Street Maryan: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled 
Street Maryan: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled 
[Volume:660;Page:9180] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I would like to respond to a couple of points that Mr Boscawen has just made in the previous speech even though none of it bore much relation to Part 2 of the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill. Mr Chair I hope that you will allow me to provide some rebuttal albeit a little tenuously connected to Part 2. 
First I wish to register my sympathy and respect for the personal family story that Mr Boscawen told. Such stories touch us all and the story goes to the heart of the accident compensation scheme. I thank the member for raising it and I want to treat that story that part of the member’s own family history with a deal of respect. It is true that near-fatal accidents and very serious injuries that may result in tetraplegia can cost the accident compensation scheme something in the order of $20 million over the lifetime of a person these days. Because our medical technology has improved substantially because our support systems are better than they were 40 years ago and because prices and costs have increased yes it is quite true that even one such accident a year can cause a $20 million liability to be loaded across the lifetime of that person. 
But for my part I would rather have such a system than not have it. I would not wish to see people compensated and supported at a time of a traumatic injury for one or two years only or even perhaps for three years only. The reality of the situation is that we proceed with our busy and full lives something happens an injury is sustained and people’s lives are irrevocably changed. They are changed for life. I want to be part of a society that is compassionate enough to say we will support those people for the duration of their life because they are human beings and because we value them. I cannot put a price on anybody’s life. I can say some people with extraordinary disabilities arising out of injury have been among the most inspirational people I have ever met and to think that a Government a State a country a society would choose not to support those people does not sit with my values and with the values of the Labour Party. That is the first point. 
I wish to turn to a couple of issues that come out of Part 2. I want to revisit clause 55 which my colleague Darien Fenton spoke about earlier and which is to do with the calculation of weekly earnings for weekly compensation. I too am pleased that the Minister of Labour is in the chair at the moment because I want to draw some facts to her attention. The Minister in charge of this bill the Hon Nick Smith comes from Nelson. In Nelson there is a lot of seasonal casual and part-time labour. It is a region that is fundamentally dependent on primary produce. Fortunately we produce it well. I live there also so I know that we do it very well. But there is a lot of seasonal work. It is a good year for low-paid workers in Nelson if they can move from trimming the vines to picking the apples and to harvesting the kiwifruit in succession. But quite often workers find that they can get work for say only 40 weeks out of 52. And let us not exaggerate the case and say it is 4 weeks out of 52; let us say it is nearly a year but not quite. 
The amendments in this legislation have compensation being calculated on the basis of a 52-week year rather than the number of weeks worked. Anybody can work out that if one divides earnings by 52 rather than by the number of weeks worked—for example 40—one will get a much smaller figure. If we think about the principle of compensation it has always from the very beginning in the Woodhouse report been set at 80 percent of income. The purpose of that is to prevent people from doing the very thing that the Minister in charge of this bill accuses people of doing; that is earning more on compensation than they would do if they were in work. Receiving 80 percent of one’s earnings is an incentive to get back to work. Receiving 80 percent of the household income is an incentive to get back to work. That is why that percentage was set; that is what it was designed to do. 
What we have in Nelson is not only the average hourly income being the last time I looked at the figures some $2 less than the average hourly income across the country—and the Minister in charge of the bill should be aware of that—but also a lot of seasonal work. So suddenly to divide a 40-weeks-a-year income by 52 and then pay compensation at 80 percent of that will cause hardship to already low-paid workers. The Minister of Labour who is currently in the chair needs to drive that home to her colleague the Minister for ACC because for some reason he does not get it. 
The Minister for ACC persisted with yet another myth—another of Nick’s myths—when he said people are likely to receive more through compensation than they would through their earnings. That is both untrue and nonsensical at the same time when people are working a short year and are on low rates of pay if the system divides their earnings by 52 rather than 40 and then takes 80 percent of that. Hardship is suffered by some 76 percent of the families who live in Nelson. Some 76 percent of them did not benefit from tax cuts from this Government. They are low-income earners. Nelson is beautiful; it looks lovely when we drive in. I love it. It is a fantastic place to live. But let us not be fooled into thinking that the whole region is not sustained by the low wages that come out of primary production. This clause will create hardship. It is not fair. The nonsense that the Minister for ACC spouts about people receiving more while they are on compensation than they do when they are working is simply that: it is arrant nonsense. 
The next clause I wish to speak to is clause 53 and it is to do with work-related gradual process disease or infection claims. We have had some discussion about this clause in relation to hearing loss in particular. I want to make a couple of points. One is that work-related gradual process injuries if we take hearing loss as a particular example have been monitored and have been subject to research and analysis for numbers of years. In fact one of the advisory panels to the Minister is particularly engaged on this aspect of the accident compensation scheme. The hearing loss figures as an example of a work-related gradual process injury were actually in decline. They have been declining because most of the people who have been subjected to noisy work environments have become older and have been detected.