Rich Katherine: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Rich Katherine: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:20281] 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 I stand to discuss Part 2 “Miscellaneous Provisions” and the schedules that follow at the end of the bill. Here we have once again a reminder of the changes that were made to the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) driven by the ideology of this Government because one of the first things clause 52 does is to take out all references to At Work Insurance Ltd. As many listeners will recall for a short space of time there was competition in ACC. A number of organisations entered the sector in good faith and structured their businesses to provide accident insurance. Although this system was in place for a very short space of time the results coming through were very good and very favourable. 
But when this Labour Government came to power like a South American dictatorship it decided to nationalise the businesses that had been built up by these companies and not only to kick them out of the sector but also to totally monopolise the sector. So what we have in clause 52 is just one of the clauses that take out any reminder of and any reference to the previous version of accident compensation. 
What we are seeing now I think is just changes as a result of ideology—no changes for logic or for the benefit of New Zealanders but some subtle changes in wording. I would like the Minister to explain the difference between an “earner premium” and an “earner levy”. Why would she expend the time of the Committee and the time of putting together lots of paper and cutting trees to make some very small changes which really reflect changes in ideology and politics rather than anything else? 
But there is a bit of a concerning part of this bill and it is one that I had not considered until this evening. Schedule 2 and sections 118 through to 128 are sections in the principal Act that deal with disentitlement I would like the Minister to take a call to explain what the impact will be of omitting the words “is not liable to” and substituting the words “must not” in the number of sections that discuss disentitlement for accident compensation. 
For example section 118(1) states that the corporation instead of “is not liable to provide a claimant with entitlements for personal injury caused by a work-related gradual process disease or infection if”—and then it lays out a number of different sections—changes the wording to “must not”. It really changes the entire meaning of those particular sections. The wording “is not liable” sounds as if the corporation has more discretion. There might be circumstances where the corporation legally is not liable to provide support but as a result of weighing up the pros and cons and sometimes the special circumstances that often Ministers are asked to consider the corporation might be in a situation where it does provide support for a particular person just simply because of the special nature of his or her particular situation. 
Changing “is not liable” to “must not” makes it very clear that the corporation has no discretion whatsoever. I would like to hear the Minister explain the reasoning behind that because I was not on the Health Committee at the time when it was discussed and did not have the opportunity to ask officials. But it seems to me although we are looking at taking out four words and putting in two words it does change those particular sections dramatically.