Hutchison Paul: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hutchison Paul: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:607;Page:5051] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (NZ National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I am pleased to have the opportunity of speaking on this Labour Government’s “Unashamedly Blatant Tax Amendment Bill” otherwise euphemistically known as the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill. This bill literally represents yet another iniquitous and rapacious grab by this socialist Government into the pockets of ordinary New Zealanders. The tax in this bill comes as one in a series of taxes levies and increased compliance costs that this Labour Government is systematically and stealthily imposing on the people of New Zealand. 
This is the Government that says that it is focusing on economic growth. This bill epitomises just why the Prime Minister has had to admit in this Parliament that her Government’s policies have no date attached to when New Zealand might ascend into the top half of the OECD. This bill’s 5.8c per litre increase comes on the top of the 1 July Crown revenue petroleum excise tax increase which was from 17.8c per litre to 18.5c per litre and the 1 March 2002 road fund petrol tax hike which was from 13.5c per litre to 17.7c per litre. That is 3 years in a row that this Labour socialist Government hits the ordinary New Zealand taxpayer in the pocket and that is just in the area of accident compensation and it is probably only the beginning. 
It is relevant to this bill to look a little wider and glimpse over how hungry this Government is to grasp into the New Zealand workers’ hard-earned wages by whatever method it can. I took the trouble of going to our Parliamentary Library to see how in relation to this bill the Government has managed to spread its tentacles and grasp taxes from the New Zealand worker. The chronology it has left is quite extraordinary. This was the Government that said it would not increase taxes. All we have to do is look through the bill and on the first page we see “income tax”. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member can talk about this bill and the reasons for introducing it or not introducing it. But what he is doing now is going through a long list of taxes that are outside this bill. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: Thank you Mr Speaker. I will go straight on to excise duties petrol tax duties and Accident Compensation Corporation levies of which we have a chronology that is a legacy of shame to this Government. Might I just start with the Accident Compensation Corporation levies because four of them were outlined by the parliamentary research unit on 1 April 2002 a short year ago. The Accident Compensation Corporation motorbike registration levy was raised from $134 to $211 a rise of 57 percent just in July 2002. The car ownership levy increased 14 percent from $130.23 to $141 and there are a whole range of other levies including petrol excise duty that have also been increased by this Government. 
It is also relevant to remember that many anticipated this—including the effects of the Kyoto Protocol which is also likely to have the effect of increasing petrol tax by at least 5 percent. The list is readily available. It goes on and the impacts it has on business and economic growth in New Zealand are profound. 
Turning to the bill I point out that the regulatory impact and business costs compliance statement states the reason for increasing costs is that the motor vehicle account is facing exactly that increase in costs. The statement saysthese increases have resulted primarily from improved estimates of long-term rehabilitation costs for seriously injured claimants and underlying cost increases. I want to ask the Minister why for 3 years in a row the corporation has had to fine-tune the way it estimates these costs and they have gone up each year. 
We know that the Government’s focus—it is all over the annual report—is on prevention care and recovery. If indeed prevention was to be successful and if rehabilitation was to be successful these costs would not have gone up. In fact the levy would have gone down. But the Government has failed on all three counts. 
This Government used to talk about how it would fix the Accident Compensation Corporation; how it would make the Accident Compensation Corporation more efficient; how by removing the competitive model everything would be better. But it is not. The Accident Compensation Corporation is actually a $2 billion business. It is a substantial business. This Government says that one of the major focuses encompassed in this bill is the area of prevention so that these levies might be contained. Yet less than 1 percent of that $2 billion is actually spent on prevention. In fact it is in the order of 0.75 percent. 
This amendment bill is undoubtedly unnecessary. One of the extraordinary things that I note in the Accident Compensation Corporation’s book  
Consequences: What Accidents are Doing to New Zealanders 
 is the fact that deaths and injury on the road are reducing. The Accident Compensation Corporation says that this is good. On closer analysis road deaths have marginally come down. But it is of huge concern that in New Zealand we average 12 deaths on the road per 100000 people whereas in the UK there are only seven deaths per 100000 people. In 3½ long tortuous years of this Labour Government what has it done to effectively prevent road deaths let alone deal with the more important statistic which is the moderate to serious injuries? Those are the ones that impact on Accident Compensation Corporation levies. If we analyse exactly what happens we see that in 1988-99 it was those moderate to serious injuries that sank the lowest they have done in decades and over the last few years they have marginally increased. This tax bill is an indictment on the ineffectiveness of this Government’s policies to do what it said it would with the Accident Compensation Corporation and that was to have effective prevention and a focus on prevention and early rehabilitation. 
These are the right things to do but under this model which the Government has put to New Zealand unfortunately none of it has succeeded. For 3 years in a row this Government has gone about increasing the Accident Compensation Corporation levies from petrol. This bill just epitomises another failed policy of this Labour socialist Government.