Dyson Ruth: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Dyson Ruth: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:658;Page:7443] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 There certainly is a lot to be sorry about as the House considers this legislation. I feel sorry for seasonal workers and their families. I feel sorry for people who have a work-related hearing loss. I feel more sorry than for anyone else for people who have attempted or committed suicide and for the loss their families have to endure not only because of the loss of their loved one but also because of the further insult that the Minister for ACC dished out to them in a pre-determined calculated way. Further they have to suffer because of their disentitlement in this legislation. 
Allan Peachey the member who just resumed his seat quoted Peter Foley the chair of the New Zealand Medical Association. Although Peter Foley welcomed this announcement of the privatisation of accident compensation his predecessor Dr Pippa McKay who is an obstetrics and gynaecology specialist from Canterbury said that when she heard the announcement of privatisation on the radio it made her groan and gave her a sense of déjà vu. She said that the last time the scheme was privatised during which time she was leading the doctors it was just a nightmare. She knows what she is talking about. She has been through this crazy experiment in the past and she has described it from a general practitioner’s point of view as a nightmare. 
This bill is very easy to summarise. It says that New Zealanders will pay more and get less. They will pay higher levies to the scheme or to their private insurance companies and they will get a lower level of entitlement. The legacy that Dr Nick Smith as Minister for ACC will leave New Zealand is this: pay more get less. It was only in March this year and it is not even November yet that Dr Nick Smith was adamantly denying any interest in introducing competition—any interest at all in opening the work account to private insurers. He said that would happen only if it were in the best interests of taxpayers business and workers. But he had one meeting with Rodney Hide and he said he would forget about that and forget about John Key’s commitment to having an honest and open conversation about how much people will want to pay and what their level of entitlement will be. 
In this bill Nick Smith has delivered what he wanted to do. He wanted to spend 6 months scaremongering around the country telling us that the accident compensation scheme was insolvent that it needed fixing and that it was totally broken. He wanted to do exactly the same thing that Bill Birch wanted to do. He wanted New Zealanders to pay more money into the scheme but to get a lower level of entitlement. This is part of Nick Smith’s reforms to ensure that people get less. 
The National Government knows from its polling that New Zealanders are allergic to the words “privatisation” and “private insurers” so it has been parading up and down the country talking about opening up the scheme to competition. Well New Zealanders fell for that in 1998 but they will not fall for it again. We know that this is not about more efficiency fairer entitlement better access to rehabilitation and an easier return to work. We know that this is about having private insurers come in and about having New Zealanders pay more money and get a lower level of entitlement. That is all that this is about. 
Some specific areas in this legislation are described quite accurately in the explanatory note of the bill. I was very interested in the comments in the section on “workplace gradual process disease or infection” which reinstates a three-part rule in order to get cover. It quite specifically says that this will reduce the number of people who receive cover. It quite specifically says that it does not matter whether someone has an injury. It does not matter any more to Dr Nick Smith and his National Government colleagues whether someone is so badly injured in his or her workplace that he or she cannot work any more. It does not matter that that person is in pain. To the National Government it matters only that that person is costing the country money and costing that person’s employer money if it is a workplace injury. That is not acceptable to the Government. It does not matter to Dr Nick Smith if a person has been injured at work and is so badly injured that he or she cannot even go to work any more. Under this legislation quite explicitly it says that this will reduce the number of people receiving cover. Does this legislation fix the injury? Does it make the injury go away? Does it suddenly restore a person to wellness? Does this legislation get people access to the treatment and to the rehabilitation they need to be able to work and support their families? No it does not. This bill states that it has upped the bar and increased the threshold. So even though that person still has exactly the same injury as he or she had last year—tough! That is what Nick Smith says to injured people. He says “Tough!”. They are injured but they will no longer get cover. 
This is the same approach as that for hearing loss. People who suffer hearing loss in their workplace currently get accident compensation cover. They have done so for a long time but that cover is out the door now. People with hearing loss now have a 6 percent threshold to reach before they are entitled to receive cover. So if someone has lost only 5 percent of his or her hearing in the workplace and wants some help to hear fully again what will Nick Smith say to that person? He will tell that person to sod off. That is basically what the Minister will say. He will say that yes he knows the person has a 5.9 percent hearing loss but the National Party does not care about that because that person is costing his or her employer money. Well in my view if employers allow a workplace to be so noisy that people lose part of their hearing then those employers should front up and bear the responsibility and the cost for the hearing loss their workers have suffered. That is an employer’s responsibility. 
This bill says “Tough!” to the people who have not reached that magical 6 percent threshold but the worse insult in my view is to the people who were so callously insulted by the Minister Nick Smith last week. That was when he said that under accident compensation legislation people get such great money if they kill themselves that if he had a terminal illness and his doctor said that in 30 days’ time he would die he would wait till the 29th day and then throw himself under a train so that his family would be better off. Not only was that a highly offensive comment about the state that people are in when they injure themselves or commit suicide but it is deeply offensive and hurtful to the families who have lost loved ones through suicide. Today in the House Dr Smith said that suicide was not an accident so it should not be covered. Well a lot of injuries are not accidents. A lot of injuries occur to people who know full well that they have a very high risk of having an injury. In my view if people are so unwell and so distressed that they attempt to do harm to themselves even to the point of killing themselves their families deserves all the support that we can give. If it is good enough for the accident compensation scheme to offer financial support to and cover the injuries of those who go hang gliding and then crash and do serious damage to themselves to those who go mountain climbing to those who play sport or to those who drive a car when all those people know full well the risks they are taking then in my view people who are so unwell that they harm themselves or commit suicide deserve to have their injuries covered as well. I think that the Minister made a highly offensive contribution. 
This legislation is a winding back of entitlements that New Zealanders signed up to in a social contract. We gave up the right to sue but under Nick Smith we are paying more and getting less.