Bennett David: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and  Compensation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Bennett David: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and  Compensation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:637;Page:7521] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 I appreciate the call on the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill that is before us. In looking at what the Labour Party has been saying I believe there is a fundamental difference in society and especially in business that its members just do not understand. There is a difference between being an employer and being self-employed. Employers generally have commitments to their employees that they have to maintain. They have to provide a safe environment in which people can work and they are generally audited to make sure they comply with those regulations whereas self-employed people are generally people who are starting out and taking a few risks. They will go out there and do what they have to do in order to get their product or their job completed. They will take risks that employers just cannot afford to take because of their responsibility to other people. That is a concept we would not expect Labour Party members to understand. 
They cannot understand it because they have never been in that position whereas a lot of people on this side of the House have been there and done that. They know what it is like to go out and milk cows or do whatever they have to do to get by to get going and to make a business successful. They know what it feels like to take the risk of doing the extra work they would not ask employees to do because they know they have to save some money to make their business successful. That is the fundamental difference we have in relation to this legislation and that is why we have a difference in the way those two business entities have been treated. 
This legislation seeks to change that. It seeks to put everyone together in a great universal pot which I guess is the collective socialism one would expect from the far left. Those members think that if those two ingredients are put together things will be equal and that the great ideals of a society based on equality will come about by treating everyone the same. Well it does not work that way. People are different and businesses are different; they deserve to be treated differently. 
We see a number of things in this legislation. The first is the difference between employers and the self-employed. The second has to do with the reserves employers have built up which equate to about $511 million. That is money employers have paid into an account they did not need to pay into because the account is being merged with another account that has only $115 million in it. Effectively over a number of years employers have been paying excessive levies and the Government has decided that it will put that money into one big pot worth about $700 million. I do not know why the Government has such resources there—perhaps it wants to raid them in a year’s time for its election spending. The real reason it should have the account there is so that it can give the money back to the employers who have actually paid into it. The Government should not take money off the employers and put it into some great merged account that it thinks will achieve its goals of equality. The employers have paid in that money and they deserve to get it back. 
The Government is talking about some kind of scheme—a 2-year window of opportunity—where it will rebate some of its new levies for employers. That will account for about $105 million of that $500 million. That may seem fine but the reality is that Labour is doing that just for show. It is just keeping the employer levy down for 2 years. Why would it want to do that? The reason is that when the two accounts are merged the employer levy will have to go up. So if Labour uses the $105 million to keep the levy down employers will not notice the change for the next 2 years. But once that rebate has come off employers will see their levies go through the roof. That is the real reason Labour is doing what it is doing with that levy rebate. 
Labour should be giving the whole sum of money back to the employers and it should be treating employers and the self-employed differently. Members may ask what that actually means. Well the ministry has told us that there could be an increase of up to 25 percent in relation to the levy of the previous year. Can members imagine running a business and increasing the price of their product by 25 percent in one year? At the end of that year there would not be a business. But it is all right for the Government to do that to employers. It is expected that 8 percent of employers will get a levy rate increase of between 5 and 45 percent—that is up to 45 percent more in levies than exists under the current regime. Members should imagine businesses getting a 45 percent increase in their levies. That is not exactly the kind of thing people should be doing to New Zealand business if they want to transform the economy grow the economy or—more likely now—just sustain it. 
Let us look at some of these numbers. For employer classification levies in 2007-08 we are at present looking at levies of about $2.43 for lobster fishing—basically for ocean and coastal fishing. Under this new scheme without the employer rebate it will mean that in 2 years’ time the figure will be $4.31. So the levies will go from $2.43 to $4.31 for the fishing industries. Those industries are really struggling under a high export dollar but these guys in the Government are going to give them another kick in the guts through their employer levies under the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) scheme. 
I turn to meat inspection services. The figure will go from $1.26 to $2.02. I say to Mark Gosche that we have read the legislation and we have read the numbers and the Government cannot do that to another industry that is really struggling in New Zealand. I take another example the timber industry where the levies will rise from $1.13 to $2.74—a huge increase for an industry like that one. 
Members should look at other industries that they would not expect to have such big increases such as sport. That will be good for Trevor Mallard will it not? Let us look at what the Government is going to do there. The levies in equestrian sports will go from $4.83 to $5.65. Labour should be encouraging people into sports in New Zealand. Rugby league levies will go from 75c to $1.01. Effectively levies in the sports area will increase by about 17 percent. 
This Government prides itself on culture does it not—a Government that has an interest in the cultural affairs of this country? What has it done there? The levies will increase from 24c to 36c—a big increase on a percentage basis. This Government does not really care about our youth—it does not care about getting them into sport—it does not care about cultural interests; it is just prepared to do whatever it has to do in order to get more money. This is another tax-and-grab from this Labour Government. 
There will also be an effect on self-employed people; some of them will have from 20 to 50 percent increases. The police and those in stevedoring plastic products and chemical products will have increases at large rates as well. 
This bill was intended as a means of putting together two pieces of the ACC components that should always have been separate. They represent different ways of doing business. They represent the different structures of New Zealand business. Yet the Government has put them together in a process it believes will create equality and fairness. Well it will not create equality and fairness; all it will do is make employers pay through the nose for the self-employed. It is a farcical attempt by this Government to push through something without any consultation. 
In the select committee we were very surprised to see such legislation being proposed without there being time for genuine consultation. The reason there are not many submissions on this legislation is that people simply were not given time to make submissions. It was within about a 6-month period that people became aware of the changes and those changes were forced upon them this year. That is simply not good governance for business. It shows that this Government has no idea of how businesses plan ahead. It shows how this Government is prepared to make its changes just willy-nilly as it desires without having any knowledge of the consequences or the approaches to take. 
New Zealand business deserves more. New Zealand culture deserves more. New Zealand sports deserve more. But what will we get? We will get a regime that lumps it all together for the sake of this Government. There is a sum of $500 million that has been stolen off employers. It is time for the Government to give the money back to them and show that it really cares about transforming this economy.