Wong Pansy: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Wong Pansy: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:609;Page:6481] 
PANSY WONG (NZ National) 
: 
 In this Chamber we have tried to establish the principle that the title of a bill is meant to reflect the purposes of the bill. The title of this bill is Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill. Anybody hearing that title would think that Parliament was debating a bill that would have measures to help the transport or the motor vehicle industry to lead them and to come up with an innovative way of how to prevent injury or to reduce injuries caused by motor vehicle accidents; or a bill that contained new health initiatives to be introduced to help people who are injured during motor vehicle accidents to regain their health. But actually this bill is all to do with enabling the following: first to “establish as a levy under the principal Act the portion of excise and excise-equivalent duty payable on motor spirit that is paid to the Motor Vehicle Account;” and second the bill states that because the Government does not want to come back and debate other legislation to adjust the rate of excise tax while it is passing one piece of legislation to increase excise it might as well adjust another one. Everything is to do with increased cost increased levy on to motor vehicle users. 
Also as my colleague Dr Paul Hutchison expertly pointed out the interesting thing is that this increased levy of course is due to better estimation. All it is saying is that every time we come back to debate this legislation it is nothing to do with how to introduce a measure to prevent or reduce injury: all it says is that the Accident Compensation Corporation probably has developed better models to estimate how much more it costs for the long-term rehabilitation costs of claimants under accident compensation. So once again the Labour Government continues to say there are no ifs and buts the Labour Government promises there will be no increase in tax no increase in levy. We have heard that again and again in this Chamber. It seems to me that every alternate bill introduced to this Chamber has some sort of increased cost relating to it. I think it would be appropriate that the title of this bill should be very upfront and be the “New Levy and Increased Excise Tax Bill”. There is much to be said for the title of a bill being upfront so the public would know—they might even agree—whether there needs to be an increased cost. The public might even say that at least this Labour Government is honest. 
Simon Power 
: It would never say that. 
PANSY WONG 
: That is my point I tell my colleague Simon Power. The point is that the public would not be able to say that when they look at this title: the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill. When they follow this debate in the Chamber they will realise that it is another increase in levy another increased cost but with very little effort going into preventing injury—apart from the fact that we know that the police and traffic cops have a quota of speeding tickets. That might be about the only contribution this Labour Government is trying to make in terms of injury prevention—that when the public want the police to investigate burglary etc. it is low priority yet the traffic police seem to have a quota to catch people who are speeding etc. The Labour Government should demonstrate that it is open and upfront and change this title.