Wong Pansy: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wong Pansy: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7701. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 That is a real concern is it not? I gave the Minister plenty of notice when we were debating Part 1 of my specific concern about the reserve margin and of an amendment to adjust it. I will give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she actually understands what the issue is all about but refuses to debate it. It would be worse if she was hoodwinked by the officials and did not even attempt to address it. The Minister had no answer and then resorted to personal attacks on my hard-working colleague from Hamilton—the hard-working diligent David Bennett—who won the seat and is absolutely loved by the people of Hamilton. Good on him! We are very proud of him. 
The Minister resorted to personal attacks but that will not deter me from asking her to look at her own official’s paper which stated categorically that the 150 percent margin of the work account as at 1 April 2007 would be progressively reduced in 2008 2009 and 2010 towards the target of 111 percent. That is the stated position of her officials. Yet at the same time the Minister is asking all the other parties to support her in imposing a surcharge on self-employed people that will increase their margin from 20 percent to 53 percent. It simply does not make sense for the Government to impose a surcharge of an additional $100 million and then in a few years’ time to bring the rate down again. That defies logic. 
First of all let me acknowledge United Future’s support for my amendment. It is a sensible party that can exercise its own independent thoughts and it is on the side of the self-employed. I will make sure the self-employed are aware of United Future’s support for the amendment. New Zealand First and the Green Party will just have to face up to self-employed people who will be irate when they receive their bills in the next 2 years. 
Second I propose the amendment because we feel outrage particularly at this point about the legislation the Government wants to pass to do away with consultation. Actually that is telling. The Minister says that if anybody wants information he or she can make a request under the Official Information Act. But why should anybody have to make a request under the Act? Why can the Minister not simply make the information available as public information? I thought the Labour Party believed in open government and consultation. What is happening is that the Government is legislating to do away with consultation. It does not want to hear from self-employed people because it knows what would happen. Labour members know that those people will be outraged when they are asked to pay a surcharge of an additional $100 million. Labour members do not seem to understand that hard work produces the incomes of those people. They think nothing about penalising people to pay that money to a monopoly organisation “just in case something happens”. We have bad news for the Labour Government: self-employed people understand what the Government is trying to do to them. They know it will penalise them in the next 2 years for $100 million without consultation. That will add insult to injury. 
Once again I acknowledge that United Future is the only party so far that has indicated it will exercise its own independent thinking and support my amendments. It believes it is a party that stands up for the self-employed and it does not think the Government should penalise those people with a surcharge amounting to $100 million for the next 2 years just so that a monopoly organisation can feel good. We want the self-employed hard workers and employers to feel good about themselves not a monopoly organisation.