Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party also in support of the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. I too would like to acknowledge the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway and the previous Ministers Nikki Kaye and Michael Woodhouse for the process of getting this bill to the House and the unanimous support that we seem to have across Parliament for it.I do just need to just very briefly though take exception with the rewriting of history of the previous speaker Jacqui Dean who spoke about the significant systems improvements under National to ACC missing out the significant system breakages that happened under that Government before they saw fit to embark on improvement processes. I want to recall for that member and to put on record having heard a submission in the select committee around the funding for specialist sexual violence services. We heard from a man who was telling us how his wife was struggling to access supports after the changes that the National Government had made to the ACC sensitive claims process—how his wife committed suicide because she was unable to deal with the impacts of the abuse without help which was explicitly due to the changes that have been made by that Government. So if they choose to tell history it should be a full history. They certainly made improvements but it was after some very significant loss and damage.I would also just challenge the concept of the fully funded scheme and how they restored that. There is no evidence that we need to have a fully funded scheme. That money and the levying process to be able to pay out in concept every single person at one moment is quite a bizarre concept actually. So it was perceived I think rightly by many people at the time as an effort to undermine the system by driving up levies and undermining services to be able to have this money in the bank which is not necessarily needed.So to the content of the bill the Green Party is happy to support it. Our focus in our ACC policy is ensuring a fair system that's there for all New Zealanders with equitable and adequate rehab and compensation and that is generally the focus of this bill. It makes quite a number of changes that as have previously been mentioned were recommended by the Productivity Commission previously and cover a wide range of relatively minor issues. It is not the fundamental reform to the system to deliver better services; that will come later and the Green Party certainly looks forward to that.What it does is—as an example for people listening—it removes the requirement for ACC claimants to choose between weekly compensation and New Zealand super after receiving a year of both. It removes that requirement and that is consistent as a previous speaker mentioned with a Human Rights Review Tribunal ruling around discrimination in that area of policy. It clarifies the current transitional provisions to ensure that all claimants who are close to or above superannuation qualification age receive up to 24 months of weekly compensation if they are entitled to it so that it is not linked strictly to coming of age of entitlement for superannuation and will allow surviving spouses to receive up to five years of weekly compensation regardless of age. It also removes the requirement for another dependant to elect between weekly compensation and superannuation. So you can see that's a whole package of work around the age of entitlement as well as surviving spouses that brings the legislation to a more consistent position around our human rights commitments. It makes moves from an annual review to a biennual review of the accident compensation regulations—not exactly an earth-shattering change but probably quite a sensible bureaucratic shift. It automatically updates the maximum and minimum liable earnings to the minimum wage and labour cost index retrospectively to improve the workability of biennial levy rounds—again hardly earth-shattering but probably important for the delivery of services and the efficient work of ACC. It disestablishes the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority which hears cases under the 1972 and 1982 Acts and enables remaining cases to be heard in the District Court.I did hear the previous National speaker Shane Reti talking about the select committee possibly needing to watch that area and consider evidence on that point quite closely because of a previous backlog of appeals in the District Court. My understanding is that this is in the legislation because there are so few cases going to their appeal and that there isn't an expectation that those numbers would increase just because the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority is being disestablished. But we certainly will be listening with interest to submissions to make sure that we are getting that right. Possibly the most substantive point in this piece of legislation is extending ACC cover to spouses and partners and dependants of New Zealand employees posted overseas. So that change will mean that those partners and dependants posted with New Zealand will align with how they'd be treated had the injury occurred while they were living in New Zealand and the coverage would primarily be on their return to New Zealand because ACC doesn't usually cover treatment costs offshore. This was the case. It's returning us to what was the status quo pre-1998. My understanding is that we're not actually sure why it changed after 1998 and that there is some speculation that in fact it may have been a drafting error that led to that result. In practice it seems that ACC have been handling this area inconsistently perhaps under the belief that it was a drafting error and that the policy intent was to maintain that provision for people. So in effect this is providing legal certainly and it will be retrospective. It is unusual for the Green Party to support retrospective legislation but considering it has been inconsistently applied up to this point it seems just the fair thing to do. It's a fair question for people to ask what the costs of that might be and we're not sure but the advice is that it's likely to be a very small number of cases. As an example probably the main employer the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade can cite only 10 cases since 1998 that were denied coverage. So in all likelihood it is a quite small amount of money. Considering the fully funded nature of ACC it's not going to break the bank and it will certainly make things simpler for other Government agencies who are currently trying to provide interim cover for their dependants offshore. So in summary the Green Party is happy to support this important piece of housekeeping. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.