Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2)

SUE BRADFORD (Green) Link to this

Overall, this bill makes a number of beneficial changes to the current accident compensation scheme, and the Green Party will be supporting it to go to the select committee. However, we believe that this bill should be improved in four key areas, and we will reconsider our support in the future depending on whether at least some of the issues we are concerned about are addressed positively in some way during or after the select committee process.

The first of our concerns is in regard to the cover relating to mental injury. Although we welcome the proposal to extend cover to mental injury caused by a traumatic event experienced while at work, we think that this bill should go a lot further. The Green Party believes, in fact, that cover should be broadened out to include all mental injury covered by accident, work-related gradual process disease or infection, or treatment. This would effectively restore the position that existed under the Accident Compensation Act 1982, before National’s so-called reforms to the scheme in the 1990s.

Getting down to the detail of the bill, it seems to me particularly anomalous that cover will extend under this legislation, for example, to a person who suffers a mental injury as a result of seeing someone die in a car crash, while at the same time a health professional who suffers a similar mental injury as a consequence of witnessing a series of deaths and other trauma as a result of his or her work—a paramedic, or someone like that—will not get cover because his or her problems are caused by a series of events and are not a one-off experience. So at a minimum the Green Party would like to see the bill amended to correct this particular anomaly.

The second area about which we have particular concerns relates to cover for work-related gradual process, disease, and infection. Although we are pleased with the provisions contained in clause 10 of the bill as far as they go, we believe that they fail to address the most serious inadequacy of the current legislation as highlighted by the Ministerial Advisory Panel on Work Related Gradual Process Disease or Infection, which reported back to the Government in March 2006. This issue is the difficulty faced by claimants in proving, where there is no clearly separate and antecedent physical injury, that conditions such as regional pain syndrome or multiple chemical sensitivity are personal injuries as defined in the principal Act, even when the causation test under section 30 is met. The bill should be amended so as to ensure that claimants who have conditions such as these but without a discrete antecedent physical injury, and who meet causation criteria, should be able to get cover for work-related gradual process, disease, or infection injury.

We would also like to see cover extended to those who contract serious illnesses or impairment as a result of being the children or grandchildren of workers who have been exposed to toxic chemicals such as dioxins. So-called third-party cover should be made available to these people without any further mucking around. Although some of the issues I am discussing here are highly technical, as is the case with a lot of accident compensation law, I remind the House that behind the sometimes mind-bending detail of law and regulation are real people who are suffering daily because of the often unfair, and even at times cruel, way in which so much of our accident compensation system still operates, despite improvements made since 2000.

The third area of particular interest to the Green Party in this bill is that of vocational rehabilitation, and we are pleased to see that the circumstances under which vocational rehabilitation can be provided are extended. However, the extensions all relate to people who are entitled to receive weekly compensation, or who would have been entitled to receive it but for the fact that they qualify for national superannuation. The original Act and the new bill completely ignore the needs of people who may have little chance of finding employment without vocational rehabilitation, but who are denied weekly compensation because they are non-earners or not potential earners as defined in the Act at the time of their personal injury. People in this situation often end up languishing on a sickness or invalids benefit for a considerable period of time, or on no benefit at all if they have a partner with significant earnings. If they do qualify for an invalids benefit, they may potentially be able to access the training incentive allowance through the Ministry of Social Development, but others will have no support for vocational rehabilitation whatsoever. Often such people end up in debt through a student or private loan just in order to have any prospect at all of getting back into the workforce. We would like to see the bill amended by providing for an obligation on the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) to provide vocational rehabilitation for claimants who cannot get weekly compensation but who are vocationally and medically assessed as having little chance of getting full-time work with an earning capacity similar to their earlier employment without such rehabilitation.

The final area of particular interest to us is that of vocational independence. We welcome the provision in this bill to require occupational assessors to take into account earnings before the claimant’s incapacity occurred, and I hope that this should preclude ACC from forcing highly skilled people off weekly compensation and into inappropriate low-wage jobs. Our overarching policy in this area is that the vocational independence provisions of the Act should be repealed altogether. Losing one’s job is still at times a consequence of injury, and it is not fair that someone should lose his or her compensation because even though that person is medically capable of some types of employment he or she has the skills to undertake, that person cannot find a job in those areas due to the state of the job market at the time. We believe that the vocational independence assessment should be abolished. Provisions already exist in the Act for the corporation to negotiate, or, if the claimant does not agree, to deem certain activities to be contained in an individual’s rehabilitation plan. Job search requirements can be one such deemed or negotiated activity under current law, and people can be booted off compensation if they do not take reasonable steps to obtain a job. The extra step of vocational independence assessment is not necessary and is a very blunt instrument.

Although availability of appropriate work may not be such a big issue at the moment in the current economic climate, this will not always be the case, just as it was not the case during much of our recent history. In the late 1990s and early 2000s I was aware of many claimants who were exited from weekly compensation, and who then spent months, if not years, unemployed because there were no jobs available for them for which they were either vocationally or medically suited. The loss of employment such people suffered was a result of personal injury, yet through no fault of their own they found themselves without a job, without compensation, and receiving either an unemployment, a sickness or invalids benefit, or no benefit at all. Some people are, of course, still in this situation to the present day.

We would like to make a number of other improvements to this bill, but I will not take up the House’s time with them now as I am sure we will have plenty of good submissions on these and related matters at the select committee. I look forward to the select committee process and to hearing what people who have a deep interest in the matters covered by this bill have to say. I hope that despite the unfortunate time of the year, affected individuals and organisations will find the time and energy to make submissions to the select committee. As I said earlier, this bill does make some progress towards improving our accident compensation system, but there is a long way to go before we are even close to meeting the Woodhouse principles. The Green Party is supporting this bill in going through its first reading because of the useful steps forward it takes, but we will reserve our position in later votes depending on whether we can make any progress on at least some of the matters I have talked about today.

TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Māori Party) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker; tēnā tātou e te Whare. It is always a good thing to be able to come to this House and know that we are debating legislation that, if implemented well and with some changes, will make a difference in the quality of people’s lives. The quality of life for Māori workers in relation to their experiences with injury prevention, rehabilitation, and compensation has not always been a topic that I can talk about with much joy. We know only too well that injury is the leading cause of death for Māori for the first three decades of life. Māori are overrepresented in injury statistics across all age groups, and in employment and sports. Most of these injuries are preventable.

We know also that Māori aged 25 to 64, particularly men, are more likely to be injured at work than non-Māori. This reflects the types of occupations in which Māori men are overrepresented, such as manual and trade occupations, manufacturing, and construction. Occupational segregation operates to maintain Māori in more high-risk employment. High-risk occupations, which are those with high rates of new workplace injury claims, are agriculture, manufacturing, construction, and forestry. These come after hunting, fishing, and mining.

It is not just a matter of Māori having such dire experiences of injury statistics; it is also a matter of the fairly negative experience of having to go to the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) itself. Research from Dr Peter Jansen on Maori consumer use and experience of health and disability and ACC services reveals that Māori are currently not receiving entitlements to care, rehabilitation, and compensation at a level comparable to the proportion of Māori in the population. That is appalling.

The issue is, in essence, that Māori have greater need but have less access to treatment. I know this because many people who have come to my office—Māori people—have come for help because the staff at ACC have tended to treat them as malingerers who do not want to work and who do not have any rights to accident compensation. It is obvious from these stories and these statistics that our people are overrepresented in high-risk industries and under-represented in claims and entitlements from ACC.

Given this history, we have given priority to this Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) in order to review the amendments proposed for work-related injuries, the changes in weekly compensation eligibility and entitlement, and the changes in entitlement and processes around vocational rehabilitation and independence. We are particularly pleased that the bill improves access to compensation for a number of currently disenfranchised groups—seasonal and casual workers, and those in non-standard work; those mentally injured by trauma; those between work; and young people who are injured. The Māori Party has previously voted against bills that were not inclusive of the rights of these groups, so it is obviously pleasing to see that these groups have been included from the outset.

We are especially interested in the initiatives to provide cover for mental injury arising from traumatic events in the workplace. Our reading of the bill suggests that cover is extended to those suffering mental injury, as opposed to temporary distress, by exposure to a sudden traumatic event in the course of employment situations—for example, witnessing a death.

I know the impact of such events from personal experience. When I was working in a Government agency a member of the public held a staff member up against a wall and clutched the staff member’s throat in response to behaviour that the member of the public had clearly taken offence at. I imagine that the trauma for that worker was huge. I also remember only too vividly that at a hui I attended when I was working in Rūātoki one of the speakers attending the hui died. As I moved to give him CPR I realised that it was too late. The shock of that sudden death stayed with me for a very, very long time.

Sometimes when we talk about people having temporary distress it is unfair not to note that that distress can stay with them for a long time. When I read in this bill that this cover will help ensure there is appropriate treatment to facilitate rehabilitation I am absolutely convinced that experiences such as those I have mentioned are indeed encompassed within the scope of personal injury.

I will be interested to learn at the select committee whether any of the submitters bring to our attention the possibility of racism being added as a work-related gradual process of injury, because that was identified in Dr Peter Jansen’s report, as well. Clearly, racism has long-term effects, including that of post-traumatic stress disorder.

There are some very good features in this bill, and I believe that weekly compensation for seasonal and casual workers will be calculated more fairly as a result of amendments included in the bill. For example, compensation for meatworkers will be calculated more in line with their working periods rather than their non-working periods, which I think is fair. Instead of having 3 months’ work averaged out over 52 weeks, it will be averaged out over 12 weeks, which in effect means that the 80 percent compensation will be of their real income. This change is intended to improve access for seasonal casual workers and others in non-standard work, and it is something we would support.

We would like to see more focus on occupational safety and health included in this bill. A 2004 National Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Committee report on occupational injury and disease in New Zealand highlights the lack of information on Māori work-related mortality and morbidity. Despite the fact that awareness and monitoring of occupational safety and health issues for Māori are sorely lacking, we know that particular issues flow from the facts of their employment. Māori and Pacific workers are more likely to be shift workers and, as a consequence, are more likely to be vulnerable to the range of work-related disorders associated with shift work—sleep disturbance, peptic ulcers, ischaemic heart disease, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, mellitus, female reproductive disorders, and disorders of the immune system, as well as psychological and relationship disorders. A recent publication, the New Zealand Blood Donors’ Health Study, reported that when occupation, lifestyle factors, and excessive sleepiness are controlled for, there is an almost twofold increase in the risk of work-related injury for shift workers.

The final issue I bring to the debate is the precarious nature of non - full-time, non-permanent employment, where Māori are also highly represented. Precarious employment is employment that is low quality and puts workers at risk of injury, illness, and/or poverty. Precarious workers are more exposed to physical work hazards and stress from insecurity. We will be looking carefully at the select committee report to see that the specific issues for shift workers and workers in precarious employment are fully canvassed in this bill.

All workers have a right to expect that the workplaces they go to, the work they do, and the people they work with and for are not compromising their health and well-being. They also have a right to benefit from the social contract represented in the accident compensation scheme, which began some 40 years ago.

We will be supporting this bill in order to enable a full discussion to take place and to allow all of us in this House to benefit from the robust discussion about the impact of injuries upon the community. We will reserve our final decision until we are really well informed by the submissions made to the select committee. Kia ora.

JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) Link to this

I speak on behalf of United Future on this first reading of the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2). This is a bill that seems to widen access to accident compensation entitlements. It is a refinement of the accident compensation system, as it proposes amendments to cover for work-related injuries, changes in weekly compensation eligibility and entitlement, and changes to entitlement and processes around vocational rehabilitation and independence.

There are some changes in the bill to tests for causation for work-related injury where there is a gradual process—when an injury is gradually experienced by somebody—and that is a good thing. It includes eligibility to lump-sum payments to be extended to claimants for work-related gradual process, disease, and infection, and to those who suffer personal injury following the date the bill comes into force.

The previous speaker, Tariana Turia, talked about the new cover for mental injury that is caused by exposure to a sudden traumatic event in the course of employment. I think that this is an extremely good thing to be included in the bill. We know of some very highly publicised cases where people have witnessed murders, train drivers have had people walk out on to the line and be killed, or very traumatic events like that. The cover for those people to get some counselling and help with that is hugely important.

The access to cover for people in between jobs is widened from 14 to 28 days, as long as future employment has been organised. This provision does not apply to people who are out of work and who have left work, but if people are in between jobs for a period of up to 28 days, then they can still receive cover. I think it is a good thing. The abatement conditions for those who are partially incapacitated and who return to part-time work are improved, and I have had lots of constituent cases around that issue.

I am particularly pleased to see that the bill is making some improvements to leave entitlements, so that they will not be considered earnings for weekly abatement purposes. I had a case only about a week ago from a constituent who fell exactly into this category. He was in between jobs. There was an accident during that period of time that was work-related, because he was finishing up, but he had handed in his notice on a job and was planning to go into new employment after taking a holiday. He was very full of angst over the fact that the holiday pay that he was entitled to—that had been caught up on and paid out from the first job—was calculated, and it affected his accident compensation payments at that time. It looks like we will get some real movement on that, and I am sure that the gentleman I spoke to in Whakatāne only a week or so ago will be very pleased to hear of that change.

One of the negatives of this bill is that in widening access to accident compensation entitlements, we also widen the very real gap that exists right now between trauma-based disability and medical or disease-based disability. I accept that the issue I am bringing before the House does not fall within the scope of this bill. I believe that there is a very real challenge for the Government to address this matter in the future, and I would also go as far as to say that failure to address this blatant inequity is an extension of gross unfairness that borders on cruelty. I have been spending quite a bit of time recently talking to those within the disability sector, and the stories are tragic. We can meet people whose set of limitations is identical to the set of limitations of somebody living right next door, where their impairment has been caused by an illness and the people next door have had a car accident. The difference between the services provided in each case is enormous and it is discouraging.

I believe that some real work needs to be done by this Government—and, in fact, by every party in this Parliament that is seeking re-election—to look at how we can better help those who suffer debilitating conditions but who have not suffered them as a result of a traumatic accident. There is a very, very big gap in the provision of health and disability services in this country right now. Issues around compensation and the loss of income remain unaddressed, and I think we do the public whom we serve a great disservice when we fail to find a way forward on this matter.

United Future is happy to support this bill. We will be very interested to see what submitters to the select committee say. We do not have membership on the select committee that will be looking at this bill, so we will be relying very heavily on the report back from the select committee and the recommendations it makes, but we are very happy to support this first reading.

LESLEY SOPER (Labour) Link to this

Our world-leading accident compensation scheme was a social contract to provide a universal, no-fault accident compensation scheme in this country, for which New Zealanders gave up the litigious path of the right to sue, and it has very much stood the test of time. I compliment the new Minister for ACC, Maryan Street, on bringing this Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) to the House. It is a far-sighted and significant bill that will further deliver for New Zealanders, and I am proud of this bill.

In contrast to the negative speeches given by the National members, who want, of course, to return to a privatised accident compensation scheme—a National experience that did not work for employers, employees, or for anyone except the insurers—the Labour Government is committed to having a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme and to making this scheme more responsive to claimants’ needs, because at the end of the day, a technical bill, which this one is, is still delivering to the human stories of the people affected by the legislation we create. I am very sad that National members can come to this House and witter on about their opposition to this bill, pretending that this bill is making accident compensation more complicated, when, in fact, they know that this bill is about having an even fairer and more sustainable accident compensation scheme. It is about improving outcomes for injured workers; providing fairer and more straightforward weekly compensation for seasonal and casual employees, whether they might be meatworkers, farm workers, tourism workers, care workers, or retail workers; making important changes to the cover provisions for work-related gradual process, disease, or infection; providing cover for clinically significant mental injuries, like the train driver whose train hits someone on the tracks or the bank clerk who witnesses a colleague being killed in a bank robbery; and providing the Accident Compensation Corporation with the discretion to extend the current 3-year limit on vocational rehabilitation when claimants need longer periods of rehabilitation. These are all exceptionally important provisions in this bill. None of these provisions, or the people who will have their lives improved by them, deserve the nonsense of petty opposition that we have heard from the National speakers today.

I will concentrate particularly on some of the positive aspects of this bill for the benefit of workers whom I have had through my office door and whom I dealt with in my previous life as a union organiser. The first aspect is changes in the area of weekly compensation. The bill provides fairer and more straightforward weekly compensation for seasonal and casual employees, and that is a very good thing. There is no doubt that the world of work has changed dramatically, and that more people are working part time, are moving in and out of employment, are self-employed, or are in casual or seasonal work. Updating the weekly compensation framework to improve access to weekly compensation, changing the way that weekly compensation is calculated for casual and seasonal workers, making the assessment for claimants more reasonable and easier to understand, allowing easier access to minimum weekly compensation and extending the period of eligibility so that claimants can access weekly compensation if they are injured within 28 days of stopping work, and also allowing self-employed people and shareholder employees who are injured during a transition to employee status to be eligible, are all positive parts of the bill. So is improving abatement conditions for partially incapacitated workers when they return to work part time. I would ask why the National Party is opposing those very good proposals that increase fairness. Well, who knows? I wonder whether the National members themselves know.

The other positive aspect I want to talk about is the changes the bill introduces to the cover provisions for work-related gradual process, disease, and infection, to ensure that people harmed by their work receive greater access to cover and can have more clarity as to whether cover is available. If people have been clearly harmed in the course of their employment, then they should be covered by the accident compensation scheme, regardless of whether the injury is the result of accident or occupational illness. The bill makes that philosophy clear. The three-part test set out in section 30(2) of the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act is revised in the bill in order to clarify the threshold of allowable non-work exposure, and that is a good thing, as is some provision for extending eligibility for lump-sum compensation.

No cover is currently available under the accident compensation scheme for mental injury caused by exposure to a sudden traumatic event in the course of employment. The bill introduces such cover where the traumatic event is significant and is seen, heard, or experienced by a person directly. Providing that cover will help to ensure appropriate treatment and rehabilitation and an early and sustainable return to work. Again, those are all good provisions of this very good bill that I am surprised to hear the National Party opposing.

Lastly, I want to point out how pleased I am to see that the bill introduces a requirement for occupational assessors to consider a person’s pre-injury earnings when identifying suitable future work for claimants. Having worked with those faced with the identification of unsuitable jobs in the past, I think this provision is a very important one for a lot of reasons, including the full utilisation of retained skills and professional abilities by a great number of those claimants, and also because of the injured person’s own self-esteem and the attention we need to pay to that as part of any rehabilitation and return to work process.

In summing up, I say that this is a very good and well-thought-out bill. It is a technical bill, and it is also, as I said at the start, a bill that addresses real human stories that come through the doors of our electorate offices. These are real human stories that my former colleagues as union organisers still experience very often. The bill talks about delivering real improvements for the people involved, the people whom we must never forget in a technical bill. I am looking forward to the submissions on this bill to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, of which I am a member, and I commend this bill.

ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) Link to this

I saw the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) come across my desk. I grabbed it, read the general policy statement, and saw that the bill would “continue the Government’s commitment to a fair and sustainable ACC scheme for reducing the incidence and impact of personal injury, by proposing amendments to cover for work-related injuries,”. When I read that I thought “Great!”. Of course, if I had been like Peter Brown, as he explained to us last night, I probably would have put the bill down and thought it would do everything that I hoped it would do, and everything that the general policy statement said it would do.

I brought an issue to this House in September of this year about work-related injuries. I assumed and hoped that when legislation came before the House that had a commitment to a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme, and that was proposing amendments to cover for work-related injuries, I would see some changes to the law around the case that I had brought to the attention of the Minister for ACC. But, alas, when I read the legislation I found that that had not happened.

I want to talk today, at the first reading of this legislation, about what is not in it, and what should be in it if we are indeed to have a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme, and if we genuinely want to reduce the incidence and impact of personal injury. You see, if one looks at the definition of a work-related injury in section 28(1) of the principal Act, one finds that we are talking about a personal injury that the insured suffers “(a) while he or she is at any place for the purposes of his or her employment, including, for example, a place that itself moves or a place to or through which the claimant moves;”. So we are defining that workplace as somewhere where the insured person is actually working, whether it is a movable place or a place that a person moves through while doing his or her work. Section 28(1)(b) also states: “while he or she is having a break from work for a meal or rest or refreshment at his or her place of employment;”. I read those provisions carefully, because they are really pertinent to the case that I brought before this House in September and brought to the Minister’s attention.

What is the problem? The problem occurred in 2003, when an employee of AFFCO—a meatworks company—left the plant on a break, walked outside the secured compound of the plant, and went to the car-park with another person. That employee went into that car-park on his break, allegedly, to smoke a joint. It had nothing to do with work, he was on a work break, and he was actually committing an illegal act.

SUE MORONEY (Labour) Link to this

It is a great pleasure to be able to rise and speak in the first reading of the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2). I congratulate my colleague Maryan Street. As a new Minister it must be very exciting for her to bring forward such an important bill that will make a real difference to people’s lives.

Negativity has been displayed by members opposite today. However, this legislation is something positive that will actually affect some of the most vulnerable people in our society—those who have been injured at work, and those who are in seasonal and precarious employment. This bill will do a lot to make things right for this particular group of people in our society. It is about the Labour-led Government’s commitment to a fair and sustainable accident compensation scheme. It is the envy of the international community. I hope the National Party take that into consideration instead of condemning this very important step forward for our well-valued accident compensation scheme.

The last speaker, Anne Tolley, spoke about a situation local to her, and I wish to bring to the House’s attention a situation in my local area—in Hamilton East—that will be resolved by this bill. I am disappointed, because I had hoped that the member of Parliament for Hamilton East, who is on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that will hear this bill, would be present in the House this afternoon to take a call. It seems that he will not be taking a call, and that is disappointing, because a man in Hamilton East, Mr Bruce Gardiner, has communicated frequently with members of Parliament over his particular situation, and it will be addressed by this bill. His pleas have been heard—yes, by this Labour-led Government. Unfortunately, his member of Parliament, David Bennett, will be voting against this bill—a bill that will actually address the issues of one of his constituents. I am sure Mr Gardiner wants his story to be known, because he has had a lot of publicity about what happened to him.

This bill will make some significant changes to the cover provided by accident compensation for work-related injuries. It will extend this cover to include mental injuries caused by a single traumatic event, and it will make changes to the cover provisions for work-related gradual process, disease, or infection. The cover that includes mental injuries caused by a single traumatic event will be of particular importance to Mr Bruce Gardiner of Hamilton East.

His story is that one day, in the course of his duties as a milk tanker driver for Fonterra, he was driving along a country road—well within the speed limit and well within the law—doing the job that he had done many times before, he noticed a person crouching in a sprint position on the side of the road. He did not have time to react before the person ran out in front of his milk tanker. Unfortunately, Mr Gardiner could do nothing to avoid that accident and that death from occurring. That person had probably got to a point in his life where he had decided to end it. Mr Bruce Gardiner, through his work, actually became an unwitting player in that scenario, and the trauma and mental injury that that caused him was not covered by accident compensation.

Mr Gardiner has been a very strong advocate for the law being changed in this regard. As I said, he is from Hamilton East. It has been a big call for Mr Gardiner to talk about the personal stress that this moment in his life caused him. His suffering meant that he was unable to continue in his duties as a milk tanker driver for Fonterra, and he continues to suffer to this very day because of that very traumatic event.

I will be very pleased to campaign as Labour’s candidate in Hamilton East at the next election, and to be able to inform Mr Gardiner, his family, his friends, and his entire community that the Labour-led Government has heard his pleas. It is the Labour-led Government that cares about these issues, and this bill—having its first reading today—will address those issues in the future.

The bill provides cover for clinically significant mental injuries, rather than for temporary distress that constitutes a normal reaction to trauma. The bill does not introduce cover for mental injury caused by non-physical stress. It introduces changes to the cover provisions for work-related gradual process, disease, or infection, to ensure that people harmed by their work receive greater access to cover and more clarity about whether cover is available and how it is determined.

The bill also provides fairer and more straightforward weekly compensation for seasonal and casual employees, by improving access to weekly compensation for people who are injured while temporarily between jobs. Many New Zealanders will be very pleased to hear that Parliament is considering this issue, because a great many New Zealanders are involved in temporary work.

The bill also provides the Accident Compensation Corporation with the discretion to extend the current 3-year limit on vocational rehabilitation, where appropriate.

I have listened very carefully to the debate, because this issue will be a litmus-test issue for New Zealanders come the next election. I have listened very carefully in the hope that the National Party speakers on this bill will throw some light on what their policy is in regard to this issue. Unfortunately, it was very difficult to work out. Apart from hearing their negativity and their opposition to our world-class accident compensation system, it was very difficult to work out where National may go on this. However, although they may not have let that slip in the course of this debate, they certainly have made public statements that give us some clues about where National would go on the issue of accident compensation.

John Key said: “I want to confirm today that National’s policy is to re-establish a competitive market to provide accident insurance.” Back to the good old market model, the failed model of the 1990s! The National Party has not learnt a thing. Gerry Brownlee says that during the last, all too brief, period of private sector involvement in accident compensation, premiums fell dramatically, and accident statistics fell as employers experienced the direct financial benefit of keeping workplaces safe.

Well, what we know is that privatisation of accident compensation did not mean a better service, and it did not work for employers or employees. Since Labour renationalised accident compensation, the average self-employed levy has come down by 6 percent, the earners rate has reduced by 7 percent, and the average employer’s levy has dropped by—and wait for this figure—a massive 43 percent. That has happened under our world-class system of accident compensation, which is the envy of the international community. Labour stands firm and very proud on its record in this area. It is an area that is close to my heart. Before my election to Parliament I trained health and safety reps in the workplace, and I know of many, many other stories of trauma, apart from Mr Bruce Gardiner’s. I know what that trauma means for people’s lives—not only for the people injured but for the people around them, for their workmates, and, yes, for the profits and productivity of their workplace, as well.

In closing, I say that although there are many wonderful challenges in my new role as the junior Government whip, one of the downsides is that I am no longer a member of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, which will consider this bill. However, I give my best wishes to that select committee. I know that it will be well led and that the submissions on this bill will be well received. I wish the committee luck in its deliberations.

Hon DARREN HUGHES (Deputy Leader of the House) Link to this

I move, That the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 2) be referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee