Wong Pansy: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wong Pansy: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7706. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 I am proposing a very sensible amendment to this part of the debate. It is to defer the implementation of this bill until 1 April 2009. It is the only sensible thing to do. Judging from what some of the political parties sitting in this House—the Greens the Maori Party and New Zealand First—have said I do not think they have had an opportunity to understand the implications of the passage of this bill on the supporters whom they claim to represent the self-employed. I want to look after these party political colleagues. I do not want them or their electorate offices to be facing outraged self-employed people in the next 2 years. So I am seeking their support to make sure that this bill is deferred for 2 years so they can have time to think about the implications. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
PANSY WONG 
: I am seeking for the sensible parties in this Parliament to support a very sensible amendment—to delay the commencement of this bill to 1 April 2009 for a very good reason. National will then be in Government and when I become the Minister for ACC I will not be an apologist for the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC). I will not put myself up there and tell the self-employed that they have to front up with $100 million extra. I will not confiscate the $500 million in the employers’ account so that ACC can feel good smooth the levy and not forego the opportunity to invest. According to the Minister in the chair the Hon Ruth Dyson she is the apologist for ACC. 
It is typical of a Labour Government that it will not trust the self-employed to invest their own money. It will not trust employers and workers to know how better to spend their own money. But the contempt of this Minister towards employers was evident when she said that the employers did not deserve their rebate. She blatantly said that they did not deserve it; I am not too sure what they have done to upset the Minister. We will be very clear when we become the Government that ACC will serve the people it is set up for. ACC will not turn around and use its monopolistic position to basically tax people keep the surplus of $600 million just so that it can feel secure if it makes any calculation of premiums incorrectly. When we think of it we remember that last week in the House we were told by the Minister that that monopoly agency ACC was spending $5.1 million just to market itself in a branding exercise. Yet it is a monopolistic agency; people have no choice of going somewhere else or through various sources to pay their premiums. 
So I am seeking the support of the other parties in Parliament because after the previous debate—or lack of debate—it seems they might not be clear that the passage of this bill will actually impose $100 million worth of surcharge in the next 2 years for self-employed people. So when all those self-employed people come knocking on the doors of New Zealand First the Green Party and the Maori Party I hope those parties will be able to tell them some good reasons why they supported a bill that has imposed $100 million extra on those self-employed in order to bring the surplus on the reserve to a margin of 53 percent although ACC has indicated all the time that an 11 percent margin would have been sufficient. The law stated very clearly that all the account had to achieve was to be self-funding. At the moment the reserve accounts are showing surpluses of 20 percent and 63 percent yet this Labour Government is trying to push through a bill without consultation to impose $100 million extra on self-employed people. Members should try to explain to some of the people in the meat industry why they should pay for that.