Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I'm delighted to be the final speaker in the first reading of the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. I want to first of all commend the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway for his prompt leadership in picking up in part what was started by the previous Minister under the previous Government but there are also some new initiatives in this bill. It's great to see his first bill in this portfolio come before the House. I do want to also acknowledge the Hon Michael Woodhouse who started some of the work for this legislation and I'm sure he'll be pleased to see it progressing as well.A number of speakers during the debate have talked about the world-leading status of ACC and I want to totally agree with that. I had many conversations with the Rt Hon Sir Owen Woodhouse who was one of the instigators of this scheme before his death which was a great loss to not just ACC but a whole range of other contributions that Owen made to our communities. So I just want to acknowledge his contribution as the vision behind the ACC scheme. Not only is it a comprehensive injury prevention rehabilitation and compensation scheme but it also gives every New Zealander the opportunity to receive fair compensation and rehabilitation without having to resort to legal action. Some people describe it as We gave up the right to sue" but actually only about 1 percent of injuries pre-1974 ever resulted in successful legal action against the person or incident that injured the person. So when we say "We gave up the right to sue" not many people had it because it cost a lot of money and the level of proof was quite high. There were very few successful suing actions in New Zealand prior to this so we gained a huge amount and lost very little.When the scheme was introduced it was indeed world-leading and a lot of countries have since come to New Zealand and studied it but very few other jurisdictions have had the courage to say "We should try and prevent injury we should provide compensation and rehabilitation for any injured people and we shouldn't have to resort to the courts in order to do that." There are some parts of the world that have this but none that offer it to every single citizen. They are limited to workers' compensation schemes rather than our comprehensive scheme that we have now.In fact workers' compensation schemes are probably much easier to administer because they wouldn't come up against the challenges that this bill in part seeks to address. For example the situation where the dependants the families of workers who are employed overseas and are covered by this scheme—they might be diplomats or public servants of some sort. They receive cover but their families haven't received cover if you look at the technicality of the law. This bill fixes that.Jan Logie from the Green Party in her contribution mentioned that this provision was made retrospective in this bill and that the Green Party usually doesn't do retrospectivity but agreed to in this situation. That is because nobody seems to be able to determine how this change in previous policy came to be—what was the policy thinking behind it?—and it seems as though it was never implemented by ACC anyway. They didn't think the law had been changed; it appears it had been.I was on that select committee in 1998 and I am going to research my notes of that time. I may speak to the then chair of the committee the Hon Gerry Brownlee who I know paid close attention to every detail in that legislation. He often mentioned that during the committee meetings so I'm sure it's correct.Another committee member at the time was Derek Quigley who at that stage represented the ACT Party. The House might be interested to know that Derek Quigley worked with New Zealand First and the Alliance—or New Labour; whichever it was at the time—and Labour to get over 400 amendments to the very bill that changed the dependant provisions. I'm sure I'll have some record of that but if the Hon Gerry Brownlee or the Hon Derek Quigley—or the Hon Laila Harré who was on that committee as well—recall it it would be very useful for the select committee that's going to consider this bill to have that information. So we have the extension of ACC cover to the spouses and dependants.The removal of the election requirement for spouses or dependants who receive superannuation—that was a Human Rights Tribunal recommendation; that we change that provision because it's discriminatory on the basis of age. The people who receive weekly compensation will now be able to continue to receive weekly compensation for up to two years after they receive New Zealand superannuation entitlement. This is a good step forward and I commend the Minister for it. I don't think we have yet got a clear determination of how long weekly compensation could be paid for if the person has a permanent impairment and I would recommend to the select committee that they consider permanent impairment payments as an alternative to what is a very difficult and contentious issue. I'm sure that will come up in submissions.Also there's the automatic updating of the maximum and minimum liable earnings. That's another area that has never been updated properly. I know of many examples where young quite poorly paid people—could even be on an apprenticeship or training wage—have severe and permanent injuries and are then consigned to a lifetime of being on a low income. Eighty percent of not very much is very difficult to live on and it's not increased enough in my view to keep pace with the increases in the cost of living.The bill also abolishes the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority. That authority has been dealing with claimants' appeals for review from 1972 and 1982 legislation. It's probably not in use very much. It's probably quite expensive to administer and I'm sure that once again the Minister has made the right decision to move those cases from the authority to the court.This is a bill that sounds like it's got support from across the House and I think that's good. That's the way the scheme was introduced. It has had some pretty challenging times between 1974 and now. I remember the 1998 legislation that I discussed earlier actually privatised the workers' compensation account. We had private insurers—clearly driven by profit and policy rigour—in charge of workers' compensation. That was a very sad time for New Zealand and I was delighted that in 1999 the Government changed and Murray McCully was no longer the Minister and the incoming Government sought to restore ACC to being a State organisation rather than having any private interests.As the Minister indicated in his speech this is a small bill in comparison with quite fundamental and progressive changes that we will see coming either later this year or early next year. I am sure despite this only covering quite a number of small issues that the select committee will be pleased by the amount of interest that I am confident will arise out of the points that have been made. They are all betterment to the current legislation—they all improve the Act. They make it fairer they make it more transparent and they resolve the frustrations that a number of people have had.I might sub into this committee because I'm very interested in ACC and the scheme. It is a delight when people take an interest and come and give you submissions.Hon Ron Mark: You're the best Minister there was.Hon RUTH DYSON: Oh thank you very much Mr Mark. I'd like you to put that on public record more often please.Hon Ron Mark: I have done so already.Hon RUTH DYSON: Ha! Just one other point that I want to make—I'd feel that I would be short-changing parliamentary counsel if I didn't mention that in the 1998 legislation I actually presented certificates to the people who were working from nine in the morning till midnight five days a week on that legislation; who wrote "private domestic workers" more often than any other term. It was a new term to all of us and it was one that was introduced or altered as part of that legislation. I know that they'll be listening to this debate because they listen to pretty well everything in our Parliament and I commend the work that they did then.I'm pleased we're not doing this under urgency from 9 a.m. till midnight as the privatisation was done by the then National Government. That was a pretty outrageous breach of natural process. This will go through a much better process and I look forward to hearing the submissions and hearing the second reading on its conclusion. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.Bill read a first time. Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee."