Hernandez Francisco; O'Connor GregFRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to oppose the Accident Compensation (Interest on Instalment Plans) Amendment Bill. I just want to acknowledge first of all that this bill isn't the worst thing in the world. I think out of all the bills that the Government has proposed this is probably one of the most benign ones and it's something that the Greens would have come on board to support if it weren't for the two aspects that we found quite problematic which previous Green speakers have already spoken at length about. This bill is relatively benign in comparison to some of the other bills that the Government has done. For example they've defunded the climate emergency they've cut public servants and they've taken away first-home grants. But this bill is actually from a public service perspective fairly good.I acknowledge the past Green speakers Kahurangi Carter Scott Willis and Lawrence Xu-Nan who've shared their personal anecdotes about ACC—Kahurangi and her family Scott and his finger and Lawrence who's done a great job speaking on this bill and holding the Government to account. Unfortunately I'm a gamer so I haven't had a chance to have many accidents but I have worked at ACC before so that's kind of the experience that I bring to this as a portfolio adviser.So just two unique features of ACC—and this bill intends to safeguard aspects of it. One of them is that ACC has a no-fault system and the other is ACC is self-funding. Now this bill is intended to retroactively validate the collection of fines and the interest rates that were charged on them which makes perfect sense right? Because there's actually a real commercial benefit to businesses being able to defer payments. So that's a very sensible aspect of the bill and one that the Greens would probably have supported if it weren't for the kind of processes and the urgency that surrounded this and also the retrospective validation clause which is not inherently problematic—but when you add to the cause of the urgency.We do want to see the definition of ACC coverage progressively expand. We've heard during the debates friendly jostling between the Opposition benches between comrades in Labour and the Greens about who was responsible for expanding it to cover birthing injuries—I think it's both of us. But we do want to see it go further and faster. We do want to see it transformed into the agency of comprehensive care.In terms of the actual urgency process it did skip the select committee process which we do find problematic. We did ask questions throughout the whole process and there's still a number of unanswered questions which I'll go through when I describe how the urgency process went. That was a very interesting process. I'm not sure whether it's still actually 30 May or whether we've skipped and it's now 26 June again.In the clause 1 debate my colleague Lawrence asked whether businesses would have confidence around retrospectivity. Minister for ACC Matt Doocey did address it but in my view he didn't provide quite a fulsome answer. My colleague Scott Willis also brought up an excellent point about the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee. We know that there's been no consultation around it but we do wonder whether there's been a chance to consult since then because it's been nearly a month since the bill went through the initial stages.Around clause 2 my colleague Lawrence Xu-Nan asked about why the legislation was here when the ministry had known since last year—I believe 1 April was the date—and why it was being done under urgency when none of it is necessarily time relevant. I think the Minister did give quite a fulsome answer and comprehensively answer the questions.Around clause 3 unfortunately no Green MP managed to get calls on it. But you know I think it does speak to the point that I raised earlier that there are questions that haven't been asked and questions that haven't been answered because they haven't been asked around it. Because I was here for basically all of the committee of the whole House and I think Green MPs were very active in standing up to try and take calls but not all of us were able to get calls unfortunately.Around clause 4 my colleague Lawrence asked about new section 234(1A) and (1B). Again the Minister did give quite fulsome answers on that. Around clause 5 I did manage to ask a question around new section 329(1)(hb)(ii): the circumstances in which the payment of the whole or any part … may be remitted or waived:" when I asked for a breakdown of the 30000 that the regulatory impact statement had addressed. The Minister did address this question and I do thank the Minister for being so fulsome in answering these questions. Thank you.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Just before I take the next call you will note I didn't call the five-minute call for Te Pāti Māori. That five-minute call will now go to the end on the assumption that they may or may not be here by the end of this reading."