Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:660;Page:9223] 
Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill 
In Committee 
Debate resumed. 
New Part 3 Requirement to undertake annual reviews of impact of various changes 
 (continued) 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. It relates to Standing Order 320 which requires that amendments to bills that can affect or have an impact upon the Government’s fiscal aggregates need to be lodged with the Clerk at least 24 hours before they are considered by the Committee. New Part 3 and I believe subsequent parts do not meet that test and most certainly do have an impact on the Government’s fiscal aggregates. 
Hon Member 
: How so? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: It is the fiscal aggregates of the Government that we are talking about. 
Hon Member 
: Rubbish! 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I am reading from the  
Standing Orders of the House of Representatives 
. Standing Order 320(1) states that an amendment that may have an impact on the Government’s fiscal aggregates—[ 
Interruption 
] 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Points of order will be heard in silence. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: That will be novel for those people. An amendment that may have an impact on the Government’s fiscal aggregates etc. must be lodged with the Clerk at least 24 hours before the House meets on the day on which the amendment is to be proposed. This part does not meet that test. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I presume this matter can be dealt with relatively quickly. “Fiscal aggregates” is a term that has been used on a number of occasions for a long period of time and any suggestion that a change as minor as this one would have an effect on the fiscal aggregates of the Government goes to the point of being absolutely ridiculous. The effect would be within the margin of error—1 percent of the size of the fiscal aggregates of the Government. There is clearly an ability to veto on the part of the Government if in fact that is the case. That again is something where no Minister of Finance would ever pretend—is the Hon Gerry Brownlee an Associate Minister of Finance? 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: No economic development. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: He is the Minister for Economic Development. No Minister of Finance would ever pretend that this amendment would have an effect on the fiscal aggregates because it is such a small number. For example if the member had moved an amendment to bring forward the close-off date from 2019 to 2015 there might be an argument that that would affect the fiscal aggregates of the Government. It might or it might not; even a number of that size might not. But this amendment is so minor that when the Government’s spending is brought together—aggregated—no one could pretend that it would have an effect. 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 The point of order raised by the Leader of the House ought to have to been raised at the beginning of the debate on this part when the amendment was first moved. Instead no point of order was taken the Chair accepted the amendment and debate commenced. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I thank members for their contributions. I think there are four points that I can see arising out of this point of order. 
The first point is enshrined in Standing Order 320 and in Speakers’ rulings 119/1-4 where there is quite a raft of information about it. On the strength of that the point of order is upheld. 
I think there are three other points that I need to comment on as well and I will deal first with the point of the Green Party member Mr Hague. At no point do the Standing Orders define a lapse time for a point of order if it is relevant. That the member did not raise his point at the time the amendment was moved is not a reason for ruling out the point of order. Had we voted on this part and moved on we could not return to it. In that regard it is perfectly relevant to raise the point of order at this time. 
The third point that springs to mind— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Springs to mind. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: —sorry that comes to mind—in relation to this matter is when the day actually starts. Because we are in urgency and the sitting day stays the same it would be my ruling that the day started at 2 p.m. yesterday. I have inquired of the Clerks and I find that these amendments therefore would have had to be lodged at 2 p.m. on Monday. Even given another interpretation that it was a chronological 24 hours the amendments do not fit. 
The fourth point is whether the amendment is a trivial matter in terms of its effect on the financial aggregates. The Standing Orders do not required the Chair to rule on that; that is the prerogative of the Government. It is not the Chair’s job to rule whether the effect is trivial; it is simply to rule whether the amendment has a fiscal implication. In that regard I am bound to uphold the point of order. That would mean that new Parts 3 4 and 5 are ruled out of order in relation to the ruling I have just given. 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. The words you used then were that it was not for the Chair to determine whether the impact on the fiscal aggregates is large. Speaker’s ruling 119/1 states: “During the committee of the whole House the Government will be able to make a submission to the chairperson that an amendment or a change proposed to be moved appears to have more than a minor impact on the fiscal aggregates …”. It goes on to say that if there is doubt whether the effect is more than minor then the amendment should be ruled out. I suggest to you Mr Chairperson that there is no doubt that the impact of this amendment is minor. This is the most minor sort of review and I cannot see how it could have a more than minor impact on the fiscal aggregates. In order for you to rule it out Mr Chairperson you have to be satisfied that there is at least doubt that the impact is minor. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 The other point that I would like to draw your attention to Mr Chairperson is Speaker’s ruling 119/4 where it is made clear that it is quite proper for the Minister to raise the issue on official advice. I want to ensure that you have sought confirmation from the Minister that there is official advice. If there is official advice we know that it is always obtained in writing from Treasury. That is the way that that advice occurs. The Opposition wants to ensure that there is that official advice. If that is the case we are happy to go with it. It was always tabled in the past. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: The Hon Gerry Brownlee should respond to that. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 I am advised by Treasury that the cost of this provision would be somewhere between $600000 and $1 million. Whatever way members like to look at it that is an impact. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson.  
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I will rule on this point first. Can I say that the Chair does not have at his disposal the kind of information that the Leader of the House has just given. It is part of the process of this institution that the Chair accepts Ministers’ advice on that matter and the Leader of the House has confirmed that he sought advice. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Could we ask the Minister to confirm that that advice is written advice? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: As far as I am aware it does not have to be. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. That is something that is very clear and very important. Ministers when they have advice that is required by the Standing Orders have always got that advice in writing. It is part of having a record. It is a protection for the Minister and it is a protection for this House. I am not doubting that there is such Treasury advice—because the Minister has assured us that there is—but I want to know that it is available and that it is in writing because it is something that will have to be tested going forward. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I think in response to that that there are layers to the reasons why an amendment can be ruled out. This is not a financial veto which probably has a higher level of standards around it. But the 24-hour rule is a requirement. I remind members again that all members in this Parliament are honourable members and if the Leader of the House gives me his word that he received advice it is not in my opinion my responsibility to then require him to present to me written evidence of his having had that advice. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I have several points to raise with you. I will first take the point you have just raised. 
With regard to Speaker’s ruling 119/4 the ruling contains the phrase “official advice” and the inclusion of the word “official” must mean something. As Mr Mallard has said to you we have now had the Leader of the House say verbally that the cost of the amendment would be between $600000 and $1 million. What happens if down the track the official information is found not to have existed and the Leader of the House has said in the Committee that it does exist and has said what the advice is? When Mr Mallard asked about it Mr Brownlee waved a piece of paper that is acting as his bookmark in his copy of the  
Standing Orders of the House of Representatives 
. It is a handwritten note on paper that has been ripped out of a notebook—it is perforated along the side. That note cannot possibly constitute official advice to the Government of New Zealand about this matter. So I raise that point with you. 
I also raise a second point Mr Chairperson about the fact that when we read Speaker’s ruling 119/4—and Mr Mallard has quoted the first part—we see that it continues: “It is quite proper for the Minister to raise the issue on official advice” and finishes off: “although it is finally for the chairperson to rule.” That is a very important point for you Mr Chairperson because I noticed that when the point of order was taken at 2 o’clock you had a lot of information at your fingertips. You were able to give four points to us when you were ruling on it. But the ability of the Opposition to propose amendments to legislation whether they are in support of or in disagreement with the law is quite an important point. 
The reason I raise that is that previously it was totally out of order for an Opposition to put forward any amendments that had any fiscal impact whatsoever. The changes to the Standing Orders at the end of 1995 which came into effect in 1996 altered that so that an amendment could come from the Opposition that might have some costing associated with it. But rather than use the term “financial impact”—that is $1 or more—the term “fiscal aggregates” was used so that it was clear that amendments that involved costs that were small as a percentage of the Government’s total spend would not simply be ruled out or dismissed. It is very hard to accept that in a Government Budget of about $60000 million a review costing half a million dollars is somehow some extraordinary change to the Government’s fiscal aggregates. A stay at a hotel in Tonga or a trip on the Interislander 
does not have a big impact on the Government’s fiscal aggregates either. Those are the sorts of figures we are talking about. 
This is a device being used by the Government to try to stop the Opposition from being able to propose amendments to the legislation—amendments that the Government can vote down. It will have that option shortly; we have spent about an hour discussing Part 3 and Government members will have the option of voting against it to show that they are not in support of it. 
Mr Chairperson the Speakers’ rulings make the point that it is finally for you to rule on this matter. If you as Chair accept that a Minister who feels frustrated at the length of time of a debate and says “Oh look that amendment is just too expensive.” is not required to supply you with any written advice that is then available for the Committee to look at and if the Minister does not give any detail about what the advice is then the Opposition could have all of its amendments ruled out for all time. There is a cost even in the simple fact that when an amendment is accepted by the Committee it forces a printer to go into action somewhere within the Government. That is a financial cost. If the Government goes down the path of not only stopping us from having question time but also stopping the Opposition from proposing amendments because by their very nature there will be a cost of some amount—a fiscal impact—that is different from an effect on the fiscal aggregates which is the way in which our Speakers’ rulings and Standing Orders have been written. 
I think that this is a really critical point Mr Chairperson and the Opposition respectfully seeks your assistance with it. Otherwise there is no point in doing any of these debates because as soon as the Leader of the House loses his temper about these matters the ball will be thrown and we will all have to go home. That seems preposterous to me. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I refer you Mr Chairperson to Speaker’s ruling 136/4 and go back to the question of the perforated piece of paper from a notebook which the Leader of the House is relying on. I quote: “An official document is not just a piece of paper with notes for the Minister’s guidance but is a more formal piece of writing conveying a message or memorandum or recording some matter between officials of the Government or between the Government and other persons.” That is the sort of document that in my opinion advice consists of. That is the way that Ministers get advice. It is official. There is a proper record of it. I do not know in whose hand the note on the perforated piece of notepaper is but it is my submission to you Mr Chairperson that in that form it cannot be an official document and therefore it cannot be the source of the advice that the Leader of the House has received. 
Just as a matter of guidance on fiscal aggregates my memory is that as far as Dr Cullen was concerned an amendment had to have an effect of more than $10 million before he would— 
Hon Members 
: Oh! 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Can the member just sum up? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The next point I am making as to an effect on the fiscal aggregates is that Dr Cullen’s view was that a figure of $10 million was the point at which he would start being interested as to whether there was an effect on the fiscal aggregates. Dr Cullen used to make clear that the Government had a majority in the House and if we did not like an amendment we voted against it rather than attempting to have it ruled out through this method or through a financial veto. What he saw as an effect on the fiscal aggregates sufficient to trigger this mechanism or to trigger the financial veto—generally an effect would have to be bigger in order to trigger the financial veto—was something much more significant than the cost of this amendment which at most would be $1 million with the best estimate being about $200000. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: OK. Let me deal with what I think are three points that have come out. I think that this series of points of order on the process around this stuff is useful. I regard it as quite valuable. I will deal firstly with the last point that the Hon Trevor Mallard raised in terms of amount. There is no guidance for me anywhere that I can find in the Standing Orders Speakers’ rulings  
McGee 
 or anywhere that actually defines an amount. That is the prerogative of the Government. If it were $10 million or any figure it would be enshrined somewhere. That is my difficulty. Moving away from saying “This doesn’t fit.” or “That doesn’t fit.” I tell the Committee that there is no documented evidence for me to go to in order to determine what amount is trivial. 
Let us now go to whether it was appropriate or proper for the Leader of the House to have raised this matter and again we go to Speaker’s ruling 119/4 which states clearly in the second-to-last sentence: “It is quite proper for the Minister to raise the issue on official advice”. The member raised the matter of whether the paper was an official document but the ruling does not say “official document”; it states “official advice”. Again in the time that I have had at my disposal to look at this matter nowhere have I found a specification about what is official advice. As I said earlier I have to accept that the Leader of the House has received advice and I so rule on that. 
Then we come to the matter of the responsibility of the Chairperson which is my responsibility. I go to the latest edition of  
McGee 
 at page 381 and the fourth paragraph states in regard to this matter: “The chairperson does not determine such a matter on a balance of probabilities; a possibility is sufficient.” So I am guided by  
McGee  
on this matter in terms of ruling in favour of the point of order raised by Gerry Brownlee. 
We move now to the vote on the schedules. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am sorry but a lot of discussion was taking place while you were giving your ruling. Are you declining to rule on Speaker’s ruling 119/4 which sets out that it is quite proper for a Minister to give official advice? You are accepting the torn off bit of paper that is perforated down the side— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Yes I am. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: —and handwritten as official Government advice? You are ruling against Speaker’s ruling 136/3? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I am accepting that the Leader of the House has had official advice. That is what I am accepting. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: On what basis? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: His word. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: His word. So what recourse does the Opposition have if it turns out that that advice does not exist? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I remind the member that all members are honourable members and if at a subsequent time any member is found to have misled the House there is a course of action which is substantially Draconian for dealing with the matter. Well it rules justice in a way that members understand. There are matters of privilege; there is a whole range of things. Members have that course open to them if it is subsequently found that any member has misled the House and this issue is no different. 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I am about finished with this issue unless there is new material. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: You have ruled out of order the addition of Part 3 in my name. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Correct. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I have not heard any rulings about the other amendments. Are you now ruling them out of order also? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Yes. I did say when I responded in the first instance that I was ruling out the amendment in your name currently under debate and also the amendments to add Part 4 and Part 5. I have already given that ruling. 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Are we to take it then that the advice you have received from Mr Brownlee is that each of those amendments of itself causes cost that would materially change the fiscal aggregates or is the advice that in the aggregate the amendments would cost between $600000 and $1 million or whatever the figure was? By the way I accept the Minister’s word as to the amount. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I think there are two points there. Let me clarify the member’s first point which was about advice that I as Chair have received: the Committee of the whole House has received that advice; it is not pertinent to me only. The second thing is that I have accepted that advice in relation to the three amendments before us to add new Parts 3 4 and 5. 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am not trying to be difficult. My confusion about the amount that the Committee was told is material. Is it the cost of each of these reviews or is it the cost of all of them? It is a relatively simple question that I thought we should be able to get an answer to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: This is my interpretation of it. We have trolled through this area and established some principles around it. The Leader of the House has said to us that each of the amendments has an impact on the fiscal aggregates. We have also established that there is no threshold of triviality so we simply accept it. The Leader of the House of his own volition gave some numbers. I am prepared to accept his word that each of the amendments has an implication for the fiscal aggregates. I have accepted it on that basis. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I want to check that you have had an assurance from the Leader of the House that these amendments could not be done within the baselines that are currently available—that they would require an extra appropriation as opposed to using current appropriations—because if they can be done within the baselines they will not affect the fiscal aggregates. In my view in a vote the size of the one we are talking about there is not a bolter’s show in hell of these amendments affecting the baselines of the Accident Compensation Corporation. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Let me affirm again to the Committee of the whole House that I am not privy to any information. When the member raised the point of order he asked whether I had been told information by the Leader of the House; he told the Committee. That is the first thing. The Leader of the House told the Committee that these amendments will have an impact on the fiscal aggregates. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I do not want to show disrespect Mr Chairperson but you came to the Committee with the answers to a series of questions. I cannot accept that you did not have some sort of briefing on this matter before you came to the Committee. I have enormous personal respect for you Mr Chairperson I have known you for a long time and I respect your integrity but I do not think you should attempt to tell the Committee that you had not been briefed and you were unaware of this matter. You clearly were aware of it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Let me respond to that. Every day before I come to the House I spend time with the Clerks. They are whom I spend time with. When I came into the Chamber Mr Brownlee was sitting next to me and I said “Do not talk to me.” He may or may not wish to confirm that but I think the member will accept my word. So I am dealing simply with some anticipation—because this is developing into a filibuster—as to what the probabilities would be— 
Moana Mackey 
: It is not. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: It is taking somewhat of an interesting twist—let me put it that way. I do not want to accuse anybody of anything and I apologise for that. It is the right of the Opposition to explore every possible avenue and it is my responsibility to make myself conversant with the pertinent Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings and  
McGee 
. Also we have spent some 25 minutes on this matter and there has been an opportunity for the Clerks to advise me and give me some quotes like the one I took from  
McGee 
. I did not prepare it before I came here. Members have to accept that I am dealing with this matter in the most straightforward manner that I can. We will now put the vote on the schedules. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. First I echo what Mr Mallard said about the personal respect we have for you. Mr Mallard and I would like to invite you to join us for lunch tomorrow when the House will still be in urgency to make sure there is not a single chance of Mr Brownlee getting to you. He will be in quite a mood by then I predict. 
I want to take you to the point where you referred to your role as the Chair of the Committee. As a presiding officer you have a number of functions but the protection of the rights of the minority is one of the most important ones and it is one that you do very very well indeed. You referred to your view of the proceedings of the Committee at the present time and it is probably correct that things could have taken an alternative parallel path to the one they are taking at the present time. But there are three amendments that propose three new parts. I would not describe them in the language you did—although you did withdraw it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I rescinded it. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: But it goes to the fact that just because the Government is unhappy with the process that has been followed by the Opposition is no reason for our amendments to be ruled out. If every single one of our amendments is going to be ruled out because of a claim that it will have an impact on the fiscal aggregates—and you yourself have said that the triviality or otherwise of the cost is irrelevant—it actually means that the Government could rule out every single amendment that the Opposition seeks to put to this legislation which affects the lives of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. That is why I bring you back to Speaker’s ruling 119/4 and to the very last few words—the last seven or eight words—“although it is finally for the chairperson to rule”. If the Government is allowed to get away with this behaviour—and the great irony is that we had spent an hour on Part 3 and we would have had the vote by now and we would have moved on; we have lost time on procedure because of the Government’s management style—if every single amendment is ruled out because you are saying that triviality is not important then the Opposition has lost its voice. That is why we are appealing to you Mr Chairperson as the defender of the minority in the Chamber to make sure that that does not happen. I am not confident that the Leader of the House will not try to bulldoze the legislation through the House because he has the pip about something that is far beyond my intelligence to understand. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Is it a fresh point of order? I should rule on the current one. Are you speaking to it? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I think I should speak to the point of order. There has been a degree of emotive expression that is somewhat disappointing. I would like the member to consider that although it is the right of the Opposition to try to put forward views equally it is the right of the Government to govern and to go about its business in the House and our protections both yours and mine lie in this book the  
Speakers’ Rulings 
. I ask the member to look at Speaker’s ruling 119/3 which is of no lesser import than 119/4. It has in fact been endorsed by former Chairperson Pettis and former Speaker Hunt. It states that Standing Order 320 “is not neutral as to whether an amendment is out of order. If a member fails to give 24 hours’ notice and there is any doubt or possibility that it has a fiscal impact the amendment is out of order.” That is all we have raised. These Speakers’ rulings are here for the House to be guided by and I think we should get on with our business. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I will now rule on the matter that the Hon Darren Hughes raised. I thank him for his expression of respect and I will look at taking up the luncheon offer. But I want to correct him on something that—[ 
Interruption 
] Points of order are heard in silence. I want to clarify—because the member picked me up wrongly—that I said that it was not for the Chair to rule whether something is trivial. The member said that the Chair ruled whether something was a trivial matter. There is a pertinent difference. I have not ruled whether this matter is trivial; I have simply ruled as per  
McGee 
 that the possibility exists. I have therefore chronologically followed through that process in determining that. So I have not ruled that it is trivial. 
The fundamental point that the member made is that the Chair can rule out amendments. I pick up on Speaker’s ruling 119/3 which Mr Brownlee raised. It is there for good reason and it is not neutral. I think it is just a little wake-up call that where there is a possibility of a fiscal aggregate implication anyone putting in an amendment simply has to obey the 24-hour rule. That does not rule out the possibility of debate at all. I will now put the question on schedule 1. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I think we have just about addressed every— 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: It is a different point of order. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Well I will listen with interest. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: We strongly contest the approach that is being taken—it leaves us with very few rights in the way of posing amendments—but if that is the way it is going to be ruled then we have to do our best to advocate and articulate for the people we represent. But we rely on the protection of the Chair for these matters. 
One of the difficulties is that the House as you mentioned before is in urgency. Urgency was signalled to the Opposition very very late in the piece—far later than more recent practice under Mr Brownlee’s tenure as Leader of the House. This particular amendment to create a new Part 3 was lodged 23½ hours ago. We did our best to comply with the information available to us at the time we put these amendments forward. There is a point where it is impossible for the Opposition to comply with the 24-hour rule. If the Government operates in this fashion it curtails the ability of the Opposition to comply with that rule. 
As you can appreciate these are serious amendments. They create three new parts—three important parts to do with injury prevention. I do not think anyone could argue that they are not serious amendments. The Government might not like them but they are not ridiculous. They are not frivolous amendments; they are proper ones. We have to write them to make sure they comply with the Standing Orders and to have them tabled and if the ability is not there to do so because the Government has moved urgency without that happening— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: They had brought this matter up the Order Paper compared with where it had been. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: That is right. This bill was moved higher up the Order Paper than it had been as my colleague rightly says. It was set down at about No. 4 or No. 5. We arrived in Wellington on Tuesday we were advised that the House was going into urgency and the bill became No. 1 on the Order Paper. It became impossible for us to comply with the 24-hour rule. The Leader of the House is losing a lot of time that he need not lose if he were operating in a slightly different way. It does not have to be this way. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: I will respond to that point and say that the second reading of the bill was on the Order Paper last Thursday so members could have assumed that it was going to be dealt with this week and they could have applied themselves to the sort of exercise we are in now. But given that that is not the case the final Order Paper would have been printed by 10.30 on Tuesday morning at the time when caucuses are having their powwows about process—or whatever caucuses do—so there certainly was an opportunity. Thirdly— 
Hon David Parker 
: Where was it on that Order Paper? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Just let me finish. Thirdly this meets neither the urgency day rule nor the chronological rule. It does not meet either of those. But the member has raised a point to which some consideration may need to be given but not at this point. I suggest that the Standing Orders Committee would be an ideal vehicle for that matter to be teased out because in this case I can rule only on the Speakers’ rulings the Standing Orders and other literary records that I have in front of me. 
Schedule 1 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That schedule 1 be agreed to. 
Ayes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Schedule 1 agreed to. 
Schedule 2 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That schedule 2 be agreed to. 
Ayes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Schedule 2 agreed to. 
Clauses 1 to 3 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 Amongst the Supplementary Order Papers that are on the Table in respect of the title of this bill is a late proposal by the Government to change the name of the underlying legislation from the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Act to the Accident Compensation Act and I want to explore that proposal. I think we need to look historically at why the current bill name came to be. In my mind there is not much doubt that if members look historically they will see that following the passage of the original accident compensation law New Zealand took its eye off the ball when it came to injury prevention. Prior to accident compensation of course there was a fiscal cost to employers through the risk of court action as a consequence of injured workers suing them which meant that they kept a good eye on injury prevention. 
After the accident compensation legislation came in there was a period when New Zealand’s accident rate in the workplace did not follow the same trend as was the case in overseas jurisdictions. For that reason Governments of the day including the Labour Government decided that there was a need for more interventions to make sure that we achieved what I think everyone in this Parliament would want to achieve which is lower accident rates. 
One of the things that was done was that more focus was put on the enforcement of appropriate workplace safety through the Department of Labour using its regulatory function to ensure better workplace practices so as to reduce accidents. But another thing that was done was a change within the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) to a greater focus on injury prevention and it has worked. Following the changes that the last Labour Government made in terms of both more regulatory action via the Department of Labour and more focus within ACC on injury prevention that combination of efforts has meant that rather than the trend in New Zealand workplaces going in the wrong direction—that is separating from the international trend where New Zealand workplaces were not improving in their safety at the same rate as was being achieved in other places including Australia—we actually had improved outcomes and less injury. 
I will give an example of where the Government is now reversing that trend and I think this is a shocking example. It relates to a programme that was developed at the University of Otago Faculty of Medicine and has now been rolled out through most parts of New Zealand. It is the Otago Exercise Programme for falls prevention. We heard the Minister acknowledge in this Chamber in just the last few days that more than the work account it is the non-earners account that has increasing costs largely as a consequence of the elderly growing older and many of those elderly falling over in their homes and breaking a hip. 
Sandra Goudie 
: Oh what a generalist statement. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: That has additional medical costs and home-care costs. Sandra Goudie derides that but it has been acknowledged by ACC at recent financial reviews that one of the great problem areas is the growth in falls by the elderly in their homes. 
A programme developed by the University of Otago Faculty of Medicine is directly targeted at the most at-risk group which is made up of people who are more than 80 years old who have already had a fall and who have been identified by their doctor as needing an intervention. It is an inexpensive intervention and unlike most of these programmes it has had extensive peer-reviewed studies by scientists as to its efficacy. That has led to articles in the  
British Medical Journal 
 no less highlighting the programme as an example of injury prevention work that is cost-effective. Indeed the cost-benefit analysis shows that for every $1 spent $2 is saved in the health system in the year following. Yet this Government has cut the funding saying that the programme cannot be afforded. It is nonsense economics. This will see the costs of the accident compensation scheme going up and that is one of the reasons why the Government wants to go back to talking about this being the Accident Compensation Amendment Act rather than the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Act. 
The reality is that we are now heading back to the time in New Zealand when insufficient attention was paid to injury prevention. As a consequence New Zealand will go back to where it was under the last National Government. The trends in respect of injury prevention will be bad and therefore the trends in terms of the growing number of injuries and the growing costs of injuries will remain. As a consequence costs will go up rather than come down. 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 Clause 1 of the bill that came back from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee is: “Title: This Act is the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Act 2009.” At the initial stages in tabling the bill for the first time the Government clearly did not think it was an issue to keep the name as it had been. At the select committee and the second reading the Government clearly did not think it was an issue to keep the name the same. Come the Committee stage the Minister in charge of the bill the Minister for ACC lodged a Supplementary Order Paper to change the title to the Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010 and proceeded to perform like a seal about how important it was that the bill would now be called the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. He made a song and dance about it and he enunciated in the most exaggerated terms he could possibly manage that people on the street would not know what the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Act was. Now it is imperative that it be called the Accident Compensation Act! 
My question to the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister for ACC is why this change suddenly became important. I say to the Associate Minister that it leaves the Opposition thinking that there is an agenda. I quote somebody who is rather more famous than me: “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet;”. There is as much difference between the names Labour and National as there is between the names Montague and Capulet which is what Shakespeare was talking about. There is as much difference between Labour and National over the title of this bill as there is between the names Montague and Capulet. 
This change raises questions about the agenda and I would like to ask two questions apropos of this name change. What are we to read into this change? If the legislation is to be called the Accident Compensation Act are we now to understand that there is to be no injury prevention rehabilitation or compensation? Or are we to understand that anything that is an accident will be covered by this legislation? I ask whether the Minister has considered—and whether this has an impact on fiscal aggregates—the term “cerebrovascular accident” commonly known as a stroke. Does this change in the name of the bill indicate that the Government is looking to include strokes otherwise known as cerebrovascular accidents in the coverage of the compensation? If so the Government should say so and it should prove that there is no fiscal aggregate impact from that change. 
My second question is: if only accidents are to be covered by this legislation and not injuries where does that leave sexual abuse victims who sustain injuries but never by accident? Sexual abuse does not occur by accident; it is perpetrated upon victims and it creates injuries. At the very least it creates mental injuries. Are we to assume by this change of name that there is some agenda to move stealthily and without any recourse to the public to take sexual abuse treatment out of accident compensation? That is the impact already of moves this Government has made in changing processes on treatment of sexual abuse victims. Already there are people who cannot get treatment and who risk suicide because they are unable to get treatment in a timely way because people are waiting for decisions to be made about whether there is an injury. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 While we are on the subject of quotations I would like to offer the Committee one of my own. In response to a correspondent the great writer Mark Twain stated: “I notice that you use plain simple language short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English—it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective kill it.” 
I will follow up with another quote because of all of the discussion we have had about the royal commission’s report. Owen Woodhouse wrote these words and I think they are the most enduring of all of them: “Injury arising from accident demands an attack on three fronts. The most important is obviously prevention. Next in importance is the obligation to rehabilitate the injured. Thirdly there is the duty to compensate them for their losses.” Having stressed that injury prevention was obviously the most important component of any framework Owen Woodhouse then called the royal commission report  
Compensation for personal injury in New Zealand 
. He did not need the “fluffery” of adding “injury prevention rehabilitation and compensation” or this that and the next thing. He called it by a simple title. 
The House of the time in passing the legislation did what? Did it give the legislation an extra-long title? No it did not. In highlighting the importance of injury prevention it said “Let us call this Act the Accident Compensation Act 1972.” It is pretty simple stuff really. There is so much more about that Act that does not need to be packed into the title. In 2001 when it was given the present name which was so long that the front page of the Act needed a concertina sort of shape what was done was done nobly I think. I do not think that anybody was under any illusions that the priorities were changing and that the goal of preventing injuries remained. Sadly we did not seem to have much luck; injury rates have continued to climb and rehabilitation rates have dropped which is obviously the reason why we are in the Chamber debating this bill. 
But let us call the legislation what it is. The Act should be the Accident Compensation Act. Nobody on the street understands it by any other name. They know “ACC” by what it. Let us call it what it is and let us resist any of these nonsensical suggestions that by giving it a simple name the Government diminishes the importance of injury prevention. That is simply not the case. Nobody believes it; not even the Opposition believes it. I really strongly support this change. 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I begin by asking the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister for ACC a question but I doubt very much whether she will answer it because she seems to have been unable to find a contribution to make at all in this debate despite being the Associate Minister. Her arm is moving; that indicates some form of life. But she does not seem to think that it is part of her responsibility—despite collecting quarter of a million dollars with a car and free travel credit card and all the other trappings that go with being a Minister—to stand up in the debate and say why this is happening why we are having this debate. But the question I have immediately for the Minister is where Gerry Brownlee is when you need him. Where is the Leader of the House who felt obliged to come to the Chamber and have my Supplementary Order Paper ruled out of order on the grounds that it would nearly bring the Government to its knees— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Let us keep this reasonably good-natured but the member is straying into two areas. The first is implying that a member is not here and secondly speaking about a ruling that has been made. The member cannot do that. 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: So where is Gerry Brownlee’s contribution when it is needed? Clearly it is not being provided at the moment because if Gerry Brownlee was able to make a contribution in this debate I am sure he would look at the amendment to the title and think about the huge impact on fiscal aggregate that this amendment from the Minister the Hon Dr Nick Smith will have. How much will it cost for every single letterhead every single logo every single front window every single car every single business card and every single bit of paper—including ones with perforated sides—that currently have the existing logo and brand “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation”—to be altered? Gerry Brownlee is likely to be considering a contribution to this debate and having this amendment from the Minister ruled out. If it is good enough for the previous amendments to be ruled out it is certainly good enough for this one. But if we were able to put aside the huge impact on fiscal aggregate that this amendment will have even though it will be debated and then voted on by the sounds of the current lack of contribution from the Leader of the House then the Committee would be asking why we are doing this. 
At the very time when the focus of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) has moved from looking at accidents as things that just happen and we pay out compensation for them why are we not moving that culture to say that a prime responsibility of the corporation as outlined in the original Woodhouse commission report was that injury prevention should come first? That is what the commission said. That is why the name was changed to reflect what should be the primary responsibility and focus of the corporation as it should be for the leadership position of the Minister and the Associate Minister to drive injury prevention. I do not think that anybody in the Chamber would want to see anyone injured; even in the most heated moments of debate we would not wish any harm on any of our political opponents. But without that focus in the name the corporation lost its way. It did not refer back to the original intent of the commission. Now it has looked to the title of its mandating legislation and said injury prevention comes first. 
What should be the second responsibility of the corporation? It should be rehabilitation. It should make sure that when people have the misfortune of an injury despite the best efforts of any injury prevention programme there is a fundamental responsibility to try to restore injured people to the greatest extent possible to their pre-injury earning capacity. We must make them as well as we can make them and restore them from their injury to as much as possible their pre-injury situation. So injury prevention should be the corporation’s No. 1 focus. Rehabilitation should be its second and compensation for loss of earnings or earning capacity should be its third role. 
Under this amendment and under the now new title—yet another leap backwards into the 1990s—we see that the title of the Act will be the Accident Compensation Act. What does that say from this Parliament to the corporation? What does it say to the general public? What does it say to the leading injury prevention and rehabilitation specialists? The message from the Hon Dr Nick Smith and the Hon Pansy Wong is: “We don’t care any more about injury prevention and rehabilitation. We don’t care about it to the extent that we’re even prepared to change the name of the mandating legislation so that the message is ‘accident compensation’—end of story.” That is not a good enough message. We have people day in day out who are injured often permanently often severely. People lose their lives in incidents that we could prevent such as children who are killed on quad bikes and children who drown. People lose their limbs in incidents that could be prevented. 
My colleague the Hon David Parker spoke of a fantastic programme that was funded in part by ACC and in part by local authorities and other Government departments and agencies. The programme focused on a group of people who were often neglected in the past in terms of injury prevention. The reason they were often neglected was that they do not cost the corporation much money because they do not receive earnings-related compensation—that is people over 80. People over 80 often fall and break their hips. They do not cost much so they were never in the past a priority. The previous Labour Government changed that. We said that those people were important in society. They have contributed all of their lives to our country and to their communities. They have raised families many of them have fought overseas on our behalf and we should not write them off just because they are over 80. So we put a focus on a critical area of injury prevention for those people through the National Falls Prevention Strategy. I say all credit to Otago University for the amazing work—led in particular by Professor A John Campbell—that was done with that injury prevention programme. 
The programme stopped large numbers of senior citizens falling over and often breaking their hip. If older people fall and break their hip they have a lot of pain they have to have a lot of surgical intervention and the most telling thing is that they never fully regain their confidence again. They rapidly decline in terms of their ability to get up get out of bed and get out and about because that fall has shaken more than their bones; that fall shakes their confidence. Why would we want to let that happen when we know that it can be prevented by a very simple internationally well-regarded falls prevention programme? I do not know the answer to that question because the National Government scrapped the programme not the Labour Government. This Government said to over 80-year-olds that it does not care any more about their falls prevention programme and that it does not care about injury prevention at all actually. It scrapped the small amount of funding that was keeping so many of those people out of danger and out of hospital and giving them an opportunity to lead a much fuller life. 
Those issues are at the heart of my concern about the change in the title. Many people might ask who cares about the name change. Well if we cared as little as that then we would not be debating it in Parliament. It is more than the name of a statute on the books of this House. It is about the message we give about what is important as the legislative mandate for the corporation and its staff throughout the country. It is about what this Parliament thinks is a priority. I do not think we should say that if it is an accident it just happens. I think we should say that these are injuries and in many many instances they can be prevented. It should be a moral responsibility of this Parliament to make it a legislative responsibility of the corporation to have injury prevention as its highest priority. None of us wants to see anyone being injured so we should take the next logical step to make sure the law reflects that. 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I want to explain to the Government why Labour feels so offended about this proposed name change. The name of the principal Act was changed by the previous Labour Government as members have pointed out. What was the name of the law relating to accident compensation before that? 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: It was the privatised name. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That is right. It was the Accident Insurance Act which described exactly how National saw accident compensation then and how those members still see it. They see workers’ livelihoods and their injuries as tradable commodities. We are upset about the new name because it means that National has not changed. We know that before the last election National was meeting with business and the insurance industry and we know that it was making promises about privatising the work account. 
The message that we receive from Supplementary Order Paper 111 is that the focus is coming off the things that the previous Labour Government worked so hard on which my colleague Ruth Dyson so eloquently described and is going back to the accident compensation scheme being opened up to competition and to private insurers. We heard that kind of language. We heard the statement that it is not supposed to be a welfare scheme; it is an insurance scheme. That is what the Government says all the time. That is what Government members like to say about this scheme all the time. So we are worried about the change of name. 
I ask members opposite what is so complicated about the existing name. What is not simple about the words “injury prevention”? 
Sandra Goudie 
: I know we’re doing the right thing when we know you’re worried. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: What does the member Sandra Goudie not understand about injury prevention? Maybe she does not have any idea about what it means why it is important or why Labour made it the first priority of our accident compensation scheme. The first priority is to prevent accidents particularly in the workplace but what are we seeing from this Government? We know that the priority has gone off injury prevention. We know that Government members do not care about it. They are cutting cutting cutting— 
Sandra Goudie 
: She didn’t care about how she wasted billions of dollars. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Is it a waste of millions of dollars to prevent injuries? Due to funding cuts training for workplace health and safety representatives has been cut from 6000 places down to 2000. What did we hear in the last quarter? The Minister of Labour said that she was worried about the increase in workplace accidents. Well surprise surprise! If we take the focus off injury prevention and start making cuts to workplace health and safety training then we will see more of that. It is an utter disgrace. 
The second word is easy to understand. It is a simple word: “rehabilitation”. What is so hard to understand about it? Why do members opposite not like this word? They want to ignore the fact that our scheme is trying to get people back to work back to their ordinary jobs and back to being productive members of the community. That is what rehabilitation is. That is why rehabilitation is the second platform of the previous Labour Government’s requirements of the scheme. 
The final word must not be hard to understand because National has retained it in the changed name. It is compensation. It is the last resort. When people can no longer go back to work or are recovering from an accident they are compensated so that they can feed their families and put their lives back together. They can plan for the future. 
Those three terms in the current title prioritise the purpose of our 24-hour no-fault accident compensation scheme. People can understand why members on this side of the Chamber are particularly upset about the change in name because it indicates the change of focus that we knew was coming. From the kind of language that has been used from the discussions that have happened in the debate we knew that the change was coming and the Minister for ACC has confirmed that with his Supplementary Order Paper. 
I will be putting forward some amendments to the title and I suggest a few alternatives. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Hope they don’t have any fiscal impacts. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That is right. One alternative for example would be the “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation Compensation and Experience-Ratings Amendment Act 2010”. We have talked about experience-ratings in the debate. We are concerned about what risk rating meant in the 1990s when we had experience-rating and how it affected people. It affected the behaviour of employers and workers but it did not bring the accident rate down; it increased. 
LYNNE PILLAY (Labour) 
: 
 I congratulate my colleague Darien Fenton on reminding us about the name change made under the previous National Government in terms of our accident compensation scheme. I join with my colleagues in questioning the Government about why this current change is necessary. Members opposite may call us suspicious but I ask why when this amending bill came to the House called the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill suddenly there is a need to change the title of the principal Act by cutting out those words and calling it the Accident Compensation Act. 
The Minister for ACC got to his feet yesterday—I note that he is not speaking as much on the bill today—and said that the reason is that is what the Act used to be called. That is the National Government’s answer: that is what it used to be called. 
Darien Fenton 
: This is the brains trust. 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: The brains trust came up with that. 
I am sure that all MPs care about communities. Surely they want to build on and improve on what was there before. I know that that is what inspired members on this side of the Chamber to come to Parliament: to advocate to improve the lives of New Zealanders. The Act was called that before. Improvements have been made over the years—though admittedly only under the previous Labour Government—to this wonderful social contract for New Zealanders. But this Government is intent on cutting back those improvements. 
My colleagues have asked what the Government’s removal of the words “Injury Prevention” from the title tells us. What does “injury prevention” mean? We have already seen cuts to injury prevention schemes. We have already seen that happen under the current Act. We have already seen cuts to education programmes for older people about avoiding accidents. We have already seen much of the funding cut for schemes that worked. What does that make us think? I note what else we have seen cut. We have seen cuts in training for the delegates who are involved in health and safety in the workplace. They are involved in working towards ensuring that people have a very healthy workplace. The removal of the words “Injury Prevention” might make us think that this is what this Government is about. 
Why would a Government remove the word “Rehabilitation”? It is absolutely the key principle of what is behind any social contract to do with accidents. It is not about rewarding compo. That view is so old-fashioned it is not funny. Yes people must be compensated. We note that but we have already drawn attention to the fact that many people will not receive the compensation that they are entitled to particularly if they have committed suicide. There are already claw-backs to do with compensation for seasonal workers and holiday pay especially the provision that means people will have to use their holiday pay before they receive compensation. 
But as well as those claw-backs it seems to this side of the Chamber that the Government is saying that it does not want rehabilitation in the legislation. All it says to me and my colleagues is that this Government does not believe in investing in rehabilitation. We are already seeing examples of that under the current Act. But when it is no longer part of the title of the Act—when and if the bill goes through which it will unless there is a big change of mind from the Government and the ACT Party—then I make no bones about the fact that rehabilitation will go further and further down the agenda. 
It just makes a mockery of a scheme that has worked and that has delivered for so many New Zealanders. It has assisted them to be work-ready to be working and to fully participate in our society and workplaces and to effectively support their families. I too have some amendments. 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am happy to take a call on the title and commencement clauses of the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill. I will first remark on a comment that was made by the Hon Tony Ryall the Minister of Health. When my colleague Maryan Street was using an analogy from  
Romeo and Juliet 
 the Hon Tony Ryall said: “Yes but they ended up together in the end”. That is true I say to the Minister—but they were dead. In terms of the analogy for accident compensation I think it is particularly worrying if the Minister of Health thinks that is a good outcome. It is everyone’s happy ending; it is great—apart from the small fact that they were both dead. I think that sums up Labour’s concerns about where this legislation is taking us. 
My colleagues have talked about the Minister’s insistence that the name of this legislation needs to be changed. We worry about a seemingly innocuous move on the Minister’s part because the mere fact that a Supplementary Order Paper is put forward will lengthen the debate in this part of the Committee stage. The Minister in the chair the Associate Minister for ACC and the Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee have already been in the Chamber desperately trying to shut down the debate and shut down the amount of time we spend debating. It is not a small move for a Minister to come here with a Supplementary Order Paper and put it on the Table—it opens things up for a longer debate so there must be some reason that he is doing it. 
The Hon Pansy Wong the Minister in the chair has refused to take a call in this debate. I think someone should place a mirror under her nose and check that she is still breathing just so we can be certain there is not something more serious going on because normally the Committee stage is about debate. It is the one time that the Opposition gets to question a Minister and hopefully get a response and she has refused to do that. Therefore we have to try to ascertain why the name is being changed from Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Act. 
The reason I think is that the Government is softening up accident compensation for privatisation. We know the Government wants to privatise accident compensation. It did so the last time it was in Government and it desperately wants to do it again. It got a lot of campaign donations from Australian insurance companies that will benefit to the tune of billions of dollars from picking up the work that is currently done by the Accident Compensation Corporation in New Zealand at a cheaper lower administrative cost and a lower cost to the levy payers. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am again reluctant to do this with one of my colleagues. But it has long been the case that the motives of the Government cannot be challenged. The linking of direct donations for policy is something that would certainly indicate a lack of integrity on the part of the Government. Although the Government whips and the Minister in the chair at the moment the Minister for ACC might want to accept that as a fact I think it is a reflection on the House. Any suggestion that this is a policy-for-money approach as has been made by my colleague is in my opinion out of order. I know that you were temporarily distracted Mr Chair. The Minister was clearly listening. I know that the junior Government whip was clearly listening. She appeared to be nodding; I am not sure whether she was going off to sleep or agreeing. But it does seem to me that impugning the motives of the Minister and saying that he and his party are getting cash for the policy is something that implies corruption and probably should not be allowed to continue. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: The first point is that Government members did not raise a point of order because we give little credibility to this assertion which has been made on repeated occasions. Furthermore Mr Chairman I think you should take note that the reason Mr Mallard chose to raise a point of order far from actually upholding the principles of the House was to do exactly the opposite. It was simply to give him the opportunity to recite those quite wrong and unparliamentary allegations. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Firstly can I say in response to Mr Mallard’s point of order that questioning people’s motives is not a unique event in this Parliament. In fact a time when members’ motives for putting forward legislation or amendments were not spoken about would be a remarkable period of time. So motivation in my view is a legitimate part of debate for this Committee. The second point that the member alludes to but not directly is that it is contrary to the Standing Orders to imply or say directly that people in this Chamber are controlled by outside interests. I do think that the member speaking fell well short of that. I take the point that has been made by Mr Mallard that this House is brought into disrepute by some of those assertions or that implication. I will not pull the member up on it but I do think the member should be circumspect. An attack on any particular member’s motives in the House is an attack on all members of the House. I think the member should be mindful of the decorum of this place and the standard of debate that the public would expect. The member will continue. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Thank you Mr Chair. I am happy to do so. I think we are very lucky that we have the Hon Trevor Mallard as a moral conscience of this Committee to keep us all on the straight and narrow when the Government fails to do so. I say to the Hon Nick Smith that if he is so upset about these allegations he should stop hiding the money in trusts and let New Zealand people see where the National Party’s money is coming from. 
I will carry on. The reason I believe that the Hon Nick Smith wants to change the title of the Act from the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Act is so that when he privatises the scheme there is absolutely no onus on the new Australian owners of the scheme to carry out those activities. He is clearing the decks and making it clear that all they will have to be in charge of is paying out money. Let me preface that comment by saying that insurance companies make money by not paying out and by refusing claims and that is the future for New Zealand workers under this National Government when it comes to workers’ compensation. 
The Hon Nick Smith is sending a very clear message that the new owners will not have to carry out injury prevention and rehabilitation. All the niceties and all the weasel words saying that that is not right and the Government still thinks injury prevention is fantastic does not hide the fact that injury prevention is being cut by this Government now. That sends a very strong message. If all the National members who took calls—and there were not many of them—were genuinely concerned about saving money then surely they would see that injury prevention is the way to do that. 
It makes far more sense to spend a bit of money keeping people well. Let us be clear that every single piece of analysis of the programmes that were in place—my colleague Ruth Dyson mentioned the falls prevention programmes—were working. They were saving money. So to say that this is all about saving money is ridiculous when we consider that this Government has cut the very programmes that do save money. 
If I were to come up with an alternative title for this piece of legislation I think I would probably come up with a title along the lines of the “ACC (Kiss Your Holidays Goodbye) Amendment Bill”. I do not think the Minister for ACC is being completely up front with people. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 I wonder in speaking to this part which seeks a name change to the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill whether I could divert the Committee with a little homily on pre-parliamentary experience. It is relevant. Before becoming a member of Parliament I was a management consultant and worked for an insurance company over the ditch that specialised in accident insurance. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Not HIH? 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: I could not possibly comment but no it was not that one. The key point to make is there were three functions that needed to be undertaken that fit nicely with the name that is proposed by our side: the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill. In looking at injury prevention rehabilitation and compensation we see that the first of those functions speaks to getting upstream and making sure that the environment is safer that people’s costs are minimised and that personal harm is minimised. A stitch in time saves nine and the investment in public information and public education pays huge dividends. So it proved to be. 
The second of those functions rehabilitation is absolutely critical especially on claims that are required for moderately serious injuries. A very small injury can often be fixed on the day within 24 hours and out of the door at a walk-in clinic. A moderately serious claim may require many weeks months or sometimes years of rehabilitation to get people back to work so that they can pay their way. 
The third category was the very serious claims that required intensive often lifetime management and compensation. That company was able to minimise the cost to its shareholders and the Crown by undertaking all three of those functions diligently as does I believe our accident compensation scheme. 
The issue with this name change is that it underplays two of those absolutely vital functions. It collects the burden on the organisation under the third function. Compensation should be the last cab off the rank not the first. If it does that it will not be good for New Zealanders who either are not educated to avoid accidents before they occur or are not rehabilitated to the same extent after they occur and we are left with what will be both increased human suffering and increased fiscal risk because the organisation will not be fitted as well to do its job. 
We can imagine that the motivation for National in suggesting the name change that Dr Smith has suggested in his amendment is not drawn from the library of Mark Twain. I suspect that it is not a stylistic amendment. By all reports this is a busy Government that has much on its plate. Would that Minister really spend his time on a purely semantic amendment? Quite obviously there is a broader game afoot. Things are not always as they seem and I think New Zealanders are finding that the penny is already dropping for them. Here is a Government that is bent on cutting and trimming the services that our accident compensation scheme makes available that it has interpreted in the most negative way. From the chair on down in regard to the financial circumstances of the corporation it has put the most pessimistic assumptions before the public and has used that as a pretext to undertake a rash of cuts. New Zealanders are deeply disturbed that the social contract is being broken. As well as that it makes absolutely no sense to do it in economic or management terms as this name change suggests. Each of the functions of preventing accidents rehabilitating those who are injured and only then fairly and fully compensating those who cannot be rehabilitated are equally important. 
If there is no human interest reason for the proposed change and if there can be no managerial or economic reason for it I ask what it is. One of my colleagues has suggested that perhaps it is a pretext for privatisation. We know and there is nothing outside the Standing Orders in recalling for the Parliament that Merrill Lynch a firm not unknown to the current Prime Minister advised its clients in the insurance industry that there were hundreds of millions of dollars of profit to be made should this Government proceed with privatising the New Zealand accident compensation scheme. That would be a tragedy for New Zealanders. The only beneficiary would be those Australian insurance companies or their like and that cannot be allowed to happen for the sake of New Zealanders. 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I have a couple of questions for the Minister for ACC. I will give them at the outset and then spend a little time trying to convince him that it is not a bad idea to answer them. The first question is: why change the name? We have been saying to the Minister that we think he has changed the name for this reason that we think he has changed the name for that reason and that we think he should have left the name alone for the other reason. We have been at that for a while and we have had no response. 
The second question is: when was the name changed? The last time a National Government took the axe to the accident compensation system was in the 1990s when the Rt Hon William Birch had a go. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Nick Smith was there too. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Nick Smith was there I was there and a few others in the Committee were there. The name change which put the word “insurance” in the title was made up front at the outset. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Always. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Maurice Williamson agrees with me. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: He’s not old enough to remember is he? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Maurice Williamson is old enough to remember. It is clear that the Government had a policy shift afoot and wanted to reflect that policy shift in the title so it did. It was upfront which gave us months to say that it should not have done it as it is not an insurance scheme; it is a social contract. That debate continues to this day. 
But not this time. This time the Government is taking the axe to the accident compensation system in all its totality. It is changing the first couple of words of the title of the bill from “Injury Prevention” to “Accident Compensation”. I would like to know when the Minister decided to do that and I gently challenge the Minister with the proposition that he had decided all along that he would change the name. He has after all had to be across this portfolio very tightly because he was the person who said that the accident compensation scheme was broken. No one else agreed with him but he said it and he stuck with it. He ran that line hard and fast. He then decided to proceed with the legislative changes that are in front of us today. 
The Minister started this issue so he has been across the issue for about 15 months. I wonder whether it is within the bounds of credibility that within that time he did not at some stage have some conversation either with himself or someone else about the name change. I suspect he did yet the legislation as introduced into the House was the same and no change was made to the title by Government members of the select committee. I am not aware of submissions calling for a name change. There may have been some; it would be interesting to know if the Minister would like to tell us about them. I suspect that the Minister had the name change in his back pocket all along. I think the Minister decided that he would do a little quickie and make the name change on the floor of the Chamber towards the end of the legislative process. That is my challenge. I would not call it as strong as an accusation but I would like the Minister to get up and give us his side of the story. 
Those are my two questions: why did the Government believe that a name change was a good idea and when did the Government—or indeed the Minister—decide to change the name? I wonder whether the Minister would care to indicate whether he would like to respond to me. If he does not want to respond I am happy to continue with the debate and I thank the Chair for allowing me the opportunity to do so. However as soon at the Minister twitches a muscle I will happily sit down. I am just making that clear to the Minister and to the Chair. 
On the substantial issue of the name change I think an important point to make is that as with the health system prevention is where the cheap benefits come. Prevention is a cost-effective activity; compensation is not a cost-effective activity. I want to know from the Government why it has chosen something that is determinedly and systematically inefficient. This Government is preoccupied with economic growth and with catching up with Australia yet with this name change it has arguably chosen an approach that is known to be less efficient. If there is to be a downturn a downsizing or a reduction in attention to injury prevention or if more programmes of the ilk of the University of Otago Faculty of Medicine falls prevention programme are to be cut I want the Minister to explain to the Committee why he thinks that will be economically efficient. I tell members to notice how I am choosing my language. In essence this is a social portfolio but I ask the Minister why he thinks that would be more economically efficient. 
JO GOODHEW (Junior Whip—National) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to add my concern to the concerns that have been raised about why we are removing very important words from the title of this bill—words like “injury prevention” and “rehabilitation”—but I want to take a slightly different approach. I intend in this contribution to tie this issue back to some of the strategic priorities of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) because I wonder what the implications of this message the Minister is sending are for the corporation and its work. 
In relation to injury prevention I say that that is clearly the way we could make a real difference to cost containment. Cost containment is supposedly one of the major drivers for many of the changes in this bill; there is very little other justification for some of the arbitrary unfair and discriminatory provisions in the bill. When it comes down to it we are told that the reason for the bill is cost containment. The provision around holidays will save $1 million a year so that is a cost containment measure but even Treasury wonders whether such a small saving is worth it for the unfairness of the provision. That was the advice given. 
But I go back to the words “injury prevention”. These are the most fundamental words that should be in the name of this bill and of any bill to do with accident compensation because injury prevention is where it should start. Injury prevention is more than just cost containment. Obviously it is the most effective way of containing cost but more important it is about ensuring that people do not have accidents—that people do not get hurt that they do not die at work and that they do not lose their parents spouse or child through workplace fatalities see them severely incapacitated through workplace accidents or see them lose income from being off work for a period of time. Injury prevention is about people’s lives and protecting people yet submitter after submitter has said that injury prevention is what is missing here. 
I will finalise my comments in relation to injury prevention by noting that a strategic priority of ACC is to work to reduce injuries and occupational diseases. I wonder what this title is saying in relation to that strategic priority. Thank you. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: We have a number of amendments in the name of Darien Fenton which propose to change and amend the title of the bill. I draw members’ attention to a Standing Order on page 27: “preliminary clauses means the title clause and the commencement clause and if applicable a principal Act clause”—so this preliminary clause is the title clause. The second issue here is that the amendments that are going to make changes must not to be an attempt to criticise the contents. They must be a serious or objective description of the bill rather than simply being an attempt to relitigate issues and criticise the contents. Accordingly the following amendments have been ruled out. These are the amendments that insert words as follows: “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Reduced Emphasis on Rehabilitation to Reduce Costs) Amendment Act 2010” “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Primary of Cost Reduction) Amendment Act 2010”— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am sorry to interrupt you but just from the point of view of being helpful could you repeat the Standing Order you are quoting; 27 I thought you said is— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: No page 22. I am ahead of myself a little bit on that because this will come up later— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: So you are going to move through the different amendments to the amendment in the names of the different members and say which ones are not consistent in your view as Chairman. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The first ones we are dealing with here are amendments that attempt to criticise the contents of the bill; amendments have to be serious and in order. If they are an attempt to relitigate issues or criticise the bill the Speakers’ rulings are that they are out of order. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: And you are going to do that— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I am going to go through and explain them. In the first amendment I have ruled out just the words in brackets “(Reduced Emphasis on Rehabilitation to Reduce Costs)”— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: In whose name is that one? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Darien Fenton. I am dealing with ones by Darien Fenton at this stage. The amendments that seek to insert the words “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Experience Ratings) Amendment Act 2010” “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Alignment with Commercial Insurance Practices) Amendment Act 2010” “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Alignment with Australian Practices) Amendment Act 2010” “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010” “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid) Amendment Act 2010” “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide) Amendment Act 2010” “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Reduction of Cover for those With Hearing Impairments) Amendment Act 2010” and “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid and Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010” are ruled out. 
I now move to the amendment that is in order from Darien Fenton—that is the amendment to amend the title of the Act to “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010”. That is in order. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I accept your comments about any titles or amendments that might be deemed to be taking away from the meaning of the bill’s title as it currently stands. But in relation to amendments such as “Alignment with Australian Practices” I note that we have a bill in the urgency motion relating to trans-Tasman proceedings and alignment. I do not mean to be flippant—any reference to Australia by some New Zealanders would be considered offensive—but I think I can say that this is a serious amendment and it fits in with other bills that are on the urgency motion. It is hard to see how an alignment with Australian practices would be somehow demeaning. 
Equally Mr Chairperson the removal of cover for those who attempt suicide and a reduction of cover for those with hearing impairments are statements of fact; that is what the legislation does. If it said “The Terrible and Unfair Removal of Cover for Those with Hearing Impairment” I think that would be inconsistent with the Standing Orders with regard to the way in which we would be putting a conjecture on the title. But simply for you to say that “Reduction of Cover for Those With Hearing Impairments” is “criticising” when there are clauses that state exactly that in the bill proper makes it hard for us to see how that can be inconsistent. 
I am not going against the other points you have made. We accept that those are out of order—the “Non-work and Work Account Cost Shifting” provision for example—but not those three particular ones. I would have thought that “Alignment with Australian Practices” was a very neutral phrase and the “Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments” is—political differences aside—what the law does; the Minister has given speeches about that. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: In response to the member I make two points. Firstly the Chair’s decision is final and no correspondence is entered into but in this case I am happy to accept a point of order. The issue here is that the title is to describe the whole bill. This phrase describes an aspect of the bill; it is not an attempt to describe the whole bill. The title has to be an objective description of the bill and when an amendment picks out just an aspect it is to make a political point rather than to objectively describe the bill. The bill’s title has to be a wide generic term rather than contain specifics in the bill. 
The point I make again is that amendments are also ruled out when they attempt to highlight a point of difference in the debate or political differences over the bill. On that basis I ruled out the amendment. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Thank you for your ruling on that—that clears that aspect of it—but can you advise the Committee? These are all amendments to the amendment. The Minister himself Dr Smith has put forward Supplementary Order Paper 111 which is a significant Supplementary Order Paper and which in itself renames the legislation. I think it renames it the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill when clearly there are clauses in respective parts of the bill that cover injury prevention and rehabilitation. So the name that the Minister’s amendment chooses highlights just one aspect of what his law is doing—because it is about accident compensation; it will give weekly compensation to people who have accidents—but it takes away the words “Injury Prevention” and “Rehabilitation” which the Minister’s law also covers. So how does it work when a conjecture is put on an Opposition amendment but the amendment itself that we are trying to amend does equally the same thing? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Well in respect of the member’s point I tell him that one of the amendments that he objected to for example was the alignment with Australian practices. That is not a particular aspect of compensation; that relates to a point of view that people in this Chamber have or do not have. I come back to what I ruled: the amendment generally has to be an objective description of the bill not a relitigation of particular points. 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I have listened quite carefully to this and of course it is your ruling and I understand that you alone get to rule on it. That is clear to me. What I am seeking to understand however is whether an amendment to a title that said for example the “Accident Compensation (Reduction of Certain Rights and Services) Act” would be in order on the grounds that although it points out something that the Government may not wish to see pointed out from a political lens it is nonetheless a broad description of the essence of the legislation that is in front of us. Would a title of that ilk be deemed to be within the Standing Orders on the basis of your ruling? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Speakers’ ruling 112/4 states: “An amendment to the title of a bill must be a serious or objective description of the bill rather than an attempt to criticise its contents.” The point the member has made is that it is an attempt to criticise the contents. Whether the member believes it to be entirely true or not in the way the member has described it it is a negative and therefore a criticism of it. 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. That gets us somewhere further. What then if the House were generally to agree that this was a reduction in services and certain rights? If the Government held the view that that title was accurate would that influence the Chair? How does the Chair decide whether a reduction in certain services and rights is an accurate but nonetheless pejorative entitlement for a piece of legislation? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: If the Government was of that opinion it would have moved it. 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 Oh no that is not the point. If I might gently contest your view I say to you that that is not an answer to my question either. The question is: if an Opposition moves something that is in essence accurate—that is to say accurate in the terms that it is serious—but is nonetheless pejorative in the sense that it is critical because Oppositions do that sort of thing does that fall within the Standing Orders? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The member has answered his own question. I will pick up Speakers’ ruling 112/4 and read it: “An amendment to the title of a bill must be a serious or objective description of the bill rather than an attempt to criticise its contents.” A pejorative by definition is a criticism; it is a negative. So by the member’s own words his objection fails because it does not meet what Speakers’ rulings have ruled before. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I think we are getting somewhere on this so please just hear me out. I think Mr Hodgson is putting to you the question of whether there is any test for an amendment to the title by a Government Minister on a bill. Supplementary Order Paper 111 changes the name of the principal Act and gives it an emphasis that does not marry off the other two things that the existing law does: injury prevention and rehabilitation. I think we are trying to ascertain whether an Opposition amendment can be struck out on the basis that it could be perceived as being a negative criticism. In a couple of ones that have been ruled out of order there was no criticism; they were just statements of fact. Does Speakers’ ruling 112/4 apply equally to Government amendments because once we have voted on the amendments to the amendments we are going to shortly vote on an exact example of this from the other side of the Chamber? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The member is correct in that a Government amendment that was negative would be ruled out accordingly. But as I see the Government’s amendment it is not a negative. It might not traverse the ground the member desires to have in it but it is not in itself a negative. 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I appreciate that we are testing your patience but let me see where we might need to go. We might need to go to the Speaker now or at some later time to try to get clarity around this. 
The Speakers’ ruling has two parts to it. You have read it out to us more than once and I thank you for doing so. The two parts are that the amendment must achieve several things. It must be a serious amendment to the title. It must be a serious amendment that describes the legislation on the one hand. Then the Speakers’ ruling goes on to say that it must be that rather than a criticism of the legislation. Well the problem the Opposition has is that a serious description of the title an accurate description of the title may be—and we would assert in this case must be—critical. So it is no fault of yours dear Mr Chair because it is a Speakers’ ruling from earlier times. But the Speakers’ ruling has two parts to it as if one of the two must be true. In fact it is easy to show that an accurate description of legislation must in order to be accurate also be critical. That is in the essence of it our conundrum. I say that the problem for you Mr Chairman if I may be so bold is that you are obliged to choose one of the two parts of that dichotomy. We would assert that you should choose the other. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Well it is the Chair’s decision. I have heard plenty on this. I want to make the point again that the amendments to the title are to be serious and objective descriptions and are not to attempt to criticise the contents. Many of the amendments I have ruled out do exactly that; there is no question about that. There are some and I am just coming to them that are serious amendments in my opinion and that do not attempt to directly criticise the contents. I want to move on to these. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Darien Fenton to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 1 be agreed to: 
to omit “Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010” and substitute “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Darien Fenton to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 1 be agreed to: 
to omit “Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010” and substitute “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation (Urgent Changes) Amendment Act 2010”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: We now move to the amendments in the name of Lynne Pillay. These too propose to amend the proposed amendment to the title of the bill and are also ruled out of order as being either a criticism or a non-objective description of the bill. Those are the views of the Clerk and I support the Clerk’s views. 
The following proposed substitutions in the name of Lynne Pillay are also ruled out of order: “Accident Compensation (Reduced Emphasis on Rehabilitation to Reduce Costs) Amendment Act 2010” “Accident Compensation (Primary of Cost Reduction) Amendment Act 2010” Accident Compensation (Experience Ratings) Amendment Act 2010” “Accident Compensation (Alignment with Commercial Insurance Practices) Amendment Act 2010” “Accident Compensation (Alignment with Australian Practices) Amendment Act 2010” “Accident Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010” “Accident Compensation (Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010” “Accident Compensation (Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid) Amendment Act 2010” “Accident Compensation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide) Amendment Act 2010 “Accident Compensation (Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments) Amendment Act 2010 and “Accident Compensation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid and Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010”. Further amendments to change the bill’s proposed title back to the bill’s original title are ruled out of order as that is a direct negative. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. One of the amendments to the Minister’s proposed amendment that you ruled out of order was the Accident Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010. There was a similar amendment in Darien Fenton’s name which had that same language about a rebalancing between the non-work and work accounts and which you allowed previously. 
Maybe while you are checking that Mr Chairperson I will also raise a point about the reference to “Experience Ratings”. Does that fall into the same category as your earlier ruling about it—that of being only one part of the bill? It seems to me that that is not pejorative in any sense; it is a scheme that is funded by that method. But my primary point of order certainly relates to the amendment with regard to “Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts”. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for ACC) 
: 
 One of the rules of the Committee is that members cannot put the same question twice. The amendment that was put forward by Lynne Pillay with regard to that name change was absolutely identical to that which was put forward by Darien Fenton and put to the vote. The normal practice is that it is the first version that is put forward and voted on. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 The difference between the two amendments is that one was for an Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation name for the principal Act and the other one was for an Accident Compensation name for the principal Act. So they were two different amendments. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I have sought advice gone upstairs to the “TMO” and asked them to look at it. The Hon Dr Nick Smith is correct and Lynne Pillay’s amendment is substantially the same as the one before that was allowed. Normally it would have been ruled out as having been voted on but there is a minor but sufficient difference between them. The Clerk has now considered the advice and the amendment in the name of Lynne Pillay to omit all the words after “substitute” and to insert “Accident Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts)” will be put. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Thank you for your ruling. There is just one point that I would like to draw to your attention. Although you are again attempting to inject a sense of humour into the Committee we should make it clear that the judgments that have been made in this case are your judgments Mr Chairperson and not the Clerk’s judgments. It is important to keep that clear even though there is whispering into your earpiece. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The member has made the point. Of course the member knows that in the end the decisions are the Chair’s decisions but as the member also well knows the Chair and the Speaker consult with the Clerk regularly and take the Clerk’s advice which I have done on this particular occasion. We now come to the amendment in the name of Lynne Pillay that I have reinstated. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Lynne Pillay to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 1 be agreed to: 
to omit “Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010” and substitute “Accident Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Lynne Pillay to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 1 be agreed to: 
to omit “Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010” and substitute “Revised Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2010”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Lynne Pillay to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 1 be agreed to: 
to omit “Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010” and substitute “Accident Compensation (Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation) Amendment Act 2010”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Lynne Pillay to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 1 be agreed to: 
to omit “Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010” and substitute “Accident Compensation (Urgent Changes) Amendment Act 2010”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: We also have a number of amendments in the name of Carol Beaumont. These also propose to amend the Minister’s proposed amendment to the title of the bill. A number of the amendments are also ruled out of order for being either a criticism or a non-objective description of the bill. I will read them out: “Accident Compensation Corporation (Reduced Emphasis on Rehabilitation to Reduce Costs) Amendment Act 2010” “Accident Compensation Corporation (Primary of Cost Reduction) Amendment Act 2010” “Accident Compensation Corporation (Experience Ratings) Amendment Act 2010” Accident Compensation Corporation (Alignment with Commercial Insurance Practices) Amendment Act 2010” Accident Compensation Corporation (Alignment with Australian Practices) Amendment Act 2010” Accident Compensation Corporation (Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010” “Accident Compensation Corporation (Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid) Amendment Act 2010” Accident Compensation Corporation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide) Amendment Act 2010” Accident Compensation Corporation (Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments) Amendment Act 2010” and “Accident Compensation Corporation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid and Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010”. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Carol Beaumont to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 1 be agreed to: 
to omit “Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010” and substitute “Accident Compensation Corporation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment to the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment to the amendment not agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: We come now to an amendment in the name of Carol Beaumont to change the name of the Act to the Accident Compensation Corporation (Urgent Changes) Amendment Act 2010. But that title is so close to one in an amendment in the name of Lynne Pillay that we have already voted on—to change the name to the “Accident Compensation (Urgent Changes) Amendment Act”; the title is almost identical—that I rule the amendment out of order. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 1 be agreed to. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I seek your advice about the order in which amendments are dealt with. Is this the Minister’s amendment that deals with clause 1 only— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Correct. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: So the amendments set down for clauses 2 or 3 will be considered subsequent to these ones? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Correct. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: And there is only one set of Minister’s amendments in his Supplementary Order Paper—is that correct? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: We are dealing with the Minister’s amendment relating to clause 1 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 and not with amendments to clauses 2 or 3. OK? 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Amendment agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That clause 1 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Clause 1 as amended agreed to. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Steve Chadwick to clause 2 be agreed to: 
to omit from subclause (1) “1 July 2010” and substitute “1 November 2025”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I have taken advice members and the ruling will be that as the Committee has rejected the proposal to change the commencement date all other amendments are substantially the same and inconsistent with the Committee’s earlier decision and are therefore out of order. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. The Opposition views this matter quite seriously because it is a continuation of an approach that has been taken around amendments being submitted by the Opposition. The only mechanism that Opposition parties have in order to have influence on legislation in the Committee of the whole House is by way of amendment. 
There is a series of points to be made here. First of all these are all individual amendments. The value of the next amendment cannot be determined by the fact that there might be several other amendments that contain dates that are different from the one in the amendment we are currently voting for. They are separate amendments. 
Secondly this is legislation about the accident compensation scheme. There is significant political debate about the timing in regard to the dates in the scheme. It has been subject to debate and to submissions during the select committee process. During that time the concept of dates becomes critical to the passage of the bill through Parliament. To rule out all the amendments that have been made simply because a decision has been made about one particular date when there are so many dates around this area I think is very unfair on the Opposition and I do not think it is in the spirit of the ability to make amendments to legislation. 
It follows on from what happened previously when the Opposition put up well-thought-out amendments that were dismissed because the Government said that there might be some sort of fiscal impact on it. Those were taken out as well. What has now been ruled from the Chair is that there will be a determination on Opposition amendments that will deny the ability of the Opposition to make amendments to legislation before Parliament. I regard that as very very serious indeed considering that not only is this important legislation but also from a process point of view the rights of members of Parliament to bring amendments to the legislation before the floor of the Committee is a very very important right and the Chair is proposing to take that away on the basis that there are simply too many. I think that is the wrong way to come towards that determination simply on the balance of other work before the Committee. 
These amendments that have been put in and that are in order ought to be voted on by the Committee on their own merits and the Government can vote against them. That is the choice before the Committee. But forcing the Committee into a position whereby Opposition amendments are considered only on the basis of what is going on that day which appears to be what is happening I think is a hugely retrograde step and it actually takes away rights from the Opposition that I regard as being quite serious. I ask you to give some serious consideration to that Mr Chairperson because it may be an issue that we need to seek the view of the Speaker on. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for ACC) 
: 
 The senior Opposition whip is being rather cute here. We have 1066 amendments that would involve the Committee in many many hours of debating. The purpose of this Parliament is to have good robust debate. If you allow these amendments Mr Chairperson you are saying that the Opposition can effectively stall the parliamentary process by simply listing a forward date—1 day 2 days or 3 days—and can technically table 20000 100000 or 200000 amendments and force this Parliament to a standstill for what is actually not a principled argument in this Parliament doing as it should which is robustly arguing issues of concern. 
What it effectively will do is say that the Opposition can bring the Parliament and its work to a halt. It can make a farce of the process and it can tie this institution which costs of tens of thousands of dollars every hour in meaningless votes over a whole lot of different dates when really the principal issue is that Labour does not agree with the bill not that it somehow wants to defer it off to 1066 different dates when it might be implemented. We cannot allow our Parliament to be made into a farce. I think the ruling we have had from the Chair is absolutely fair and proper. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 There is a kernel of truth in one of the points made by the Minister. Of course it is technically possible for this Parliament to be flooded every single day it meets with unlimited numbers of amendments by Opposition parties. That is true every single time it meets. It is within the purview of Opposition members to take points of order if they wish all during question time. Indeed the Minister himself made quite a feature of that during 9 years in Opposition. It was quite an art that he had perfected. All those things are possible but the reality is that they do not happen because Parliament operates on a series of understandings and conventions and a will to get things done 99 percent of the time. [ 
Interruption 
] If the Minister wants to use his open microphone to interject he can but the point I make to you Mr Chairperson is that these things do not happen because Parliament’s business must go through and the Opposition cooperates with that. 
But what has become very clear is that the Government is trying to roll over the top of the Opposition this week shutting down parliamentary question time for example so that there is no question time between now and 17 March. We have had amendments that were ruled out by way of financial veto. The Minister who himself talked about the ability to have robust debate in this Parliament did not take a call at any stage today in order to defend his own legislation so we could accuse him of a breach of parliamentary protocol. 
What I am saying is that it is very unusual for the Opposition to lodge this number of amendments but the fact that it has happened and the fact that there are so many and that of course it involves a lot of work for a lot of people does not undermine the fact that these are amendments that are in order and it is within the ability of Parliament for the Opposition to do this. You are being asked to take into account a far wider gamut of things than would normally be the case. For example many times during a normal day where the Government orders of the day take precedence the Opposition puts up amendments. It could be argued that some of them have some level of fiscal impact but we do not see the Government running around like it did at 2 o’clock today with the Leader of the House coming in and ruling out all of those amendments. In that case there were only three amendments—all three very substantial amendments; in particular the amendment of my colleague Mr Anderton who put up a new part around for example suicide. 
They were very sensitive and serious matters and I think that what has been done here is for the fact that there is a feeling there is some time pressure and the Government is unhappy about the fact that things are going slower than it would have liked to see—and let me assure the Committee that it is the master of its own destiny in that particular respect; the Opposition had a reasonable deal to cooperate on all these matters. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: We would have finished this by now. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: One of the ironies is that this bill would be law by now if the approach that Dr Smith and Mr Brownlee had taken had not been the case. It would have passed its third reading so there is a degree of irony in that. 
But all of that is just by the by. What is important is that amendments that are in order that are submitted to the Clerk’s Office should be able to be voted on on their own merits and not be held up in wider political concerns that are not your responsibility as Chairman. Your responsibility as Chairman is to the Committee and to make sure that the rights of the minority can be advanced here. I think the fact that this is something that happens rarely should be a message in itself to the Government but to the Committee it is simply a case of our amendments being able to be considered by the Committee of the whole House and I do not think that other matter should be taken into account. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. [ 
Interruption 
] Before I do so I ask that you deal with David Bennett and Gerry Brownlee who interjected after I was given the call on a point of order. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I am not going to deal with anybody. People on both sides have been guilty of making comments and interjecting on points of order. It has not yet got to a level that I have found objectionable. If the member wants complete silence on points of order then I suggest to the member and to his own party that they set that standard for themselves and I will judge the rest of the Committee accordingly. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The first thing I refer you to Mr Chairperson is the rulings made on 7 April 2005 in regard to the Hon Dr Nick Smith and his approach at that time. It is something that I think does need to be looked at. The second point is to ask you: when the Government has a remedy—[ 
Interruption 
] What is happening now Mr Chairperson? The Minister is talking into an open— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The member will sit down. If I want to talk to the Minister and ask him a question as an aside I can do three or four things at once. I do not need that member to tell me not to do so. Secondly I had my finger on the microphone. It was not an open microphone. This is the second time the member has interrupted his own point of order. If the member wants to raise a point of order he should stand make the point of order and be terse and direct. I will listen to it attentively. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Of course I accept that you can do more than one thing at once. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The member well knows that one is not allowed to refer to a ruling on a point of order that has been dealt with. The member is relitigating the issue that he raised before. I ask the member to come to his point of order and make his point of order tersely. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: There is a long-established method of dealing with changes in commencement dates for a Government that is awake and that is for itself to move an amendment that rules the amendments out. That has been done here in the past; it was done last year and the year before by a Government faced with this situation. 
The fact that John Carter is not here to run things for Mr Brownlee and that the Government was caught flat-footed should not be an excuse for it to hide behind this approach. I am sure that the Speaker will be involved in this matter—well I am not sure because you might see reason but it is likely. There is a precedent in this matter. The precedent in the past has always been that the Government deals with this through the tools that it has rather than having the amendments ruled out. It has been caught flat-footed and it is my view that it is not your job Mr Chairperson to protect them for that. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 That was not a point of order; it was a highly political statement and an attack on you Mr Chairperson and the Chair. No one would seriously believe that the series of amendments that the Labour Party has put up are the work of people who are strenuously engaged in trying to get better legislation. It is the ultimate filibuster. I think the fact that the Government is able to set aside some of the silly defensive moves that need to be taken because of what the Opposition should do is something that New Zealanders should be proud of. They need to see the Labour Party for what it is and what it is doing right here today. 
The fact is that Labour members are shrugging their shoulders and saying that we will be here for ever—well that is OK—and that we should have had a question time today. We should also have had select committees sitting today if there was going to be a question time but the Labour members do not consider them to be important at all unless it is something that they want to do themselves. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: The member is straying into the very area he accused the Opposition of straying into: being political. I have given the member as much latitude as I am going to on this matter. If the member wishes to make a point of order he should make the point of order be terse and be direct to the point he is seeking to make. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: My point is that I think for the good order of the Committee if there has been by way of a vote an expression about the desire of the Committee to accept a particular date as being the date we work with then it becomes utterly frivolous for the Committee to continue suggesting other dates. That is the way you have ruled and I think it is absolutely appropriate. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I think there are two points to be made from that. They are simple and it is easy to do so in a terse manner. 
The first point is that the House has not accepted a date; it has rejected a date. There has not been any acceptance whatsoever of a date by this House; there has not been a vote on that question. The second point I should make regards a reflection on you Mr Chairperson. Saying that the Government wishes to set aside these amendments as time-wasting as Gerry Brownlee did— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: No I didn’t. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: That is exactly what Gerry Brownlee said: that the Government wants to set aside these amendments. This is a decision for you to make Mr Chairperson and for the member to imply that you are doing the work of the Government is a reflection that I think is wrong and almost obscene. 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Oh this will be good! 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: We will have quiet. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: After you anything would be. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I call for order. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: There are a number of amendments in my name and I want to assure the Committee that they are not frivolous or time-wasting. They are serious amendments in my name and I ask to be taken on my word as an honourable member as we had to do for Mr Gerry Brownlee when he said he had official advice. These amendments are not time-wasting or frivolous and I reject that implication. They are serious amendments and I ask to be taken on my word as an honourable member. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I will not suggest that anybody is dishonourable; I will not make any of those implications. I will make several points about this. 
Firstly the ruling that I have made is I understand from the Clerk consistent with other decisions that have been made previously. If members doubt that then they are perfectly entitled to use the well-worn process of challenging the Chair’s decision. I also come back to the point made by the Hon Darren Hughes that this ruling somehow takes away members’ rights to move amendments. That is not the case at all. Members have the unfettered right to move amendments. Whether they are accepted by the Chair is another matter but it does not stop members’ ability to move amendments. 
The next point I come to is about the date and House procedure. Mr Mallard is not correct in saying that the House has made no decision about the date at all; the House has made a decision about the date at the bill’s first reading and second reading. The bill has been before the House and has been passed including the date on two particular occasions. A further point I make is that the bill has been before the select committee and has been through a select committee process. This bill is nothing new to the Committee. Whether or not members like it the fact is that the material has been through the House and has been well thought through. 
Another point I make about the date is that the amendment to change the date one day at a time would have meant that we could have had enormous numbers of amendments that do not change things particularly at all but are substantially the same. The Committee could find itself in the position of not only just changing the date. We could go through every minute of the day saying that instead of midnight it was 11.59— 
Moana Mackey 
: They could but they do not. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I am not saying they do; I am saying that we could get to this point. The issue here is substantiality in my opinion. Does it substantially change the issue or not? This sequence of amendments does not substantially change the legislation; it makes minor amendments to test it. As to the point made by Mr Mallard about the previous events those were tactics. They were not precedents; they were tactics to change things. 
So I think that the key part of this has been that the House has seen this legislation on two occasions before and has seen it through the select committee. The House is well familiar with it. The ultimate test will be whether the Committee accepts it as it is going to vote shortly on the actual date. That will be the test. If the Committee rejects the date it is over. The point is that the date is well understood. I propose to continue with the ruling that having voted on one amendment to change the date to have a succession of amendments that marginally change the dates is out of order. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I would like to get some advice from you about the advice that you are receiving. You make the point that you could change the commencement time from midnight to 3 p.m. or something like that. All those things are technically possible. As I said before those things do not happen because the place operates on understandings and agreements. When things are managed in a way that prevents that from happening for whatever reason—which is still beyond us—those things can fall away and the only— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Shut down select committees; it’s simple! 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Order! 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I was helping. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: No the member was not helping. I ask the member to stand and apologise to the Committee for interrupting. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I apologise to the Committee for interrupting. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: The fact is that those arrangements have not been able to be arrived at. Then of course all that the Opposition can rely on are the rules and the procedures that are set out in the Standing Orders. For example it has been possible over time to get up and seek leave to table each individual Standing Order. The Leader of the House himself did that when he was shadow Leader of the House. In fact if you look at the  
Hansard 
 from Thursday 7 April 2005 you will see Nick Smith the Minister in the chair seeking leave to table individual Standing Orders. So these things are not new. 
But I am asking for your advice Mr Chairperson with regard to the child discipline legislation when it was a bill going through the Committee of the whole House. A member moved many hundreds of amendments around the commencement date of that particular bill. They were all accepted and were due to be voted on by the Committee and there was a mechanism the Government used in order to move its own amendment because it was set out separately from the way these amendments are with their reverse date order. There was no suggestion at all that the member’s amendments could not be considered simply because there were so many of them. I think that is the point we are trying to make to you. 
These are items where there is precedent for the way that Parliament votes. Just because we very occasionally—once last year and hopefully just once this year but we are in February so who knows—get into a situation like this I think it is wrong to say that the ordinary rules of parliamentary procedure cannot apply for the Opposition simply because there are so many of them and because that has led to a situation where there is some grumpiness on the other side of the Chamber. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. It follows on from that one and is related to it. My colleague has given you the precedent for amendments of this type being accepted. I will accept that there were not as many of them but there were a substantial number of them and they were accepted by the Chair. You have indicated to the Committee that there is precedent for things being ruled out. You indicated that you had had advice to that effect. All I would ask would be for a reference to  
Hansard 
 or 
 Speakers’ Rulings 
 for something as specific as this being ruled out. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I draw the member’s attention to  
Erskine May 
 page 401 on restrictions on contents of amendments: “Various considerations that render amendments out of order have been described earlier. An amendment is also out of order if it is inconsistent with an amendment already agreed to or if it is substantially the same as an amendment to the same motion which has already been negatived.” I repeat: “substantially the same as an amendment to the same motion which has already been negatived.” 
I would have thought that an amendment that sought to change 1 July to 1 November which was voted down and a second amendment to change 1 July to 31 October were substantially the same. We are talking about 24 hours. The point that is being made here is that the amendments have to be substantially different. These amendments in my view are not substantially different. If it was a matter on which the legislation turned dramatically and the legislation had not been before the Committee before and had not been to select committee the member might have an argument. 
The point I would make to members is that this legislation that been to the House before. It has been canvassed by a select committee and the select committee report came back without any particular sense of outrage about the date. I think the matter has been well canvassed by the House before and these amendments are not substantially different. I say to members that I am not taking any more points of order on that. I have ruled. I have ruled the points of order out and I will proceed to put the vote. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. It is a new point of order. Of course we disagree but we accept the ruling you have made. 
I raise a point of order with you for future practice about how Oppositions can have some certainty on their amendments and it may be something on which you will come back to us. This is a proportional representational Parliament; since 1998 the Government has been a minority Government and there are shifting coalitions of parties around different bills even within confidence and supply agreements. It has become a feature of our system that minority Governments can regularly be defeated on a particular bill in the House. It is not the end of the world because they have arrangements for confidence and supply elsewhere. 
Let us say you make that ruling because a majority of the Committee voted against for example the date of 31 October 2025 because there was not a majority for that—and there are a lot of amendments in there. If it was the case that a majority of the Committee was in favour of for example 30 April 2025 a 6-month difference which I think would be a substantial enough difference how can the Chair or the Committee know that if as soon as the first vote is taken it is assumed that there is a majority against every single amendment that has been put up by a member? In the shifting coalitions that take place around bills it may well be that a subsequent amendment quite further through the ones that are being put up would be able to find the majority of members of Parliament down the track. You cannot possibly know that at the point you rule out the first amendment. This is an example but it is a broader sort of issue which is why we would be keen for your view. 
It seems to me that the danger we could get into is that this is quite a first-past-the-post model. It assumes that once there is a defeat on the first amendment that is it and there can be no other chance for Parliament to support another style of the amendment that may come down the track. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I think the shadow Leader of the House raises an interesting point. If I can correct him I say that we have probably had minority Government in this country since about mid-1994. The point is though— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: No 1996. New Zealand First and National— 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: We have if we look at our history. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I want the member to sit down. Mr Hughes has interrupted the point of order. I want him to apologise to the Committee for interrupting. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: He is a young man and he probably does not remember back that far. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Order! 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I promise not to make fun about his size if he does not make fun about my age. I can do something about my problem. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Can I just say that I am getting a little bit frustrated by this. Members are to make points of order that are about the order. I am not interested in debating the pros and cons of MMP or the sweep of history. I am confronted here by a particular point and I am about to hold a vote. This is the only remit I have here at the moment. This point of order has to be about this matter. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I think your decision should stand because the argument that Mr Hughes has just advanced is that in the few seconds that might elapse between one vote being put and the other the arrangements in the Committee could be reconfigured such that people might consider 1 day’s movement in the dates proposed to be suddenly acceptable. That is utterly preposterous. As he says himself we have now had a long history of coalition Governments and I do not recall any such change in the midst of a vote. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. It is close to but not exactly on the point that my colleague Darren Hughes has raised. I think it is close enough that we do not have to start a new one. It goes to the question of what is substantially the same. I find a compelling logic in your suggestion that shifting the date by a day would not make a lot of difference. 
The question I have is whether a 1-month change or a 6-month change is in fact something that is substantially the same. I think that is what you are being asked to rule on. With some reluctance and I can feel some stares already from the members behind me I can accept a ruling that indicates that a day-by-day approach is— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: That’s not the ruling. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I ask the member to constrain himself. I want to hear Mr Mallard make his point of order. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The point I am making is that I can accept given the compelling logic we have had from the Chair on the point that a day-by-day approach is one where there might not be a lot of substance in the difference.  
The question I have though is that if something is a month apart—even a week apart but say a month apart—whether that is substantially different and whether the Committee should be given the opportunity to rule on that. What I am inviting you to do is to amend your ruling to probably rule out the majority of the amendments but to allow the Committee to vote on a sample of them say a month or a week apart with a ruling that that is enough of a difference for the Committee to be allowed to voice an opinion. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Can I just say to the honourable member that I am certainly not going to do that. The moment I draw a line and say that it is a month or 6 weeks I can hear another 3 hours of debate and points of order saying that I have got the snapshot wrong. I will not take any more points of order on this issue but I will make a couple of preliminary comments. 
Firstly it would seem to me that the substantiality argument would be a judgment that would be made at the time by any future Chair. It would be made on the basis of how important the date was in terms of the implications of the legislation. That would be driven by the debate about the issue during the Committee stage or during the discussion of the bill. I have heard no such debate thus far only at this particular point in time. In respect of the substantiality argument on some occasions it might be small numbers and on other occasions it might be big numbers but it would be determined by the debate. I will not hypothetically project into the future what substantiality would be. I think any ordinary member of the public would say that an amendment to shift the date from 30 November to 29 November is not substantial. I think the ordinary public would say that it is a minor technical amendment. I will not entertain any more points of order on this and we will now move to the vote. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: This has to be a substantial— 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: It is a motion. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: A motion. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: I move  
That the Chairperson report progress to obtain the Speaker’s ruling on the admissibility of amendments substantially the same as an amendment that had been negatived 
. 
Motion agreed to. 
House resumed. 
Speaker Recalled 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Mr Speaker during the Committee stage we had a number of amendments in the name of Steve Chadwick to amend clause 2. These amendments seek to change the commencement date and there is a whole sequence of them. The first amendment seeks to delete “1 July 2010” and insert “1 November 2010”. The next amendment seeks to insert “31 October”. We then move from 31 October to the 30th the 29th the 28th the 27th—a very good day in October I might add—the 26th and we go on. We tested the Committee on the first amendment and the Committee defeated it. I then ruled that the rest of the amendments were out of order. I ruled them out of order on the basis of Erskine May’s  
Parliamentary Practice 
 page 401 which states: “An amendment is also out of order if it is inconsistent with an amendment already agreed to or if it is substantially the same as an amendment to the same motion which has already been negatived.” I ruled that the amendment to insert “31 October” was substantially the same as the amendment to insert “1 November” as was the rest of the sequence of amendments. 
The Opposition has claimed that in doing this I am stopping its right to move amendments. I do not think I am at all. Opposition members are still free to move their amendments. I think the ruling I have made is consistent with previous Speakers’ rulings. 
The other matter raised by the Hon Trevor Mallard is that in actual fact the House has not had the opportunity to test the dates. My response to him was that the House has already seen this legislation at its first reading. It has been to the select committee which has also considered the matter of the date. The bill has come back for its second reading and the House has passed it on all three occasions. In doing so the House has determined that the legislation in general including the date is suitable. 
In my opinion the Committee has the ability to consider these amendments and I would have thought that if a member had an amendment to make to the date there would be quite a substantial amount of discussion on it during the rest of the Committee stage because points in parts of the legislation turned on this. I did not hear that. I would have thought that if there is to be an amendment to the date there would be a range of arguments that said that changing the date was substantially important because of these reasons. I did not hear that. I felt that the Committee was being tested piece by piece and that there was no substantial difference between one amendment and the next one. I have accordingly ruled out the amendment. I may wish to come back to you with some other comments later but that is the essence of the situation as I understand it. I am sure you will hear from both Opposition and Government members as to their views on it. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 Thank you for returning to rule on this matter. It is an area of incredible disappointment to the Opposition in respect of the treatment of Opposition amendments to this legislation. It falls into two areas but it is based on the idea that the only ability that an Opposition has to rely on through our Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings is the ability to make speeches in opposition to legislation or to propose amendments to offer alternatives to the Committee or to the House—in this case to the Committee—in respect of legislation before it. Taken to their extraordinary extent this could see the Parliament ground to a halt as both the Chairman and the Leader of the House have said while we were debating this issue previously. But that does not happen because although the rules might allow for an enormous amount of material to come by way of amendments points of order or seeking leave to table documents for example those things do not happen because there is a relationship between the Government and the Opposition that allows the smooth passage of legislation within reason. 
Occasionally that relationship does not exist and the Opposition has to use what is available to it in order to make its point. For example if there is an inability to ask Ministers questions at question time the Opposition has to use its only tools which are protected in its Speakers’ rulings and the Standing Orders and for which you have a responsibility as the protector of the minority in your position as Speaker. 
I know that you commented at the end of last year about the number of amendments on a particular piece of legislation but that was within the context of bills never having been seen before by the Opposition the extended use of urgency and things that impacted from a wide variety of angles on the proceedings and good management of the House either by actions from the Government or actions from the Opposition. 
There are two points. The first is the issue of the use by the Government of the Standing Order for fiscal aggregates. There was a discussion earlier and I want to briefly bring you up to date with that— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I urge the member to stay focused. I have not yet actually heard the particular point of order that I have been recalled to rule on and fiscal aggregates is not the matter that I understand is currently the procedure that has been delaying the Committee. I urge the member to focus on the issue of order that he wishes me to rule on. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Thank you Mr Speaker. I am sorry. That will be a matter about amendments that we do quite genuinely wish to take up with you. But let me come to the matter for which you have been recalled. It is the ruling out of amendments that of themselves are in order that have been submitted by members—in this case by the Hon Steve Chadwick and Moana Mackey. After the first vote on the first amendment the Chairman then moved to rule out all subsequent amendments. There is an argument about whether they are substantially different; I know Mr Mallard has a view about that. 
But the reason I wanted you to be recalled is that it is our view that amendments must stand on their own merits and that if there is the ability for an Opposition to put forward an amendment that amendment itself should be judged regardless of what other environmental factors are going on that day with regard to how many amendments there are. An amendment must be considered by the Committee regardless of how many other amendments there are. 
I can give you a very recent example of that from 13 March 2007 on the child discipline legislation. There were amendments to change the commencement date of that bill once it had received its third reading and its Royal assent which would change the date on which it would become law. There were many many amendments that shifted out by a number of months the date when that legislation would come into force. All of those amendments were accepted by the Clerk’s Office and were put to the House. It is all available in the  
Journals of the House 
. The only time when that was interrupted was when the Government chose to support one of the amendments in order for the other ones to become inconsequential because a decision had been made by the Committee. The Committee of the whole House has faced exactly this sort of situation before and it has upheld the process of its rules to allow the Opposition to be able to take those amendments through. 
Our argument is that if these amendments are simply wiped out because they are considered to be similar then that takes away a right of the Opposition to signal its disagreement with legislation. But also in the position where the Government is a minority Government the Chair cannot possibly know whether further down the list of amendments there is a majority for a different date. I guess that is where Mr Mallard will comment on the substantially different argument because in these amendments there are differences that are spread over many years. It may well be that in the position where the Government is in a minority as it has been since 1998 there will be a time when one of the amendments might be successful. It seems wrong to me to rule one out or to rule them all out on the basis that the first one happened not to be accepted by the Committee. 
I will end by reiterating what I said at the beginning that an Opposition has very few protections in the Chamber and to ride over the top of those because on a particular day it happens to be inconvenient due to the amount of work by way of the number of amendments that has been put forward is quite wrong. This is not something that happens regularly in our Parliament. There is a self-correcting mechanism to the whole thing and I think that it would be wrong to take away the last protections that an Opposition has when we are in the Committee of the whole House in a minority sense. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Before I call the next member I urge members in making points of order to keep them terse. These are not speeches. I realise that members are covering issues that are interesting territory but I would ask members to keep their point of order brief. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 My colleague has outlined the issue very broadly Mr Speaker and I would prefer to make just a couple of very specific points. 
There are three points that I want to make.  
Erskine May 
 is quite clear. If there were a lack of precedent in New Zealand that would be the fall-back position but there is some precedent for this sort of amendment being accepted. My colleague has referred to one instance and I think that if you cast your mind back you would remember that this procedure has been used in the past. Generally it has been negated by the Government; the Government has moved in the way that it can in the Committee to shift the day sometimes by only 1 day. In that way it means that none of the further amendments can be considered. 
I disagree with the Chairman’s suggestion that amendments can be made at the first and second readings in this House. This House as a full House has not had the opportunity to look specifically at that question. This is the time for any amendment to be made. The Chairman is quite right that the select committee could have considered it and possibly if the House was of the mind to then the House could have sent it back to the committee after the report back in order for the date to be reconsidered. But this is the first time that this matter has been specifically addressed. 
My point essentially is that  
Erskine May 
 is a fall-back position that I can accept. My view differs somewhat from that of my colleague in that I think that amendments shifting a date day by day are amendments that are substantially the same. But where there are big gaps between the start and the end point and a wide range of options my suggestion is that the proper thing to do would be to rule many of the amendments out—I could even say most of them or three-quarters of them—but there is enough difference between some of these amendments if we accept the “substantially the same” argument for a range of them to be put to the Committee. 
I know that the ruling being given here is one that will no doubt appear in a green book in the future one way or the other because we are into unprecedented territory and it is my view that in doing so the Speaker should make a ruling that protects the very few rights that the minority has as long as the minority is not being totally unreasonable. I can accept that putting all of these amendments to the Committee would be totally unreasonable but that does not mean that all of them should be ruled out. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 Mr Speaker I think that in the opening remarks made to you by the shadow Leader of the House on this issue there was a little bit of a betrayal about why we find ourselves in these positions and I say this only because those remarks went unchecked for quite a long time. The reality is that I understand his disappointment but there we are: we are in this situation. I want to— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I just urge the honourable member please—the contributions have been of good quality and I do not want to see a deterioration of this procedural discussion under points of order. It is an important procedural issue and I ask the member to respect that. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: It is indeed a very important procedural issue but I would ask that you check the  
Hansard  
just to assure yourself as to that quality in relation to the opening statement from the shadow Leader of the House. I think that two Speakers’ rulings are relevant here. As well as the conclusion reached by Chairman Rick Barker this afternoon which I strongly support there are two Speakers’ rulings 112/6 and 113/1 that are also relevant. 
The first one goes to the issue of relevancy. The most important point there is 112/6(4). The issue has been ruled on by Speakers continually over a long period. I note that obviously there was a problem with this sort of thing in the late 1800s and early 1900s but the point remains that if an amendment is in conflict with the provisions of the bill then it is not relevant. Further coming to Speaker’s ruling 113/1 that ruling states: “A bill can be amended only in ways that are relevant to the text. It cannot be turned into something that it is not and did not start out as.” The text reference in that ruling is most important because we are repeatedly reminded in this House that there are occasions when the courts will turn to  
Hansard 
 debates select committee reports and a range of commentary on the passage of legislation through this House for some guidance as to how it should be read. 
I would suggest that it has been abundantly clear for a very long time that this legislation is to commence on 1 July 2010 and to have its effect from that point. We know that there is a need to have some provisions in this bill dealt with by 1 April as well so that the people dealing with it have a fair and reasonable amount of time before that. To accept a series of amendments that of themselves do not substantially change the initial intention of the preceding amendment and to let that run out for some thousand amendments—or in other words nearly 3 years’ worth of date changes—I think contravenes the idea that it is not turning the bill into something that it did not start out as. I think that it is also in conflict with the provisions and the purpose of the bill in the first place. 
As to the issue of there being no certainty about the voting support for any one amendment or another that would be assuming that in the few intervening seconds between a vote being put for one date and a vote being put for the next an entire Government coalition could deconstruct and there could be some sudden change that no one in the Chamber knew about. I think that is an implausible position and it is an argument that cannot be run too strongly. But on those other two longstanding Speaker’s rulings I think that the conclusion reached by Chairman Barker today is the correct one. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I will accept the Hon Dr Nick Smith as long as he is brief. Interesting issues have been raised and I am ready to rule on the matter. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for ACC) 
: 
 As the Minister in the chair I want to make a brief point. In the sense of the relevance of Parliament I would suggest that this is a bit of a try-on. We have 1066 amendments tabled most of which shift the commencement date by 1 day. If the House were to allow every one of those amendments to be put it would take 15 or 16 hours of the time of the 122 members of this House a House that costs over $15000 an hour to run being spent not on debate. New Zealanders expect issues to be robustly debated in the House and I welcome that. But as a pragmatic speaker who has been interested in the quality of this institution of Parliament serving the interest of the public at large I ask whether that interest is best served by spending 15 hours on amendments that would vary the commencement date by 1 day. 
The second point I make is in response to those that have been made by Mr Mallard who said that what the Government needs to do is move the very first amendment to change the date from the date that is in the bill and that way if that is agreed to then the procedure is quite OK. 
My response to that is if that is to be the procedure of the House then that says to Ministers that they should introduce a bill to the House without its intended commencement date then bring it in confusing the public and everybody and then when we get to the Committee stage move an amendment to shift it. In terms of the public purpose of this Parliament for the people of New Zealand I ask how that procedural approach would help the relevance of this Parliament. We would get people submitting on a bill that does not have the date that was intended because we Ministers were forced into a position of cute amendments during the Committee stage to overrule what is nothing more than a sophisticated mechanism that is being attempted to create a filibuster of voting. That is why Mr Speaker my plea to you is to support the Chair and for common sense to prevail. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I thank honourable members for a very interesting procedural discussion under point of order. I agree with the Hon Trevor Mallard that we are in territory without clear precedent in New Zealand’s parliamentary practice; therefore it is important. That is why I have listened very carefully to the points being made. I think very good points have been made by both sides in the last few minutes. 
I assure the Hon Darren Hughes that my thinking in this is certainly not governed by the number of amendments in itself. There could be any number of amendments that are different from each other to a piece of legislation. Opposition members or any member have the absolute right to put amendments that the Committee has not already decided upon. That is not the crucial issue. There are more substantive issues involved in this particular ruling that I am about to make. I think the crux of the whole thing comes down to the issue which was recognised by the Hon Trevor Mallard that if we look at what has been the practice in New Zealand in the past as was mentioned by the Hon Dr Nick Smith we see that when the Government—usually it is the Government—moves an amendment to a date and the Committee votes on that once that is accepted then any other amendments are ruled out. We have had that as a clear precedent in New Zealand. 
What has not been such a clear precedent in New Zealand and this is an issue that I am going to rule on at this stage and suggest a way forward for is the other side of that mention in  
Erskine May 
 which the Chair the Hon Rick Barker has emphasised and that is that  
Erskine May 
 also emphasises that a Chairperson has to also consider the admissibility of amendments that are substantially the same as an amendment that has already been negatived by the Committee. That is something that has not been our common practice in New Zealand I think it is fair to say. Yet what the Hon Dr Nick Smith pointed out in his point of order is that in the past our not having accepted that practice has led to a fairly unsatisfactory situation whereby it may lead to the Government doing exactly what the member suggested which is leaving out a date so that an amendment can be moved by the Government to put a date in and any other dates are then ruled out. 
I think the Hon Trevor Mallard has made an interesting point in accepting the basis of Erskine May’s advice on page 401. The Hon Trevor Mallard pointed out that the issue is what is considered to be substantially different and he pointed out that when it comes to dates 6 months’ difference is substantial compared with a difference of 1 or 2 days. I make it very clear to members that I will rule in favour of the Chair’s position on this. The Chair has found that the amendments are not admissible because the Committee has already negatived an amendment that is substantially the same as those other amendments. Therefore the Chair the Hon Rick Barker has ruled them out and I will support that ruling. 
In doing so I suggest to members that this matter be looked at further by the Standing Orders Committee. I think that what is different in our practice from the practice at Westminster is that at Westminster the Chair can select from a range of dates two or three amendments that are substantially different and test them. Once they are tested the rest are out. It may be that we should look at something similar. In our procedures in this Parliament we do not have the ability for the Chair to choose from a lot of amendments that are very very similar some that could be considered to be different. I think it is something I would like to have the Standing Orders Committee look at for the future. As Speaker I am genuinely concerned in the interests of the minority and that would overcome any concerns about the Chair deciding what might be substantially different because then the Committee would have decided that in the matter of two or three amendments that could be voted on in a reasonable space of time and that would then resolve that matter so that the Chair is not having to make that judgment totally on his or her own. That is what I want the Standing Orders Committee look at. 
But at the moment I am ruling in favour of the position adopted by the Chair of the Committee which is that because the Committee has already negatived an amendment that is substantially the same as these further amendments they are ruled out. I thank all the members. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I speak not in any way to litigate your ruling; it is in one that I think we will consider carefully and I hope the Standing Orders Committee does as well. I seek leave for there to be a question time at 2 p.m. tomorrow 25 February on outside time with the normal arrangements for the lodging of questions. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did not hear objection. I saw a nod but did not hear a word. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: There is a concern about whether I correctly ruled on the matter. I am very happy to put the leave again. Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is objection 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I want to make it very clear that we are always open to negotiate these matters with the Opposition when it behaves— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am not sure— 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: That was just playing politics. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am on my feet and that was not a point of order. The member is perfectly at liberty to negotiate with whomever he wishes but that was not a point of order. 
I declare the House back in Committee in consideration of the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill. 
In Committee 
Debate resumed. 
Clauses 1 to 3 ( 
continued 
)  
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Moana Mackey to clause 2 be agreed to: 
to omit from subclause (2) “on the day after the date on which this Act receives the Royal assent” and substitute “1 November 2027”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I am now confronted with exactly the same decision as I was before. I am mindful that the Speaker has supported my previous ruling which was to rule these amendments out because they are substantially the same as the amendment the Committee has already negated. I am of a mind to test the Committee’s opinion. I have two conundrums here. One is that the Speaker has said that the matter will be referred to the Standing Orders Committee so as to give the Chair discretion. I will stick with that decision because I think the Standing Orders Committee needs to make a decision about the ambit of the Chair’s discretion in this. As I see the matter at the moment I have full discretion. However I make the observation that the practice in other places was for the most radical amendment to be taken first and the least radical after that and if both are negated then all in between go. I have taken from Moana Mackey’s amendments the least radical which is to amend the date to 2007 and the most radical which is to amend the date to 2015. I will now put the latter amendment. If the Committee negates both I will rule out all subsequent amendments in between those dates. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. That sounds like an excellent suggestion. Just to clarify you referred to the least radical amendment as being 2007 and the most radical as being 2015. I think you meant the reverse way round: that the least radical would be 2015 and the most radical would be 2027—just so we are clear about what we are voting on. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: That is right. The House has negated the most radical 1 November 2027 and the least radical is 10 August 2015. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Moana Mackey to clause 2 be agreed to: 
to omit from subclause (2) “on the day after the date on which this Act receives the Royal assent” and substitute “10 August 2015”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I rule all the other amendments in the name of Moana Mackey out of order as they are substantially the same. Next is an amendment in the name of the Hon Steve Chadwick. All her amendments relate to the year 2025. I will put one amendment to test the opinion of the Committee. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Steve Chadwick to clause 2 be agreed to: 
to omit from subclause (2) “on the day after the date on which this Act receives the Royal assent” and substitute “1 November 2025”. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Noes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I rule that all the subsequent amendments in the name of the Hon Steve Chadwick are out of order because they are substantially the same as the amendments that have already been disposed of by the Committee. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That clause 2 be agreed to. 
Ayes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Clause 2 agreed to. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: There are amendments to clause 2 in the name of the Hon Steve Chadwick to insert a new clause 2A. There are 1066 of these amendments and I rule all of them out of order because they are not consistent with the Standing Order that defines a preliminary clause as a commencement clause and if applicable a principal clause in the Act. These amendments propose an expiration clause and should have been in the body of the legislation. They are ruled out of order. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 3 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Amendment agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That clause 3 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Clause 3 as amended agreed to. 
Bill reported with amendment. 
Report adopted.