By 3 News online staff with NZN
Deaf
MP Mojo Mathers warns that being forced to pay for note-takers so she
can participate in parliamentary proceedings will set a dangerous
precedent.
The Green MP, who is the country's first profoundly
deaf MP, will make her maiden speech on Wednesday, with sign language
translators in the debating chamber to mark the event.
Meanwhile,
the battle continues over who should pay for note-takers to assist Ms
Mathers follow speeches and debates, after Speaker Lockwood Smith said
the staff must be funded from Ms Mathers' staff budget.
Ms Mathers says it's unfair that she should have to pay the estimated $30,000 cost.
"At
the moment, the parliament service pays for support of the other
members of parliament in the house - things like Maori translation,
there is the sound system - some of which I cannot use," she told Radio
New Zealand.
"Because I am the first person with a profound hearing impairment, they're seeing this as an individual issue, but it's not.
"It's about the right of all members to participate in the house and be supported by parliament to do that."
Ms
Mathers says she won't be able to do her constituency work effectively
if she has to spend her budget on participating in the house.
"We shouldn't be having to make these kinds of choices," she said.
"There
will be more hearing-impaired and deaf people [coming] into parliament,
there will be other disabled people with specific needs go into
parliament.
"This is the future - it is becoming more representative of New Zealand."
Dr
Smith says he is unable to allocate extra money from existing budget
appropriations but will meet with the parliamentary service commission
in March to discuss the issue.
Ms Mathers wants that meeting brought forward and the matter resolved urgently.
Green Party co-leader Dr Russel Norman spoke to Firstline this morning, saying that this is the first time since Mrs Mathers’ election the party and Parliamentary Services have not seen eye-to-eye.
“We’ve worked with them since the election and they’ve been pretty good, so we’ve made some progress, but the outstanding issue is the labour cost if you like of the transcriber, so they’re saying they won’t pay for that, we’re saying that it’s actually just part of Mojo doing her job like any other MP,” he says.
“We’re happy to pick up the cost when Mojo’s in the Green Party offices or something like that, we don’t expect Parliament to pick up that cost, but the cost when she’s in the chamber and Select Committee we do expect Parliament to pick up. This will go to a further series of meetings and I’m sure eventually we’ll see our way through it.”
The digital service is not the end of the issue though, with Dr Norman revealing there are works afoot to ensure all Parliamentary debates are accessible for the hearing impaired.
“This is a little bit of an interim measure, in the long run where this is going is towards live captioning of Parliament, which will benefit not just Mojo but everyone who’s watching Parliament who’s hearing impaired,” he says.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters quickly offered up $6,000 of his party’s staff budget to help the Greens, but Dr Norman says he is uncomfortable accepting the money.
“We haven’t thought about if we’ll accept others, we’ll certainly make sure it happens, part of it is I don’t like the charity model, if you’re a disabled person there’s nothing worse than having to put your hat around all the time and get charity from everyone just to do your job.
“I think it’s a very generous offer […] but it’s much more important that we get the principle right, deaf people have a right to be in Parliament,” he says.
And the Greens co-leader says Mrs Mathers’ is just the latest in a long line of New Zealanders who have enforced a change in society.
“Mojo’s just breaking through a barrier, there’s all sorts of barriers that different groups that have been discriminated over the last 100 years have faced, whether they’re women or Maori or whatever,” he says.
3 News/NZN