Gosche Mark: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Gosche Mark: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:637;Page:7786] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 The bill we are about to pass through its third reading the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill came to the select committee that I chair the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and I was interested to note some of the strange comments from National speakers last night about the process the select committee used. We had a very limited time—which had been voted on by this House; it was not decided upon by the committee—that meant we were not in a position obviously to open the bill up to the normal public process of submissions. So we chose a very broad range of representative groups of employers unions and other interests to make submissions. They did so very well and they came forward with some interesting views on the matter. It is interesting to note that all of the National members on the select committee agreed with that process; there is no record of National members voting against it. Yet they came into the Chamber and took cheap shots at the select committee chair—myself—last night for a process they had agreed to unanimously. That paints the picture of the standard of Opposition we have—purely sitting there not looking at the realities— 
Peter Brown 
: Pansy Wong was one of them wasn’t she? 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: I think Pansy Wong was one of them but I am not sure because they change spokespersons so regularly over on those benches that it is very hard to keep up with who is the spokesperson on accident compensation this week and who will be the spokesperson next week. 
But the fact of the matter is that the members of that party over there were in agreement with the process and they never raised a single vote against it in that committee. That actually illustrates that they approach their job as an Opposition from a fairly lazy viewpoint. I say that they have a fixed position on these matters; logic and rational argument does not actually count with them. That is why not one of them is able to explain why they want to vote against this bill and punish self-employed people. That is supposed to be the party of entrepreneurial spirit the party of capitalism and the party that supports self-employed people who quite often go on to form companies and run larger businesses. But many many people in business in New Zealand start out being self-employed. It is the first step. 
Peter Brown 
: I was one of them. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Peter Brown indicates that it was his first step into business before he went on to greater things. And that is the case for so many New Zealanders. Why has the National Party turned its back on them? After making the mistake it did back in 1998 or 1999—or whenever it was that it hocked off the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) to its mates in the private insurance industry—why does National want to repeat that mistake 15 or 16 years on and show that it has not learnt anything? In fact National is prepared to say to hard-working self-employed people out there that they are on their own as they were when it hocked off ACC last time and set up the separate account. The account is not there for a good reason and the evidence that was presented to the committee in relation to the bill showed that. 
The reason there was a difference between the self-employed work account and the employers’ account was predominantly that the self-employed work in high-risk industries. That is the reason. It is not because of any other reason; it is because self-employed people were in industries like fisheries farming and forestry when they happened to set up as self-employed persons. The risk for those people is the same and we illustrated that last night when Dr Paul Hutchison—strangely—chose professional rugby league players or rugby union players as an example. He tried to argue that if professional rugby league players running out on to Mount Smart Stadium for the Warriors had set up their business affairs and turned themselves into companies—and I am sure that some of them do—they should pay a different levy from the people in the same jerseys running out on to the same field in the same team who were self-employed. We on this side of the House—and on those other two sides because National is the only party voting against this legislation—are still waiting for a rational logical explanation as to why a self-employed rugby league player should pay a different premium from and have a different risk to the one who has set up a company. It is the same for a plumber. 
The select committee heard from a representative of the Seafood Industry Council who was in a cleft stick. He said that he was not taking a position on this bill as the National members wanted him to do because he wanted to be able to live a little longer. If he had said he was for the bill he would have half his membership after his throat and if he had said he was against the bill the other half would be out to get him. On the back of fishing boats that situation may occur—people with exactly the same risk and exactly the same job but operating in a different way in terms of whether they are self-employed or set up under a company structure. 
So the situation is that National is again parading to the nation its desire to return to the failed policy it had back then in the late 1990s of privatising ACC despite all the evidence that where that has happened or where it is the basis of worker compensation around the world the levies for everybody are higher and the services are not as good. In my view we have the best system in the world. It is envied by many and a few have managed to try to copy it. But does the National Party recognise that? No! 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.