King Annette: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled 
King Annette: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled 
[Volume:660;Page:9192] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 I came to the Chamber to listen to the debate on the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill because it is an issue that Labour intends to fight strongly on. We are believers in the accident compensation system that has served New Zealanders so well for so long. 
I listened to Mr Peachey’s speech; it was a 3-minute attack on Labour’s record in Government. He stressed the need to have an affordable and sustainable system. I tell Mr Peachey that this bill—and as a constituency MP Mr Peachey will know this—will undermine the confidence that New Zealanders have in the scheme that they are paying for. It is their scheme to cover them when they have an accident. As other members are doing in their constituency offices I am picking up on people coming back to us asking why they are being denied cover under a scheme they thought they would be covered by. 
I agree with the points that Mr Peachey made about the scheme needing to be affordable and sustainable and so do New Zealanders. But from the National Government we are getting nothing more than a propaganda campaign to undermine accident compensation for its own political purposes. I ask people to read a story in the newspaper today about a 15-year-old girl who injured her hip playing sport. The mother has gone vocal because she said that she thought the accident compensation scheme would cover her child in the event of an accident yet she was turned down for cover. Why was she turned down? Because the medical assessor for accident compensation said she had an unusual-shaped hip. Before she had that accident she was playing sport and was an active child. She was like any ordinary kid at 15—lively running and enjoying life. She is now in such agony and pain that she can do nothing. She can hardly walk. She is on painkillers. That is a very good example of the system not being fair. Why would that child be turned down just because an assessor said she had an unusual-shaped hip? 
I say to Mr Peachey that when he makes speeches about the scheme being affordable sustainable and all the fancy words the National members are using he should think about the New Zealanders who need to have access to accident compensation and rehabilitation. This is not an insurance scheme as National has tried to paint it; it is a scheme to help New Zealanders in the event of an accident. If they have an accident they need help. 
I was staggered by John Boscawen’s comments. He really labelled what this Government is doing and I think it should be said by every member of the Opposition. He said that we are paying more and getting less. I thank Mr Boscawen for that comment. New Zealanders will be paying more and getting less. I have a question for him: why is he voting for a bill that will mean people pay more and get less? That seems a bit crazy to me. We have had no answer to that question. 
I think one of the big issues in these transition clauses is the issue of New Zealanders who will lose access to hearing aids that they need because of hearing loss. People have already come to me around this issue. They have come to me because they have a workplace injury: they have lost their hearing at work. They have gone to work year after year and worked in a noisy environment in a time when they did not take a lot of care about health and safety. A lot of those changes came in under a Labour Government and much of it was called “bossy PC” Government. But we believe in workplace safety. Many New Zealanders who have gone to work in a noisy environment year after year now have hearing loss. The reason why the Government is changing the entitlement is not that it does not want people to have hearing aids; it is that it thinks too many are getting them and it is costing too much money. It is saying that because the cost has gone up—of course the cost of hearing aids has gone up too—it will now put a threshold on when people can get a hearing aid. 
We and the National members have been told that many New Zealanders who do not meet this threshold will still not be able to hear daily things around them. A very good example was their not being able to hear children speaking because of the pitch of their voices. We were told that these people would miss out on parts of their lives that they should be able to enjoy with help from the accident compensation scheme. They did not choose to lose their hearing. They did not deliberately go out put on earphones and listen to heavy metal; they were actually working amongst heavy metal and heard the noise and the thumps of their workplace and so they lost their hearing. I think it is shameful to treat our workers in such a way. 
I also endorse the comments made by Ruth Dyson around clause 54 and the area of vocational assessment. I have to say that I had not heard the story of the one-legged tap-dancer. He was assessed following an injury as being able to tap-dance—he had a job he could do. He was assessed as being able to be a tap-dancer but he was found to have only one leg. I imagine it is quite difficult to tap-dance on one leg. The only thing I can say is that the person was lucky he did not have both legs missing. He may have then been assessed as being able to do something else. Who knows? 
This is the stupidity of this whole change. Why would we not take into account someone’s pre-earning capacity and his or her capability to do a job? It is demeaning to New Zealanders—who may well have gone to university got qualifications been top earners and supported their families—to be told that they have been assessed as able to do a job that does not relate to anything they have spent their life doing and that many of them will have paid to be qualified in. This is another method of reducing access to accident compensation for New Zealanders. I know there will be many many other examples. 
This is a sad day. I hope New Zealanders are listening to this debate because they are seeing the gradual destruction through the tyranny of the majority in this Committee of a scheme that has served New Zealanders well. When we were in Government we were not looking for New Zealanders to pay more and get less; we were looking for a system that worked and provided cover to many many people including the families of people who commit suicide. I think this Government has taken an axe to the scheme for no other purpose than its own political philosophy and ideology. We knew it was coming unfortunately. We warned New Zealanders it would happen. We said that National would make drastic changes to accident compensation and would set out to undermine and privatise the scheme which is exactly what is happening in conjunction with ACT. 
At the end of the day we will see New Zealanders demanding the right to sue. We have to ask whether we would blame them. The mother of the 15-year-old I told members about will be asking why she should not sue if she cannot get compensation. What about the ACC doctor who said her child should not get cover because she has oddly shaped hips? We have to wonder why an ACC doctor would do that other than that he or she was being paid by ACC. That is an extremely serious issue. Too many cases come to me where people say they have grave doubts about the fairness of the assessments that are done on them. 
I conclude by saying that Mr Peachey wants a sustainable and affordable system but National is making New Zealanders pay more and get less. That is what this bill is doing.