Submission Sunday - Disability Services Bill
The Disability Support Services Bill was introduced to Parliament on Monday 18 May 2026. There have been several concerns shared since then by sector leaders, disability advocates, and family carer representatives who have reviewed the Bill and its accompanying documents.
The Bill is now open for submissions - Disability Support Services Bill - New Zealand Parliament
There is a need for a legislative framework for funded disability support services. However, specific provisions of the Bill as drafted create uncertainty, there was no consultation about the Bill, and the values that underpin it are inconsistent with te Tiriti, the UNCRPD, and Enabling Good Lives approach.
This post outlines key concerns that you are welcome to draw on in making a submission on this Bill - submissions close 12 June.
Key concerns
1. The Process
The Bill has been developed and introduced under conditions of urgency that have effectively excluded the disability and carer community from meaningful participation. The Government’s own Regulatory Impact Statement acknowledges that there has not been any community or prior agency consultation on the specific legislative proposals. The Departmental Disclosure Statement confirms this. No draft text was shared. No representative organisations were engaged in the drafting process, and only a handful of selected representatives were invited to a meeting one hour before the Bill was introduced.
The Government’s stated justification is the fiscal and legal urgency arising from the Supreme Court’s December 2025 judgment in Fleming v Attorney-General. This ruling determined that two paid family carers were employees of MSD. That urgency is real, and the Court’s judgment does require a legislative response. However, urgency does not require absence or silence.
They are repeating the mistakes of the National-led changes to paid family care years ago. Sensitivity doesn’t mean don’t consult. It would have been fairer, and kinder, and braver, to talk to people, listen, and wind up with better outcomes. People are so tired and angry.
The Select Committee process is the only formal mechanism for community input. This process has been compressed to 3 weeks only, before an already busy Select Committee. This is insufficient time for disabled people, family carers, and advocacy organisations across the country to prepare considered submissions, particularly on legislation of this scope and consequence.
New Zealand ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Article 4.3 requires governments to “closely consult with and actively involve” disabled people and their representative organisations in developing legislation that affects them. The Government’s own disclosure documents acknowledge this obligation may not have been met. The Select Committee process, as currently scoped, does not remedy that gap.
What you might like to ask for:
• An extended Select Committee process with proactive outreach to disabled people and carers, including regional hearings
• A firm commitment from the Government to genuine co-design and consultation, to be enshrined in law for Ministerial programmes
• Removal of parts of the legislation that are inconsistent with disabled people’s rights to choice and control
• Legislation that creates clarity and certainty
2. Clause 8: “Families First” Principle (Care Without Limits)
Clause 8 of the Bill establishes a binding legal principle that families and whānau “have responsibility in the first instance for the well-being of their members” and that eligible persons should, before being provided with DSS, use their own resources and any support available from family, whānau, and community. This principle must be taken into account by MSD and all contracted providers in every funding decision. This goes well beyond the stated objective of the Bill to clarify “that responsibility for the care of disabled people rests with family and whānau where appropriate”.
We agree that families and whānau often play a central role in supporting disabled people. Many do so willingly, with love and commitment. Our concern is not with acknowledging that role, it is with the way this is encoded as a legal mechanism that can be used to reduce or deny public funding, without any corresponding obligation to support, sustain, or even assess the family carer who is being relied upon.
The Bill’s framing assumes that families are available, capable, and resourced to provide significant care — and that this will remain the case indefinitely. Sector experience tells a different story.
This exacerbates existing inequities. It assumes all families come from the same wealth and have access to resources and support. Many don’t — or they get eroded over the years. It assumes that families are functioning, healthy, and have positive relationships. Again, without support, these erode over the years. There is no mention of training, capacity building, or care for family.
Critically, the Bill places no limit on what families can be expected to provide, or for how long. It does not distinguish between the support a parent provides to a young child and the expectation that the same parent will provide that support into the disabled person’s adulthood, middle age, and beyond. The CRPD is explicit that disabled adults have the right to live independently and to be included in the community — not to remain in a position of dependence on family care as a substitute for publicly funded support.
If you’re a parent, when your child turns 18, they are an adult. How much obligation is there for families to provide significant or 24/7 care? The state cannot say families have this responsibility permanently, nor is it fair to disabled people to continue in a childlike situation with family, as this flies in the face of UNCRPD and all that disabled people have fought for to be independent and supported as a right.
The social and economic context in which this principle is being embedded has changed fundamentally since the assumptions that underpin it were formed. New Zealand no longer has broadly accessible single-income households. Many family carers (a majority of whom are women) are single parents, or in financially precarious situations where caring directly forecloses other employment. The State of Caring report documents the lifetime financial and wellbeing impacts of caring. Legislation that relies on an outdated social contract while those impacts go unaddressed is not sustainable policy. It simply transfers the cost.
Specific concerns about clause 8:
• There is no requirement to assess the sustainability or wellbeing of the family carer before their resources are relied upon
• There is no floor below which Crown support cannot be reduced by reference to family resources
• There is no definition of what “appropriate” family contribution looks like, or when it ends
• There is no independent mechanism to challenge an assessment that over-relies on family support
• The principle applies permanently — there is no point at which a family’s contribution is deemed to have been fulfilled
What to ask for:
• Amendment to require that any assessment of family resources must include an explicit, documented assessment of carer wellbeing, capacity, and sustainability
• A non-regression principle for secondary legislation — a floor below which DSS cannot be reduced on the basis of family resources alone
• Clear legislative guidance on the limits of family responsibility, including in relation to adult disabled people with limited decision-making capacity
• Implementation of an independent mechanism to challenge unfair decision
• Removal of Clauses 12-15 that limit complaints processes
3. Family Carers and Employment
The Bill’s response to the Supreme Court judgment includes a suite of provisions that, taken together, strip significant employment rights and protections from family carers. The sector accepts that the employment framework has complexities. However, we strongly reject the framing that employment is simply “not a suitable model” for family carers.
In both the health and ACC systems, the only way a family carer can currently be paid is through employment via a provider. The Bill does not address those systems. Rather, it creates a DSS-specific carve-out that removes employment as an option in this context while leaving it available elsewhere. The result is not simplification; it is a narrowing of options for a defined group of workers, the majority of whom are women.
3.1 The Minimum Wage Limitation
Schedule 1, clause 5 provides that during the three-year transition period, any hours a family carer provides in excess of their funded allocation are deemed not to be “work” for the purposes of the Minimum Wage Act 1983. In plain terms: a family carer providing care beyond their funded hours has no legal entitlement to minimum wage for those additional hours.
Yes, family carers can be paid less than the minimum wage, and this provision is to allow family carers to be underpaid or unpaid. It is very unclear what level of support is realistic to provide. It is all about mitigating the risk to the Crown, not about supporting family carers — or even about disabled people.
This provision does not merely preserve the status quo. It actively removes a legal protection that carers could previously have relied upon to seek wages for hours worked. The RIS itself frames this as necessary because the Crown faces risk if courts determine that additional care hours are “work.” The solution chosen is not to fund those hours, it is to legislate that they are not work.
3.2 Stripping Employment Protections Without Replacement
The RIS notes, as a benefit of the preferred option, that it will remove MSD’s obligations to ensure carers take breaks under the Employment Relations Act, receive leave under the Holidays Act, work in safe conditions under the Health and Safety at Work Act, and receive parental leave entitlements. These are presented as administrative burdens being lifted from MSD. From the perspective of a carer, they are workplace rights being removed.
This seems to be about stripping employment protections away from family carers and creating what seem to be very unsafe working conditions. Who is now responsible for managing employment implications for carers? It is very much about reducing fiscal costs to the Crown — while simultaneously loading them onto families.
The sector is not opposed to alternative payment models for family carers. However, these models must be developed with carers, must provide minimum equivalent protections, and must not be used as a mechanism to reduce the overall cost to the Crown by shifting it onto families. While the Minister notes that work will be undertaken in this regard, it is not enshrined in legislation, nor does the secondary legislation that allows for this provision contain adequate protections for disabled people and family carers.
3.3 Extinguishing Pending Claims
The Bill extinguishes legal claims and the removal of access to discrimination complaints bodies. These go well beyond what is necessary to respond to the Supreme Court judgment and raise fundamental questions about the Crown’s accountability to disabled people and their carers.
Schedule 1, Clause 10 extinguishes all pending employment proceedings by family carers against the Crown that were lodged but not resolved before the Bill’s introduction. These are deemed to have been withdrawn. The affected individuals — who acted in good faith on the basis of the Supreme Court’s own ruling — receive nothing. There is no settlement process, no compensation, and no alternative pathway.
3.4 The Discrimination Complaints Bar
Clauses 12–15 of Schedule 1 bar both new and existing complaints to the Human Rights Commission and the Health and Disability Commissioner where those complaints relate to Crown DSS policies affecting paid family carers. Pending complaints are extinguished. Future complaints cannot be filed. Court and tribunal proceedings are similarly barred.
The bar applies to complaints that are “in whole or in part” based on a specified allegation — meaning that if any part of a complaint touches on Crown DSS policy relating to paid family carers, the entire complaint is barred. The Commission cannot investigate even the portions that do not relate to a specified allegation.
This is not a proportionate response to a fiscal problem. The Human Rights Commission and the Health and Disability Commissioner exist precisely to provide an accessible, non-adversarial pathway for people who believe their rights have been violated by the Crown. Removing access to those bodies for a defined class of people in relation to a defined area of policy is the Crown legislating itself immune from the human rights accountability framework.
There is a historical parallel: Part 4A of the NZ Public Health and Disability Act 2000 did something similar in 2013, after the Atkinson judgment, and was enacted under urgency. The Human Rights Commission opposed it at the time. Part 4A was repealed in 2020 — without replacement safeguards. That repeal is part of what created the legal vacuum that led to Fleming. The Government is now reinstating a comparable bar, broader in scope, again under urgency, again without meaningful consultation.
What to recommend:
• Removal of Clauses 12–15 in their entirety. The discrimination complaints bar is not justified by the fiscal urgency that motivates the rest of the Bill
• Replacement of the extinguishment of pending claims (Clause 10) with a structured settlement process for affected claimants
• Employment to remain as an option for family carers, consistent with Health and ACC settings, rather than being eliminated from the DSS context
• Any replacement payment model to be co-designed with the disability sector before being finalised, and for this to contain appropriate legislative protections.
• A statutory guarantee that replacement arrangements will provide protections at least equivalent to existing employment entitlements
• An obligation on MSD to actively monitor and respond to situations where family carers are providing hours significantly beyond funded levels to ensure that family carer human rights are not being breached.
4. Ministerial Programmes = Power Without Adequate Checks
The Bill’s central ongoing mechanism for setting DSS policy is the ministerial programme (secondary legislation made by the Minister by written notice). All key policy questions — including who is eligible for DSS, on what criteria funding is allocated, and under what conditions it may be used — will be determined by ministerial programmes rather than by Parliament.
The use of secondary legislation for operational DSS policy is fine, but concerns arise around the absence of structural safeguards for how that power is exercised:
• There is no requirement to consult with disabled people or carers before a programme is approved or materially varied
• There is no independent review mechanism for individuals who believe a programme has been applied incorrectly or unfairly to them
• There is no complaints or appeals process — the Disclosure Statement confirms these are deferred to Phase 2
• The definition of “eligible person” — who can access DSS at all — is delegated to these programmes, meaning the most fundamental gatekeeping decision is made by ministerial discretion
The Bill creates a framework in which a Minister can, by written notice, determine who is eligible for disability support, set income and asset thresholds, impose conditions on the use of funding, and restrict access to specific types of support — all without Parliamentary vote and without any obligation to consult the people affected. That is a very significant concentration of power over the lives of disabled people and their families - without appropriate legislative checks and balances.
4.1 Means-Testing Made Legal
Clause 11(3) of the Bill sets out the criteria that ministerial programmes may use to determine eligibility and allocate funding. That list explicitly includes (f) income-based criteria; and (g) asset-based criteria.
DSS has never been means-tested. Access to funded disability support has historically been determined by need (the nature and severity of a person’s disability), not by their financial position. This Bill creates, for the first time, explicit statutory authority to introduce income and asset testing for disability support services. They do so through secondary legislation — a ministerial programme made by written notice, without a Parliamentary vote.
Neither the Regulatory Impact Statement nor the Minister’s public statements have disclosed this change. The RIS does not use the words “means-testing,” “income testing,” or “asset testing” anywhere.
The interaction of these clauses with Clause 8 (which requires that individuals exhaust their own and their family’s resources before accessing DSS) compounds this concern. Together, these provisions create a means-testing framework: a principle that personal resources must be used first (Clause 8), and a mechanism to set specific thresholds for what those resources must be (Clause 11(3)(f)-(g)), all implemented by ministerial discretion without Parliament’s direct approval, without safety rails, and no requirement to consider disabled people’s rights, or the welfare of family carers.
The Bill includes the potential introduction of means-tested disability support without public disclosure, without community consultation, and without Parliamentary debate. It will be implemented, if at all, by ministerial programme, invisible to Parliament until after the fact.
For comparison: ACC is not means-tested. Public hospital care is not means-tested. School education is not means-tested. Introducing means-testing for DSS would make it unique among major New Zealand public services, and would do so by secondary legislation, not by Act of Parliament.
What we are calling for:
• Removal of Clauses 11(3)(f) and (g); OR
• Require any programme using asset or income testing criteria to be approved by Parliament rather than merely subject to disallowance; AND
• Require secondary legislation to have to uphold the rights of disabled people and to take into consideration the wellbeing of family cares; AND
• Implement a non-regression guarantee: a floor below which eligibility cannot be reduced by ministerial programme
• A statutory requirement to consult with disabled people and representative organisations before programmes are established or materially varied
• A commitment to establish an accessible, independent complaints and appeals mechanism before Phase 1 takes full effect — not deferred to Phase 2
• A non-regression principle: programmes cannot reduce eligibility below the level in place at commencement without Parliamentary approval
5. Treaty of Waitangi and Equity
The Departmental Disclosure Statement states that the Bill is consistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, and that no reference to the Treaty was considered necessary. I dispute this assessment.
Tāngata whaikaha Māori (Māori disabled) are disproportionately represented among DSS recipients, and Māori carers are disproportionately represented among those providing funded family care. The principles of partnership, participation, and protection that underpin the Treaty relationship require more than a finding of non-discrimination. They require active engagement with Māori as partners in the development of policy that significantly affects their whānau.
The Bill was developed without consultation with Māori disability organisations, without a te Tiriti analysis that goes beyond formal compliance, and without any provisions that reflect the tikanga-based approaches to care and support that are central to how many Māori whānau understand their obligations to disabled members. The “families first” principle in clause 8, while expressed in culturally inclusive language (referring to “whānau” and “other culturally recognised family groups”), does not engage with the specific context of Māori carers or acknowledge the additional pressures that whānau face.
What we want to see occur:
• A genuine te Tiriti analysis to be commissioned and published before the Bill proceeds
• Targeted engagement with Māori disability and carer organisations during the Select Committee process
• Consideration of an explicit provision recognising the Crown’s obligations to tāngata whaikaha Māori
Conclusion
The Disability Support Services Bill addresses a genuine problem and contains some provisions that the sector can support, particularly the transitional protections for existing carers and the establishment of a foundational legislative framework. These elements should not be held hostage to opposition to the Bill’s more troubling provisions.
The Bill as drafted goes significantly further than is necessary to respond to the Supreme Court judgment. It removes access to the human rights accountability framework for a defined class of people. It introduces the architecture for means-tested disability support. It encodes, in primary legislation, a principle of indefinite family responsibility for the care of disabled members without limits, without corresponding obligations, and without adequate support.
Other handy links:
The D*List Delivered has an excellent post and will be providing letter templates and support to write or film their response. Join in-person on Thursday 28 May at 11am-1pm at The D*List Community Hub (322 New North Road, Kingsland), or online on Wednesday 27 May at 6-7pm. RSVP with this form, so that we know what we need to support you.
Huhana Hickey has created a plain English and Easy Read submission template. Choose which one you want to use, fill it in, add anything you want to say, and delete the rest. You can then save, download, and submit the letter on the Parliamentary website.
CSS Disability Action has a great summary of the issues on their website - What the new Disability Support Services Bill means for disabled people and whānau — CCS Disability Action
Emily Writes has a great explainer post and will be providing some submission templates and further updates as we go.
There is an Action Station petition in play here - Stop the Discriminatory Bill Removing Disabled People’s Rights – Ensure Fair Due Process | OurActionStation
DSS has some FAQs on their website now, some of which were incorrect and have now been hastily edited (e.g. EGL is a ‘good life’ not an everyday life, and it misunderstands the principle of an ordinary life, which is enraging! Also, home modifications aren’t formally means tested!) - DSS Bill Frequently Asked Questions | Disability Support Services
A shorter summary of the key issues can be found here - Disability Support Services Bill – PARENTS OF VISION IMPAIRED (NZ) Inc.
Huhana Hickey has written some excellent posts, including this plain language breakdown:
Ngā mihi. A fantastic resource. 🫶
Thank you so so much for this you're a star Bex