Flavell Te Ururoa: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:637;Page:7790] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
Tena koe Madam Assistant Speaker kia ora tatou. The Maori Party comes to the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill aware of the responsibilities of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) under the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Act of 2001. I understand that section 3 of that Act charges the corporation with “providing for a fair and sustainable scheme for managing personal injury that has as its overriding goals minimising both the overall incidence of injury in the community …”. 
As a consequence of the proposals that have come before the House during the passage of this legislation all employees self-employed people and private and domestic workers will pay levies into the work account with entitlements funded out of it also. The drive to create a fair and sustainable scheme has been complicated in the case of the self-employed work account by the fact that this account is often volatile due to the small number of earners and the potential claimant base. The incentive behind the bill is therefore to merge the employers’ account and the self-employed work account into a single work account. 
The Maori Party supports any initiatives that seek to address inequities and instability in the current system and to make compliance comparatively hassle free. The intention of the 2001 Act was to provide a level playing field for claimants whether self-employed in high-risk industries or in private employment. A level playing field is obviously something that every member in this House would support as being in keeping with the commonly held view about there being one law for all and due access to justice. 
In this context we were concerned to read reports from the Access Support Services lobby group that ACC is exiting blue-collar workers from the scheme at a faster rate than it is exiting white-collar workers. According to a study of ACC’s own injury statistics in 2005 a plant and machinery operator is twice as likely to be exited from the scheme as a clerk or administrator is. Workers involved in the agricultural and fishing sectors or in trades are also disproportionately more likely to exit the scheme than legislators and administrators or professionals. It would appear that the so-called blue-collar workers are less equipped and supported to be able to negotiate ACC support for their rehabilitation than say their white-collar counterparts. This clearly demonstrates a class bias and I might add a race bias. 
The Maori Party is advised that similar statistics are also likely to be seen for Maori workers as compared with non-Maori workers. However there is some lack of clarity around data collection which we want to raise in the context of this Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill. It should be remembered that until 1998 ethnicity data was not collected for accident compensation claims. Ten years ago the ACC Injury Prevention Strategic Plan identified a goal to “substantially reduce serious injuries in ethnic groups overrepresented in injury statistics”. 
It goes without saying of course that even though Maori have a higher injury rate across the board Maori are significantly less likely to make an accident compensation claim and are more likely to be declined cover. In honouring this strategic goal ACC improved the collection of the ethnicity data by establishing the injury profile of Maori and Pacific peoples. Since 1998 ACC claim forms have included ethnicity as an option. However—and here is the catch—as it has not been obligatory it is difficult to relate claims injuries to ethnicity. Despite this what we do know from the information available to us is that the application and take-up rate of accident compensation by Maori is significantly lower than by non-Maori particularly given that Maori are overrepresented in injury statistics across all age groups. 
Let us look at the level playing field in more detail. The data tells us that the proportion of Maori continuing as claimants in a subsequent year is even lower and that Maori have significantly higher chances of being declined ACC support than non-Maori. We also know that Maori aged 25 to 64 years particularly Maori men are more likely to be injured at work than are non-Maori. This reflects the types of occupations that Maori men are overrepresented in such as manual and trade occupations. 
Therefore when we look at the purpose of this bill which proposes the merging of the self-employed and employers’ accounts a very obvious question is how Maori will fare. It is important to note from the outset that Maori and Pasifika people constitute the lowest proportion of self-employed amongst their populations. The ethnic group with the greatest proportion classified as self-employed without employees is the Asian labour market on 14.3 percent and the European labour market on 13.4 percent as compared with the Maori labour market on 6.5 percent and the Pasifika labour market on 4.4 percent. Those Maori who are self-employed are largely involved in the primary sector in particular in agriculture forestry and fishing. Those areas are known as high-risk industries and occupations. 
I am told that the Council of Trade Unions in its submission on this bill endorsed the merger approach as making practical sense in that it would bring clear focus to the areas of injury prevention and health protections across particular industries and enterprises. Therefore we would hope that the high-risk or low-paid industries within which Maori are generally employed—fishing farming and forestry—will benefit from the new emphasis on safety management practices and capacity for weekly compensation cover. In line with this new emphasis we would expect to see increased priority on educating the self-employed about safe working practices and the development and implementation of new measures to ensure that safety standards are adopted. 
During this third reading debate we want to bring to the fore again the previous concerns raised about the impacts of this bill’s proposals on the self-employed. We were aware that because of this bill the levies will almost certainly increase and in some high-risk industries like fishing and forestry levy increases could be quite significant. The table provided in the Government’s briefing paper suggested that there are likely to be increases of between 30 percent and 56 percent across a range of industries as a result of the merger. We would be interested in learning what these implications will be in particular for the employment areas of greatest risk. 
Finally the issues we have canvassed in this speech extend of course outside the coverage of this bill. The gap in claiming accident compensation cover between Maori and non-Maori the lack of awareness of accident compensation entitlements the inequality of outcomes for Maori the increased risk of injury that accompanies industries such as fishing forestry and farming and the serious issues related to the gaps in data collection do of course warrant far greater consideration than we can give in this forum. 
We the Maori Party have appreciated the willingness of the Minister to share with us the strategies that the Accident Compensation Corporation is leading such as the PaeArahi position staffing and general practitioner training in cultural competency and other initiatives related to the Maori access strategy. We support the merger as a way of enhancing the current system and we will therefore support the bill. We are hopeful that the issues we have outlined today will remain a high priority for the Minister and the agency. They will need to be a high priority if we are truly committed to creating an enduring and sustainable accident compensation scheme based on fairness and justice for all. Kia ora tatou.