Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Can I begin firstly by thanking the chief Government whip for his indulgence in allowing me to take one of the Labour calls in this debate. The reason I asked for that was because while the bill is in the name of Simon Watts I actually wrote it and there's been a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about what are the intent and the purpose of the bill and what the intent behind it is. So I'll take the opportunity to set out the circumstances that led to my drafting the bill and then address some of the issues that have been raised by members.So there are two scenarios that can affect an employer's experience rating and both of these have occurred and been brought to my attention. One is where an initial injury has been incurred and there is a change of employer before the exacerbation of that injury. Depending on ACC's decision in respect of whether or not it's a new injury or whether or not it's a re-injury that can affect the experience rating of the employer that is being asked to carry the can for it when in fact the injury did not occur at his or her workplace. The second scenario is one where a non - work-related injury is exacerbated by an injury that occurs at work and this was a case that was brought to my attention where somebody with a relatively minor knee injury tripping up a step aggravated an old and longstanding rugby injury. Now members should understand that the experience rating impact of these sorts of scenarios is not insignificant. In this case it was over $120000 for surgery extended time off work physiotherapy and other therapies. That was put on to the employer's experience rating where the actual cause of the injury was sport-related not work-related. But by the time that became clear the ability to appeal the decision to attribute it as a work-related injury had passed and this bill seeks to remedy that.Now Marja Lubeck is right: the law—the Accident Compensation Act—does not refer to the nomenclature that is in this bill and I'm sure Helen White will be aware of this as a lawyer who's worked on ACC cases. There is often nomenclature around re-injury that is used and ACC themselves accept that personal injury caused by an accident can be reactivated after a long period and that's what we're talking about. That's what the language in the bill was designed to do. Now the ACT member who's just resumed her seat before Toni Severin is right: if the language is wrong then the select committee can fix it. That's often the case with members' bills because we don't have the vast resources of Government and therefore we are limited in our ability to get things right. In fact frankly we don't do a worse job than Government. Some of the bills that have been brought by the Government before this House actually are in no better shape than some of the members' bills brought before this House. So that would have been the place where we could have addressed some of those things.Now a lot of things were talked about by members that I frankly think are not appropriate or attributable to this bill and my experience on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee in my first term in Parliament was that there was a high level of congeniality and collegiality until we got to things like workers' rights and industrial relations and then the left are up like meerkats. And that included the ACC Act. This is what I think we are seeing today when actually and I stress this the claimant is not negatively affected by this one bit—unless it is a repetition strain injury that did not occur at work and that is a very rare thing. It might be tennis elbow or something like that but generally speaking the claimant will never be affected by this bill if it is passed. However the employer may have the right to challenge not whether the claim should be accepted but whether the experience rating liability should fall on his or her business. That is what this is going to fix or would have had Labour been a little less like meerkats and actually supported it at first reading. I'm disappointed they won't do that. This will fix a problem that won't harm claimants.