Hague Kevin: Accident Compensation Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Hague Kevin: Accident Compensation Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:9280] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 It is no secret I guess that the Green Party will be voting against the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill at its third reading. I will not repeat the arguments that I have made through the various stages of the legislation but I will touch on them and build on that somewhat. In the Committee stage I spent most of my time working through the various ways in which this bill erodes the Woodhouse principles. I have to say that I agree with the analysis that Maryan Street has just presented on that. The bill certainly erodes the principles upon which our accident compensation scheme is based. It cuts back on entitlements and in my view and in the view of Green members it goes back on the deal that the Government made with the New Zealand population at the time that the right to sue was given up. That was the focus of my comments during the Committee stage. 
In the second reading debate I focused on an area where the Greens have a different analysis I think from every other party in this House. That area is the issue of the funding basis for accident compensation. Other parties support full funding for accident compensation; the Green Party supports “pay as you go” funding. We ask why we would choose just this one area of Government activity accident compensation to fund in a full-funding way when we fund all of the other areas—education social welfare and health—on a “pay as you go” basis. 
If we look at the nature of the costs associated with accident compensation rehabilitation and injury prevention we see that in the future the nature of those costs will not be different from the nature of the costs that will be faced in the health sector for example. So there is no sound argument for using a different method for paying for this scheme—except one. This one rationale is the rationale that we believe the Government has chosen to use this approach to funding—that is using full funding as a funding mechanism for this scheme makes the scheme more like a suite of insurance schemes or insurance policies. Doing that enables the product of accident compensation to be comparable to those of commercial insurance companies and that will enable first of all competition from the private sector then ultimately the privatisation of ACC. We believe that is the agenda. 
I have to say that in the second reading debate it was heartening on the one hand to hear from the Maori Party that it will now be voting against this bill. It is heartening because the bill is a bad one and it should be opposed. On the other hand it is a double-edged sword because given that the Maori Party is voting against the bill the Government will now be relying on the ACT Party for its support. I think we all know in this House and outside the House what the price of that will be. National which said in its campaign that there would be no privatisation and no competition in the first term of a National Government will now be “reluctantly forced” to the point of saying that in order to get ACT’s support it will have to move on that competition now instead. It is a double-edged sword but I welcome the Maori Party to the righteous side of the issue. 
I will draw a quick parallel with a couple of other areas. The health portfolio is one of mine and I have pointed out in debates on health for example that the Government in requiring district health boards to contract out more surgery to the private sector is doing something that will draw specialised staff from the public sector into the private sector thus undermining the capacity of the public sector and leading towards greater privatisation in the health sector. In the education sector to draw a parallel with the United States national standards are a precursor to vouchers and vouchers presage privatisation in education. 
So what we are seeing is a change from the Government’s first year of office. I think it is fair to say that from right across the community there were many criticisms of the Government. People were saying that this Government was just engaging in a grab bag of unconnected populist issues. That is what people were saying in the first year and maybe that was a fair criticism. But now we start to see a programme. We start to see a programme that right across the range of social services sees a withdrawal of this Government from the role that the State has played. It is a Government that has an agenda of a smaller State with a bigger role for the private sector. 
It is no secret that the Green Party stands on the other side of the line on that debate but I recognise that it is a legitimate political philosophy to say that the State should be minimal and that social services should be provided by the private sector. If that is the philosophy that National wants to espouse it should do so. My objection to that is that we are seeing that philosophy and that approach emerging by stealth here in the second year of National’s term. It is not the basis on which that party went to the population and I say that it should be. 
Now I want to draw on some comments from a former Prime Minister of this country Michael Joseph Savage. When Savage was defending the Social Security Act across the House from attacks by opponents he said this: “The honourable gentlemen”—in those days of course they were—“on the Opposition benches want to turn back the clocks. I want to know why people should not have security—why people should not have security in the evening of their days or when they are invalided. What is there more important in Christianity than to be our brothers’ keepers in reality?”. I am not a Christian as members of the House know but I would substitute my own version of the latter part of that statement and ask what is more important in being part of society than taking a collective social responsibility for one another? That was one of the principles upon which the accident compensation scheme had its origins—one of the bases on which New Zealanders gave up their right to sue—and I say that this bill this approach to accident compensation represents a fundamental derogation of the principles. I say that the Green Party stands instead for a fair go for all. Thank you.