Rich Katherine: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
Rich Katherine: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:20164] 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 The National Party supports this bill but I must say with some reservations. On hearing the Minister speak just now I can say there are a lot of things we agree with in relation to that Minister. The National Party believes in a fair system of accident insurance. We believe in a comprehensive system of accident insurance and we also believe in an equitable system for accident insurance. But where we differ from the Government of course is in the area of choice. We believe that New Zealanders should have a choice of insurer. We believe that New Zealanders should have the ability to make decisions about who provides accident insurance for their businesses and organisations and that is what we do not have in this legislation. We have choice removed from a very important part of New Zealand life. 
The National Party has always supported a no-fault system for accident insurance like most within this House. Since 1974 that system has been the way of providing accident insurance within this country. But we have seen the removal of choice for many businesses so that they do not have any ability to go out and identify which organisations would provide them the best services for accident cover injury prevention and things like that. 
We continue to support this bill because it makes an important change to the accident compensation system in the area of medical misadventure. The system we had in the past required people who were victims of injuries as a result of medical treatment to find fault in the first instance but then also to prove who was culpable before they were able to access cover. Often that process was very time-consuming and difficult for all involved and the faultfinding investigative systems that had to be put in place did not work well either for the medical profession or for those people facing injuries. I think there is a smoothing in this legislation—an introduction of the same standards for medical misadventure that we have seen in other areas in respect of accidents. This bill will allow people who have suffered from unexpected injuries as a result of their treatments to have the same standard of cover as any other New Zealander who has had a workplace accident. So we support the no-fault system and we support the changes that have been made to the medical misadventure area. 
I suppose that many members on this side of the House will have faced a number of constituency problems and concerns in this particular area so we will go on from here by ensuring that those people will not have to go through a very difficult process of trying to find fault with the medical profession before they have the same standard of cover. That is not to say that we will not continue to look for fault where fault needs to be found. If the issue is to do with medical negligence or is the result of poor practice that will still be picked up on and investigated. But the issue in the legislation is that those people will be able to get cover for their injuries under the same circumstances as other New Zealanders who have faced more easily defined accidents such as falling off ladders etc. 
In terms of this bill a lot of the changes are very technical changes but in the bill there is a key difference between the parties—a really defining issue between the National Party and the Labour Party. National is a party that believes in choice that believes that the private sector should have the ability to provide certain services where they can be of value and that believes that the State is not necessarily the only provider that can supply this kind of service. Certainly in the area of accident prevention education the State is not the only provider that can undertake that sort of educative process. 
We believe that it is important to have a system whereby all New Zealand workers are covered—and not just covered but where everybody is covered fairly in the event of accidents taking place that do not allow them to continue to work. We believe there is a comprehensive system that covers a wide range of accidents and injuries that face all sorts of New Zealanders in the various vocations they are involved in. We also believe in a system that provides cover in a very cost-effective way and rehabilitation in the event that those accidents take place. 
But one of the things we believe in which goes further and which the Labour Party has a closed mind to is the idea that employers should be able to choose their insurers just as they make decisions in every other aspect of their businesses. There is no reason that the State has to have a monopoly on the accident insurance area. It does not have a monopoly in other areas of insurance and it does not have a monopoly in other areas that the Government is not involved in with regard to accidents. 
So in this case we think that there are opportunities for choice. This party stands on the side of choice and we believe that when it comes to provision for New Zealanders people working and people who face all sorts of accidents in their various vocational areas there are different solutions in the accident compensation area. I think that the Accident Compensation Corporation goes a long way to provide many good programmes when it comes to the education of our people but it is not the only source of preventive education. It can not be the only source for accident insurance but I think that the Government certainly has the blinkers on when it comes to this area of insurance. The Government feels in this case—and I think it is ideology that is driving the Government—that it has to dominate this area. This Government nationalised a lot of businesses that had invested in the area of accident insurance. It basically went in and marched over Kiwi businesses that had gone into the accident insurance area and that were or early indications showed that they were doing a very good job. 
In terms of where to from here we have some reservations about some of the technical details which we will go into during the Committee stage of this bill. But I think that what we will see from the speeches that follow will be a demonstration of whether parties are in favour of New Zealanders making choices about their own lives or whether we have the nanny State Government-knows-best idea coming from the Labour Government and we will have no choice and no ability to make business decisions. The Government will provide one option which will be the only option. So there will be very little room for innovation in this accident insurance area.