Xu-Nan LawrenceDr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): As the Green Party's ACC spokesperson I will be speaking on the Accident Compensation (Interest on Instalment Plans) Amendment Bill. I have to say that that is probably the first time I've actually spoken on something that is relevant to my portfolio today. Although this is a technical bill the Green Party will not be supporting this bill however. I will lay out why we will not be supporting this bill. For this bill we're looking at charging debt interest on levies that are being paid under instalment plans both in terms of the instalment plans that are collected by instalments but also on past levy collections.Now we know that levies are incredibly important for the function of ACC. I echo what others have said in terms of celebrating the 50th anniversary of ACC. I remember reading the original Woodhouse report and the white paper on why we introduced ACC in the first place which also had bipartisan support. It is one of those things that is quite unique to Aotearoa New Zealand having such a scheme.The Green Party understands the importance of the levies that we collect through ACC. These levies help pay for key things that we do see that ACC is being used for. The Green Party has called for further coverage for ACC and branding ACC as the agency for comprehensive care. Under the previous Governments one of the acknowledgments I would like to give is to the Green Party MP Jan Logie who did so much work in her ACC portfolio particularly being able to pass having traumatic birth and birth injuries being recognised by this.Rachel Boyack: That was us.Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: That was Jan Logie. You had your chance. You can correct that later if you would like but Jan Logie did an enormous amount of mahi on this and I remember watching her giving speeches on the experiences that people had as part of this.But as part of the agency for comprehensive care we would like to see greater cover for the use of ACC. Partly it's around extending ACC to cover all workplace injuries including gradual injuries and having ACC cover mental injuries not only as a result of physical injuries. It is very explicit how mental injuries are covered in the legislation; they are paid for by the levies that we're currently discussing in this bill. Also we are ensuring that all disabled people must be covered in this. All of these are being paid for by the levy and the interest that we are discussing right now. However drawing back to the bill the first thing around this bill is the fact that it will give ACC the ability to charge interest on levies that are collected by instalments. We have no issues with that. The problem here—and here is the crux—is having the recognition of past levy collection.We are looking here at retrospective legislation. I quote in the explanatory note the Bill retrospectively validates the ACC's past practice"—which was dubious legally speaking—"and provides an explicit legal authority"—which means that they currently do not have legal authority for something that they are already doing. That is concerning to me because it means that ACC is currently doing something they shouldn't have been doing and the Government is allowing that to be passed so that way there are no consequences to what the ACC has been doing. So although there are parts of this bill that we do support and we do like to see the use of ACC and the use of the levy going to greater coverage in this enormously important scheme however we cannot support it."