Leary Ingrid; Doocey MattINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd like to ask the Minister in the chair Matt Doocey about the way that this bill relates to the principal Act and he has just very helpfully explained the purpose of that Act which is to collect levies. If I look at this Act it is about doing that in a way that's fair and we've heard that in the regulatory impact statement (RIS). When I look at the RIS—the very helpful RIS that we have acknowledged officials for—in section 2 it talks about the criteria that would be used to compare options and it states fairness transparency legal risk and alignment. In fact further in the RIS there is a table that goes through each of those quite carefully and it even calculates pecuniary benefit as well as non-pecuniary so that is incredibly helpful.But I do have a question from a policy perspective because a lot of this debate and a lot of the new Act is being predicated on fairness—that's the nexus with the Act that it is amending; both Acts are about fairness. We have had legislation in this House that has really shone a light on fairness because different people have different criteria for fairness. That was the tax principles Act that mentioned vertical equity horizontal equities—so vertical is the same classes of people being treated the same; horizontal is across everybody that if you look across there is fairness. There's also certainty—so how certain is the fairness or the action that is to be taken? How predictable is it? There's fairness around compliance in administration and some questions have come up to do with—for example the really good question from Rachel Boyack about—CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The questions around fairness seem to be more general than how does—can you relate that to the principal Act because that's what we're trying to have questions on here.INGRID LEARY: Thank you for that guidance Madam Chair. The nexus as I had mentioned in my view is that both of these Acts are about fairly collecting levies. This Act purports to change the earlier Act which the Minister helpfully said is about collecting levies and the purpose of that Act is to do it in a fair way and so is this one.I did point out that I would have a number of questions and I didn't get to the policy question around fairness and the basis on which these decisions are being made. I think it is really timely to do it because otherwise I'd have to do it in the next section just really picking out whether fairness is an appropriate and well enough understood basis from which to make this kind of table and schedule. Perhaps had he thought about crossing it out and just looking at transparency the legal risk which has clearly come through the debate and also the alignment because it's unhelpful I would contend for us to have passed legislation that has laid out very clearly six principles of fairness under the taxation principles Act—that has now been repealed but there was a common understanding of what that involved. Now we have fairness which is explained in a different way and there are assumptions around it.This is an important question because both of these Acts the thing that links them together is the fact that they are trying to collect levies in a fair way and so it is really appropriate for the Minister to be able to explain to us: on what basis what policy basis were those evaluations made? I can understand on the table transparency legal risk and alignment; they're very clearly set out. I'd just like to know whether fairness is the right criteria. Did he turn his mind to whether that was appropriate and you know what other ways could it be looked at to make sure that the same principle of fairness applied both to the principal Act and to this amendment?Hon MATT DOOCEY (Minister for ACC): Thank you very much Madam Chair. As that last member alluded to the Accident Compensation Corporation is built on the principle of fairness and also raised awareness of the principle that debit interest which we're talking about tonight also disincentivises instalment options that could be used as a cheaper source of finance.