Fenton Darien: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Fenton Darien: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:660;Page:9237] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I want to explain to the Government why Labour feels so offended about this proposed name change. The name of the principal Act was changed by the previous Labour Government as members have pointed out. What was the name of the law relating to accident compensation before that? 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: It was the privatised name. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That is right. It was the Accident Insurance Act which described exactly how National saw accident compensation then and how those members still see it. They see workers’ livelihoods and their injuries as tradable commodities. We are upset about the new name because it means that National has not changed. We know that before the last election National was meeting with business and the insurance industry and we know that it was making promises about privatising the work account. 
The message that we receive from Supplementary Order Paper 111 is that the focus is coming off the things that the previous Labour Government worked so hard on which my colleague Ruth Dyson so eloquently described and is going back to the accident compensation scheme being opened up to competition and to private insurers. We heard that kind of language. We heard the statement that it is not supposed to be a welfare scheme; it is an insurance scheme. That is what the Government says all the time. That is what Government members like to say about this scheme all the time. So we are worried about the change of name. 
I ask members opposite what is so complicated about the existing name. What is not simple about the words “injury prevention”? 
Sandra Goudie 
: I know we’re doing the right thing when we know you’re worried. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: What does the member Sandra Goudie not understand about injury prevention? Maybe she does not have any idea about what it means why it is important or why Labour made it the first priority of our accident compensation scheme. The first priority is to prevent accidents particularly in the workplace but what are we seeing from this Government? We know that the priority has gone off injury prevention. We know that Government members do not care about it. They are cutting cutting cutting— 
Sandra Goudie 
: She didn’t care about how she wasted billions of dollars. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Is it a waste of millions of dollars to prevent injuries? Due to funding cuts training for workplace health and safety representatives has been cut from 6000 places down to 2000. What did we hear in the last quarter? The Minister of Labour said that she was worried about the increase in workplace accidents. Well surprise surprise! If we take the focus off injury prevention and start making cuts to workplace health and safety training then we will see more of that. It is an utter disgrace. 
The second word is easy to understand. It is a simple word: “rehabilitation”. What is so hard to understand about it? Why do members opposite not like this word? They want to ignore the fact that our scheme is trying to get people back to work back to their ordinary jobs and back to being productive members of the community. That is what rehabilitation is. That is why rehabilitation is the second platform of the previous Labour Government’s requirements of the scheme. 
The final word must not be hard to understand because National has retained it in the changed name. It is compensation. It is the last resort. When people can no longer go back to work or are recovering from an accident they are compensated so that they can feed their families and put their lives back together. They can plan for the future. 
Those three terms in the current title prioritise the purpose of our 24-hour no-fault accident compensation scheme. People can understand why members on this side of the Chamber are particularly upset about the change in name because it indicates the change of focus that we knew was coming. From the kind of language that has been used from the discussions that have happened in the debate we knew that the change was coming and the Minister for ACC has confirmed that with his Supplementary Order Paper. 
I will be putting forward some amendments to the title and I suggest a few alternatives. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Hope they don’t have any fiscal impacts. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: That is right. One alternative for example would be the “Injury Prevention Rehabilitation Compensation and Experience-Ratings Amendment Act 2010”. We have talked about experience-ratings in the debate. We are concerned about what risk rating meant in the 1990s when we had experience-rating and how it affected people. It affected the behaviour of employers and workers but it did not bring the accident rate down; it increased.