Roche Denise: Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6950. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): Tēnā koe. I rise to take a call for the Greens on this the third reading of the Accident Compensation (Financial Responsibility and Transparency) Amendment Bill. In my speech on the first reading of this bill I said that although this bill does not go anywhere near as close to our good green vision of a fairly funded transparent and people-focused ACC we will be supporting it because as a previous speaker on this side said it does goes part of the way.I would like to acknowledge the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which worked very hard on this bill. [Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Sorry I am just asking Mr Williamson to settle down. I think that the emergency mikes are working in an unusual way.DENISE ROCHE: So I would like to acknowledge the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for its good work on this bill. It was fairly complicated I found. I would also particularly like to acknowledge my colleague Kevin Hague for his work on the committee particularly on the way he was able to get agreement for consultation to happen around some of the regulations that will accompany the bill.As I have said we did find this an imperfect bill but before I go into the areas of where we would have done it differently I would like to speak about the parts that we do support because we do like to work constructively as much as possible. We support the intended changes to make the levy-setting process more transparent and we note that organisations like Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions have been calling for more transparent and more effective ways of doing that. I would also like to acknowledge the fact that the Council of Trade Unions did say that it would like better and more effective consultation.There is something else that the Council of Trade Unions said in its submission that I think we should actually acknowledge and take notice of. I would like to quote it. The council said that the “consultation process was a disrespectful waste of submitters’ time. That was not in general a reflection on the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) … The waste came at the end of the process: the Government was able to and regularly did override the Corporation’s recommendation. Submitters’ views counted for nothing.”So although we applaud the changes in making the levy-setting processes more transparent and easier and we celebrate our successful changes that we managed to get in we strongly urge the Government to actually take the consultation process seriously because it does not matter how good or robust the consultation process is if the Government is determined to ignore what is said there. We have seen the Government ignore that sort of consultation process before in other bills like the Health and Safety Reform Bill.We also support the provisions that are made to prevent the over-collection of levies. A lot of families out there are struggling and the key findings section of the 2015 Household Incomes Report talked about how two in five families in New Zealand have at least one member of their household working full-time hours. But even a couple of hundred dollars or so a year might mean the difference between warm clothes warm blankets and a heater and people getting sick over the winter because their wages are still so low even with paid work.That is why we advocated for the superior pay-as-you-go system. In my first reading speech I referred to Michael Littlewood an expert from Auckland University. I quoted him. He said that the pay-as-you-go model has less volatility on investment returns and less uncertainty than the current actuarial calculations which falsely rely on the assumptions that this is a private insurance model and not a Government-run system. He also says that a pay-as-you-go system is more transparent and it is easier to understand.For all those reasons we support a pay-as-you-go system. I just want to quote Mr Littlewood. He says: “A pay-as-you-go approach to levy setting should be simpler more transparent and less risky financially. It would also lower the investment risk for New Zealand.” It would also I guess make Government rorts less likely. My colleague Iain Lees-Galloway in one of his speeches during the Committee of the whole House I think spoke about the raising of the ACC levies to cover the Government’s propensity for perpetual Budget deficits due to its giveaways to people who already have enough. We see examples of that with the dividends from Housing New Zealand returning to the Government rather than being reinvested to fix our leaking—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Even if the member is quoting someone when he was being irrelevant it does not become relevant that way.DENISE ROCHE: OK. It was a good point.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): That is right. Good try but keep going please.DENISE ROCHE: The departure from a pay-as-you-go system has shifted ACC from being a fully funded fair public service to one that is closer to a neo-liberal private insurance model. We have all heard horror stories about ACC with the most egregious one being exposed by my colleague Kevin Hague in 2012 where ACC managers’ pay was linked to the number of long-term claimants they could get off the corporation’s books. That is what I mean by neo-liberal. Kevin Hague referred to the culture of creeping disentitlement and the degradation of our public services that happens when a neo-liberal model is applied to our public services. We are seeing it elsewhere—but I will stick to the point.So what would ACC look like under a Green Government? It would be fair. It would be comprehensive transparent and most of all people-focused. We would guarantee that all people who have genuine work-related gradual process injuries diseases and infections including occupational overuse injuries and chemical poisoning on the job could obtain ACC cover. We would ensure access to specialist assessors to ensure that people can receive full entitlement.We would revoke co-payment requirements. We would also establish an independent ACC ombudsman to improve accountability against abuses. We would support specific risk-based levies to encourage injury prevention where that is appropriate and that could have a remarkable impact on those industries that are at high risk. I stress high risk like forestry and construction—all those ones.We would support and strengthen ACC’s focus on injury prevention including integration with broader preventative health programmes and interventions in communities workplaces schools and homes. If we prevent injuries and take the public health approach rather than waiting to be an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff we can provide better-quality services and save money in the long run.This bill is imperfect. It is an imperfect improvement and a lost opportunity but having said that it is a small baby step towards something a bit better and we will support it.