Lees-Galloway Iain: Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6948. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): The Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill has been brought before the House because the Government realised that it needed to demonstrate that it was using—Hon Maggie Barry: You’re trying to sound reasonable. You shout.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: If you are heard of hearing just be quiet and listen up.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am having no trouble at the moment so just keep going.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: If the members opposite are hard of hearing—I would not pass judgment on your hearing. This bill was brought before the House because this Government has repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to be transparent in the way that it sets ACC levies. Members opposite were challenging my colleague Sue Moroney about the question of whether or not the previous Minister for ACC Judith Collins was actually transparent and upfront about the way levies were set when she was the Minister. Just in August last year barely a year ago—is it not a surprise that it was just over a year ago—the ACC Minister Judith Collins admitted that the reason the Government—Hon Maggie Barry: Is this in scope?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: This is out of an editorial in the New Zealand Herald:“ACC minister Judith Collins has admitted the reason the Government has ignored ACC’s recommendation for bigger cuts for the third year running was ‘because we need to get to surplus. We believe the surplus is something very important for not only the Government but also for every business that has to borrow money’.” So that is where this bill came from. It was the fact that successive Ministers in this National administration have set levies in order to prop up the surplus—or to attempt to reach surplus—Jonathan Young: That’s not correct and you know it.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Jonathan Young is challenging me on this and again I refer to his own Minister’s quote: “because we need to get to surplus. We believe the surplus is something very important…”. That was the ACC Minister’s quote about why the levies were set at the level that they were. The members opposite cannot rewrite history. They cannot give an alternative view as to why this legislation was brought before the House. That is the reason why. It is because the editorials started rolling in and the public started to react against this notion that ACC levies should be used for propping up a surplus.The fact is that this legislation is timely and we do support it. The only thing we lament is that it does not quite go far enough. Last night we debated—Todd Barclay: One that got away.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Sorry—come again? Do you care to repeat that? No he does not care to repeat that. Funny that. Last night we debated Sue Moroney’s Supplementary Order Paper which was around the definition of “public good” and ensuring that when the Minister was setting policy in the public interest it related to ACC—to raising funds to provide for the treatment and compensation that people receive under ACC—and to prevention as well. This “public good” argument is what has been used previously to justify setting levies at a higher rate than what is necessary for full funding of the Accident Compensation Corporation accounts. Combined with what is already in the legislation that would have made this a very robust bill.We felt that the changes that were made at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that gave a little bit more latitude as to how the levies are set were necessary but created the need for this backstop that Sue Moroney proposed. If the Government members were genuine about wanting to create more transparency around the way ACC’s levies are set they would have supported that amendment but they did not and that is because they want to leave the door open to being able to set levies that are higher than what is necessary to fully fund ACC.This bill does a couple of things that are necessary now because we are coming to the end of the period of transition from pay-as-you-go funding to full funding and no matter how much rhetoric we hear from the other side the simple fact is that in 1999 a decision was made to shift from pay-as-you-go funding to full funding. It was always envisaged that that would take about 20 years and we are getting close to that 20-year mark so yes we need to get rid of the residual levies because many of the accounts are now fully funded. And yes we got to full funding a little bit earlier than 2019 because of the fact that ACC has been taking far more money than it needed to over the last few years.So yes the accounts are now fully funded and ACC’s investments have rebounded from the global financial crisis. ACC’s investments are actually one of the best performing investment portfolios in New Zealand—if not the best investment portfolio in New Zealand. This only goes to demonstrate that the public sector can actually run a very good investment portfolio. I know that the National Party does not like that idea but the public sector can run a solid investment portfolio which is why this bill is perfectly legitimate.We agree with this bill because it goes some of the way—but not all of the way—towards greater transparency around how ACC levies are set but it does still leave the door open to the ACC levies being manipulated and misused by a Government that still has not been able to get the books back into surplus. The other thing it does is that it gets rids of the residual levy and again that would have had to happen in 2019 if full funding had been achieved over the term that it was originally envisaged. So there is nothing magic here. There is nothing extraordinary about the way National has run ACC. If anything one of the other reasons why it has reached full funding a couple of years earlier than was ever envisaged was that it is so much harder to get compensation now under the National Government. It is so much harder to get treatment now under the National Government. It has slashed funding on programmes to prevent injuries so that has saved a bit of money as well.