
Nick Ruane writes Disability Politics at nicholasruane@substack.com
Do disabled need more liberal crap? This grand strip down of disabled by this neo-liberal government was on the cards from day one. Because the dice had been cast. Liberalism as a whole gives two ducks about disabled.
We got a commitment from the Nats to preserver Enabling Good Lives, but not Whānau Ora before the election. Whānau Ora was always a better system for disabled, so it had to go. And what form of Enabling Good Lives have we been left with – one without disabled oversight, without the input of whānau and worst of all a system with little to no clear pathways to review or indeed clarify what is the supports people are able to access. This was what the Nats promised, and they have delivered. And disabled people voted for the Nats in droves. You get what you deserve, and the majority of disabled people did not listen to those of us pointing out the Nats and co were going to grind disabled down to save a buck.
I find the authors defence of Whaikaha unsettling, along side their low balling of solutions. Whaikaha failed because it was not what disabled wanted – we wanted oversight and access to the decision making from the very start of the process. Around all legislation which effects our lives and disabled people and that of our whānau. Not some ministry full of all the low life scum from MSD and the Ministry of health. A ministry was tokenism at it's worst.
As for the solution, who in their right crippled mind wants some muppet in a suit writing a report once a year – deciding if there is a pass mark or not for disabled? That is worse than tokenism, that's just more liberal bullshit of saying the right thing, or bemoaning how hard it is, and never delivering.
The eugenicists have won, they hold the keys to power. Why, because they can lie better, and they label disabled as an expensive cost. All the while disabled never point out what they have, and continue to deliver towards society. Just a friendly reminder to the eugenicists scum reading this – you could not read this with out two disabled people – Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing. Least of all the other countless disabled people who have made modern technology function.