Mind the gap: reading between the lines on the DSS Bill changes

By Debbie Ward, Disability Leadership Coordinator, CCS Disability Action
Published 15 August 2026

More than 3,300 people and organisations made written submissions on the Disability Support Services Bill. Another 15,861 signed a petition asking Parliament not to pass it. On 13 August the select committee reported back with changes. You can find our explainer here.

It is good that the Minister has acknowledged that "the intent of the Bill was not as clear as it should have been" (Beehive). The past three months have caused real anxiety and frustration for disabled people and whānau. It is a shame she did not also take the chance to apologise. That would have gone some way to demonstrating empathy towards those most impacted by the proposed changes.

A statement of intent describes what one Minister plans to do this year. A law describes what any Minister can do in any year. On 13 August the select committee narrowed that distance in places. But it certainly did not close it.

What she would have heard

The Minister is on record saying she did not watch any of the oral submissions. That is a shame, because of what she missed.

She would have heard people say they were afraid. She would have heard that they were exhausted. She would have heard that they felt let down. She would have heard something else, too. Disabled people and whānau already have the answers about their own lives. They just need to be listened to. Ultimately, she would have heard how many people wanted to start again with this Bill.

Watching would not have changed a particular clause. It would have changed what the Government understood it was asking of people.

What families are being asked

The Minister says no additional expectations will be placed on families (Beehive).

The Bill still tells decision-makers to take account of the support available from family, whānau, and community when they decide what a person gets. Swapping "responsibility in the first instance" for "a responsibility to contribute" is a real improvement. But the new phrase is not defined, and the very broad definition of "family member" in clause 4 was left as it was (CCS Disability Action).

So the same judgement will be made differently from region to region and assessor to assessor (set against a current push for national consistency through a new assessment process). A whānau who show up for each other could find that willingness counted as a resource. Nothing in the Bill prevents it.

A voice that can be set aside

The Minister says disabled people will have a stronger voice in future decisions (Beehive).

For the first time the Bill requires consultation before a support programme is made, and that is a genuine step forward. Then comes the next subclause. A failure to consult does not invalidate the programme, and the Minister decides which representatives count as appropriate (CCS Disability Action).

A duty you can breach without consequence is not really a duty. Is the intention genuine, or is it merely a box ticking exercise?

Principles nobody can hold anyone to

The Minister says the Bill now reflects the language of the Enabling Good Lives principles. It also reflects the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Beehive).

Some of that language is now in the Bill. Choice, safety, and dignity have to be considered. But they sit in a list of things a decision-maker must take into account. Also on that list are a person's own resources and the support their family might give (CCS Disability Action). The Bill does not say which one wins.

The committee took "elements of these principles" from Enabling Good Lives and the Convention (Select Committee report). While neither Enabling Good Lives nor the Convention is named anywhere in the Bill itself, we are told that because this language sits in the Bill, there is no longer any need to refer to external frameworks. That concerns me, because Enabling Good Lives and the Convention were never the only frameworks that mattered. What about the New Zealand Disability Strategy? What about Te Tiriti o Waitangi?

These too are not optional extras. The Disability Strategy is how successive governments have said they will work with disabled people. Te Tiriti is how the Crown has undertaken to work with Māori. Borrowing six lines from two frameworks is not a substitute for either of them.

Nothing tells an assessor what choice and dignity look like in a real conversation with a real person. Nothing tells a disabled person what to do when a decision ignores them. Safeguarding, complaints, and appeal rights have been pushed into a later phase of law that does not exist yet.

So a person can be told their preference was considered, and then find it was outweighed. They have nowhere to take that. Good principles with no way to challenge a bad decision are a statement of hope. Disabled people need more than hope from an Act of Parliament.

The door left open on income and assets

The Minister says the Bill does not introduce income or asset testing where it is not used now (Beehive). That is true today.

The Bill does not stop it happening tomorrow. We asked for the income and asset clauses to be removed. The committee widened them instead, adding eligibility for an entitlement card such as a Community Services Card. Its own commentary records that the Bill does not prohibit means testing being extended in future (CCS Disability Action).

What consultation was for

Every one of these gaps has the same cause. Nobody asked the people who live with this system before the Bill was written (CCS Disability Action).

Instead, more than 3,300 people and organisations wrote submissions in three weeks, and 143 spoke at hearings (CCS Disability Action). That cost was paid in time, energy, and money by people who had the least of all three to spare.

Had disabled people and whānau been in the room at the start, we would have built the tools alongside the words. We would have designed what happens when support goes wrong, instead of leaving people stranded when it does.

We have been invited to consider this Bill as a framework to enable ‘the status quo’. The question, rightly asked is, was the status quo good enough? By almost every measure disabled people and families are currently disadvantaged. Did we not have a duty to aim higher?

Let us start again, and do it right

Disability Support Services describes this Bill as the first step in a foundational legal framework (CCS Disability Action). Foundations are hard to go back and fix.

So let us start again, properly. Pause the Bill rather than push it through the House. Go back and consult disabled people, whānau, and kaimahi, in accessible formats and with the time people need to take part. Then write what everyone already agrees on into the Act itself. Limits on what families can be expected to do. Consultation that cannot be skipped. Safeguards and appeals people can actually use.

This is not a hard ask. Where the intent is already agreed, putting it in the law is the straightforward part.

Disabled people and whānau have the answers. They always did. All that is needed now is a Government ready to listen and take action.