Beaumont Carol: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:660;Page:9155] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I want to go back and talk specifically about one of the provisions of this bill that I think is particularly troubling for a whole range of reasons. It is the issue of the coverage of workplace hearing loss. This issue I think typifies what is wrong with this bill overall. The provision in Part 1 effectively provides that there will be no cover for hearing loss created in the workplace if it is less than 6 percent. A 6 percent threshold is being set in place by this Government. I think it is reasonable to ask the question: why the 6 percent threshold? There is actually no reason; there is no good reason. It is an arbitrary figure that the Government has chosen for cost containment reasons. Cost containment is the justification. 
I will talk about some of these people with hearing loss in my contribution to the debate. This threshold will save us approximately $3 million to $4 million a year. That is right—$3 million to $4 million a year. The consequences for the people who no longer have coverage as a result of this arbitrary threshold are substantial. I want to find out whether members opposite believe that that saving of $3 million to $4 million is worth it for the human cost that that will have. 
I note as an aside that the Minister in the chair the Hon Dr Nick Smith had quite a good go earlier at some of the people in the hearing loss industry. He said that members on this side of the Chamber were just listening to people who provide hearing aids as if somehow those people had a vested interest. Actually if the Minister had taken the time to listen to the very very good submissions that were made on this particular provision he would have discovered that in this area there has been major cooperation by the parties and substantial efforts made to reduce costs. 
One of the points made by one submitter was that we would be saving about $3 million to $4 million a year but in fact the industry itself had saved something like $10 million over 18 months through its combined efforts and a cooperative approach. They were particularly galled by the fact that in the drafting of this bill no effort had been made to talk to anybody in the industry. We received submissions on this particular point from a whole range of people—from people who suffer hearing loss from academics who study the trends in workplace hearing loss from people who provide hearing aids from audiologists who test for hearing loss and from unions whose members work in industries where workplace hearing loss was a significant issue particularly in the past—and I will come back to that point. That whole group of 46 submitters on this point—40 submitters opposed and six in favour—came up with some very compelling points I believe and points that have not been taken into account at all by members on the other side of the Chamber. 
What does this 6 percent hearing loss mean for people? The Government is trying to say that this is quite a trivial hearing loss—less than 6 percent hearing loss is quite trivial. It is a small hearing loss. That is a bit like saying that someone is a little bit pregnant. So one is a little bit deaf. But it has real consequences for real people. I was very moved by one of the submitters who came to talk to the select committee. This submitter was an older man who had previously been a shearer. I know that members opposite probably do not give a toss about real people but I will tell them about this real person. This real person worked in our primary industries which are very significant to our economy as a shearer. He took the time to come to our select committee to talk about hearing loss because it was very significant to him. 
He said that a hearing loss of up to 6 percent is not trivial. It means that one cannot hear things like birds singing and one’s grandchildren talking. That is not trivial. Those are significant losses to real people. Hearing loss means real things to real people. It is a loss and it is not trivial. 
I want to talk about whom hearing loss affects. Who is affected by this issue? I am sorry if I am boring one of the members opposite but this is important. This is something the Government is taking away from New Zealanders. It is taking away the right to have treatment for workplace hearing loss if it is less than 6 percent. It is not trivial. 
Whom does hearing loss affect? It affects an older demographic. It is mainly older New Zealanders who have this sort of hearing loss who are coming forward nowadays who are having their hearing tested and who are then being fitted with hearing aids. They are older New Zealanders who have worked in noisy workplaces. They have been shearers worked in factories or meat plants or worked on the wharves. These people are not high-income earners. They are working-class people if you like and often older men. Overwhelmingly we see significant numbers of Maori and Pacific workers in those kinds of industries. 
The reason I am making the point that it is older New Zealanders who are affected is that this is one area where we have done some things right. Workplace hearing loss is not such a significant issue now because we can do something about it. It is perfectly preventable and nowadays in most workplaces we can prevent workplace hearing loss. One of the academics who came to speak to the select committee pointed out that although there has been an increase in the number of hearing loss claims this will not be a trend upwards. This is like a blip and it should start trending down because we have a whole lot of older New Zealanders who worked in workplaces in times when we did not have hearing protection in place. We were not aware of the issues in the way that we are now. Those people will come through. I say to the Government you are— 
Hon Simon Power 
: Not “you”. 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: I am sorry not the Chair but Ministers like Minister Power and others sitting across the Chamber are taking that away from older New Zealanders who have worked in some of our primary industries. They are working class people who have a chance to get treatment a hearing aid and their hearing restored so that they can hear their grandchildren speaking and the birds singing and those are not trivial things. 
As I said this is preventable. The implications of what the Government is doing here are unfair and discriminatory a point that the Human Rights Commission made specifically to the select committee. This provision is discriminatory. Not only is it discriminatory but the consequence of this is one that I do not think has had enough consideration and that is that this provision restores the right to sue. Because people are taken out of coverage the social contract is broken for those people and the right to sue is restored. That is important. The accident compensation system has been a social contract in place all of my working life and I have not had the right to sue for workplace injury but I have had comprehensive cover under the scheme. That is changing here and I urge members opposite as I will be urging members of the public to think about the implications of going back to a system where one had to sue to get some fairness. It is a serious matter. 
I think it might be worth reminding members opposite of some more real examples because I know how interested they were in the shearing example I gave them. Let me tell them about the 45-year-old building construction consultant with 4.7 percent hearing loss. He has a situation where he cannot hear well with background noise such as discussions at meetings or on the building site. Or I could tell them about the 56-year-old customs officer with 4.5 percent hearing loss who works at the airport in a customs hall that is very noisy. He works with dogs and has to use a radio-telephone. He finds it difficult to hear at work when there is background noise. He attends training seminars but has difficulty hearing. His kids will not repeat what they are saying to him if he cannot hear it the first time and a number of submitters talked about the implications between generations of hearing loss and especially this low-level hearing loss.