McLellan TraceyDr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker and thank you for the opportunity to say a few words about the Accident Compensation (Interest on Instalment Plans) Amendment Bill. It's one of those bills that feels like it has been around for a while because there's been a stop-start process that has traversed a couple of late nights and various urgency arrangements but it hasn't really and we haven't had that long to consider the information to ask questions and to sort of ventilate and mull over some of the implications. As I said it has gone through an urgency process which has meant that this House hasn't been afforded the opportunity to have a select committee process—the way in which we do things—and to get that departmental report and to have those questions that we may have liked to have lingered on answered in a little bit more of a robust way. But never mind; this is where we are.I'd like to acknowledge what my colleague Rachel Boyack said earlier on today: we need to remind ourselves that ACC—the Accident Compensation Corporation—is a taonga. It is so incredibly important and it is quite a unique and groundbreaking and innovative mechanism through which many people in this country have been able to have compensation have been able to have support and have been able to manage their rehabilitation when accidents occur. And of course it came via the very real desire to avoid a faults-based system where we could rely upon that compensation when we needed it without having to go through such a litigious process as we see happening in many other places in the world.With that in mind I recall on Monday—which was only two days ago so one would hope I would—talking to a small-business owner in the Banks Peninsula electorate in Woolston specifically about ACC. I had reached out to Rachel Boyack who I know is very passionate about ACC to see if she had any advice about the specific concerns that this small-business owner was raising. She wasn't attempting to disparage the system in so far as a small-business owner who works closely within the system; she wanted to provide some feedback. We acknowledge that ACC is such a mammoth kind of beast almost that there's always going to be amendments and there's always going to be improvements and changes that we can make to ensure that we do the best by it and make sure that it's in tip-top shape. So it was lovely to speak to her and to gather that feedback which I will be duly passing on to my colleague Rachel Boyack to feed into our bevy of information about what Labour will do differently in Government next time.The specific aspects of this bill that required tinkering with and required a change and an amendment were a little bit more pressing and a little bit more serious so to speak because they had essentially shown that ACC had been acting in a way arguably in the past that was not necessarily consistent with how it should have been. We note that certainly the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and ACC had slightly differing views about whether ACC had been acting outside its legislative scope and the advice from MBIE was to amend the Act and here is where we find ourselves today in order to provide that legislative clarity about the interest that has been charged when businesses—small businesses in particular—make the most of and take the opportunity to pay off those levies via instalment. So the broad purpose of the bill was essentially to introduce that regulation-making power so that they could do that in relation to that debit interest on levies and they could also have prior behaviour retrospectively validated. The bill would introduce a regulation-making power that sets out the circumstances.On the surface of it when we look at it both in terms of the three instalment plans and the 0 percent 0 percent and 2.73 percent interest rates respectively that are applied to those three instalment plans and also the retrospectivity it doesn't seem like it's particularly contentious in so far as the fact that we said from the outset it was something that we would support. We know that previous Ministers for ACC had identified that there was work required here and so it shouldn't be particularly onerous to get this across the line. But I do note that our colleagues in the Green Party took particular exception to the retrospectivity which I think has been an issue that we have had somewhat of an opportunity to talk about through this process but probably not as much as we should have.I note my colleague Camilla Belich had raised some very good points about how this concept relates not just to this bill in particular and whether the detrimental aspects or the erroneous aspects of what had been happening in the past—the consequences—truly do warrant setting a precedent for making and passing a piece of legislation that has that retrospective aspect to it. And again that would be something that I know I for one would have liked to have heard from some more people about and been able to ventilate a bit more and hear from some experts and kick around a bit just so that as lawmakers as is our obligation in this House we could have all been fully fully comfortable with the ramifications and the nuances of what this means not only for this bill but for everything else that we do.I also note that my colleague Rachel Boyack had put forward an amendment which I think is worth talking a little bit more about because the amendment—this one in particular—essentially said that it would have given the opportunity for the Minister for ACC to ensure that the three- and the six-month instalments that were relative to this instalment plan could have been set at 0 percent permanently. She mentioned that there has obviously been custom and practice involved in that. But given there's now going to be the mechanism in place for a regulatory process that means that could be changed in the future I think it would have been a really good step forward in so far as assuring not just some continuity but some confidence particularly from small-business owners that that wasn't something that was immediately going to change post the regulatory process.She made that point I think very well in so far as we want people to be able to make the most of the tools that we provide them. We don't want them to have any kind of reason to be able to go outside that tool framework and go look for those advantages perhaps elsewhere when there's uncertainty. The last thing we want our small businesses to do is to get themselves into situations that are not necessarily advantageous for them are not necessarily what they should be doing in the best interests of their businesses simply to avoid some interest on a long-serving process that had before that been at 0 percent.When the Minister was asked about this—and again if we had had the opportunity to have a select committee process we probably could have teased it out a bit further—the Minister who engaged very well in answering questions which should be said on this particular occasion didn't really provide that much information but he did mention the perverse incentives that could therefore exist. I don't feel any more informed now that I'm standing here halfway through the third reading in so far as what he actually meant by that. I would have liked to have had that as one of the half a dozen things I have circled on my piece of paper—to have been able to cross that off as something that I fully understood and was happy with.I'd just like to finish off by acknowledging all the people that have taken part in this process. As many great philosophers have said over the years not probably quite so well as Francisco Hernandez has just mentioned this isn't the worst bill in the world. Of all the bills that this Government has introduced it is the most benign. And on that very profound observation I would like to reiterate that Labour does support this bill and therefore we commend this bill to the House.