Gosche Mark: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Gosche Mark: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7696. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 After listening to that speech it is no wonder that the insurance industry fought so hard to get a new spokesperson for accident compensation. After all the money it paid and after writing National’s policy that is what the industry got—Dr Paul Hutchison. Now the industry will be thinking twice about that move and having said: “Oh he’s so hopeless that we have to get a new one.” because it now has Pansy Wong. 
The poor old insurance industry wrote all the National Party’s policy and it is a pretty simple policy—“Just privatise the lot give us all the cream and you keep the rubbish.” Anything that costs a lot of money the industry wants the State to look after and anything it can make a big profit out of it will have. One would have thought that Dr Paul Hutchison would at least be able to get up and espouse that sort of policy on behalf of the industry and do it with some sort of panache but no even the industry could see that it had an idiot on its hands. So the industry said: “Please” to whoever the leadership of the National Party was that day “give us another one.” And look what it got—it got Pansy Wong! 
So the poor old private insurance industry listening to this debate must be in despair at the quality of that sort of performance from the other side. Those members do not bother to read even the bill let alone any explanatory notes that are given to them. They do not bother to try to understand that it was their woeful attempts to privatise that set this account up in the first place. 
Dr Paul Hutchison has yet to explain why that professional rugby league player he was talking about in his speech should get a different premium when he runs on to the field dependent on whether he happens to be self-employed or a business person who set himself up as a company—an individual. Players are not tackled any less hard because they wear a jersey that reads: “I’m self-employed; please don’t tackle me hard.” They do not go on to the field with any less risk. Dr Paul Hutchison thinks that that is OK for those players on that field or in the case of people on the back of a fishing boat or a plumber or any other people—just because they happen to have a different business structure. Just because they decide to do it this way rather than the other the National Party says: “We don’t care about you you’re self-employed you pay more than people who’ve gone to the trouble of setting themselves up as a company.” 
Where is the logic in that? No wonder the private insurance industry is in despair! Those members cannot get through their thick heads that the risk is exactly the same for that rugby league player running out for the Warriors. It does not matter whether he is self-employed or a company in terms of the way in which he structures his affairs; he will still be tackled as hard and he is still going to get a broken leg if he happens to be tackled in the wrong way. So I ask Dr Hutchison who went to university for many years and obviously was an educated man once why that self-employed rugby league player should pay a higher premium than his mate playing next to him who passed him the ball if he happens to have set himself up with a company structure. 
Where is the logic in that? Where is the logic in that for the National Party? It is just plain ideological nonsense. It is just plain ideological nonsense that saw National privatise accident compensation in the first place. It said to the private insurance companies that were paying them to do this: “Oh OK that’s too much risk for you guys. We’ll take it off your hands and we’ll insure it for you as the State.” That is the truth of why this was set up. The National Party members can sit there and make all the silly speeches they like but they do not like to be reminded of their past and what they would do again in the future if they were ever let loose again on this side of the Chamber as a Government. 
They would do it again because they are saying so over and over again. They can come down and make speeches about having charity—I am not sure what 5 percent charity has got to do with accident compensation; maybe they are going to make all those self-employed people a charity as well as they did last time when they said to the insurance industry: “Take the profitable end of the business and we’ll look after this.” 
If those members had read the explanatory note before going to the select committee and coming to this Chamber they would see that the reason for the high injury rates was the jobs that people were doing—jobs such as forestry fisheries and farming—not because of the nature of the way in which they set themselves up as a private person on a self-employed basis rather than as a company. It was the job that one was doing. It was the risks people were confronting in those jobs. So poor old Dr Hutchison who was sacked from his job—and no wonder—has not figured that out yet. And there have been many many spokesperson’s roles along the way.