Hutchison Paul: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Hutchison Paul: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:16939] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I am very pleased to be able to speak to Part 1 of the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) because this is a very important bill and it is worthy of an extensive debate. I must say I was very concerned when I heard Minister Street claim the National Party has never understood accident compensation because after all it was the National Party that legislated for the visionary accident compensation legislation in the 1970s. What we do not agree with is the “foot in mouth head in the clouds” dose of unreality that afflicts the modern-day Labour Government and I must say that it is a very very dismal disease that is afflicting the modern-day Labour Government. 
I was interested to hear Minister Street discuss the question of the train driver and the very worrying and concerning submission he gave to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I was not there but I certainly heard about it. Yes it is right and proper that the train driver was covered after that awful incident. But the anomaly and the inconsistency is in the fact that if a mother with her child in a pram was at that same train crossing and she was not employed outside the home she would not be covered even though she had witnessed a scene just as horrific as the one witnessed by the train driver. That is why National is saying that once again we are seeing the inconsistency and inequity of the Labour Government. 
It took Maryan Street something like 10 minutes of verbiage including greeting the pupils from—is it Prebbleton School? Greetings to them as well. We like the blue they are wearing; it is great to see. After that 10 minutes of unmitigated verbiage she had the gall to say once again that National did not understand the scheme. Then she went on to say that National makes play of the range of costs. Well so we should. It is a great pity that this Labour Government which has caused New Zealand to fall two places in the OECD rankings so that we in are the lowest quarter does not take notice of this enormous range of costs which varies by 1000 percent. What business anywhere in the world could run successfully on those sorts of estimations? Yet this is the sort of legislation that this Labour Government is trying to bring in. 
One of the submissions I was particularly impressed by was that of New Zealand Steel which is a major New Zealand employer. It employs something like 1200 people locally in the excellent constituency of Port Waikato which I am very proud to represent. The average wage is $90000 and it is regarded as a very good employer by its local workers not to mention the 4000 to 5000 workers around the country. What New Zealand Steel says relating to clauses 5 to 9 which deal with cover for work-related mental injury is worth noting. It says: “The proposal offers an increased level of cover but to only one group of levy payers—those funded by employers. This creates further inconsistency in the recognition of a condition suffered by an individual. If an individual suffers mental injury from witnessing a traumatic event whilst in the course of their employment they will be covered. However if another individual witnesses the same event but are not in paid employment or are not at work at the time they will not be covered.” 
New Zealand Steel is a very realistic employer. It is regarded with great esteem by its workers because of the fairness with which it employs them.