Pillay Lynne: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Pillay Lynne: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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LYNNE PILLAY (Labour) 
: 
 I shall start by commenting on one of the statements made by Dr Paul Hutchison: “We all pay a little; we all get a lot.” That is exactly what National members say when they talk to the Business Roundtable: “Under our new tax regime this is the plan: we all pay a little and we all get a lot.” I know that Paul Hutchison is someone who has got a conscience about health issues and I feel really sad that he has been pushed into running some sort of silly argument to curry favour with the Minister for ACC. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Last time it was Jonathan Coleman. 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: Exactly. I know that other members have spoken about this matter before but the PricewaterhouseCoopers report found that the administration costs of New Zealand’s accident compensation scheme are lower than those of any other scheme. We must forget the smoke and mirrors that the Minister puts out there and forget the dog-whistle politics that he puts up in the Chamber because the reality is that our scheme is the envy of the world. It is the envy not just of our region; it is the envy of the world. Our accident compensation employer levies compare favourably with premiums for worker compensation in Australia. We aspire to be on a par with Australia on wages. Despite the Government not increasing the minimum wage despite it curbing wage bargaining and despite it telling many people in the State sector that they cannot have a rise somehow we magically will raise our wages to match those of Australia! No one here believes that rhetoric not even Dr Paul Hutchison who looks slightly bemused. We know that our accident compensation system premiums and delivery were—I will not say “are” and I will go into why I am saying “were”—far superior to Australia’s. 
What has this Government done? It has blown the whistle. It has said “This is outrageous.” Government members have made complete idiots of themselves in the Chamber—and I say that Mr Chair knowing that it is OK to say it—by whipping up a storm about how inappropriate it is to give any form of compensation to prisoners. But we know that that is not the key thing on the minds of ordinary New Zealanders. For them it is about value for money. It is about delivering to the many not the few. It is about a system that works for all New Zealanders. It is about not seeing their friends their families their children their mothers their fathers being dealt to by a system that this Government is nothing short of corrupting. 
I take my hat off to the people who have rallied against this Government. The Minister stated earlier that he has a degree of hearing loss and somehow that is meant to give him an affinity with people who have suffered an injury. 
Darien Fenton 
: He didn’t get it from working in a factory. 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: No he probably got it from hearing himself when he is absolutely raging frothing at the mouth and going crazy. At the end of the day I assume that the Minister is saying that he understands the position of people who get a disability or an injury through some form of work-related activity. The reality is that in terms of people whose hearing is impaired this Government has imposed a ruling despite every professional piece of advice being to the contrary that a hearing loss of less than 6 percent—and I acknowledge my Green colleague here—somehow does not count somehow is insignificant. Well I ask the Minister to put himself in the position of people with a hearing loss a little less than 6 percent. I say that it is the professionals who should decide whether funding needs to be given for hearing aids. That decision should be made by the professionals who ascertain what the problem is. This Government is saying that a hearing loss of a little less than 6 percent does not count. It says that that is a small degree of loss that if people lose a bit of their hearing it does not count. That is simply not appropriate. It is simply not the reality. 
I do not like looking back but this Government does; that is what it bases its policies for the future on. If we look back we find that this is exactly what the previous National Government did. One of the first things that it did when it came into power was to cut lump-sum payments for accident compensation. The first thing it did was to say that they were not affordable and we cannot do them. It said that we cannot afford to pay lump-sum payments any more. We are saying that this policy is exactly the same. I believe that this Government is thinking: “Right lump-sum payments are a little bit controversial at the moment. We got dealt to the last time we cut them. They got reinstated. Let’s take another tack.” So it is talking about cost-cutting in areas that as I have said before in the House affect people who are very vulnerable and often it is very difficult for them to mount a challenge and say that it simply is not fair. 
That is why I take my hat off to the many people who came to Parliament Buildings last week to protest. Did the Government have the guts or the gumption to front up when people came to Parliament—the heart of our democracy—to say: “We protest at this. We don’t think it’s fair.”? Did the Government front up last week when people from the biking community and victims of sexual assault were saying: “This isn’t working. You’ve got it wrong. It’s not fair.”? No it did not front up. We have heard the Government’s rhetoric that there are too many clients they are draining too much out of the system and the Government has to somehow change it. That is no different from a previous National Government saying that it had to drop lump-sum payments. It is about this Government wanting to cut some money and cutting it where it can get away with it. Lump-sum payments at the moment are not up for grabs. They were when National came into Government last time. They are a little bit under the radar this time so this Government will go somewhere else. We on this side of the Chamber are saying that that simply is not acceptable. 
The other area where we are seeing it happen is in terms of workers who are deemed able to return to work. Under the current system being work-ready was set at being able to work 35 hours. Many of us thought a 40-hour week was a standard week but 35 hours is the measure in terms of people being deemed to be ready to go back to work. But no this Government is saying not 35 hours—30 hours. I can see the Minister taking notes and I urge him to stand up to take a call on this specific point. How can the Government deem that any worker in New Zealand can survive on 30 hours’ pay a week? Do not give me the answer “Because of our wonderful tax breaks.” These people are going to get a GST rise and we all know that they are not going to get a tax break. The tax breaks when they come in will give a windfall to the people at the top. As I heard Dr Paul Hutchison say “We all pay a little; we all get heaps.” That is the policy of National in terms of its tax cuts. It is the higher-income earners in New Zealand who pay a little and get a lot. I ask the Minister to stand to his feet and tell the Committee how low-income people people who are deemed to be ready to go back to work when they can work 30 hours a week will make ends meet with their escalating GST charges and their escalating doctors’ charges. I ask the Minister to respond to that.