One in five people experience disability in this country - a statistic that is often quoted but not often reflected upon.
The recent 'issues paper' by the Government's Welfare Working Group made much of the numbers of people receiving the sickness and invalid's benefits.
As everyone with a disability or a disabled friend or family member knows, getting paid work that they can manage is incredibly challenging. Very few people on the sickness and invalid's benefits want to stay poor and stigmatised, but their choices can be very limited, especially during a time of high unemployment.
And let's not forget that these are people suffering chronic illnesses like Crohn's disease or severe depression (on the sickness benefit) and permanent disabilities like multiple sclerosis (on the invalid's). Some may even be terminally ill.
The Welfare Working Group and the Government's 'future focus' reforms are the opposite of the encouragement and support these citizens need to help them into appropriate paid work.
Moving New Zealanders from the invalid's to the sickness benefit, and cutting benefits by 50 percent when people fail to comply with jobseeking requirements will save money, but at the expense of some of our most vulnerable citizens.
Any serious review of the sickness and invalid's benefits should include an analysis of the real costs of having a disability.
Research undertaken at the University of Auckland has quantified the monetary costs of having a disability, over and above the costs of the able-bodied.
There are obvious extra costs, such as medicines, doctors' visits, and physical aid equipment, but there are also less obvious costs.
A disabled citizen often needs more taxis than they can afford because of their limited mobility. Disabled employees can need more time off than an able bodied employee, and end up taking it as unpaid leave. And they are often time-poor because it takes longer to prepare for many activities. As a result, they bear both an extra monetary cost and a significant opportunity cost from their disability.
The Cost of Disability Report makes sobering reading. A moderate-needs physical impairment creates an extra cost of $639 every week over and above the expenses of an abled-bodied person. An impairment that creates high needs can cost up to $2,284 more per week. There are similar figures for vision, hearing, intellectual and mental health impairments.
Nevertheless, with the right support people with disabilities can be the most reliable and creative of employees. The biggest challenge they face has been clearly identified in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. That challenge is the barrier created by the able bodied who do not see the contribution, the potential and sometimes the human rights of people with disabilities.
Under the Government's 'future focus' reforms Work and Income will be "empowered' to sanction sickness beneficiaries who are failing in the pursuit of scarce jobs.
Doctors will be encouraged to declare people capable of a certain number of hours of work when the issue is not so much the number of hours as the availability of appropriate work.
Before entering Parliament I worked as an advocate for beneficiaries, and I have vivid memories of people on the sickness benefit being sent into very inappropriate work. Examples included a person with chronic epilepsy harvesting crops and suffering epileptic seizures in the fields.
So how do we address issues of fairness and create appropriate work? The people who should be answering these questions are the many groups in the disability sector. These groups can speak for themselves but are strangely never considered "experts" about their own disabilities. There is no-one with a disability on the Welfare Working Group, only people with an academic interest in them.
My Member's Bill to establish a full time Human Rights Commissioner for people with disabilities was recently drawn from the Parliamentary ballot. Establishing this position is one response to the employment challenges and the educational barriers faced by people with disabilities.
The Commissioner's role would be to ensure that the rights of people with disabilities as ratified by the Government under the UN Convention last year are not forgotten. That convention covers a wide range of economic, social, cultural and political rights. The hugely diverse disability sector fought long and hard for it and it is a significant milestone.
This rights-based approach would complement the important work of the office of the Health and Disability Commissioner, which deals with complaints about services and provides vital advocacy for individuals.
It's a simple matter of fairness and I am hopeful that for that reason, my bill will gain the support of Disability and Justice Ministers Tariana Turia and Simon Power, and other political parties.
Guaranteeing the basics for our one in five citizens with disabilities means guaranteeing their human rights, acknowledging their barriers to work, and not demonising those reliant on benefits.
