Stewart Barbara: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Stewart Barbara: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:20265] 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise in support of Part 1. Yesterday New Zealand First indicated that we would be supporting this. When we had a look at the term “treatment injury” we were very pleased to see that it had been simplified in this bill. Previously the definitions in section 32 of the Act were very complicated and extremely difficult for claimants to negotiate their way around. Many could not and consequently they did not even bother to. 
We were pleased to see too that the treatment has now been defined as clearly as possible. We are also pleased to see in this bill that section 32(6) in clause 13 includes trials. We know that there are many advances in medicine today and notice has to be taken of people who willingly undergo trials so that the rest of our people can be cured of some disease by some new medicine or treatment that has been developed. Quite often people innocently go along to these trials and have very high hopes but sometimes the outcome is not exactly what they wanted. So it is really good to see that in there. 
New Zealand First will be very interested in the interpretation of section 33 “Treatment” in clause 13. Subsection (1)(d) states that treatment includes “a failure to provide treatment or to provide treatment in a timely manner:”. We know that the provision of treatment in a timely manner is becoming more and more of a challenge in today’s hospital system. I am sure we have all read the article in today’s  
New Zealand Herald 
: “Just how sick do you have to be to get a hospital bed?”. We know that people have problems that have a significant effect on their daily lives and they cannot get the required treatment in a timely manner. So of course we are very interested in this provision. 
We are aware that new section 32(2)(c) excludes “personal injury that is solely attributable to a resource allocation decision:”. We want to see the Government taking the next step to investigate how it can remove this unfair resource exemption clause as that does need to occur. We believe that any injury caused by a failure of resources should be considered to be in the same category as a treatment injury and should also be covered under this legislation. There was a suggestion yesterday from the Green member Sue Kedgley that her party would move an amendment to cover this concern that we have. I am waiting to see the amendment appear on the Table; yesterday we indicated we would support it and we are looking forward to doing that. 
We were pleased yesterday that the Minister reassured members that the acupuncture profession is working together to have one scope of practice under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. We look forward to seeing that occur because we cannot afford to have one group the acupuncturists with two different scopes of practice. That cannot be allowed to occur. We look forward to having a result there and will be following that very carefully. There was a suggestion from a submitter to the select committee that a time limit be provided on the resource allocation clause so that the health system could gear itself up to meet the resource standards recommended by the experts as being reasonable. We look forward to some action on that area later in the debate or we invite the Minister to comment. 
We were most interested to see that under new section 33(1)(e) the consent of a person to undergo treatment is required. Given the debate currently raging about electroconvulsive therapy and the significant number of people who did not consent to that form of treatment who experienced significant difficulties afterwards we wonder whether they will be able to undergo some of the processes for compensation provided in this bill.