Rich Katherine: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading 
Rich Katherine: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:20334] 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 The National Party will be voting for the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3). We are supporting it for a number of reasons. For a long time we have agreed that the definitions of “medical mishap” and “medical error” have been unsatisfactory. They have caused undue anxiety for those people who have had those sorts of injuries and who have had to go through some overly burdensome processes to try to prove fault before they received the same cover as other New Zealanders who had more straightforward injuries. Many members in the House today will have in mind a number of constituents who have fought those sorts of administrative battles. 
The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) has pretty much been hamstrung by the legislation and has been unable to have any discretion to deal with those sorts of cases. Unlike every other type of accident those that have been caused as a result of treatment have had to be fault-determined before cover was given. So it was not like falling off a ladder or being involved in a car accident where it is quite clear what the accident has been. Fault is not an issue there but if a doctor makes a wrong diagnosis if the treatment was the wrong treatment or was delayed or if something went wrong during surgery then New Zealanders who were in that unfortunate situation had to jump through a greater number of hoops before they were able to have the same cover as others who had suffered more clear-cut injuries. So we agree with the removal of faultfinding because if one is to provide a fair system for all New Zealanders one has to have them all facing the same circumstances. 
We do agree that there should be a fair method of providing accident insurance in this country. We believe that there should be a stable opportunity for people to have accident insurance and we believe that it should be equitable and also cost-effective. But where we do disagree with Labour is in the area of choice. We do not think that the State should be the only entity to provide accident cover. We do not believe that the State is the only organisation that is able to become involved in this area of insurance. The State does not need to have a monopoly. It does not have a monopoly on the provision of home and contents insurance house insurance or life insurance. Accident insurance is no different from other things that happen in our lives that we want to insure against. 
So we need a system where there is stable cover for accidents that happen in the workplace or indeed outside the workplace but we believe that there is an opportunity for other organisations to provide that level of cover so that New Zealanders are able to be compensated in the event that they suffer a work injury or some other kind of injury. Who says that the State is the only entity that is in a position to be able to provide that cover? We need to remember that Labour when it first came into power undid a lot of the good reforms in accident compensation in the late 1990s. Many many businesses came into New Zealand and invested in the accident insurance area in good faith. People set up their businesses and established relationships with their client employers and were quite a long way down the track towards establishing good rehabilitation programmes for those New Zealanders who had faced workplace accidents during the time of their cover. What Labour did was to bowl into that market and say: “You can’t provide this service any more. We are going to take over your business. We are going to kick you out of the business.” Like a South American dictatorship it decided it would nationalise that part of the insurance sector. 
So there was no fairness. Businesses had entered the market in good faith. The premiums were coming down and the rehabilitation rates were going up and although the competitive situation had been in place for only a small number of months—I think it was 8 or 9—the indications were very good. The indications and the results even though they were in the very initial stages were proving to be very positive. But no the Labour Government said that that had to be totally undone and those organisations that had entered the market in good faith found they had to exit. In terms of nationalising businesses it was just the same as the sorts of decisions we would see in a very unstable economy where Governments go in and out of markets at whim. 
There are some quite reasonable changes in the bill. I think that it will be interesting to see how this legislation will be interpreted by the courts. There are still some concerns that the State may end up being responsible for a wide range of injuries that were not intended to be covered in the first instance. We still have a concern that as a result of delays on hospital waiting lists resulting in treatment being delayed and thus not available to people in a timely manner those people might not be able to call on accident compensation. Although the costings that have been done are very preliminary—I understand that the Department of Labour has looked at the costings and estimates that the changes being made will cost the State about $8.6 million—we on this side of the House believe that the Government’s evaluations are on the light side because we do think that there may be some unintended consequences. 
But it is important to support this bill because it does go some way towards making it a bit easier for those New Zealanders who are caught with injuries as a result of medical intervention or indeed a lack of medical intervention. So I think that for those people who face injuries from this point onwards this bill will be a good thing in terms of providing cover where New Zealanders face injuries that are not necessarily as clear-cut as some other injuries. I can think of a couple of examples from my own town particularly as a result of treatment in accident and emergency situations. We know that those are high pressure situations. Sometimes split-second decisions need to be made and junior doctors do not necessarily consult all the time—although they should—with their seniors. There have been cases where decisions have resulted in injuries and conditions that have disallowed New Zealanders from continuing to work. Those people and their families have gone on to face very difficult battles with ACC to get cover even when it is very clear that as a result of their injuries those New Zealanders are not able to work at the level at which they could prior to the treatment injury. 
So this bill puts on a more level playing field all accidents that people face within New Zealand. It puts on a level playing field the treatment of all New Zealanders so that regardless of the sort of injury they might face there will be no fault their cover will be immediate once it is determined that an injury has taken place and they will not be caught in the middle of these ongoing administrative battles that cause huge amounts of anxiety for many people and their families. 
Time will tell how the courts will interpret this law. We know that ACC spends a lot of time in court for good reasons and bad. But at this stage we think the changes that have been made so that New Zealanders who face treatment injuries—as opposed to the old definitions of “medical misadventure” and “medical mishap”—will receive fair treatment from ACC when they front up for cover.