Rich Katherine: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Rich Katherine: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:625;Page:20263] 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 The National Party has indicated that it will be very supportive during the Committee stage but looking at the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has provided for this process we continue to have a number of questions about this legislation. 
Part 1 basically involves substantive amendments to the principal Act. The first question that the National Party has is why has the Minister gone to the trouble of putting a Supplementary Order Paper out when changing clause 3 “Interpretation” is basically rewriting section 6(1) of the principal Act and restating a lot of the original information that was already in the legislation? If one looks at it the two clauses are more or less identical word for word. I would like the Minister to take a call and explain why there is basically no substantive difference but Parliament has gone to the trouble and additional cost of introducing more paper into this process when in fact it may not be necessary. 
We also have a suggestion when it comes to clause 6 in which new section 19 “Key terms in this Part” is substituted. We think it is better to clarify that in this part of the bill we are talking about the principal Act. Although it is stated under new section 19 we believe that under the heading “Key terms in this Part” when the bill refers to changes to sections 25 and 27 it should be clarified that those are of course sections in the original Act and are not part of this bill. 
But probably more interesting to listeners in the discussion on Part 1 and I suppose it comes back to one of the aims of this bill is the provision to redefine medical misadventure and medical mishap and to start to talk about treatment injuries. One of the problems that many New Zealanders had if they had a wrong diagnosis or some kind of treatment went wrong is that they had to prove fault on behalf of the medic and go through quite an extensive process before they were able to get accident compensation. 
This bill brings medical misadventure and personal injury caused by medical mishap in line with other injuries such as falling off a ladder and other basic injuries that New Zealanders might face so that they do not have to prove fault before they can get that sort of cover. But if one looks at the definition of treatment it can be the giving of treatment the diagnosis of a person’s medical condition or a decision on the treatment to be provided including a decision not to provide treatment. I would like the Minister to take a call to explain to us whether in the decision on treatment or lack of treatment we are talking about the medics or in fact the individual. We have had some high profile cases in the past where some individuals have opted not to have treatment in certain circumstances and that has led to a deterioration of their condition. So I am unsure whether it is the doctor making that decision or in fact if an individual takes that decision whether he or she would still be covered. 
Clause 33(1)(d) states that a treatment injury can be the result of “a failure to provide treatment or to provide treatment in a timely manner:”. I would like the Minister to explain what happens to a New Zealander who has been on a waiting list for cancer treatment or any other kind of treatment and while that person has been waiting on a hospital waiting list there has been a deterioration in his or her condition whether we will see the State further in the gun for keeping people on waiting lists when that person’s condition can deteriorate. I do not believe that significant costings have been done on this bill. The Minister might like to take a call to talk about what costings have been done. If one looks at clause 33(1)(d) “failure to provide treatment or to provide treatment in a timely manner:” the State might run into real difficulty if in fact the waiting lists are not addressed. I suppose the Government is on notice to try to make huge improvements there.