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:7697. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 The only reason I am taking this call is to raise some alarm about the chairperson of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee who chaired the passage of this bill through that committee. It is no wonder that every other party apart from National has been hoodwinked by that person. Firstly he is lazy. Every time he stood up we got the same speech apart from the names. That is laziness. Secondly I want that member—the chairperson of the select committee—to take another call to explain whether he cares about the self-employed. How is he going to explain to the self-employed members of the Meat Industry Association that if the merger does not go ahead next year they will pay $6.50 to $7 per $100 but that if it does go ahead they will pay $8.83? But the situation gets even better. When the merger of the two accounts goes ahead—and we should remember this—the self-employed are to pay $8.83 but I ask members to guess how much the employer will pay. [ 
Interruption 
] I thought the member had read all the papers. The employer will pay $4.69. So the self-employed will pay almost double the amount that employers will pay. 
The lazy chairman of the select committee is trying to tell us that we did not study the papers. We studied the papers from top to bottom. It is no wonder that he and the Minister hoodwinked the whole Labour caucus; its members are so lazy that they never read a word of the papers. I would like that member to explain to the poor self-employed people why after the merger they will pay $130 million extra in total. If the merger goes ahead without a rebate employers will pay only $80 million. So for the next 2 years the poor self-employed people have to pay an extra $100 million. 
The National Party under the leadership of John Key is charitable. We need only to look at what our leader announced today about lifting the cap on donations. We are going to encourage people who are charitable. We will support them—unlike the Labour members on the other side of the Chamber. They will punish the hard-working self-employed people who in the next 2 years will pay $100 million extra in their levies—and the chairperson of the select committee got up and said that Labour looks after hard-working self-employed people! I would hate to think what would happen if it stopped looking after them; it would probably charge them an additional $500 million. 
So the challenge in terms of Part 1 is for New Zealand First and the Green Party to explain to their supporters why they should support the Labour Government’s move to impose a surcharge of $100 million on the self-employed for the next 2 years so that they can pay higher levies when compared with employers. I think it will be extremely interesting to see what this socialist Government will actually do to those vulnerable self-employed people for the next 2 years—$100 million. I think Labour members had better be prepared to front up and be answerable to all those irate self-employed people if this bill goes through. National will make sure for the next 2 years that they know who has punished them for being hard-working self-employed businesses.