Dalziel Lianne: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Volume:619;Page:14698] 
LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 Nothing could make me happier than to take a very brief call in this debate to welcome the introduction of the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3). As a former Minister for ACC I was able to begin a process that has now ended up with the bill that is in front of the House today. The process I began was to establish a working-party to look at the issue of medical misadventure. For the brief period that I was the Minister I was deeply concerned to try to address an anomaly that had bothered me for a number of years. Bill Birch of course was a significant distraction to the issues of accident compensation in the 1990s when he set about destroying our accident compensation scheme with the 1991 amendments— 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: On top of many other things. 
LIANNE DALZIEL 
: On top of many other things as my colleague points out. But also in addition the previous Government decided to privatise big chunks of accident compensation. So we have had the opportunity to restore accident compensation to the public system that it was before the 1990s and to ensure that New Zealanders would benefit as they have from having a public accident compensation scheme. The public scheme has protected ordinary New Zealanders from the dramatically increased cost of insurance premiums all around the world since the events of September 11. This country has been protected from those increases because this Government has made sure that we have a public scheme that works in the interests of all people. 
This legislation will get rid of an anomaly that has bothered me and other members of the Labour Party for a long time. We will have a scheme in place to ensure that when an injury results from medical treatment people are treated in the same way as they would be treated if their particular injury had occurred in any other circumstance. If the injury occurs in a hospital setting at the general practitioner’s rooms or when people are being treated by a registered health professional they have to prove that either the health professional was at fault—and this is in a no-fault scheme—or the condition or the injury that arose as a result of the medical treatment was both rare and severe. It had to meet one of the two tests—either that there was fault or that the result was rare or severe. The difficulty with that particular set of tests is that a number of people who suffered their injuries as a result of medical treatment have had to go through a very in-depth process of either showing that their medical professional was at fault or showing that what happened to them was both rare and severe. Even if something dreadful had happened if it was relatively common it was something that they had to carry as their own risk. Yet somebody who gets behind the wheel of a car without putting on the seatbelt is entitled to have all of his or her treatment costs met even though that person knows the risk is that the extent of any injury will be far greater than if he or she had put on the seatbelt. Why was medical misadventure singled out in that way? I still have not heard a good enough reason for that. 
I am very pleased to see this bill in the House today. I congratulate the Hon Ruth Dyson. I think she has done a tremendous job and continues to do a tremendous job as the best Minister for ACC that this country has ever had.