By: Mike Hosking | Tuesday, May 15, 2012 7:52 AM

In a victory for justice and common sense, the Court of Appeal has ruled that parents who care for their intellectually disabled children have been unfairly discriminated against in not being paid for what otherwise would be regarded as a job.

No one seems to know how many of these parents there are in the country, but they’ve fought for years for recognition and they’ve been battled by the state’s every step of the way. They’ve never asked for massive amounts of money, no ones going to get rich from it. But the argument has always been if the person needing looking after is in the care of a parent then that's not work, it’s parenting. Yet if that person is of an age that they would otherwise have been out in the community but needing certain levels of care because of their disability, then the person giving that care is hired and paid for by the state.

So in many respects the parent has been, and will be even if and when the rules change, saving the state money. And these parents haven’t been doing this because they want to earn a living, they’ve been doing it because they’re parents and because they love their kids. Despite all their kids have to face in life, getting help and care from those that love you most is probably therapeutic as well as practical.

The Ministry of Health’s defence over this has been sad but predictable. They don't know how many parents there are who do this and because of that they don’t know how much it will cost, which is why they lost. That's an economic argument, not one about fairness and justice. That's about dollars and cents, not discrimination. When you apply logic, the ministry never stood a chance.

Given if all the parents simply held up their hands and handed their kids to the state, the state would have to supply the service and cover the bill no matter what it was. So given that was all they had by way of defence, it made it doubly sad given the defence seems heartless.

They were in other words relying on the good will of those parents to work for nothing, to get no recompense, to just do the job for love which of course most of them have done and willingly. But being out of pocket and getting not one jot of recognition was and is grossly unfair. The ministry should be ashamed of the fact they fought so hard and made these people go through so much legally to prove them wrong.

It’s classic David v Goliath. The state v the parents. The might and budget of a Government ministry v a handful of sometimes elderly people who have little money and a busy life anyway without getting into the rigmarole of legal action. But the good and the right prevailed, and well done them.

So now the ball is with the Ministry of Health to sort this out fairly and decently once and for all. That can’t happen soon enough.

Photo: Minister of Health Tony Ryall (NZ Herald)