Dyson Ruth: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled 
Dyson Ruth: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled 
[Volume:660;Page:9190] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 Deciding who to give the next call to was a major dilemma and I really think you moved forward on it with courage and correctness Mr Chairman! I thank you very much for giving me the privilege of taking the next call. 
I will add to the comments made by the member who has just resumed his seat the Hon David Parker in relation to John Boscawen’s comments but I will also recall different comments that that member made during his contribution. John Boscawen began his speech by asking why we are now paying more and getting less in accident compensation. He asked why that was. Well the answer is very simple: we have a National-ACT Government that will make New Zealanders pay more levies pay higher levies and get less through reduced entitlements. That is what we get under a National-ACT Government. Mr Boscawen should ask that question while looking into the mirror. What part has he played in making sure that New Zealanders under the scheme now have to pay more and get less? 
As an example of that reduction in entitlements I will look at clause 54 in Part 2 which is the part we are debating at this moment. I think that this debate will go on for some time given the number of people I have seen seeking calls. The provision I will refer to which will certainly cause people to be paying more and getting less relates to vocational independence. “Vocational independence” is a lovely term is it not? It sounds as though people who have had an injury have had proper high-quality rehabilitation and are now able to move back into a paid job if that is what they had before or even if they did not have a paid job previously—a younger person a student or a parent with the primary responsibility for caring for the children may not have been in a paid job. 
Vocational independence sounds great but the National Government has gutted the basis of the vocational independence assessment. It has made three major changes with this amendment. Clause 54 refers to the assessment but it does not give the details of those dramatic changes. The first is that people’s pre-injury earning capacity will no longer be considered as part of the vocational assessment process. For example a Minister of the Crown earning quite a good income has the misfortune of having an injury—I would not wish that on any Minister of the Crown. That Minister then goes through some rehabilitation. Part of the vocational independence assessment under this legislation will no longer require one’s earning capacity as a Minister to be taken into account. The vocational assessor might tell the Minister that he or she is fit to work as a cleaner in a Minister’s office and that would be determined under this amendment as vocational independence. Well there is one word for that: “unfair”. It is not fair for a person to be moved so dramatically from one scale of earning or potential earning to another much lower scale because of an injury. People’s pre-injury earning capacity should remain as part of the consideration. The officials confirmed to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee—and I give them credit for doing so—that changing “must” to “may” can be interpreted by a vocational assessor as “may not”. So it will not matter a toss to the vocational assessor what the person was earning before his or her injury; all the vocational assessor will be interested in is turfing that person off accident compensation. 
The second change that I will refer to is that where a person is assessed as having the capacity to do a job it will not matter whether it is a real job. It will not matter whether such a job is available in New Zealand. Many examples of that happened in the 1990s and this bill will head us in that direction. There were many examples where people were deemed to have the capacity to be a lift operator for example. I ask members when the last time was that anyone in this Chamber went into a lift in Kirkcaldie and Stains Smith and Caughey’s Ballantynes or James Smith’s and had a lift operator ask which floor madam or sir would like to go to. We do not have lift operators in New Zealand any more. Those were the olden days which is where clause 54 in Part 2 of this amendment bill will take us. That is exactly the situation this clause will take us back to because the clause removes the requirement for the job that the person is assessed to be capable of doing to be a real job. 
The other example that I recall very well was that of a man who was assessed as being capable of being a tap-dancer. I have not seen a lot of tap-dancing jobs going in New Zealand on which one could earn money or keep a family but that was what the vocational assessor said. Later that same week Paul Holmes interviewed the tap-dancer. It was revealed that the man—who had been assessed by the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) as being vocationally independent able to move off accident compensation and fit to be a tap-dancer—had only one leg. That would be a very very hard duty to perform but that is exactly what this amendment makes possible again. 
The Minister in the chair the Associate Minister for ACC is right to hang her head and keep her mouth closed. She seems to be—and she should be—ashamed of what she is doing to ordinary hard-working New Zealanders who have had the misfortune of being injured. This amendment takes us back to having no consideration of pre-injury earning capacity. Georgina te Heuheu thinks it is funny. Well I do not think it is funny that people who had high-paying jobs who worked hard to get ahead in their careers and who were able to offer their families good financial support because of their hard work and determination will now be told by ACC that that does not count any more and that they are fit to do very low-paid menial jobs with no career prospects. Under this amendment that is all right. Well I say to Mrs te Heuheu that it is not all right. I will be very interested to see members of the Maori community front up to that member and say exactly what the impact will be on Maori families. That member should be raising questions with her ministerial colleagues rather than laughing at the unfair treatment that this amendment will dish out. 
The third change in the work-capacity vocational independence assessment outlined in clause 54 is the reduction in hours. Currently people have to be determined to be fit to do a real job—taking into consideration their pre-injury earning capacity—for 35 hours a week. That is fair. It is not a full-time job but it is pretty close to it; 35 hours a week is in the main enough to keep a family on. This amendment reduces that requirement to 30 hours. Someone may be deemed to be capable of working only 30 hours in a low-paid job. Even if that person is able to get a low-paid job he or she frankly could not keep his or her family going on that many hours a week. It is just not possible if one is the primary income earner. The inclusion of that amendment says to injured people that we do not care what they were doing before the injury we do not care whether there is a real job and we do not care whether they can afford to keep their families on 30 hours a week. That is not what Labour says. Labour believes that what people were earning before their injury should be taken into account in the assessment process. They should be able to work for 35 hours a week and the job that they are determined as being fit to do should be a real job. 
That is what ordinary New Zealanders who have the misfortune of having an injury deserve out of a scheme that they pay for. They pay for it out of their hard-earned income; they deserve fair treatment when they are injured. That is all the New Zealand public want. They do not want what National and ACT are dishing up which is to pay more for accident compensation but get less in return. They just want a fair go. Frankly I do not think that is too much to ask. 
Throughout this bill there are amendments that cut back provisions that people now expect as part of the social contract they have bought into with the Government. We will see increased calls for the right to sue. I am sure that Associate Minister Pansy Wong will say that maybe people should have the right to sue but why would any one of us want to take New Zealand down a track of litigation of stress of putting money into lawyers’ pockets and of many hundreds of people losing their entitlement and their rights to a fair go through the court system? We have a fair and just system now and we should keep it.