Moroney Sue: Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6839. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise and speak to Part 1 of the Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill. The Labour Party will be exploring Part 1 in fine detail because this is the part of the bill that we have the most reservations about actually. It is the part that is supposed to give the financial responsibility and transparency—the main title of this bill—its oomph and its content but we have become quite concerned about what happened to this bill in Part 1 in particular as it went to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.Again just like what the Government did with the workplace health and safety legislation the bill was in one form when it went into select committee and when it came out there have been some amendments made that have caused us concern. The amendments that have come out the other end of the select committee process have caused us so much concern that I proposed an amendment during the course of this debate Supplementary Order Paper 123 to make the financial responsibilities and transparency of this amendment bill clearwhich I hope will be supported by all parties.Part 1 of the bill introduces a new process for ACC levy setting. In setting that new pathway I guess one of the most fundamentally new parts is that whereas currently ACC starts this process and does the consultation with stakeholder parties and has some guiding principles that guide it in terms of the recommendations it makes to the Government what this bill brings in is a political overview of that before ACC even gets to consider it. So what the bill does in Part 1 is that it says that the Minister actually gets to set up the parameters. The Minister will set out a funding statement that will guide ACC. That sounds like quite a good idea. However when you take into account that the history of this particular Government is that it hasin the past by its own admission been overcharging ACC levies—to the tune of about $350 million a year—in order to as the previous Minister for ACC Judith Collins put it get to surplus then this is giving a lot of political discretion to the Government to give direction to ACC.There are some good amendments that the select committee made to try to make sure that this would not become a political lever that can be used even more overtly than the current Government did to prop up its failed attempt to get to surplus. The select committee made some recommendations that before sending that funding policy out the Minister has to go to the stakeholders and consult over that funding policy to start off with. I think that will give those of us who are concerned about the Government’s agenda some comfort that there will be wider scrutiny of this and I think that that is a good amendment. That is not the select committee amendment that we are concerned about.However the funding principles that ACC has stuck to relentlessly throughout the yearswhen it sets ACC levies—the funding principle of ensuring that there is levy stability the guiding principle that it has used since 1999 of ensuring that the purpose of setting ACC levies is to fully fund the lifetime costs of injuries and accidents and the other principle that it has used to ensure that there is sustainability in the ACC scheme going forward—all of those things are now transferred into this legislation. The legislation went into the select committee in a shape where it said that those funding principles “must” be adhered to—that they “must” be adhered to—by the Minister when considering the levy setting. However when it came out of the select committee there had been some small but important changes. No longer “must” the Minister consider allof those three important principles; it had been watered down to a “should consider”.That alone would not be quite so concerning were it not for the Government’s contention that it has carte blanche to do whatever it wants in ACC levy setting because there is part of the Accident Compensation Act that says that the Minister can consider or take into account the public’s interest in setting ACC levies. That is the bit of the Accident Compensation Act that the current Government has used to excuse itself for setting ACC levies artificially high in order to do something that is nothing to do with ACC—in order to try to make its books look as if they are getting into surplus by its own admission. That is what we resile against.Not only is it the Labour Party that resiles against this but also it is indeed Business New Zealand the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and a number of other submitters who said—and Business New Zealand was very clear about this—that it should not be allowable for the Government to set ACC levies with a view to propping up a fiscal surplus. The Labour Party agrees with that view and that is the reason why I have brought forward a Supplementary Order Paper that deals with their concerns.We had a discussion about this in the select committee and it was the view of the National Government members that the use of the Minister’s regard to the public interest with regard to setting ACC levies is to do with the public interest about ACC only. It is not broader than that; it is about ACC. So I am calling on those Government MPs who gave us that assurance in the select committee to vote for my amendment because in fact that is exactly what my amendment clarifies. It clarifies that when the Accident Compensation Act talks about the public interest it is talking about the public interest with regard to reducing accidents and injuries in the workplace on the sports field in the home or wherever they may occur.This amendment is important because it gives this Parliament some comfort that when the Government has moved to water down those three guiding principles for how ACC levies are to be set that that is not a signal that it intends to keep on using ACC levies to prop up its failed attempt to get to surplus because that is not what is intended by this Act.I take the members at their word—that it is not what the National Government members on the select committee believe it to mean—and I am now calling them to account for that by seeking their commitment on voting for my amendment which does in fact exactly that. It would make it absolutely clear that the public interest when it comes to talking about setting ACC levies is about reducing injuries and accidents and is not about things so far removed from the responsibility of ACC as ensuring that the Government can try to get its surplus.This is the surplus by the way that it has failed to get to so far. We will wait and see whether the Government’s promised surplus is ever going to happen but it has failed to do that despite the fact that it has been using inflated ACC levies to prop that up. Those are not—well those are my words but it was not me who made that assessment; it was Judith Collins the former Minister for ACC. She said very clearly when setting the levies in 2013 that one of the things—one of the factors—that she took into account and that has continued through to the current Minister is getting to surplus and the broader fiscal situation that the Government finds itself in through its own sloppy fiscal management.So I want to urge all of the parties to consider voting for Supplementary Order Paper 123. I hope that the Government MPs will find themselves in a position where they can because if they cannot then I think that is a very clear signal to the rest of New Zealand that this Government intends in our view to misuse ACC levies—to set them artificially high to ensure that they can actually prop up things like its failure to get to surplus. That is not what the New Zealand public requires from the ACC system and that is not what the public would see as in its interests when it comes to funding ACC levies. What they want them to be used for is to reduce injuries and accidents at work and that is what my Supplementary Order Paper makes absolutely clear. Today the Minister made a statement which we will come to when we debate Part 2.