Curran ClareHon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thanks Madam Chair. I just want to refer to a couple of the issues that this bill addresses and I think there's been one mention of the disestablishment of the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority but also they're moving from an annual review to a biennial review of the Accident Compensation (Liability to Pay or Contribute to the Cost of Treatment) Regulations 2003—rather a mouthful. But actually there were submissions on these matters. In the committee stage of the whole House this is when the opportunity is to actually talk about what those changes mean and why they're necessary and why they are being progressed. With the disestablishment of the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority The Authority is a historic entity that hears only"—as I understand it and this is what the departmental report told us—"a small number of appeals under the repealed Accident Compensation Acts 1972 and 1982. The majority of appeals are now heard by a District Court Judge in the Accident Compensation Appeals District Court Registry." That might sound really boring and dry but actually these things are set up decades ago for a purpose and then they were overtaken by other mechanisms. As I understand it there are currently no cases before the authority. The last case was lodged before Christmas in 2015. There was a submission around this by the Federation of Women's Health Councils Aotearoa that did not support this proposal to disestablish the appeal authority and to move to the District Court due to concerns over the costs that this would impose on claimants and Rural Women New Zealand also expressed concerns about the effect of this proposal. If the Minister is minded he might like to just tell the committee given the fact that there has not been a case before that authority since 2015 whether there is any basis to those concerns—which isn't to diminish those concerns but actually whether there is any basis in terms of the costs around the appeals and what that actually means. The second point is around moving from an annual review to a biennial review. Now again there was a submission from Hazel Armstrong Law that submitted that moving to a biennial review—and I'm not going to read out the whole thing again because it's a mouthful—would double the lag between an increase in inflation and an increase in costs paid under the regulations. The submission by Hazel Armstrong Law said that it wasn't clear that the annual reviews were currently being undertaken which is interesting looking across the Chamber—just saying. The response from officials on this was that—and this is the sensible thing basically if you think about it—an annual review of the regulations wasn't resulting in regular updates to the regulations and the way in which the review was required to be carried out required ACC to begin to undertake the next review. So basically by the time they finished one review they had to already have started the next review in what was sort of a self-fulfilling going around in circles. Moving to a biennial review sounded like a sensible approach to that. So if the Minister had any comments he'd like to make about that in this important piece of legislation we'd welcome that."