Tolley Anne: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Tolley Anne: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:644;Page:13961] 
ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) 
: 
 I saw the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) come across my desk. I grabbed it read the general policy statement and saw that the bill would “continue the Government’s commitment to a fair and sustainable ACC scheme for reducing the incidence and impact of personal injury by proposing amendments to cover for work-related injuries”. When I read that I thought “Great!”. Of course if I had been like Peter Brown as he explained to us last night I probably would have put the bill down and thought it would do everything that I hoped it would do and everything that the general policy statement said it would do.  
I brought an issue to this House in September of this year about work-related injuries. I assumed and hoped that when legislation came before the House that had a commitment to a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme and that was proposing amendments to cover for work-related injuries I would see some changes to the law around the case that I had brought to the attention of the Minister for ACC. But alas when I read the legislation I found that that had not happened.  
I want to talk today at the first reading of this legislation about what is not in it and what should be in it if we are indeed to have a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme and if we genuinely want to reduce the incidence and impact of personal injury. You see if one looks at the definition of a work-related injury in section 28(1) of the principal Act one finds that we are talking about a personal injury that the insured suffers “(a) while he or she is at any place for the purposes of his or her employment including for example a place that itself moves or a place to or through which the claimant moves;”. So we are defining that workplace as somewhere where the insured person is actually working whether it is a movable place or a place that a person moves through while doing his or her work. Section 28(1)(b) also states: “while he or she is having a break from work for a meal or rest or refreshment at his or her place of employment;”. I read those provisions carefully because they are really pertinent to the case that I brought before this House in September and brought to the Minister’s attention.  
What is the problem? The problem occurred in 2003 when an employee of AFFCO—a meatworks company—left the plant on a break walked outside the secured compound of the plant and went to the car-park with another person. That employee went into that car-park on his break allegedly to smoke a joint. It had nothing to do with work he was on a work break and he was actually committing an illegal act. 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: Allegedly. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: I said “allegedly”. While they were sitting in a car a car drove up. An occupant saw the worker and his mate sitting in the car recognised the worker’s mate and as part of ongoing gang warfare in the area put a shotgun through the window shot at the gang member who was not the person whom this accident compensation claim was about and also badly injured that worker. It had nothing to do with a workplace injury it had nothing to do with the company and it did not happen in the place of work—not even within the secured compound of a workplace. As a result of that AFFCO is being charged $1 million for the ongoing care of this injured worker despite the fact that the company has talked incessantly with the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) about it not being a workplace injury.  
One has to look at the definition of workplace. I was hoping that this legislation would start looking at the definition of workplace. The car-park where this accident took place was outside the secured area. In fact I am informed that Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry regulations require that a car-park that is used as a public car-park cannot form part of a secure workplace. So the poor old employer which has a car-park outside the secured premises that is a public car-park for a public park next door on one side and a butchery shop on the other is now being told that that car-park forms part of the workplace. So members should forget all the stuff around the alleged happenings and what the worker was allegedly doing; the fact that this car-park was not part of the workplace is irrelevant to ACC. That to me seemed wrong. And I would have thought from the reaction to this story when I raised it in this House that the Minister accepted that there was some opportunity to have a discussion about it.  
At the time that this incident happened nobody saw it as a workplace accident. It was reported in the local papers and there was a great deal of publicity about it. The police treated it as a gangland shooting. It was written up in all the local papers as part of an ongoing gangland shooting problem. It had nothing to do with AFFCO and the meatworks other than the fact that it had taken place in the car-park outside the AFFCO meatworks. The Occupational Safety and Health Service did not consider that it was a workplace accident either; it considered that it was a police matter. The only person who in addition to ACC has continued to say it was a workplace accident despite AFFCO notifying ACC that it did not consider it to be a workplace accident is the Minister herself. 
I heard one of the members on the other side going on about liability and ACC accepting that. That is not true. An original letter was sent to the claimant the injured person but that was withdrawn when the full information became available. ACC has been well aware of that. I tabled it in the House; it is a fact. But I just want to make the point that I am also informed that the issue of AFFCO’s liability is not determined by the letter ACC sent to the injured person but by the accreditation agreement AFFCO has with ACC. It does not affect at all ACC’s ability to exercise its statutory discretion to accept responsibility for the accident.  
I want to raise one last point. When I raised this issue with the Minister in the House and asked her whether she would commit to a mediation process she agreed. In fact she issued a media statement on 20 September welcoming that mediation and negotiation. Well of course it did not happen. It was just a way to get the issue off the front page. The parties did meet at the car-park and that quite clearly showed ACC that the car-park was a public car-park outside the secured area. They did meet but it turned out that the ACC officials who turned up at the so-called mediation meeting had no power to act. They had no intention to act because they had not been given an alternative amount of negotiating dollars with which to act. So there was no mediation and there was no negotiation and all the Minister did was get the issue off the front page of the papers by agreeing to look at it.  
I repeat: I eagerly looked at this legislation fully expecting that having been made fully aware of the circumstances around this particular case the Minister would have taken some opportunity to address that obvious iniquity in this legislation. It is not there Madam Assistant Speaker and the National Party is not supporting this bill.