Street Maryan: General Debate 
Street Maryan: General Debate 
[Volume:648;Page:17127] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Minister for ACC) 
: 
 Well well well—another day and there is another shifty slippery National Party cover-up of another National Party attempt to sell off or dispose of our State assets. It is funny because a couple of months ago the leader of the National Party John Key told the public that National would not sell off State assets in its first term but what is he telling his Australian insurance company mates in private? He is telling them that he will dismember the accident compensation scheme—our $10.3 billion public asset—and sell it off or in the fudged and slippery language used now that he will open up parts of it to competition. So he has dressed this up as “providing New Zealanders with choice”. 
Today Mr Key has been compelled to spell out the National Party’s position which he says is to allow private insurers to compete. But I ask why he is being compelled to release the National Party policy on accident compensation today when he has not felt compelled to release policy on any other matter before this week. Has in fact Crosby/Textor told National to do this today because the strategy to date is not working and is backfiring? 
But let me get back to accident compensation for a moment because Crosby/Textor will no doubt have an interest in how this policy runs out as well. What is meant by opening up some of the accident compensation accounts to competition? It means that Australian insurance companies will be given the choice to decide who to cover and who not to cover. It will mean that a whole lot of people will miss out on accident compensation for wages physio bills paid caregivers and the like. This policy is not about giving injured New Zealanders a choice; it is about giving Australian insurance companies the right to play Russian roulette with our nation’s injuries and health. It would seem that the $200 million in profit these insurance companies will reap from New Zealand taxpayers—and people should make no mistake that that money will come out of New Zealand taxpayers’ pockets—will be handed to those companies by the man who wants to be Prime Minister of this country Mr Key. It seems to me that Mr Key is batting for the wrong country and what we have seen in the House today is one nasty underarm bowl. 
What must be particularly galling for New Zealand businesses is that Mr Key is telling them that they will pay lower levies under privatisation or a competitive model. Well let us look at the facts which are these: in 1999 when National privatised the work account—and let us call a spade a spade; the shifty National Party cannot call a spade a spade but I am happy to—employers were paying $2.14 per $100 of liable earnings. What are they paying now under a State monopoly? They are on average paying $1.26. So that means that employers are paying about half of the levies they were paying under the National Government’s last effort at privatising accident compensation. What are employers paying in Australia? On average they are paying about two and a half times more than our employers are paying. Yet Mr Key is going to allow Australian insurance companies to take over parts of our accident compensation scheme. Those are the facts and employers need to think about them. Mr Key may not spell this out; he may continue to be shifty to prevaricate and to be slippery about it. But the employers of this country know what the facts are because they have seen the average levies come down in the last few years. 
Employers also need to think about the fact that a significant amount of their levies will end up being wasted on regulation. In fact the PricewaterhouseCoopers report found that accident compensation administration costs were significantly lower than those of insurers in Australia. But the report stated that those costs would go up by an increase of well over 10 percent under privatisation. So levy costs will increase to pay for more red tape and that is an irony considering that the National Party professes to be the anti - red tape party.