Moroney Sue: Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 17 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6802. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): If only the Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill did actually reflect the title that it has been given that would be great. That would be a really good start because those who have been following this debate might well imagine this bill to be the bill that will actually stop the Government from overcharging ACC levies as that Government has been doing to the tune of $350 million a year because of a decision that it made—and the decision was announced publicly; it was not even embarrassed about it. When Judith Collins was the Minister for ACC she said that the Government had set a levy that was higher than recommended by ACC in order to get to surplus. What the Government was doing was unnecessarily hiking up ACC levies to try to get the books into surplus. And guess what? It still failed. Even though it ripped off every worker and every company right across New Zealand with higher than necessary ACC levies it still failed to get to surplus. That is the record of this Government.So here we are with the Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill. Surely this is the bill that will say to the Government: “Hands off ACC levies. They’re to be used only for the outcomes of accidents and injuries not for propping up your failure to get to surplus.”? Sadly not—sadly not. What a missed opportunity. But the Labour Party can save the Government from this embarrassment because at the Committee stage—Iain Lees-Galloway: Here to help.SUE MORONEY: We are here to help and at the Committee stage we will propose an amendment that will make it absolutely clear with regard to this bill that the part of the Accident Compensation Corporation Act that requires the Minister to act in the public interest is the public interest in reducing accidents and injuries. It is not the public interest in just any old thing that the Government thinks it wants to do like propping up its failure to get to surplus. No no no—our amendment will ensure that the public interest argument can be used only in order to reduce accidents and injuries. That is how it should be if this is truly an Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill. So I am looking forward to the Government supporting this amendment because if the name of the bill is going to be fulfilled the Government will genuinely do that.I do want to put the Government on notice because at the moment there is very tenuous agreement from the Labour Party towards this bill and I will explain why in a minute. If the Government does not accept our amendment then that is very likely to change because clearly the bill is not going to deliver what it purports to deliver. Actually it is even worse than that because when people made submissions on this bill they made submissions on the basis of the bill that came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. The amendments that the Government members pursued in the select committee have once again fundamentally changed the bill that was supported by many of the submitters. I would hazard a guess that many of those submitters would not agree with the billin its amended form.Here is one submitter who I believe would not approve of this bill in its amended form: Business New Zealand. That is right—the Labour Party has found itself in the enviable position of being in agreement with Business New Zealand; or should I say that Business New Zealand has decided to agree with the Labour Party that actually ACC levies must not be used to prop up the Government’s fiscal position? That was in fact the submission from Business New Zealand. It came along to the select committee and said that it wanted a change in the bill in order to reflect that. The Labour Party is delivering exactly that change in the amendment that we will come forward with at the Committee stage because we do not believe in cheating the system in that way. ACC levies are in fact for improving and treating injuries and accidents at work on the sporting field and in the home. That is their purpose; not propping up Bill English’s failed attempt to get to surplus.The reason why we find ourselves inclined though to support this bill none the less is that actually what it does is expose the sham which was started by Nick Smith and is being continued today by Nikki Kaye of pretending that the ACC system was in deep deep trouble under the Labour Government. The part that we strongly agree with is the part that says that the system is actually doing so well that the residual levies that were put in in 1999 in order to cover the full lifetime costs of injuries and accidents—the system is going gangbusters—are likely to be able to come off much earlier than planned. That very act exposes the sham of Nick Smith’s trying to pretend that the whole system was bankrupt. That is what he tried to tell the country. It was utterly wrong and this bill proves it. Why would the residual levies be coming off much earlier than planned if that was in fact the truth? It clearly was not the truth and this bill proves it. What did the Government do at that stage? It pretended that the system was bankrupt. It hiked ACC levies way up. The National Government hiked up ACC levies and then kept them at an unnaturally and unnecessarily high level for years by its own admission in order to prop up the failure to get the Government’s books into surplus. What a rip off—what a rip off—that has been for every worker and every company in New Zealand that has been paying those ACC levies.I would be much fonder of this bill if in dealing with accident compensation financial responsibility and transparency this was the sort of bill that fixed up the shambles that Nikki Kaye has created over ACC motor vehicle levies because if it did that it would have my full support. What a shambles. It has been like watching a slow car wreck happen actually. I was going to say “train wreck” but in this instance it is a slow car wreck because before these new ACC levies with these risk ratings came in 24 models amounting to about 115000 cars had to be reclassified because she had simply got it wrong—she had simply got it wrong. The travesty is that she then went and convinced the Hon Michael Woodhouse to use exactly the same sort of risk rating process to decide what was a high-risk and a low-risk industry and wow did that work! Now we know that worm farms are more dangerous than cattle farms of course!What we find out from Nikki Kaye is that cars that have exactly the same safety specifications and are exactly the same model but that have been called a different name in Australia are actually more dangerous than each other when it comes to the New Zealand environment. Simply putting that Australian information together with the New Zealand crash data has been a complete and utter shambles. It has also resulted in thousands of New Zealand motorists being overcharged for ACC levies for their motor vehicle registration and that is continuing. Although the Minister has accepted that she made a mistake in 115000 instances—and that was on day one—still today when people raise their issues with ACC about other mistakes that it has made with other models it refuses to acknowledge them and it does not refund the ACC levies for those motor vehicle registrations. So again we have the Government overcharging thousands of New Zealanders for their ACC levies and that needs to stop. Sadly this bill will not achieve that and I look forward to debating this further at the Committee stage. I look forward to the National members actually agreeing with an amendment coming forward from the Labour Party and supported by Business New Zealand to stop the rort.