Hipkins Chris: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19328] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I will quickly correct what the Minister for ACC has just claimed. The independent inquiry that his Government called for found that the previous Government’s Ministers did not do anything wrong. That was clearly stated by this Government’s own independent inquiry. To suggest otherwise is simply untrue—full stop end of story. 
This Government is hanging a massive “For Sale” sign over New Zealand and ACC is smack-bang in the middle of the fire-sale list. This Government is interested only in hocking off everything as fast as it possibly can. Nick Smith’s talk of a financial crisis in accident compensation is absolute nonsense. I tell him to look at the financial review from the financial year in question. ACC was over $2.5 billion in surplus which is a $2.5 billion decrease in ACC’s liabilities this year. ACC is not now and never has been broke or broken despite Nick Smith’s best attempts to suggest otherwise. Scaremongering has been done by Nick Smith because this National Government has one agenda in accident compensation which is to carve it up and hock it off to its private sector mates. 
National does not believe in accident compensation as it stands now. It believes that it should be provided by the private for-profit insurance industry. That is the National Party’s sole goal in accident compensation: to prepare accident compensation to be privatised. It can use terms like “competition” but its model of competition is privatisation by any other name. 
Nick Smith is offensive enough to go around saying that it is no different to deregulating the broadcasting industry. I say that there is one major difference: New Zealanders did not give up any of their civil or legal rights under broadcasting law. Under the accident compensation scheme they have given up their legal rights in order to be part of the scheme. This Government sees that New Zealanders giving up their legal rights to be part of accident compensation creates all sorts of fascinating interesting profit-making opportunities for its corporate insurance mates. I think that is wrong—I think that is fundamentally wrong. 
This Labour Opposition will be arguing and fighting against the Government’s plans to privatise accident compensation. We send a very clear word of warning to the insurance industry: insurers will invest in accident compensation at their own peril. A future Labour Government—and we already have a commitment from the Greens to support us in this—will not support this change. We have reversed a National Government’s privatisation of accident compensation before and we will do it again. 
This change will not stand because ultimately it undermines what should be a world-leading scheme. Despite all Nick Smith’s scaremongering the Government has still not come up with evidence to suggest that this change will work and that New Zealanders will end up with better cover or better compensation as a result. The independent PricewaterhouseCoopers study found that ACC is already offering the lowest cost accident cover in the developed world. Nick Smith’s own officials provided evidence to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that New Zealand employers are paying on average half what Australian employers are paying for accident cover. 
Perhaps that is what National meant by catching up with Australia: loading a whole lot more compliance costs on to our employers. That is what this Government seems to think is meant by catching up with Australia. National certainly does not seem to want to catch Australia when it comes to wages any more; in fact Bill English thinks that it is a competitive advantage to have lower wages than Australia. 
Moving back to accident compensation I say that this Government manufactured a crisis in accident compensation. It is not broke. It never has been broke and it is not broken. This is all part of the National Party’s agenda to strip out accident compensation and hand it over to the private insurance industry. New Zealanders will end up paying more to get less. The only way the private insurance industry will be able to make money out of accident compensation is by declining more claims or decreasing cover and that is fundamentally wrong. New Zealanders having given up their legal rights in order to be part of the scheme deserve better than that. 
As the Christchurch earthquake showed us a lot of unforeseen things can happen in this country. Accident compensation was there when Cantabrians needed it and the extension of accident compensation cover that Nick Smith and the Government were able to offer following the Christchurch earthquake would not have been possible if he had already privatised accident compensation as he intends to do. 
Nick Smith and the National Government are hanging a massive “For Sale” sign over New Zealand over our State-owned assets over accident compensation and over everything else—even over our law books—and saying that it is for sale if the foreign investors are willing to pay for it.