Moroney Sue: Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6946. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): If only the last sentence that the Minister for ACC spoke was the true aim of this bill we would be absolutely applauding it. As it happens the Labour Party is supporting this bill but we know that it could have been so much better. What an opportunity lost—what an opportunity lost to actually get the confidence of the New Zealand public and of all of those levy payers who have clearly been overcharged ACC levies for several years now under that Government. That is the confidence that needed to be reinstated through the third reading of this bill and sadly the Government has not achieved that.The Labour Party does support this bill because for three decades—for 30 years—the Labour Party has fought for a robust sustainable accident compensation system. Through all those years where the National Party has wanted to privatise it and dumb it down to being a private insurance model through all of the twists and turns it has been the Labour Party that has absolutely consistently stood up for the principle of having a sustainable collective socially responsible model of ACC.Why is that? It is because it is the Labour Party that understands how vulnerable people are when they are hurt—when they have an injury or an accident—and how their life changes. Whether that accident happened in the workplace whether it happened on a sports field or whether it happened in their own home it changes people’s lives. It changes people’s lives in a way where they need the support of their community more than ever. They need the support of their community more than ever when that happens because they need the ability to be able to live their day-to-day lives. They need to be able to pay their bills on a day-to-day basis even though they cannot work. They need to be able to be rehabilitated and to continue to participate in community life. These are the reasons why the Labour Party has fought for a robust ACC model.Therefore we are disappointed about how flimsy this attempt is to make ACC truly financially responsible and transparent because if the title of the bill had been adhered to and that Government was really interested in fairer levies as the Minister just said before she resumed her seat it would have voted for an amendment that I put forward in the Committee stage just yesterday. That amendment was designed to ensure that the National Government could not continue to use ACC levies as a means to try to get its books back into surplus—because that is what it has done not because I have accused it of that but because Judith Collins when she was the Minister for ACC admitted to it.Todd Barclay: Ha ha!SUE MORONEY: Well she did Todd Barclay. You should read her press statement. Judith Collins 2013—Hon Member: She was refreshingly honest about it.SUE MORONEY: She was transparent about it actually. What she said was that she had rejected ACC’s recommendation for lower ACC levies because her Government needed to “get to surplus”.Todd Barclay: Is that a quote?SUE MORONEY: That is a quote: “get to surplus.” And because the Government could not do it by fair means it decided to try to do it by foul means. The foul means were jacking up—every worker and every business in New Zealand—their ACC levies to higher levies than what they needed to be. My amendment would have stopped that practice and it was very telling that the National Government without any explanation without any justification stood up and voted against it. What does that tell us Todd Barclay? It tells us it still wants the ability to actually jack up and hike up ACC levies to a higher level than is needed to pay for the outcomes of injuries and accidents—that is what it tells us. There could be no other explanation of why the Government voted against that amendment.The other important thing about this bill and its passing—and it will pass with the Labour Party’s support—is that it absolutely proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Nick Smith and the National Government manufactured a crisis in ACC. They manufactured a funding crisis in ACC. When National took the Government benches in 2008-09 it said: “It’s broke! It can’t be fixed.” It cried: “It’s insolvent! It’s bankrupt!” and yet here we are just a few years later and suddenly the Government is able to remove the residual levy 2 years earlier than what was forecast. Why is that?Hon Members: It’s called good management.SUE MORONEY: The reason is that there has been good management over the years. By the Government’s assertion it believes that ACC has been bankrupt since 1999. That is its analysis. In 1999 the plan was that ACC would be fully funded by 2019.The Government asserted that because it was not fully funded in 2009—10 years early—it was somehow bankrupt it was somehow insolvent. Either those members do not know how to count and they do not know how to do fiscal management and they do not understand it or they were misleading New Zealand. I am going to be kind to the National Party and say it was the latter not the former. I am going to say it was the latter that they were misleading the public not that they cannot count. So I am being kind to the National Party on that basis but I am often generous towards the National Party in that way.It is good that the residual levies are coming off earlier than the projections that had been planned way back in 1999 but what that does mean is that successive Governments have managed ACC in a way where that could be achieved. That is not something that has happened in the last few years; that is something that has happened and that has been worked towards since 1999 and anyone who understands the history of ACC will know that that is a correct statement. In removing the residual levy here is what is going to happen next: some businesses will be winners and some will be losers. The ones that will be the winners are the ones that have improved their health and safety outcomes since 1999.Todd Barclay: That’s the intention.SUE MORONEY: And that is a good thing—yes that is a good thing. The ones that will be the losers are the ones whose records have worsened since that time and that is perhaps also a good thing.But we have seen the National Government have a go at this twice in recent weeks and it has made an absolute shambles of it. In both instances I think Nikki Kaye the current Minister has had her hand in there. So when is it recently that we have seen the National Government try to determine risk and what that looks like? The first example we saw was when Nikki Kaye decided to change the way that ACC levies were handed out with regard to motor vehicle registration. She decided to change it so that it was now going to be on the safety rating of the car and how did that go? Well within the first week of it being implemented 115000 cars had to be reclassified because she got it wrong—she got it wrong.That is the story so far but what I can tell the House is that that is just the tip of the iceberg because every week a new car is being discovered a new model that the Government has got wrong. But instead of actually refunding people and owning up to the mistake and saying it got it wrong the Government is now saying to people: “Go away. You are going to have to use the ACC consultation process to address that.”—even though it has got it wrong. So it has got cars that are exactly the same model—exactly the same model—but that have been badged differently in different countries Australia and New Zealand being assessed as being more dangerous or less dangerous than each other.It is a complete shambles. But it is the same mistake the Government made when it decided that worm farms were more dangerous than cattle farms. It is the same technique that it used with workplace health and safety. That was a shambles. The ACC motor vehicle registration has been a shambles and I truly hope for all the workers and employers in this country that the same shambles is not visited on the removal of the residual levy and what that will mean for establishing the risk ratings of all of those companies.The Labour Party is pleased to be able to support this bill. We had hoped that it would be an awful lot stronger and that it would have brought about true transparency but this will do for now.