SpeechMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker and a pleasure to take a call in this second reading. With the ACC legislation being introduced 50 years ago it is very clear that the existing legislation was due for an overhaul and that is what this bill is actually doing. We have heard mention of issues of gender balance fairness and equity in the ACC scheme. That brings me to the story that we heard during our submission process of a couple where one of them slipped in the pub and had an injury that was similar to the one that his wife sustained during childbirth except one of them was covered—the one from the man—and the one from the woman wasn't covered. So it's obvious that birth injuries as they're currently not covered in the legislation were a very important place to start the work.It is really important to put up front that this bill is intended as the Minister said previously as well to cover all maternal birth injuries that can be caused by childbirth. I want to thank the Minister the Hon Carmel Sepuloni for bringing this bill to the House. We are really grateful for that. It is a first of its kind and once this bill is passed 28000 women will benefit from this improved legislation. That is 10000 more than initially expected. I want to also thank the officials and advisers for their work on this and my colleagues from the Education and Workforce Committee for working so collaboratively on this bill. I join the previous speaker the Hon Michael Woodhouse in also commending a special mention of our wonderful colleague Sarah Pallett. She subbed in to our committee on many meetings and took the opportunity to share her extensive knowledge and expertise on this particular issue and the bill is better for it. Thirdly but not lastly I would like to thank every submitter on this bill; they bravely shared their personal stories and their contributions were extremely valuable in informing our consideration. The feedback actually resulted in amendments being made with regard to the injuries covered.Now the previous two speakers the Hon Carmel Sepuloni and the Hon Michael Woodhouse already mentioned the review clause so I won't go further into that. But I want to talk a little bit more about an addition that our select committee made in the process which is that we also opened a briefing into the accident compensation scheme cover for maternal birth injuries. What we put in our select committee report is that we hope to see this briefing reinstated in the 54th Parliament by the Education and Workforce Committee. It means that in addition to the review clause this briefing will then give an opportunity to review how the bill is working in practice. If it turns out that there are obvious injuries missing then through the briefing injuries could be added to the schedule rather than awaiting the three-year review period.Our committee heard very many notable institutions and organisations—I won't mention them all but it was from drawing on their mahi and all of the personal stories from the submitters that the committee recommended a number of additional birth injuries for inclusion in this bill. That is exactly what this process was supposed to do and because of that process we are here at second reading discussing a more comprehensive and better bill. I commend it to the House. Thank you Madam Speaker.