Uffindell SamSAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): Thank you Madam Speaker. I always love it when the Speaker pronounces my difficult last name correctly so thank you for that. All this talk of pies has got me quite excited! I know people say the Prime Minister's a real pie man. He might be the sausage-roll man but I love my pies. Paul Eagle and Tama Potaka were talking about them. I just want to admit that I had another one for lunch today and it was fantastic. On this bill the Accident Compensation (Access Reporting and Other Matters) Amendment Bill at its third reading I'm very glad that I didn't burn myself with the pie which is quite fortunate. It was a bacon and egg one. If it had been mince and cheese it could have been a little bit different!Paul Eagle: Always blow on the pie."SAM UFFINDELL: Thank you Mr Eagle for the advice to always blow on it. I usually do. Thank you for that.We stand here talking about this bill and I am just wondering whether there are other things that we could be talking about except for a bill which probably doesn't need legislation to deal with it. We do note that previously this reporting had been done from 1982 to 2006 when the then Clark Government stopped that. If the idea was to gather statistics potentially just doing what is necessary to turn that back on could have been the more appropriate way to go about it. We do work through this though. I note that there is a provision in here to move the compensation back from starting in the sixth week to the second week. In principle I think that's probably a fairly reasonable step to take because if you've injured yourself whether you've burnt yourself with a pie or you've twisted your ankle in a pothole and can't go to work or you've spent too long in a hot shower—six minutes potentially; you've got a bit of scalding and you need to take time off work—it's probably good that you do get those earnings sooner rather than later especially in the middle of a cost of living crisis when people are really struggling to pay the rent or pay their new mortgage rates which they have just switched on to.So I think that is probably a good step in that regard but I do question why we are here debating something which as I have mentioned before—whether it really did need a bill to adjust and whether it's something that could have been adjusted some other way. My colleague the very astute and always entertaining Tama Potaka talked about why his whakapapa is the thing that is being looked at and how he feels a little bit affronted about why he's being treated as another statistic. I won't comment any further on that other than to recognise what Tama has said. I don't know if people ever do statistics about me—probably not—but if they did I would just like to think that you could collect that information through the channels that were already established. Also what are you then using that information for? It hasn't really been shown through this bill that there will be any definitive outcomes through that. There is nothing to show that certain whakapapa have more difficulties accessing ACC.So I'm at a bit of a loss and I would think if you wanted to improve the functioning of ACC there are probably better ways and better use of the House's time as well—Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Such as?SAM UFFINDELL: —as opposed to pushing through this bill—such as speeding up the bureaucratic process because we do know that people do spend a lot of time. They call up they get caught in bureaucratic tangles they get bounced around on phones backwards and forwards to Wellington back to the ACC office. For people who are sitting there who have recently been injured and who are looking at a loss of their income for what would have been up to six weeks now looking like that will come down to two—Hon Member: Stick to the bill.SAM UFFINDELL: Stick to the bill? That is actually in the bill thank you. It does go from six to two. I appreciate the kind suggestion but it is here. It's also in my bill notes; so there you go! For the people there you could speed it up; there are other ways that we could have used this time as opposed to producing this. I would really be focusing on the bureaucracy and the operational processes within ACC to make sure that that is being sped up.These are vulnerable people that we're dealing with. These are people who have injured themselves. They most likely have dependants or family to look after. They probably don't have income-continuity insurance and they are faced with a potential loss of livelihood and all of the negative consequences that come with that. How are they going to put food on the table? How are they going to pay the rent? How are they going to buy the kids' footy boots? How are they going to do all of those things that they used to do?Tama Potaka: And inflation.SAM UFFINDELL: And they are also suffering with inflation. Tama that is right. Is it not better that we speed up that process instead of wasting all of the parliamentarians' time—and no doubt all of the hard-working officials' time in ACC drafting and coming up with legislation that isn't necessarily required? Shouldn't we have said to them "Look this is what the issue is: it takes far too long to work through stuff. Can you have a look at your operational processes look at where there's a bit of wastage look at where there's duplication look at where we could speed things up and let's focus on that."? You know what would also be a really good idea? Let's look: you've got six steps here for instance—just being hypothetical Madam Speaker. Shall we look at what's involved in each of those and then set time targets around that? OK. Do we then want to put some sort of compliance process on top of that? That would then make sure that everyone is hitting those benchmarks and if they aren't what are the remedial processes that we need to implement to make sure that people are working a little bit faster? And ultimately the person who's had the injury is then getting the payment faster and they're also not stuck with the uncertainty and stress that they already have by having to spend hours on the telephone. So I would have liked to see us focus more on that. I note that we haven't. Our position on this side of the House is that we see this bill as unnecessary. We think there are better things that we could have focused on and that we should be prioritising. As a result we will oppose this bill."