Street Maryan: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Street Maryan: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:9054] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 It grieves me to have to get up and speak to the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill. Here we have it: the systematic dismantling of a piece of New Zealand’s social fabric which is second to none in the world. 
The Minister for ACC’s speech is typical of the way he has presented accident compensation since he had the privilege of taking up that portfolio. He talks in half-truths. He gives half of the information never the complete information. He continues to represent the accident compensation scheme as an insurance scheme and not a social contract. He continues to pretend that it has its equal in the private sector when it does not. He continues to pretend and to try to persuade New Zealanders that this second-to-none world-class system which began as a worker compensation scheme and developed into something so much more than that for the protection of injured New Zealanders is insurance like every other kind of insurance. It is not. It is nothing of the sort. It is not charged out at private sector rates. It is in fact not even charged out or levied particularly on employers in any way that is remotely comparable to our nearest neighbour. The levies that employers pay in New Zealand for work-related injuries are substantially lower across the board than any comparable scheme in Australia. My colleagues and I will talk about that further. 
This bill represents the attack on accident compensation that that Minister has been threatening for the last 15 or 16 months. When he took up the portfolio he responded hysterically to some issues related to the increasing costs of treatment and rehabilitation in New Zealand. In the course of the Minister’s misrepresentation of the scheme’s position people began to become concerned until they realised that in fact the Minister’s definition of insolvency which was the main point that he was trying to persuade the New Zealand public of was based on a tissue of half-truths. That is the most complimentary way I can describe it. 
The definition of “insolvent” that was used was that the scheme’s total liabilities exceeded its assets. What the Minister failed to tell the public was that the calculation of the liabilities was spread over many many years over the life of an injury. That meant that some 30 or 40 years out there would be residual liabilities. That is because until such time as this law is passed we have a scheme that covers the life of injuries. It is not just the cost of going to the doctor after one has been injured; it is whatever it takes to support a person after he or she has been injured. Then the Minister repeatedly set that lifetime liability against the current assets not recognising for a moment the ongoing income from the well-invested funds that the scheme gathers from levies from different quarters. 
The public has been fed a tissue of half-truths about the state of the scheme. Certainly there were increases in costs because we have become better at saving people. Medical science has progressed and there is case upon case where we now save people who would have died otherwise from motor vehicle accidents injuries in the home and sports injuries. Those people can now be saved whereas some years ago they were not. The Minister never says that in his description of the scheme. He continues to say untruthfully that it is broke and it is insolvent. 
In order to reinforce his point he appointed a new chair to the board of the Accident Compensation Corporation who agreed with his definition. We heard that definition in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee shortly after the appointment of the new chair John Judge. Certainly it helps to pick people who will repeat one’s own words—obviously for that Minister’s benefit. Now we have the peeling back and the dismantling of compassionate human provisions in the legislation which were put there for good reason and which benefited numbers of people. 
Labour will oppose every part of this bill with the exception of one part. That is the part where the date for the payment of residual levies—that is the payment of treatment that has not been fully funded up until now—is extended. That I have to say derives from the last time National tried to dismantle and privatise accident compensation. That is why those injuries from pre-1999 are not fully funded—are not fully funded—and we are still having to fund them; the provision was not set out for them. They were meant to be fully funded by 2014 and the National Government at the time picked the period of 15 years out of the hat. The number was arbitrary. It could have been 10 years it could have been 20 years but National said that it would split the difference and make it 15 years. 
Labour is in favour of the pushing-out of that date. In fact we announced it. I as the previous Minister for ACC announced it prior to the election. It became apparent to me even in the only 12 months I had in that position that something needed to be done about residual levy payments and the pressure was building. Pressure was applied to employers that was not reasonable. 
The thing that this Minister should have done was introduce this bit a year ago. We have lost the ability and employers and car owners have lost the ability to have reduced levies by the tune of 1 year’s worth of levies because of the tardiness of this Minister and because of his inability to get past his own hysteria and apply something with which we would have agreed. It could have happened immediately. It was only in 2008 that the pressure on that residual levies payment component became clear and that was the only time when the pushing-out of the date started to be explored. 
In this bill we have a reflection of a Government that has absolutely no respect for the history and purpose of this social contract. One of the things that becomes really apparent as an example of the callous approach this Government is taking is in the Morrison Low report to the Accident Compensation Corporation board which talks about the need to “significantly cut back to essential and core services effectively draining the swamp.”—“effectively draining the swamp.” The Minister and his Government are now saying that those who benefit from or apply to the corporation are no better than swamp dwellers. We have the case that was offered earlier in the House of an elderly woman who fell and hurt her shoulder but who cannot get any relief from ACC; she is a swamp dweller.