Coleman Jonathan: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Coleman Jonathan: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7694. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) 
: 
 We have heard the Labour members talk a lot about fairness today and in that spirit I know they would like to acknowledge the landmark historic policy announced by John Key today whereby the 5 percent cap on charitable donations by private businesses is going to be lifted enabling companies to get in and do something about the underclass in this country. The Minister in the chair the Hon Ruth Dyson is a fair Minister and I know that she would want to acknowledge that. I would say that the Labour members opposite are probably a little bit disappointed that this policy has not been put forward by their somewhat tired Government. It is ironic that on the same day as this policy is announced the Government is trying to force through a bill that will punish the very businesses that employ people who under this policy will be in a position to give a higher level of donation to the charitable sector. That is the irony of what is happening here today. 
The irony too is that we have heard four or so speakers from the Labour side of the Chamber who have been very concerned about the rights of self-employed people but not one of those members has ever been self-employed. 
Darien Fenton 
: That’s not true. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: I am sorry Darien has been. We have a couple of freelance unionists on the other side! Getting back to the issue of fairness I point out that fundamentally this bill will punish employers. Employers will have the risk premium amounts they have paid in over the years cross-subsidising the pool of self-employed people. The Minister spoke about fairness. How can we say that is a fair situation? It flies in the face of actuarial common sense because actuarial sense tells us that insurance premiums are directly related to risk—the higher the risk the higher the premium. The Labour Government is telling us that self-employed people carry a higher risk than the employed as they tend to cluster in high-risk occupations. Frankly that shows just how out of touch the Labour Government is with the reality of self-employment in New Zealand today. The self-employed workforce is in the main made up of white-collar professionals—people in areas like information technology people who are behind desks people in the service industry— 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: General practitioners! 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: General practitioners—not people who are in high-risk professions. This is antiquated out-of-touch thinking. 
At the core of the Labour Government’s pushing of this bill is that it wants to super-reinforce the Accident Compensation Corporation against any threat of competition in the future. I ask Government members what is so wrong about competition in accident compensation. Despite what Darien Fenton the list member and unionist said when National was in Government and accident compensation was privatised accident rates went down and premiums were lower. Competition was good for business; competition was good for everybody. 
Under this bill as David Bennett said we are in effect seeing an election bribe. One has only to look through the table to see that premiums will be kept down for about 18 months to 2 years—just until about the time of the next election—then they will soar up again. So the Government is trying to politically neutralise this as an issue. 
As Paul Hutchison said earlier the legislation provides for a blatant grab from the employers’ account. The Government should be paying back that $500 million to the employers. The employers are the people who are helping the workers; they are providing jobs and keeping the economy going. Why would we want to constantly punish employers through philosophy and the practical implications of policies such as this? 
The other thing this bill will do is make the Accredited Employers Programme extremely unattractive. We know there is a philosophical motive for that. We know that the Government knows—and it is what it wants to happen—that employers will opt out of the Accredited Employers Programme which will add more cost to the new merged accounts and even greater cost and liability to the residual account. 
So there we have it. In the interests of fairness the Minister did say that she was very impressed with Dr Hutchison’s amendments. Basically what is wrong with an amendment that asks for greater transparency in the audit programme? How could one possibly object to that? Employers and the self-employed have a right to know how their levies are set. We oppose this bill. It is bad and unfair legislation.