Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you Madam Speaker for the opportunity to speak on this bill. I want to start for anyone watching this at home by giving some brief introductory remarks about the ACC system as a whole. New Zealand's accident compensation scheme is world leading. It is the envy of jurisdictions within the world that have a common law system which has had over the years the development of a tort law system where personal injury is something that people can sue someone for based on a fault system and claim against them.What's really interesting and important to note in this debate is that our accident compensation scheme in its no-fault aspect is incredibly important for the employers that it protects. I remind those members in the Opposition that the reason we have the system is so that there is a bar against employees in this situation being able to sue their employers. We are talking about situations where a worker has been injured at work and would otherwise be able to sue their employer for that injury and for their employer's role in that.This bill seeks to change the balance between how these situations can be reviewed and to give more rights to employers to review those decisions by ACC with the worry that's been presented by the Opposition members that their levies will go up and essentially they will pay more.It's important to revisit the very core of the accident compensation scheme about how this protects employers and creates a system where fault is not necessary to be proven and as my colleague Helen White has said it's really important that we do not tinker with a system which is world leading in creating and inviting a space where employers are asked to come to this at their worst where we're inviting employers to go out of their way to prove that they did not have any contributing factor because the strength of this system is that they do not need to do that and they do not need to establish fault.I want to turn to this issue of privacy. My concerns with this bill are that it raises serious privacy concerns in an unjustified invasion of workers' rights. This bill in its current form has the potential to cause privacy and operational issues because of the potential of a person who has a review right being entitled to see the basis of the decision that they request a review of. I'm talking here about the principles of natural justice where if an employer had the right to review a decision with ACC you would naturally expect them to have the right to inquire as to the basis of the decision that ACC have made and potentially clinical information. That's not a position that we could possibly support on this side of the House. It's a position that gives employers far too much information about workers' health conditions and information which those workers would not have the ability to oppose or give consent to giving to their employers. It creates a system where employers are asked to delve into the clinical history of their employees which is not something that we on this side of the House could possibly support.The concern that any former employer could be entitled to this in an ongoing sense that there would be a review system that would last for more than the relevant time period which this bill seeks to address is also a serious concern. And it creates significant operational issues by allowing employers to apply for a review of a decision that would be a significant increase on the number of ACC decisions which employers can review.I think it's really useful for us to think about how useful our accident compensation scheme is at the moment the reason why we protect it the reason why it draws moral lines in the sand that sometimes those in this House do not agree with on any given day. That is not a reason to tinker with it around the edges. It's important to protect the accident compensation scheme for what it is and it's important to approach any changes very carefully and very mindfully. On this side of the House we don't believe that this bill does that and that is why we oppose it.