Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Mixing things up—thank you Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to take a call on the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill at second reading. The bill obviously makes some technical changes to the primary Act the Accident Compensation Act to ensure it's up to date and fit for purpose—a bit of a tune up if you like. It's been pointed out across the House during this debate and at different readings that our ACC scheme is the envy of the world so of course the National Party is supporting these very sensible and straightforward changes to the Act.I wasn't a member of the select committee that considered the bill the Education and Workforce Committee but I read the select committee report that came back to the House and hear Parmjeet Parmar did a great job at chairing that committee and taking us through the process. The select committee made a minor change to the commencement date the timing of the bill to ensure the timing of the changes to the Act is aligned with the funding allocation of Budget 2018. I just want to focus on the one thing that I think is of particular concern to New Zealanders and especially people in my electorate that I have spoken to and that is the anomaly under the existing legislation whereby a person who is at or above the age of superannuation who is eligible for both super and ACC payments has to choose between those two payments in the second year of their injury. In most cases they forgo their superannuation and collect just the ACC forgoing the superannuation payment that they should be entitled to. So currently if you're working and receiving super and you get injured you get both ACC and super entitlements for a year and then in the second year you have to choose which of those entitlements to take. Most people choose to take ACC and therefore forgo those super payments and in the third year they go back to super. There's no rationale for having to make this choice between the two payments in year two and it's not in line with the premise that superannuation is a universal benefit and not means-tested. If a person is working past 65 they're entitled to both superannuation and their working income so there's no logical reason why in year two of an injury a person aged over 65 must choose between those two payments. The current legislation also has an anomaly whereby if a person is injured prior to their 64th birthday they're actually worse off than if they were injured prior to their 65th birthday because they're not eligible to collect both payments. So this bill tidies that anomaly up and I think there will be many people out there who will be quite pleased about that.There are a number of measures included in the bill—other measures addressing the gap in coverage for family units in dependence on New Zealand employees posted overseas allowing surviving spouses to receive up to five years of weekly compensation regardless of their age and abolishing the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority. One of the things I'd note from select committee that I've heard a lot about through my colleagues who sat on that committee were the submissions that were out of scope. I get a lot of those through my electorate office—people who have concerns about the way that ACC operates and works. I understand why so many people submitted to this process and I understand why it was out of scope but I can see where there are a lot of changes that we need to make to ACC. There were a lot of heartfelt submissions and I hear there were a lot of tears and people wanting to have their say. I know that there are more changes coming. I look forward to debating in the future a more comprehensive reform to ACC that the Minister for ACC I think has talked about delivering in the new year and I hope that the reform will consider and address some of the concerns of those submitters that brought up issues that were outside the scope of the bill. But this is a sensible and positive piece of legislation to improve our ACC scheme. I endorse it and I commend the bill to the House.