Bennett David: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Bennett David: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:660;Page:9056] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 I want to follow on from that speaker by going through a few points raised in relation to the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill that are simply not true. The first issue is the talk of the dismantling of the accident compensation scheme by the current Government. That is not the case. Members opposite are using political rhetoric to try to scare the public of New Zealand. They tried to do that during the election campaign; it did not work. They are trying to do it now when we are making genuine changes to the accident compensation system in order to enable it to survive and provide the 24-hour cover that people expect from it. That is what the general principles of accident compensation were built on—the provision of that cover—and this National Government will make sure that the system can be maintained and deliver compensation to New Zealanders in the future. 
Labour is also at a crossroads when it comes to the full funding issue. Its members say the system is not broken and is not in trouble. Well the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) had a major loss in the year that the previous Labour Government left office and even the previous speaker Maryan Street said that in 2008 that Government was looking at extending the full funding date. That shows that that had to be done and that is what this bill does. It is amazing that Labour looked at extending that date then but will not support doing that now. Those members will not support something that they were going to look at anyway. Although they say the assets are sufficient to cover claims I say that is simply not the case. There is a lack of understanding about what residual claims actually relate to and there is also a lack of understanding about what the assets of that organisation are at this moment in time. John Judge had been appointed by the previous Labour Government to many boards before National came into power and I think that his financial expertise should not be questioned in this House. He has been shown to have been used by both major political parties when they were in Government to deal with issues such as the governance of big organisations like ACC. 
I will concentrate now on what this bill does though. It does extend the full funding date to 2019 which gives us another 5 years in which we can endeavour to make the accident compensation system sufficiently viable to be able fully fund itself in the future. Most political parties are in agreement with that concept. Only one party saw things differently from that in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. That party the Green Party said accident compensation should be funded on a year-by-year basis. Other parties are very much in support of our policy but it is disappointing that Labour cannot vote for it in this House even though its members know they support it. We also see that a number of entitlements have come in in recent years. Those recent entitlements were not part of the original scheme in the first place so it is a bit rich to say what we are doing is contrary to the Woodhouse principles. When the scheme was set up it was set up for a reason and that reason is what we are endeavouring to maintain and achieve by enabling the system to be one that can survive and deliver those results. 
I thank the members of the select committee for their work on this bill which was done under time pressure. I thank all the submitters who came along and made their views known to us. We dealt with a number of issues ranging from hearing loss to entitlements and also to the accident compensation system in general. Many submitters took much time to provide a good history of the system and they also gave their perspective on what they wanted to see come out of it. We thank those submitters. I also thank the officials who provided advice to the select committee and were there to assist all members in achieving the changes that the committee made to the bill. They were minor changes but they were necessary to tidy up a few things in the bill so that we can have legislation that is as robust as possible. 
In essence this bill is here in order to provide a long-term sustainable accident compensation system. The Government has made the changes that will provide that system. We commend the bill to the House and look forward to its passage.