Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'd just like to preface my contribution with a clarification on the record that the Green member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan had talked about the Greens having introduced the birth injuries changes to the ACC laws. In fact it was the Hon Carmel Sepuloni on 27 September 2022 when the word accident" was extended to include "a force or resistance internal to the human body at any time from the onset of labour to the completion of delivery" and that was that was the provision—that small little change—that has enabled 28000 birthing parents to be able to access ACC. So it's quite a significant change and a great change for women and I would just really like to acknowledge my colleague because I feel it was a bit unfair. Of course the Greens did sign a petition which is great but it was under the Hon Carmel Sepuloni that that came into force.The other thing I'd like to say is we are supporting this bill and for me it really does encompass a little bit of a grey area of law. We have the ACC on one side trying to be incredibly fair and say that whatever interest they charge needs to be able to—or the justification is that people who are using instalments might actually end up better off than people who pay the fee up front. There has to be a kind of netting-out so that the equity issues are included for those who may need an instalment payment—particularly say for smaller-business owners—but also that people don't take advantage of it and use instalments and somehow rip off others just by making sure that they can take advantage of the future value for money.So it is a grey area. I think the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment have said "Well this is problematic. We don't see certainty in the law." ACC have said "Yes we have." and I don't think they're trying to scrape or skim the top. I think they're really trying to come down in a fair-minded way and it's to do with the provisions in sections 234 and 333(1)(b)(i). The first one is that ACC "may charge a reasonable fee to recover its costs of collecting any levy by instalments." That's section 234 and section 333(1)(b)(i) says "the matters in respect of which fees or charges are payable under this Act including any administration fee payable in respect of levies paid in instalments:". Now I can see as a lawyer how both of those might be relevant interpretations and I think it's important to note the word "any" in section 333(1)(b)(i) including "any administration fee". That would suggest in my view that there is scope to be able to add the interest rather than to assume that it is corrected. It is a debate; it is arguable. So what errs me to that side is that we do have a situation as alluded to by other speakers that it appears that the ACC has been acting ultra vires the Act. That is never ideal just as cleaning something up retrospectively is not either. But cleaning it up retrospectively is always better than allowing that ultra vires action to continue and to expose the Crown to risk of litigation. I think the risk of litigation may perhaps be overstated so I'm not sure about the use of urgency and that's something I'd like to interrogate as we get into the committee stage.But for those practical reasons I think this House could take either side of the debate. It's probably important to say that it's justified to add the interest in there and then to be able to clean the whole thing up nice and tidily with this Act. Having said that there are legal principles at stake here to do with retrospectivity as colleagues have alluded to but also how the relationship between those two provisions might set a precedent for other legislation with similar types of conundrums. So I think it is really important that we do take the time to unpick this and have a very clear and technical explanation from the Minister recorded on the Hansard through question time at the "de facto select committee process" because we're not going to have one—and I can see that Minister Doocey is getting ready by having a swirl of water. It looks like he's going to go into the ring. We're all on the same side here. We want it to go through but we need to be very very clear and accurate about our reasons. So for that reason I'll commend this to the House and look forward to asking my questions."