Kedgley Sue: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:20170] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 In general the Green Party like most other parties in the House supports the intention of this legislation to remove fault from the accident compensation medical misadventure provisions to simplify the scheme to make it more efficient and to move away from the punitive system that operated in the past of finding fault when reporting medical misadventure decisions. 
In the past trying to prove medical misadventure often put people through a lengthy stressful process of having to prove that the medical profession was at fault or that what had happened was rare severe and had happened in no more than 1 percent of cases. We always felt that those were extremely arbitrary criteria that were completely unfair. They resulted in very long delays for individuals who were trying to get help at a time when many of them may have been suffering significantly from incapacity and pain caused by the injury. That seemed extremely unfair. I know that it certainly put off hundreds of people—and probably thousands of people—from lodging medical misadventure claims and that it created all sorts of tensions. It created a situation whereby doctors saw every claim as a potential threat to their professional practice and that was very unfortunate. So we do congratulate the Minister on bringing about these long-needed changes to the way that the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) deals with medical misadventure. Now when an injury results from medical treatment or medical misadventure people will be treated in the same way as they are for other injuries and we welcome that very much. It will establish a new category for personal injury caused by treatment. 
But like the speaker from New Zealand First we are concerned that the legislation will exclude from personal injury those matters that are solely attributable to resource allocation decisions. We believe that the failure to treat a person for whatever reason should be considered to be a treatment injury and should be covered by ACC. We think it is unfair and inequitable that someone who develops an injury because he or she has not been treated properly by a medical professional is covered by this bill whereas someone who becomes ill because his or her treatment is delayed as a result of resource shortages will not be covered by the bill and will therefore be excluded from compensation under the principal Act. To give just one example of what that could mean a patient who developed a cancer because of treatment delays caused by the failure to diagnose a primary cancer would be covered by the bill soon to become legislation. However a patient who developed a cancer because appropriate treatment was unavailable due for example to a shortage of radiation therapists would not. That does seem to us to be unfair so we will be proposing an amendment to allow an injury caused by the failure to treat a person for whatever reason to be considered a treatment injury. We hope that amendment will receive support in the House. 
As the representative from ACT said there was a lot of concern about acupuncturists in terms of this bill. We continue to believe that it is inappropriate to amend the definition of acupuncturist in a bill that is about accident compensation. We strongly support acupuncturists having one scope of practice and coming under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. We are worried that the amendment to the definition of acupuncture in this bill will undermine progress in that regard and that the changed definition could effectively create two scopes of practice for acupuncturists and is therefore contrary to the spirit of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. But the Minister seems to be assuring me that our concerns will be allayed and we are absolutely delighted to hear that. 
All of us on the Health Committee were incredulous at the degree of antagonism between the different groups of acupuncturists. We could not understand why the different segments of the acupuncture profession could not work together resolve their differences and put acupuncture under one particular scope of practice and under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. Given that acupuncturists as a profession have been trying to get statutory regulation for over a decade we were deeply disappointed that our amendment to allow acupuncture to be put under the scope of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act was turned down in this House. I think it was only New Zealand First that supported that amendment. 
Hon Annette King 
: They weren’t agreed though. That was the problem. 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: The Minister of Health is saying that the concern at the time—a concern of all of us—was the lack of consensus within the profession. We are absolutely delighted if the Minister is assuring us—and maybe she will just confirm this later on—that there is now agreement within the profession to have one scope of practice and to be brought under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. 
I want to correct for the record a statement in the Green Party’s minority report on the bill. We stated in our minority report that we were “… concerned that the New Zealand Acupuncture Standards Authority offers only a local diploma not one that is national in scope.” We were genuinely confused about that—as in fact most of the committee was because the whole thing became thoroughly confusing. We acknowledge that the New Zealand Acupuncture Standards Authority is just an authority and that the Auckland University of Technology offers the course and administers it even if the personnel involved in both bodies are I think more or less the same. 
We had considered proposing a further amendment because we were so concerned about ensuring there would be one scope of practice for acupuncture and that there would not be in effect two scopes of practice because of this bill. However because of the assurance of the Minister we will no longer seek to make an amendment to that effect. Instead we say how pleased we are that we have finally reached this resolution—and I am sure the whole select committee is because the issue took up a huge amount of time and I think all of us were sick of it and could not comprehend why the two different groups could not sit down and reach a resolution. It is good news that a resolution has been reached. 
Finally we are concerned that an amendment to clause 52(2) of schedule 1 of the principal Act would mean that anyone who has suffered a gradual process injury before April 2002 would not be entitled to lump-sum compensation no matter how clear-cut or apparently justified his or her claim was. Given that gradual process injuries normally have a long period of latency we believe that it is totally unfair to set an arbitrary cut-off date before which such injuries will not be covered and we will seek to make an amendment to that when the bill comes before the Committee of the whole House. 
Other than that we are very pleased with the bill. We think it is a great step forward. It will simplify things and remove some of the climate of fear whereby doctors were always worried that a medical misadventure claim would be brought against them. It is a very stressful business to try to prove over long periods of time that something was a medical injury that happened only to less than 1 percent of cases. All of that was frankly foolish and we are delighted that this bill will change that. We are very pleased to support the bill.