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): I want to return to the clause of the bill clause 7 that I was referring to when the Minister for ACC took a call before. What I was talking about was the fact that industries will end up with ACC levies being set on their differentiated rate rather than a residual levy once Part 2 comes into effect. What I hope is that when this happens we will not see a repeat of some of the problems that this Government has exhibited when it has tried to get out of a situation by deciding which workplaces are safer than others—which industries are safer than others and which carry less risk. I really hope that we do not see that shambles reoccur as a result of the residual levy being removed.Under new section 336A inserted by clause 7 what it specifically allows for is that the effective date of the removal of the residual levy for the work account can in fact mean the earlier of either “(a) 1 April 2019; and (b) a date appointed by the Minister by notice.” It seems today that the Minister for ACC indicated that it is going to be subsection (b) of that section 336A that she is going to invoke and that she is going to propose after a consultation process on a date next year that is yet to be determined—that is when the residual levy will be removed. So the impact of that sounds like it is going to be that everyone is going to get a reduction in their levy but that is not the case.Under the work account scenario it does track back to 1999 when the residual levy was set at that point. It was set in order to make sure that the injuries and accidents that had been incurred as of that date would be fully funded. The way that this Parliament chose to do it then was to put a residual levy on. The residual levy was placed on those industries based on what their accident and injury record was at the time. What we know is that for a whole lot of those businesses particularly the ones in the Accredited Employers Programme that has had a measure of success and part of the measure of that success has been that the historic injury and accident rate has reduced. That is good news but unfortunately because the residual levy has been in place for those companies they have not necessarily seen the full impact of the reduction in injuries and accidents in their workplaces because the residual levy has kept it I guess at that 1999 level until we got to full funding.So it is a measure of success but I put it to this Committee that it is a measure of success—and I think Nick Smith actually backed this up when he was speaking before—over a 30-year period not a 7-year period and not even a 10-year period. It is a measure of success over a 30-year period that this ACC system is so successful—that the model is such a fantastic model. And yes it is a Kiwi-owned and operated model owned by the State. It belongs to the people. It is doing so well that the residual levy can be reduced earlier and that is not because of what one Government has done; it is because we have set up a fully sustainable model over a period of time.And that is why I started my earlier contribution by saying that Part 2 exposes how badly that Government and Nick Smith in particular tried to mislead the New Zealand public when he was Minister for ACC over what was going on with the solvency of ACC. Clearly Part 2 shows that that was all a sham.