Ardern Jacinda: Limitation Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Ardern Jacinda: Limitation Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13575] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I want to come back to an element of the Limitation Bill that I raised in my first reading speech. It was an issue that has been discussed at great lengths within the Justice and Electoral Committee and I would not mind hearing the Minister’s view on this. This was the discretion to allow relief for claims of gradual process disease or infection. Obviously when the bill first came to us it had a 6-year primary limitation period for monetary claims for personal injury claims to which of course the late knowledge requirements and the 15-year longstop period would also apply. Many submitters presented to us during the select committee process that that might be an unreasonable limitation particularly if a person was seeking to obtain relief for a latent personal injury caused by gradual process disease or infection. As I mentioned in my previous speech one of the many arguments we heard was that New Zealand is different from some of the other jurisdictions we heard about based on our no-fault accident compensation scheme. We did however seek advice on this issue so that we could consider how this rule applied in other jurisdictions particularly when it came to gradual process disease or infection. The UK and Australia seemed obvious jurisdictions for us to examine. We noted that in those countries courts were given the discretion to disregard limitation defences when it came to physical or mental conditions. 
Hone Harawira 
: Just fascinating Jacinda just fascinating! 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: It was even better at the select committee; that was the live unedited version. I admit that this is somewhat watered down and I apologise for that but if the member wishes to sit in the select committee I can tell him that it is tickets only. But that was where it came to physical or mental conditions. When it came to the range in those countries ours was somewhat constrained comparatively. Those countries included personal injuries caused by gradual process at their discretion. 
We had some discussion about this. One of the discussions that came up as I recall was on cases that some of us have seen in our constituency offices. One that I raised was a gradual process claim which was initially covered by accident compensation. It was several decades ago so it would have been outside this legislation. The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) had originally acknowledged the individual to have a gradual process injury and had covered the claimant for many years because of that fact. In fact ACC had prosecuted the workplace in question and received damages to cover the long-term payment for the claimant. However somewhere down the track ACC decided to reassess that case decided that in that instance it no longer believed it was a gradual process injury and instead declared it to be a degenerative disease. So in that situation we had originally had a gradual process injury which was covered by ACC and therefore it was one of the cases that understandably we would say was outside the limitation and was already covered by the State insurer. But then when ACC changed its mind there was no point of redress for that individual. Even going back to ACC to try to claim for a gradual process injury meant a very lengthy litigation period. That person would not be covered by the limitation because of being outside the scope. 
That was the kind of discussion we had at the select committee. Then we come to what we decided. Collectively the select committee decided to give the courts the discretion to allow monetary relief to be granted for a claim in relation to a personal injury caused by gradual process disease or infection when the Accident Compensation Act does not stop the claim being made or relief being granted. So there is still an interesting rub when it comes to the way that ACC chooses to define the case in question. I think it is very important to make sure we have the interaction between accident compensation and this legislation right because I do not think we can assume that all things will necessarily remain equal when it comes to accident compensation.