Carter KahurangiKAHURANGI CARTER (Green): So we are here. Saturday night is it 1 June this King's Birthday weekend—yes. It's International Children's Day today and I am actually the Green Party spokesperson for children and I know that ACC does wonderful things for children. I know my children have benefited from ACC because they are lovely active kids—as have I. You know I've got six metal screws in this arm from that cool snowboarding accident I had; I've got a couple of screws in my foot down here; broke my tailbone; this collarbone. Yeah me and ACC are great friends and I really appreciate the mahi that they do to ensure that New Zealanders can get the healthcare that they need when there has been an accident or a big trauma in their lives.Now ACC charges levies on everyone who works or owns a business in New Zealand and this covers the cost of supporting the recovery of people in injuries and accidents. So the levies can be paid by instalment as we have heard rather than of that lump sum payment. Now as the child of two parents who were both small - business owners I know that having this flexibility is key to keeping that cash flow going and to making sure that they can sustain their businesses onward.My dad is a te reo Māori teacher and I know one of the National MPs here has also been one of his students so that's a nice little whakapapa there and my mum ran a maths and English tuition centre—so really important mahi that they were doing there. To have this flexibility for them and for those other small enterprises in New Zealand is a really good thing.This bill allows ACC to charge debt interest on instalment payments starting with the current existing interest rate and can be updated by regulated subject to public consultation. This bill also retrospectively validates the past and current processes of charging debit interest on instalments.So the reason that the Greens are opposing this bill today is that the interest is justified by ACC because they're missing out on investing that levy revenue in ACC's investment fund because of the delayed payment plan. We all understand this and this interest helps fund important ACC cover—just like those metal bars in my arm. This bill will not change the current experience of businesses and self-employed people when paying their levies.However—and this is the big thing however—we are against the retrospective validation of actions that we're against the law unless the circumstances are exceptional and this does not meet that threshold of charging retrospectively. Like I said as the child of two small-business owners we know that this change in this bill will disproportionately affect small and medium enterprises in New Zealand. And we want to make sure that we aren't disadvantaging and disproportionately affecting those small and medium businesses; those mums and dads who are just wanting to put food on the table who are doing things like teaching te reo Māori to National MPs who are doing things like teaching our kids maths and English—kia ora member David MacLeod—now I can mention who my dad taught that te reo to. Tihei mauri ora!Now the Greens do have a vision for ACC in New Zealand and that is for a holistic social security health and disability system focused on the wellbeing of the people of Aotearoa. I know that we can achieve that and if we have public consultation on this with stakeholders who really understand this and who will be affected by this we could really tease this out and improve this bill. But until then we will be opposing it.