Street Maryan: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Street Maryan: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16635] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Minister for ACC) 
: 
 I move  
That the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time 
. This bill continues the Government’s commitment to a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme for reducing the incidence and impact of personal injury. The Government has already made substantial changes to the scheme including returning responsibility for cover for workplace accidents to the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and the introduction of the new treatment injury provisions. These changes have been major steps in the Government’s goal of making the scheme more responsive to the needs of claimants. The bill continues to progress this goal by making changes to cover for work-related injuries eligibility and entitlement to weekly compensation and entitlement to and processes for vocational rehabilitation. 
The bill introduces cover for a mental injury caused by exposure to a sudden traumatic event in the course of employment. This means that for example a train driver who hits someone on the tracks or a bank worker who witnesses a colleague shot during a robbery and goes on to develop a mental injury as a result will now be covered by the accident compensation scheme. 
The bill introduces changes to the cover provisions for work-related gradual process disease and infection to ensure that people harmed by their work receive greater access to cover and more clarity around whether cover is available and how it is determined. It does this through amending the test of work-causation set out in the existing Act to provide greater certainty of cover for claimants with these conditions. 
The bill also introduces changes that allow greater flexibility to amend the list of occupational diseases provided in schedule 2 of the principal Act. It also updates the weekly compensation framework to improve access to weekly compensation in this increasingly varied labour market particularly for seasonal and casual workers. The changes to the weekly compensation provisions make the assessment more reasonable and easier to understand for claimants. The bill provides fairer and more straightforward weekly compensation for seasonal and casual employees through improving access to weekly compensation for people who are injured while temporarily between jobs. It allows earlier access to minimum weekly compensation for certain claimants and increases the rate of weekly compensation paid to potential earners. 
The bill enhances the existing legislative provisions for vocational rehabilitation to provide better outcomes for claimants. Together with the existing provisions the changes help to ensure that injured people are able to return to work or look for a job. This is important for the people and their families as well as for the economy of New Zealand. The bill provides ACC with discretion to extend the 3-year limit on vocational rehabilitation where appropriate so that claimants who require ongoing assistance can return to or stay in the workforce with more vocational rehabilitation. It also removes the upper age limit for vocational rehabilitation so that claimants who are no longer eligible to receive weekly compensation because of the age limits on that will still be eligible to receive vocational rehabilitation. 
I also intend to move further amendments to the bill at the Committee stage. These amendments will ensure that the age limits for weekly compensation are not taken into account for vocational rehabilitation decisions relating to claimants who are still receiving weekly compensation but who are approaching those age limits. This will provide clarity for ACC when making decisions about vocational rehabilitation for older people. 
The bill also addresses a number of other policy issues and improvements aimed at making the scheme clearer and more responsive to the needs of claimants. During the consultation process the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee received 50 submissions on the bill. The committee has recommended two technical amendments to the bill and some changes to its work-related mental injury provisions to clarify the situations in which cover will be provided. The provisions in the bill providing cover for work-related mental injury resulting from exposure to a single traumatic event drew considerable comment from submitters. Some submitters considered that cover should not be limited to a single event but should be broader and that the provisions create an inequity in relation to non-work mental injuries. Other submitters expressed concern that introducing cover for work-related mental injuries would place a substantial cost burden on employers. Concerns were also raised that the current drafting may not provide cover to those for whom it was intended. 
The changes to the provisions about work-related mental injury make it clear that the bill is intended to provide cover for work-related mental injury caused by an event such as a road accident even though some people might view the event as consisting of a number of interrelated events. For example the committee was told that a truckdriver hitting a person on the road could be construed as a number of events—the event where the driver saw the person the event where the truck hit the person the event where the driver stopped to ascertain injury and the event where the driver actually saw the person’s injuries. The policy intent is that if the truckdriver developed a mental injury as a result of an accident the driver would be covered by the accident compensation scheme for that mental injury. 
However the bill is not intended to provide cover for work-related mental injuries caused by a gradual process such as mental stress caused by work overload. Similarly the bill was intended to provide cover for a work-related mental injury caused by encountering a traumatic scene such as a serious industrial accident even though the person may have encountered the scene after the accident had occurred and was not present at the time of the actual accident. This change would provide cover for emergency services and medical personnel if they were to encounter something sufficiently traumatic. For example again if a worker developed a mental injury as a result of encountering a scene where another worker had suffered horrific injuries in an accident the intent of the policy is that the worker would be covered by the accident compensation scheme for that mental injury even though he or she was not immediately present at the time the other worker was injured. It is intended that encountering this kind of situation could in itself amount to a traumatic event. The committee has recommended changes to the bill to make this intention clear and I welcome the select committee’s recommendations. 
I also thank the committee for its work and all those who took the time to make a submission. But I have to say that I am more than a little disappointed with the National Party’s approach to this bill. Its MPs sat in the committee and listened to the case of former train driver Terry Bristow whose train ran over people on railway tracks and who tearfully detailed how the experiences had changed his life. This grandfather was faced with these tragedies twice in a 3-year period. Unable eventually to cope he was retired from Tranz Metro in 2003 after 35 years’ service. It was a truly tragic case and it took courage for Mr Bristow to detail his story in such a public manner for the good of others knowing that this legislation is not retrospective. 
The case of coalminer John Stone revealed today by the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union was another case in point. In 1991 Mr Stone was buried alive for 20 hours in the cab of his mining vehicle after the mine he was working in collapsed. He has subsequently been unable to face work underground. This too resulted in a significant cut in his pay but he too was ineligible for ACC compensation or counselling. 
FinSec the bank workers’ union today also spoke of the experience of staff traumatised by armed robberies but it appears that National MPs will not listen to their consciences and I believe that that is sad. Of course it is clearly symptomatic of what would happen to accident compensation under any National Government. 
New Zealanders want a fair just and universal accident compensation scheme and I am proud to be part of a Government that is working to make it more responsive to those needs every day. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.