Smith Nick: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Smith Nick: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:660;Page:9113] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for ACC) 
: 
 I relish the opportunity to debate Part 1 both to flush out some of the nonsense that Labour members have been running on this issue and also to put the case fairly and squarely about the sensible and balanced reforms in this bill. I make no apologies for the core driver behind the bill being the need to improve the affordability of the accident compensation scheme and to reduce the pressure on levies this year and in coming years. 
There can be no question that Labour allowed accident compensation costs to get out of control. Over the past 4 years claim costs have risen by 57 percent or by over a billion dollars extra per year. This rate of claim cost increases is five times the rate of inflation. Labour somehow pretends that we can have those sorts of increases in claim costs but that it will not cost so much as a penny for motorists for workers and for the businesses that pay the levies. But that is fairyland stuff and it illustrates just how financially illiterate Opposition members are. 
The last annual report of June 2008 a report signed by the previous Minister for ACC Maryan Street declared a loss of $2.4 billion 6 months prior to there being any change of Government. For that member to then stand in the House last week and say that Labour left accident compensation in good financial shape was just a nonsense and it is untrue. Then just months later after that $2.4 billion loss Labour engaged in an irresponsible and reckless pre-election lolly scramble. Labour made over a dozen changes to the scheme to make it more generous and to extend entitlements without making any provision to fund them. Part of this bill is unwinding some of those unfunded extensions. 
Members opposite have referred to this bill as a complete dismantling of accident compensation as breaking the social contract and as ripping up the Woodhouse report but that is all just political hyperbole. Let us just go through and debate what is in the bill. Firstly this bill pushes out the full funding date from 2014 to 2019 in order to take the pressure off levies and secondly the bill pulls back on those extra entitlements that Labour added in the dying days of its Government but never funded. I am really looking forward to debating the clauses on holiday pay on seasonal workers on the tests for rehabilitation when people go back to work and on the provisions about self-inflicted harm and suicide. I think that fair-minded New Zealanders on weighing up the rights of injured claimants and the rights of levy payers will come to the conclusion that what is in this bill is fair. 
Let me put a few essential questions that we need to debate in these Committee changes. The first is whether people should be better off on accident compensation than they were when in work. Was that what the Woodhouse report and our accident compensation scheme was all about? Members on this side of the Chamber say no; members on that side of the Chamber say yes they should be. It is a very simple question. Should criminals be able to get accident compensation lump sums and income compensation for injuries they suffered when committing crimes? Members on our side of the Chamber say no; members on Labour’s side of the Chamber say that accident compensation should be for crims. A third question that is at the core of this Committee debate is whether businesses with a good safety record should get a lower level of levy than those businesses that have a bad safety record. Members on my side of the Chamber say yes they should whereas Labour members say they should not. Again I say I am looking forward to debating all of those issues. 
The changes in this bill are about securing for New Zealand an accident compensation scheme that is fair for levy payers and fair for claimants—a scheme that is affordable in the long term and does not just pass the bill on to some future generation or worse still pretends that nobody pays which seems to be where Labour is at. This bill is about securing a fair accident compensation scheme and one that is affordable. 
I have tabled a Supplementary Order Paper. One of the first changes I want to make is to call this bill what I think all members in the Committee would call it and that is the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. You see in 2001 in that sort of stroke and fever for political correctness we changed the name of the Act to the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Act. The most interesting thing is that going back to 2001 do members know that rehabilitation rates have got worse in every single year since? Do members know that injury prevention has been so unsuccessful that injury prevention rates have got worse over the succeeding 9 years? You see members opposite somehow believed that if we just changed the name of the Act we would fix the problem. Members on this side of the Chamber say that we should call the Act what it was called for all those years and not play these silly games of political correctness and of renaming Acts away from what ordinary New Zealanders would prefer them to be called. Let us call accident compensation what New Zealanders call it albeit there is not a member of the Government who does not believe that rehabilitation and injury prevention are important. It is just that we have to do more than change the name of an Act to make some progress. 
The last point I note in respect of the Supplementary Order Paper is the change that we are making with regard to the safety levy for motorcycles. The reality is that the record of motorcycle safety over the last decade is a tragedy for dozens of New Zealand families. At the same time that we have seen a 20 percent decline in the overall road toll we have seen a 20 percent increase in the number of motorcycle accidents and fatalities. The state of Victoria has gone down the track we are taking and it is the only state in Australia that has been able to reverse the trend of motorcycle accidents. My view is that the provision in the Supplementary Order Paper which came as a consequence of discussions with leaders of such organisations as the Bikers Rights Organisation of New Zealand and the Ulysses Club is a very constructive way in which we can make progress on injury prevention and try to reverse that trend in motorcycle accidents. The trend is not only costing the scheme a great deal of money but causing a great deal of heartache for dozens if not hundreds of New Zealand families. 
This is a fair balanced bill. The Supplementary Order Paper improves this bill; the Committee should pass it.