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:9201] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I will pick up the points that were started by the member who spoke before me Maryan Street in relation to gradual process disease and infection. The criteria and thresholds of those are dramatically altered by this Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill. 
Throughout the debate we have had what I regard as some pretty callous and cruel references to people who have been injured—particularly to those who have injured themselves deliberately and who are now disentitled under the provisions in Part 2. But I say to the Minister in the chair Pansy Wong and to her ministerial and backbench colleagues that we are talking about real people. We are taking away entitlements considered by society to be fair entitlements for the loss that people have incurred because of an injury whether or not it was self-inflicted. I think that it is time the debate in this Committee recognised the harsh reality for many families of the impacts of an injury. 
I will tell members about one such family. I know them well: Tony Annette Leeanna and Sonia Gibson. I will read a statement from Tony. He said in relation to his son Jason: “Jason pulled up at my place to pick up his small daughter. He opened the door to his van and he fell out on the ground. I said to him: ‘Have you been drinking?’ and he said: ‘No I’ve been spraying the inside of tanks with two-pot paints.’ ” Jason was 25 feet away from his father at the time but his father could smell the toxins. He thought that Jason had paint in the van so suggested they take it out; the van was empty. The smell of the solvents was coming because Jason had absorbed them when he was doing his painting job. Later on not very long after that incident Jason came to his parents’ house and said that he had hay fever - like symptoms. He said that the night before he had jogged up Dyers Pass Road to the Summit Road and then his nose had started bleeding which was quite unusual. His father suggested he go to the doctor and be tested for lead poisoning. Jason was a painter and this was a logical suggestion from his father. The next day Jason did that. He had a blood test taken. That same day at 4 o’clock the doctor rang him and said he needed to go to hospital immediately as he had blood cancer. Six days later Jason died. He had suffered five massive brain haemorrhages directly as a result of the solvents that he had absorbed just by doing his job. Jason was 29 when he died. He left his wife Sonia without a husband and his daughter without a father. These are real people whom we are talking about. 
Sonia and Annette spent 2½ years researching the link between Jason’s solvent absorption and his death. They passed that information on to the Department of Labour to use in health and safety promotions and I am sure the department has taken that up. In Part 1 though the Minister has determined that the advisory group that was set up to find out facts about tragedies such as Jason’s death and how those deaths can be avoided in future—to get that information from best practice internationally and to share it with the Minister—is gone. We have abolished that committee. 
There are three people in this Chamber who seem to know more than anyone else: Aaron Gilmore who has probably written a book on knowing more than anyone else; Michael Woodhouse who is determined to be the Minister because he does know more than anybody else about just about any topic; and the current Minister himself Nick Smith. In respect of the talents of all those three members I say that when Jason died nobody knew the relationship between his solvent absorption and his job—the job that not only he did well and was very proud of but that also provided a decent income to keep his family—the job he really enjoyed doing. He got up every morning looking forward to going to his job but the job killed him because we did not know enough in our country about the danger he was exposing himself to. In the same way my colleague Maryan Street alluded to the dangers that people in the 1940s 1950s and 1960s exposed themselves to in terms of the noise chemical absorption—particularly from solvents—and dangers that New Zealand society just did not know about then.