Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill

Amongst the Supplementary Order Papers that are on the Table in respect of the title of this bill is a late proposal by the Government to change the name of the underlying legislation from the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act to the Accident Compensation Act, and I want to explore that proposal. I think we need to look historically at why the current bill name came to be. In my mind there is not much doubt that if members look historically they will see that, following the passage of the original accident compensation law, New Zealand took its eye off the ball when it came to injury prevention. Prior to accident compensation, of course, there was a fiscal cost to employers through the risk of court action as a consequence of injured workers suing them, which meant that they kept a good eye on injury prevention.

After the accident compensation legislation came in, there was a period when New Zealand’s accident rate in the workplace did not follow the same trend as was the case in overseas jurisdictions. For that reason, Governments of the day, including the Labour Government, decided that there was a need for more interventions to make sure that we achieved what I think everyone in this Parliament would want to achieve, which is lower accident rates.

One of the things that was done was that more focus was put on the enforcement of appropriate workplace safety through the Department of Labour, using its regulatory function to ensure better workplace practices so as to reduce accidents. But another thing that was done was a change within the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) to a greater focus on injury prevention, and it has worked. Following the changes that the last Labour Government made in terms of both more regulatory action via the Department of Labour and more focus within ACC on injury prevention, that combination of efforts has meant that rather than the trend in New Zealand workplaces going in the wrong direction—that is, separating from the international trend, where New Zealand workplaces were not improving in their safety at the same rate as was being achieved in other places, including Australia—we actually had improved outcomes and less injury.

I will give an example of where the Government is now reversing that trend, and I think this is a shocking example. It relates to a programme that was developed at the University of Otago Faculty of Medicine, and has now been rolled out through most parts of New Zealand. It is the Otago Exercise Programme for falls prevention. We heard the Minister acknowledge in this Chamber in just the last few days that more than the work account, it is the non-earners account that has increasing costs, largely as a consequence of the elderly growing older and many of those elderly falling over in their homes and breaking a hip.

💬 Sandra Goudie: Oh, what a generalist statement.

That has additional medical costs and home-care costs. Sandra Goudie derides that, but it has been acknowledged by ACC at recent financial reviews that one of the great problem areas is the growth in falls by the elderly in their homes.

A programme developed by the University of Otago Faculty of Medicine is directly targeted at the most at-risk group, which is made up of people who are more than 80 years old, who have already had a fall, and who have been identified by their doctor as needing an intervention. It is an inexpensive intervention, and unlike most of these programmes it has had extensive peer-reviewed studies by scientists as to its efficacy. That has led to articles in the British Medical Journal, no less, highlighting the programme as an example of injury prevention work that is cost-effective. Indeed the cost-benefit analysis shows that for every $1 spent, $2 is saved in the health system in the year following. Yet this Government has cut the funding, saying that the programme cannot be afforded. It is nonsense economics. This will see the costs of the accident compensation scheme going up, and that is one of the reasons why the Government wants to go back to talking about this being the Accident Compensation Amendment Act, rather than the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Act.

The reality is that we are now heading back to the time in New Zealand when insufficient attention was paid to injury prevention. As a consequence, New Zealand will go back to where it was under the last National Government. The trends in respect of injury prevention will be bad, and therefore the trends in terms of the growing number of injuries and the growing costs of injuries will remain. As a consequence, costs will go up rather than come down.

Clause 1 of the bill that came back from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee is: “Title: This Act is the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Act 2009.” At the initial stages, in tabling the bill for the first time, the Government clearly did not think it was an issue to keep the name as it had been. At the select committee and the second reading, the Government clearly did not think it was an issue to keep the name the same. Come the Committee stage, the Minister in charge of the bill, the Minister for ACC, lodged a Supplementary Order Paper to change the title to the Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010, and proceeded to perform like a seal about how important it was that the bill would now be called the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. He made a song and dance about it, and he enunciated in the most exaggerated terms he could possibly manage that people on the street would not know what the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act was. Now it is imperative that it be called the Accident Compensation Act!

My question to the Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister for ACC, is why this change suddenly became important. I say to the Associate Minister that it leaves the Opposition thinking that there is an agenda. I quote somebody who is rather more famous than me: “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet;”. There is as much difference between the names Labour and National as there is between the names Montague and Capulet, which is what Shakespeare was talking about. There is as much difference between Labour and National over the title of this bill as there is between the names Montague and Capulet.

This change raises questions about the agenda, and I would like to ask two questions apropos of this name change. What are we to read into this change? If the legislation is to be called the Accident Compensation Act, are we now to understand that there is to be no injury prevention, rehabilitation, or compensation? Or are we to understand that anything that is an accident will be covered by this legislation? I ask whether the Minister has considered—and whether this has an impact on fiscal aggregates—the term “cerebrovascular accident”, commonly known as a stroke. Does this change in the name of the bill indicate that the Government is looking to include strokes, otherwise known as cerebrovascular accidents, in the coverage of the compensation? If so, the Government should say so, and it should prove that there is no fiscal aggregate impact from that change.

My second question is: if only accidents are to be covered by this legislation and not injuries, where does that leave sexual abuse victims, who sustain injuries but never by accident? Sexual abuse does not occur by accident; it is perpetrated upon victims and it creates injuries. At the very least, it creates mental injuries. Are we to assume by this change of name that there is some agenda to move stealthily and without any recourse to the public to take sexual abuse treatment out of accident compensation? That is the impact already of moves this Government has made in changing processes on treatment of sexual abuse victims. Already there are people who cannot get treatment and who risk suicide because they are unable to get treatment in a timely way, because people are waiting for decisions to be made about whether there is an injury.

While we are on the subject of quotations, I would like to offer the Committee one of my own. In response to a correspondent, the great writer Mark Twain stated: “I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English—it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it.”

I will follow up with another quote, because of all of the discussion we have had about the royal commission’s report. Owen Woodhouse wrote these words, and I think they are the most enduring of all of them: “Injury arising from accident demands an attack on three fronts. The most important is obviously prevention. Next in importance is the obligation to rehabilitate the injured. Thirdly, there is the duty to compensate them for their losses.” Having stressed that injury prevention was obviously the most important component of any framework, Owen Woodhouse then called the royal commission report, Compensation for personal injury in New Zealand. He did not need the “fluffery” of adding “injury prevention, rehabilitation, and compensation”, or this, that, and the next thing. He called it by a simple title.

The House of the time, in passing the legislation, did what? Did it give the legislation an extra-long title? No, it did not. In highlighting the importance of injury prevention, it said “Let us call this Act the Accident Compensation Act 1972.” It is pretty simple stuff, really. There is so much more about that Act that does not need to be packed into the title. In 2001, when it was given the present name, which was so long that the front page of the Act needed a concertina sort of shape, what was done was done nobly, I think. I do not think that anybody was under any illusions that the priorities were changing, and that the goal of preventing injuries remained. Sadly, we did not seem to have much luck; injury rates have continued to climb and rehabilitation rates have dropped, which is obviously the reason why we are in the Chamber debating this bill.

But let us call the legislation what it is. The Act should be the Accident Compensation Act. Nobody on the street understands it by any other name. They know “ACC” by what it. Let us call it what it is, and let us resist any of these nonsensical suggestions that by giving it a simple name, the Government diminishes the importance of injury prevention. That is simply not the case. Nobody believes it; not even the Opposition believes it. I really strongly support this change.

I begin by asking the Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister for ACC, a question but I doubt very much whether she will answer it because she seems to have been unable to find a contribution to make at all in this debate, despite being the Associate Minister. Her arm is moving; that indicates some form of life. But she does not seem to think that it is part of her responsibility—despite collecting quarter of a million dollars, with a car and free travel, credit card, and all the other trappings that go with being a Minister—to stand up in the debate and say why this is happening, why we are having this debate. But the question I have immediately for the Minister is where Gerry Brownlee is when you need him. Where is the Leader of the House, who felt obliged to come to the Chamber and have my Supplementary Order Paper ruled out of order, on the grounds that it would nearly bring the Government to its knees—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Let us keep this reasonably good-natured, but the member is straying into two areas. The first is implying that a member is not here, and, secondly, speaking about a ruling that has been made. The member cannot do that.

So where is Gerry Brownlee’s contribution when it is needed? Clearly, it is not being provided at the moment because if Gerry Brownlee was able to make a contribution in this debate, I am sure he would look at the amendment to the title and think about the huge impact on fiscal aggregate that this amendment from the Minister, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, will have. How much will it cost for every single letterhead, every single logo, every single front window, every single car, every single business card, and every single bit of paper—including ones with perforated sides—that currently have the existing logo and brand “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation”—to be altered? Gerry Brownlee is likely to be considering a contribution to this debate and having this amendment from the Minister ruled out. If it is good enough for the previous amendments to be ruled out, it is certainly good enough for this one. But if we were able to put aside the huge impact on fiscal aggregate that this amendment will have, even though it will be debated and then voted on, by the sounds of the current lack of contribution from the Leader of the House, then the Committee would be asking why we are doing this.

At the very time when the focus of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) has moved from looking at accidents as things that just happen and we pay out compensation for them, why are we not moving that culture to say that a prime responsibility of the corporation, as outlined in the original Woodhouse commission report, was that injury prevention should come first? That is what the commission said. That is why the name was changed to reflect what should be the primary responsibility and focus of the corporation, as it should be for the leadership position of the Minister and the Associate Minister, to drive injury prevention. I do not think that anybody in the Chamber would want to see anyone injured; even in the most heated moments of debate we would not wish any harm on any of our political opponents. But without that focus in the name, the corporation lost its way. It did not refer back to the original intent of the commission. Now, it has looked to the title of its mandating legislation and said injury prevention comes first.

What should be the second responsibility of the corporation? It should be rehabilitation. It should make sure that when people have the misfortune of an injury, despite the best efforts of any injury prevention programme, there is a fundamental responsibility to try to restore injured people to the greatest extent possible to their pre-injury earning capacity. We must make them as well as we can make them and restore them from their injury to as much as possible their pre-injury situation. So injury prevention should be the corporation’s No. 1 focus. Rehabilitation should be its second, and compensation for loss of earnings or earning capacity should be its third role.

Under this amendment, and under the now new title—yet another leap backwards into the 1990s—we see that the title of the Act will be the Accident Compensation Act. What does that say from this Parliament to the corporation? What does it say to the general public? What does it say to the leading injury prevention and rehabilitation specialists? The message from the Hon Dr Nick Smith and the Hon Pansy Wong is: “We don’t care any more about injury prevention and rehabilitation. We don’t care about it to the extent that we’re even prepared to change the name of the mandating legislation, so that the message is ‘accident compensation’—end of story.” That is not a good enough message. We have people, day in, day out, who are injured, often permanently, often severely. People lose their lives in incidents that we could prevent, such as children who are killed on quad bikes and children who drown. People lose their limbs in incidents that could be prevented.

My colleague the Hon David Parker spoke of a fantastic programme that was funded in part by ACC, and in part by local authorities and other Government departments and agencies. The programme focused on a group of people who were often neglected in the past in terms of injury prevention. The reason they were often neglected was that they do not cost the corporation much money, because they do not receive earnings-related compensation—that is, people over 80. People over 80 often fall and break their hips. They do not cost much, so they were never in the past a priority. The previous Labour Government changed that. We said that those people were important in society. They have contributed, all of their lives, to our country and to their communities. They have raised families, many of them have fought overseas on our behalf, and we should not write them off just because they are over 80. So we put a focus on a critical area of injury prevention for those people through the National Falls Prevention Strategy. I say all credit to Otago University for the amazing work—led, in particular, by Professor A John Campbell—that was done with that injury prevention programme.

The programme stopped large numbers of senior citizens falling over and often breaking their hip. If older people fall and break their hip, they have a lot of pain, they have to have a lot of surgical intervention, and the most telling thing is that they never fully regain their confidence again. They rapidly decline in terms of their ability to get up, get out of bed, and get out and about because that fall has shaken more than their bones; that fall shakes their confidence. Why would we want to let that happen when we know that it can be prevented by a very simple, internationally well-regarded, falls prevention programme? I do not know the answer to that question, because the National Government scrapped the programme, not the Labour Government. This Government said to over 80-year-olds that it does not care any more about their falls prevention programme, and that it does not care about injury prevention at all, actually. It scrapped the small amount of funding that was keeping so many of those people out of danger and out of hospital and giving them an opportunity to lead a much fuller life.

Those issues are at the heart of my concern about the change in the title. Many people might ask who cares about the name change. Well, if we cared as little as that, then we would not be debating it in Parliament. It is more than the name of a statute on the books of this House. It is about the message we give about what is important as the legislative mandate for the corporation and its staff throughout the country. It is about what this Parliament thinks is a priority. I do not think we should say that if it is an accident, it just happens. I think we should say that these are injuries and, in many, many instances, they can be prevented. It should be a moral responsibility of this Parliament to make it a legislative responsibility of the corporation to have injury prevention as its highest priority. None of us wants to see anyone being injured, so we should take the next logical step to make sure the law reflects that.

I want to explain to the Government why Labour feels so offended about this proposed name change. The name of the principal Act was changed by the previous Labour Government, as members have pointed out. What was the name of the law relating to accident compensation before that?

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: It was the privatised name.

That is right. It was the Accident Insurance Act, which described exactly how National saw accident compensation then and how those members still see it. They see workers’ livelihoods and their injuries as tradable commodities. We are upset about the new name, because it means that National has not changed. We know that before the last election National was meeting with business and the insurance industry, and we know that it was making promises about privatising the work account.

The message that we receive from Supplementary Order Paper 111 is that the focus is coming off the things that the previous Labour Government worked so hard on, which my colleague Ruth Dyson so eloquently described, and is going back to the accident compensation scheme being opened up to competition and to private insurers. We heard that kind of language. We heard the statement that it is not supposed to be a welfare scheme; it is an insurance scheme. That is what the Government says all the time. That is what Government members like to say about this scheme all the time. So we are worried about the change of name.

I ask members opposite what is so complicated about the existing name. What is not simple about the words “injury prevention”?

💬 Sandra Goudie: I know we’re doing the right thing when we know you’re worried.

What does the member Sandra Goudie not understand about injury prevention? Maybe she does not have any idea about what it means, why it is important, or why Labour made it the first priority of our accident compensation scheme. The first priority is to prevent accidents, particularly in the workplace, but what are we seeing from this Government? We know that the priority has gone off injury prevention. We know that Government members do not care about it. They are cutting, cutting, cutting—

💬 Sandra Goudie: She didn’t care about how she wasted billions of dollars.

Is it a waste of millions of dollars to prevent injuries? Due to funding cuts, training for workplace health and safety representatives has been cut from 6,000 places down to 2,000. What did we hear in the last quarter? The Minister of Labour said that she was worried about the increase in workplace accidents. Well, surprise, surprise! If we take the focus off injury prevention and start making cuts to workplace health and safety training, then we will see more of that. It is an utter disgrace.

The second word is easy to understand. It is a simple word: “rehabilitation”. What is so hard to understand about it? Why do members opposite not like this word? They want to ignore the fact that our scheme is trying to get people back to work, back to their ordinary jobs, and back to being productive members of the community. That is what rehabilitation is. That is why rehabilitation is the second platform of the previous Labour Government’s requirements of the scheme.

The final word must not be hard to understand, because National has retained it in the changed name. It is compensation. It is the last resort. When people can no longer go back to work or are recovering from an accident, they are compensated so that they can feed their families and put their lives back together. They can plan for the future.

Those three terms in the current title prioritise the purpose of our 24-hour, no-fault accident compensation scheme. People can understand why members on this side of the Chamber are particularly upset about the change in name, because it indicates the change of focus that we knew was coming. From the kind of language that has been used, from the discussions that have happened in the debate, we knew that the change was coming, and the Minister for ACC has confirmed that with his Supplementary Order Paper.

I will be putting forward some amendments to the title, and I suggest a few alternatives.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Hope they don’t have any fiscal impacts.

That is right. One alternative, for example, would be the “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, Compensation, and Experience-Ratings Amendment Act 2010”. We have talked about experience-ratings in the debate. We are concerned about what risk rating meant in the 1990s, when we had experience-rating, and how it affected people. It affected the behaviour of employers and workers, but it did not bring the accident rate down; it increased.

I congratulate my colleague Darien Fenton on reminding us about the name change made under the previous National Government in terms of our accident compensation scheme. I join with my colleagues in questioning the Government about why this current change is necessary. Members opposite may call us suspicious, but I ask why, when this amending bill came to the House called the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill, suddenly there is a need to change the title of the principal Act by cutting out those words and calling it the Accident Compensation Act.

The Minister for ACC got to his feet yesterday—I note that he is not speaking as much on the bill today—and said that the reason is that is what the Act used to be called. That is the National Government’s answer: that is what it used to be called.

💬 Darien Fenton: This is the brains trust.

The brains trust came up with that.

I am sure that all MPs care about communities. Surely they want to build on and improve on what was there before. I know that that is what inspired members on this side of the Chamber to come to Parliament: to advocate to improve the lives of New Zealanders. The Act was called that before. Improvements have been made over the years—though, admittedly, only under the previous Labour Government—to this wonderful social contract for New Zealanders. But this Government is intent on cutting back those improvements.

My colleagues have asked what the Government’s removal of the words “Injury Prevention” from the title tells us. What does “injury prevention” mean? We have already seen cuts to injury prevention schemes. We have already seen that happen under the current Act. We have already seen cuts to education programmes for older people about avoiding accidents. We have already seen much of the funding cut for schemes that worked. What does that make us think? I note what else we have seen cut. We have seen cuts in training for the delegates who are involved in health and safety in the workplace. They are involved in working towards ensuring that people have a very healthy workplace. The removal of the words “Injury Prevention” might make us think that this is what this Government is about.

Why would a Government remove the word “Rehabilitation”? It is absolutely the key principle of what is behind any social contract to do with accidents. It is not about rewarding compo. That view is so old-fashioned, it is not funny. Yes, people must be compensated. We note that, but we have already drawn attention to the fact that many people will not receive the compensation that they are entitled to, particularly if they have committed suicide. There are already claw-backs to do with compensation for seasonal workers and holiday pay, especially the provision that means people will have to use their holiday pay before they receive compensation.

But as well as those claw-backs, it seems to this side of the Chamber that the Government is saying that it does not want rehabilitation in the legislation. All it says to me and my colleagues is that this Government does not believe in investing in rehabilitation. We are already seeing examples of that under the current Act. But when it is no longer part of the title of the Act—when and if the bill goes through, which it will unless there is a big change of mind from the Government and the ACT Party—then I make no bones about the fact that rehabilitation will go further and further down the agenda.

It just makes a mockery of a scheme that has worked and that has delivered for so many New Zealanders. It has assisted them to be work-ready, to be working and to fully participate in our society and workplaces, and to effectively support their families. I too have some amendments.

I am happy to take a call on the title and commencement clauses of the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill. I will first remark on a comment that was made by the Hon Tony Ryall, the Minister of Health. When my colleague Maryan Street was using an analogy from Romeo and Juliet, the Hon Tony Ryall said: “Yes, but they ended up together in the end”. That is true, I say to the Minister—but they were dead. In terms of the analogy for accident compensation, I think it is particularly worrying if the Minister of Health thinks that is a good outcome. It is everyone’s happy ending; it is great—apart from the small fact that they were both dead. I think that sums up Labour’s concerns about where this legislation is taking us.

My colleagues have talked about the Minister’s insistence that the name of this legislation needs to be changed. We worry about a seemingly innocuous move on the Minister’s part because the mere fact that a Supplementary Order Paper is put forward will lengthen the debate in this part of the Committee stage. The Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister for ACC, and the Leader of the House, Gerry Brownlee, have already been in the Chamber desperately trying to shut down the debate and shut down the amount of time we spend debating. It is not a small move for a Minister to come here with a Supplementary Order Paper and put it on the Table—it opens things up for a longer debate, so there must be some reason that he is doing it.

The Hon Pansy Wong, the Minister in the chair, has refused to take a call in this debate. I think someone should place a mirror under her nose and check that she is still breathing, just so we can be certain there is not something more serious going on, because normally the Committee stage is about debate. It is the one time that the Opposition gets to question a Minister and, hopefully, get a response, and she has refused to do that. Therefore, we have to try to ascertain why the name is being changed from Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act.

The reason, I think, is that the Government is softening up accident compensation for privatisation. We know the Government wants to privatise accident compensation. It did so the last time it was in Government and it desperately wants to do it again. It got a lot of campaign donations from Australian insurance companies that will benefit to the tune of billions of dollars from picking up the work that is currently done by the Accident Compensation Corporation in New Zealand at a cheaper, lower administrative cost and a lower cost to the levy payers.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am, again, reluctant to do this with one of my colleagues. But it has long been the case that the motives of the Government cannot be challenged. The linking of direct donations for policy is something that would certainly indicate a lack of integrity on the part of the Government. Although the Government whips and the Minister in the chair at the moment, the Minister for ACC, might want to accept that as a fact, I think it is a reflection on the House. Any suggestion that this is a policy-for-money approach, as has been made by my colleague, is, in my opinion, out of order. I know that you were temporarily distracted, Mr Chair. The Minister was clearly listening. I know that the junior Government whip was clearly listening. She appeared to be nodding; I am not sure whether she was going off to sleep or agreeing. But it does seem to me that impugning the motives of the Minister and saying that he and his party are getting cash for the policy is something that implies corruption and probably should not be allowed to continue.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: The first point is that Government members did not raise a point of order because we give little credibility to this assertion, which has been made on repeated occasions. Furthermore, Mr Chairman, I think you should take note that the reason Mr Mallard chose to raise a point of order, far from actually upholding the principles of the House, was to do exactly the opposite. It was simply to give him the opportunity to recite those quite wrong and unparliamentary allegations.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Firstly, can I say in response to Mr Mallard’s point of order that questioning people’s motives is not a unique event in this Parliament. In fact, a time when members’ motives for putting forward legislation or amendments were not spoken about would be a remarkable period of time. So motivation, in my view, is a legitimate part of debate for this Committee. The second point that the member alludes to, but not directly, is that it is contrary to the Standing Orders to imply or say directly that people in this Chamber are controlled by outside interests. I do think that the member speaking fell well short of that. I take the point that has been made by Mr Mallard that this House is brought into disrepute by some of those assertions or that implication. I will not pull the member up on it, but I do think the member should be circumspect. An attack on any particular member’s motives in the House is an attack on all members of the House. I think the member should be mindful of the decorum of this place and the standard of debate that the public would expect. The member will continue.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I am happy to do so. I think we are very lucky that we have the Hon Trevor Mallard as a moral conscience of this Committee to keep us all on the straight and narrow when the Government fails to do so. I say to the Hon Nick Smith that if he is so upset about these allegations he should stop hiding the money in trusts and let New Zealand people see where the National Party’s money is coming from.

I will carry on. The reason, I believe, that the Hon Nick Smith wants to change the title of the Act from the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act is so that when he privatises the scheme, there is absolutely no onus on the new Australian owners of the scheme to carry out those activities. He is clearing the decks and making it clear that all they will have to be in charge of is paying out money. Let me preface that comment by saying that insurance companies make money by not paying out and by refusing claims, and that is the future for New Zealand workers under this National Government when it comes to workers’ compensation.

The Hon Nick Smith is sending a very clear message that the new owners will not have to carry out injury prevention and rehabilitation. All the niceties and all the weasel words saying that that is not right and the Government still thinks injury prevention is fantastic does not hide the fact that injury prevention is being cut by this Government now. That sends a very strong message. If all the National members who took calls—and there were not many of them—were genuinely concerned about saving money, then surely they would see that injury prevention is the way to do that.

It makes far more sense to spend a bit of money keeping people well. Let us be clear that every single piece of analysis of the programmes that were in place—my colleague Ruth Dyson mentioned the falls prevention programmes—were working. They were saving money. So to say that this is all about saving money is ridiculous when we consider that this Government has cut the very programmes that do save money.

If I were to come up with an alternative title for this piece of legislation, I think I would probably come up with a title along the lines of the “ACC (Kiss Your Holidays Goodbye) Amendment Bill”. I do not think the Minister for ACC is being completely up front with people.

I wonder, in speaking to this part, which seeks a name change to the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill, whether I could divert the Committee with a little homily on pre-parliamentary experience. It is relevant. Before becoming a member of Parliament I was a management consultant and worked for an insurance company over the ditch that specialised in accident insurance.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Not HIH?

I could not possibly comment, but no, it was not that one. The key point to make is there were three functions that needed to be undertaken that fit nicely with the name that is proposed by our side: the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill. In looking at injury prevention, rehabilitation, and compensation, we see that the first of those functions speaks to getting upstream and making sure that the environment is safer, that people’s costs are minimised, and that personal harm is minimised. A stitch in time saves nine, and the investment in public information and public education pays huge dividends. So it proved to be.

The second of those functions, rehabilitation, is absolutely critical, especially on claims that are required for moderately serious injuries. A very small injury can often be fixed on the day, within 24 hours and out of the door at a walk-in clinic. A moderately serious claim may require many weeks, months, or sometimes years of rehabilitation to get people back to work so that they can pay their way.

The third category was the very serious claims that required intensive, often lifetime, management and compensation. That company was able to minimise the cost to its shareholders and the Crown by undertaking all three of those functions diligently, as does, I believe, our accident compensation scheme.

The issue with this name change is that it underplays two of those absolutely vital functions. It collects the burden on the organisation under the third function. Compensation should be the last cab off the rank, not the first. If it does that, it will not be good for New Zealanders who either are not educated to avoid accidents before they occur or are not rehabilitated to the same extent after they occur, and we are left with what will be both increased human suffering and increased fiscal risk because the organisation will not be fitted as well to do its job.

We can imagine that the motivation for National in suggesting the name change that Dr Smith has suggested in his amendment is not drawn from the library of Mark Twain. I suspect that it is not a stylistic amendment. By all reports, this is a busy Government that has much on its plate. Would that Minister really spend his time on a purely semantic amendment? Quite obviously, there is a broader game afoot. Things are not always as they seem and I think New Zealanders are finding that the penny is already dropping for them. Here is a Government that is bent on cutting and trimming the services that our accident compensation scheme makes available, that it has interpreted in the most negative way. From the chair on down, in regard to the financial circumstances of the corporation, it has put the most pessimistic assumptions before the public and has used that as a pretext to undertake a rash of cuts. New Zealanders are deeply disturbed that the social contract is being broken. As well as that, it makes absolutely no sense to do it in economic or management terms, as this name change suggests. Each of the functions of preventing accidents, rehabilitating those who are injured, and only then fairly and fully compensating those who cannot be rehabilitated, are equally important.

If there is no human interest reason for the proposed change and if there can be no managerial or economic reason for it, I ask what it is. One of my colleagues has suggested that perhaps it is a pretext for privatisation. We know, and there is nothing outside the Standing Orders in recalling for the Parliament, that Merrill Lynch, a firm not unknown to the current Prime Minister, advised its clients in the insurance industry that there were hundreds of millions of dollars of profit to be made should this Government proceed with privatising the New Zealand accident compensation scheme. That would be a tragedy for New Zealanders. The only beneficiary would be those Australian insurance companies or their like, and that cannot be allowed to happen, for the sake of New Zealanders.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister for ACC. I will give them at the outset and then spend a little time trying to convince him that it is not a bad idea to answer them. The first question is: why change the name? We have been saying to the Minister that we think he has changed the name for this reason, that we think he has changed the name for that reason, and that we think he should have left the name alone for the other reason. We have been at that for a while and we have had no response.

The second question is: when was the name changed? The last time a National Government took the axe to the accident compensation system was in the 1990s, when the Rt Hon William Birch had a go.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: Nick Smith was there, too.

Nick Smith was there, I was there, and a few others in the Committee were there. The name change, which put the word “insurance” in the title, was made up front at the outset.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Always.

Maurice Williamson agrees with me.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: He’s not old enough to remember, is he?

Maurice Williamson is old enough to remember. It is clear that the Government had a policy shift afoot and wanted to reflect that policy shift in the title, so it did. It was upfront, which gave us months to say that it should not have done it, as it is not an insurance scheme; it is a social contract. That debate continues to this day.

But not this time. This time the Government is taking the axe to the accident compensation system in all its totality. It is changing the first couple of words of the title of the bill from “Injury Prevention” to “Accident Compensation”. I would like to know when the Minister decided to do that, and I gently challenge the Minister with the proposition that he had decided all along that he would change the name. He has, after all, had to be across this portfolio very tightly because he was the person who said that the accident compensation scheme was broken. No one else agreed with him, but he said it and he stuck with it. He ran that line hard and fast. He then decided to proceed with the legislative changes that are in front of us today.

The Minister started this issue, so he has been across the issue for about 15 months. I wonder whether it is within the bounds of credibility that within that time he did not at some stage have some conversation, either with himself or someone else, about the name change. I suspect he did, yet the legislation as introduced into the House was the same, and no change was made to the title by Government members of the select committee. I am not aware of submissions calling for a name change. There may have been some; it would be interesting to know, if the Minister would like to tell us about them. I suspect that the Minister had the name change in his back pocket all along. I think the Minister decided that he would do a little quickie and make the name change on the floor of the Chamber towards the end of the legislative process. That is my challenge. I would not call it as strong as an accusation, but I would like the Minister to get up and give us his side of the story.

Those are my two questions: why did the Government believe that a name change was a good idea, and when did the Government—or, indeed, the Minister—decide to change the name? I wonder whether the Minister would care to indicate whether he would like to respond to me. If he does not want to respond, I am happy to continue with the debate, and I thank the Chair for allowing me the opportunity to do so. However, as soon at the Minister twitches a muscle, I will happily sit down. I am just making that clear to the Minister and to the Chair.

On the substantial issue of the name change, I think an important point to make is that, as with the health system, prevention is where the cheap benefits come. Prevention is a cost-effective activity; compensation is not a cost-effective activity. I want to know from the Government why it has chosen something that is determinedly and systematically inefficient. This Government is preoccupied with economic growth and with catching up with Australia, yet with this name change it has arguably chosen an approach that is known to be less efficient. If there is to be a downturn, a downsizing, or a reduction in attention to injury prevention, or if more programmes of the ilk of the University of Otago Faculty of Medicine falls prevention programme are to be cut, I want the Minister to explain to the Committee why he thinks that will be economically efficient. I tell members to notice how I am choosing my language. In essence, this is a social portfolio, but I ask the Minister why he thinks that would be more economically efficient.

I move, That the question be now put.

I rise to add my concern to the concerns that have been raised about why we are removing very important words from the title of this bill—words like “injury prevention” and “rehabilitation”—but I want to take a slightly different approach. I intend in this contribution to tie this issue back to some of the strategic priorities of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), because I wonder what the implications of this message the Minister is sending are for the corporation and its work.

In relation to injury prevention, I say that that is clearly the way we could make a real difference to cost containment. Cost containment is supposedly one of the major drivers for many of the changes in this bill; there is very little other justification for some of the arbitrary, unfair, and discriminatory provisions in the bill. When it comes down to it, we are told that the reason for the bill is cost containment. The provision around holidays will save $1 million a year, so that is a cost containment measure, but even Treasury wonders whether such a small saving is worth it for the unfairness of the provision. That was the advice given.

But I go back to the words “injury prevention”. These are the most fundamental words that should be in the name of this bill, and of any bill to do with accident compensation, because injury prevention is where it should start. Injury prevention is more than just cost containment. Obviously it is the most effective way of containing cost but, more important, it is about ensuring that people do not have accidents—that people do not get hurt, that they do not die at work, and that they do not lose their parents, spouse, or child through workplace fatalities, see them severely incapacitated through workplace accidents, or see them lose income from being off work for a period of time. Injury prevention is about people’s lives and protecting people, yet submitter after submitter has said that injury prevention is what is missing here.

I will finalise my comments in relation to injury prevention by noting that a strategic priority of ACC is to work to reduce injuries and occupational diseases. I wonder what this title is saying in relation to that strategic priority. Thank you.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): We have a number of amendments in the name of Darien Fenton, which propose to change and amend the title of the bill. I draw members’ attention to a Standing Order on page 27: “preliminary clauses means the title clause and the commencement clause and, if applicable, a principal Act clause”—so this preliminary clause is the title clause. The second issue here is that the amendments that are going to make changes must not to be an attempt to criticise the contents. They must be a serious or objective description of the bill rather than simply being an attempt to relitigate issues and criticise the contents. Accordingly, the following amendments have been ruled out. These are the amendments that insert words as follows: “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Reduced Emphasis on Rehabilitation to Reduce Costs) Amendment Act 2010”, “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Primary of Cost Reduction) Amendment Act 2010”—

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am sorry to interrupt you, but just from the point of view of being helpful, could you repeat the Standing Order you are quoting; 27, I thought you said, is—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): No, page 22. I am ahead of myself a little bit on that, because this will come up later—

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: So you are going to move through the different amendments to the amendment, in the names of the different members, and say which ones are not consistent, in your view as Chairman.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): The first ones we are dealing with here are amendments that attempt to criticise the contents of the bill; amendments have to be serious and in order. If they are an attempt to relitigate issues or criticise the bill, the Speakers’ rulings are that they are out of order.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: And you are going to do that—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): I am going to go through and explain them. In the first amendment I have ruled out just the words in brackets “(Reduced Emphasis on Rehabilitation to Reduce Costs)”—

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: In whose name is that one?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Darien Fenton. I am dealing with ones by Darien Fenton at this stage. The amendments that seek to insert the words “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Experience Ratings) Amendment Act 2010”, “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Alignment with Commercial Insurance Practices) Amendment Act 2010”, “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Alignment with Australian Practices) Amendment Act 2010”, “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010”, “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid) Amendment Act 2010”, “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide) Amendment Act 2010”, “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Reduction of Cover for those With Hearing Impairments) Amendment Act 2010”, and “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide, Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments, Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid and Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010” are ruled out.

I now move to the amendment that is in order from Darien Fenton—that is, the amendment to amend the title of the Act to “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010”. That is in order.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I accept your comments about any titles or amendments that might be deemed to be taking away from the meaning of the bill’s title as it currently stands. But in relation to amendments such as “Alignment with Australian Practices”, I note that we have a bill in the urgency motion relating to trans-Tasman proceedings and alignment. I do not mean to be flippant—any reference to Australia by some New Zealanders would be considered offensive—but I think I can say that this is a serious amendment, and it fits in with other bills that are on the urgency motion. It is hard to see how an alignment with Australian practices would be somehow demeaning.

Equally, Mr Chairperson, the removal of cover for those who attempt suicide, and a reduction of cover for those with hearing impairments are statements of fact; that is what the legislation does. If it said “The Terrible and Unfair Removal of Cover for Those with Hearing Impairment”, I think that would be inconsistent with the Standing Orders with regard to the way in which we would be putting a conjecture on the title. But simply for you to say that “Reduction of Cover for Those With Hearing Impairments” is “criticising”, when there are clauses that state exactly that in the bill proper, makes it hard for us to see how that can be inconsistent.

I am not going against the other points you have made. We accept that those are out of order—the “Non-work and Work Account Cost Shifting” provision, for example—but not those three particular ones. I would have thought that “Alignment with Australian Practices” was a very neutral phrase, and the “Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments” is—political differences aside—what the law does; the Minister has given speeches about that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): In response to the member, I make two points. Firstly, the Chair’s decision is final and no correspondence is entered into, but in this case I am happy to accept a point of order. The issue here is that the title is to describe the whole bill. This phrase describes an aspect of the bill; it is not an attempt to describe the whole bill. The title has to be an objective description of the bill, and when an amendment picks out just an aspect, it is to make a political point rather than to objectively describe the bill. The bill’s title has to be a wide, generic term rather than contain specifics in the bill.

The point I make again is that amendments are also ruled out when they attempt to highlight a point of difference in the debate or political differences over the bill. On that basis, I ruled out the amendment.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Thank you for your ruling on that—that clears that aspect of it—but can you advise the Committee? These are all amendments to the amendment. The Minister himself, Dr Smith, has put forward Supplementary Order Paper 111, which is a significant Supplementary Order Paper, and which in itself renames the legislation. I think it renames it the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill, when clearly there are clauses in respective parts of the bill that cover injury prevention and rehabilitation. So the name that the Minister’s amendment chooses highlights just one aspect of what his law is doing—because it is about accident compensation; it will give weekly compensation to people who have accidents—but it takes away the words “Injury Prevention” and “Rehabilitation”, which the Minister’s law also covers. So how does it work when a conjecture is put on an Opposition amendment, but the amendment itself that we are trying to amend does equally the same thing?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Well, in respect of the member’s point, I tell him that one of the amendments that he objected to, for example, was the alignment with Australian practices. That is not a particular aspect of compensation; that relates to a point of view that people in this Chamber have or do not have. I come back to what I ruled: the amendment generally has to be an objective description of the bill, not a relitigation of particular points.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I have listened quite carefully to this, and of course it is your ruling, and I understand that you alone get to rule on it. That is clear to me. What I am seeking to understand, however, is whether an amendment to a title that said, for example, the “Accident Compensation (Reduction of Certain Rights and Services) Act” would be in order, on the grounds that although it points out something that the Government may not wish to see pointed out from a political lens, it is nonetheless a broad description of the essence of the legislation that is in front of us. Would a title of that ilk be deemed to be within the Standing Orders on the basis of your ruling?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Speakers’ ruling 112/4 states: “An amendment to the title of a bill must be a serious or objective description of the bill rather than an attempt to criticise its contents.” The point the member has made is that it is an attempt to criticise the contents. Whether the member believes it to be entirely true, or not, in the way the member has described it, it is a negative and therefore a criticism of it.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. That gets us somewhere further. What, then, if the House were generally to agree that this was a reduction in services and certain rights? If the Government held the view that that title was accurate, would that influence the Chair? How does the Chair decide whether a reduction in certain services and rights is an accurate but nonetheless pejorative entitlement for a piece of legislation?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): If the Government was of that opinion, it would have moved it.

Oh, no, that is not the point. If I might gently contest your view, I say to you that that is not an answer to my question, either. The question is: if an Opposition moves something that is in essence accurate—that is to say, accurate in the terms that it is serious—but is nonetheless pejorative, in the sense that it is critical, because Oppositions do that sort of thing, does that fall within the Standing Orders?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): The member has answered his own question. I will pick up Speakers’ ruling 112/4 and read it: “An amendment to the title of a bill must be a serious or objective description of the bill rather than an attempt to criticise its contents.” A pejorative, by definition, is a criticism; it is a negative. So by the member’s own words his objection fails, because it does not meet what Speakers’ rulings have ruled before.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I think we are getting somewhere on this, so please just hear me out. I think Mr Hodgson is putting to you the question of whether there is any test for an amendment to the title by a Government Minister on a bill. Supplementary Order Paper 111 changes the name of the principal Act and gives it an emphasis that does not marry off the other two things that the existing law does: injury prevention and rehabilitation. I think we are trying to ascertain whether an Opposition amendment can be struck out on the basis that it could be perceived as being a negative criticism. In a couple of ones that have been ruled out of order there was no criticism; they were just statements of fact. Does Speakers’ ruling 112/4 apply equally to Government amendments, because once we have voted on the amendments to the amendments, we are going to shortly vote on an exact example of this from the other side of the Chamber?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): The member is correct, in that a Government amendment that was negative would be ruled out accordingly. But as I see the Government’s amendment, it is not a negative. It might not traverse the ground the member desires to have in it, but it is not in itself a negative.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I appreciate that we are testing your patience, but let me see where we might need to go. We might need to go to the Speaker now or at some later time to try to get clarity around this.

The Speakers’ ruling has two parts to it. You have read it out to us more than once, and I thank you for doing so. The two parts are that the amendment must achieve several things. It must be a serious amendment to the title. It must be a serious amendment that describes the legislation, on the one hand. Then the Speakers’ ruling goes on to say that it must be that rather than a criticism of the legislation. Well, the problem the Opposition has is that a serious description of the title, an accurate description of the title, may be—and we would assert, in this case, must be—critical. So it is no fault of yours, dear Mr Chair, because it is a Speakers’ ruling from earlier times. But the Speakers’ ruling has two parts to it, as if one of the two must be true. In fact, it is easy to show that an accurate description of legislation must, in order to be accurate, also be critical. That is, in the essence of it, our conundrum. I say that the problem for you, Mr Chairman, if I may be so bold, is that you are obliged to choose one of the two parts of that dichotomy. We would assert that you should choose the other.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Well, it is the Chair’s decision. I have heard plenty on this. I want to make the point again that the amendments to the title are to be serious and objective descriptions, and are not to attempt to criticise the contents. Many of the amendments I have ruled out do exactly that; there is no question about that. There are some, and I am just coming to them, that are serious amendments in my opinion, and that do not attempt to directly criticise the contents. I want to move on to these.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Darien Fenton to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 1 be agreed to:

to omit “Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010” and substitute “Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010”.

We now move to the amendments in the name of Lynne Pillay. These, too, propose to amend the proposed amendment to the title of the bill, and are also ruled out of order as being either a criticism or a non-objective description of the bill. Those are the views of the Clerk, and I support the Clerk’s views.

The following proposed substitutions in the name of Lynne Pillay are also ruled out of order: “Accident Compensation (Reduced Emphasis on Rehabilitation to Reduce Costs) Amendment Act 2010”, “Accident Compensation (Primary of Cost Reduction) Amendment Act 2010”, Accident Compensation (Experience Ratings) Amendment Act 2010”, “Accident Compensation (Alignment with Commercial Insurance Practices) Amendment Act 2010”, “Accident Compensation (Alignment with Australian Practices) Amendment Act 2010”, “Accident Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010”, “Accident Compensation (Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010”, “Accident Compensation (Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid) Amendment Act 2010”, “Accident Compensation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide) Amendment Act 2010, “Accident Compensation (Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments) Amendment Act 2010, and “Accident Compensation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide, Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments, Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid and Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010”. Further amendments to change the bill’s proposed title back to the bill’s original title are ruled out of order as that is a direct negative.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. One of the amendments to the Minister’s proposed amendment that you ruled out of order was the Accident Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010. There was a similar amendment in Darien Fenton’s name, which had that same language about a rebalancing between the non-work and work accounts, and which you allowed previously.

Maybe while you are checking that, Mr Chairperson, I will also raise a point about the reference to “Experience Ratings”. Does that fall into the same category as your earlier ruling about it—that of being only one part of the bill? It seems to me that that is not pejorative in any sense; it is a scheme that is funded by that method. But my primary point of order certainly relates to the amendment with regard to “Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts”.

One of the rules of the Committee is that members cannot put the same question twice. The amendment that was put forward by Lynne Pillay with regard to that name change was absolutely identical to that which was put forward by Darien Fenton and put to the vote. The normal practice is that it is the first version that is put forward and voted on.

The difference between the two amendments is that one was for an Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation name for the principal Act, and the other one was for an Accident Compensation name for the principal Act. So they were two different amendments.

I have sought advice, gone upstairs to the “TMO”, and asked them to look at it. The Hon Dr Nick Smith is correct, and Lynne Pillay’s amendment is substantially the same as the one before that was allowed. Normally it would have been ruled out as having been voted on, but there is a minor but sufficient difference between them. The Clerk has now considered the advice, and the amendment in the name of Lynne Pillay to omit all the words after “substitute” and to insert “Accident Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts)” will be put.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Thank you for your ruling. There is just one point that I would like to draw to your attention. Although you are again attempting to inject a sense of humour into the Committee, we should make it clear that the judgments that have been made in this case are your judgments, Mr Chairperson, and not the Clerk’s judgments. It is important to keep that clear, even though there is whispering into your earpiece.

The member has made the point. Of course, the member knows that in the end the decisions are the Chair’s decisions, but, as the member also well knows, the Chair and the Speaker consult with the Clerk regularly and take the Clerk’s advice, which I have done on this particular occasion. We now come to the amendment in the name of Lynne Pillay that I have reinstated.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Lynne Pillay to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 1 be agreed to:

to omit “Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010” and substitute “Accident Compensation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010”.

We also have a number of amendments in the name of Carol Beaumont. These also propose to amend the Minister’s proposed amendment to the title of the bill. A number of the amendments are also ruled out of order for being either a criticism or a non-objective description of the bill. I will read them out: “Accident Compensation Corporation (Reduced Emphasis on Rehabilitation to Reduce Costs) Amendment Act 2010”, “Accident Compensation Corporation (Primary of Cost Reduction) Amendment Act 2010”, “Accident Compensation Corporation (Experience Ratings) Amendment Act 2010”, Accident Compensation Corporation (Alignment with Commercial Insurance Practices) Amendment Act 2010”, Accident Compensation Corporation (Alignment with Australian Practices) Amendment Act 2010”, Accident Compensation Corporation (Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010”, “Accident Compensation Corporation (Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid) Amendment Act 2010”, Accident Compensation Corporation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide) Amendment Act 2010”, Accident Compensation Corporation (Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments) Amendment Act 2010”, and “Accident Compensation Corporation (Removal of Cover For Those Who Attempt Suicide, Reduction of Cover For Those With Hearing Impairments, Holiday Pay Exhausted Before Compensation Paid and Non-Work and Work Account Cost Shifting) Amendment Act 2010”.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Carol Beaumont to the proposed amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to clause 1 be agreed to:

to omit “Accident Compensation Amendment Act 2010” and substitute “Accident Compensation Corporation (Rebalancing Between Non-Work and Work Accounts) Amendment Act 2010.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I seek your advice about the order in which amendments are dealt with. Is this the Minister’s amendment that deals with clause 1 only—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Correct.

So the amendments set down for clauses 2 or 3 will be considered subsequent to these ones?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Correct.

And there is only one set of Minister’s amendments, in his Supplementary Order Paper—is that correct?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): We are dealing with the Minister’s amendment relating to clause 1 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 111, and not with amendments to clauses 2 or 3. OK?

I have taken advice, members, and the ruling will be that as the Committee has rejected the proposal to change the commencement date, all other amendments are substantially the same and inconsistent with the Committee’s earlier decision, and are therefore out of order.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The Opposition views this matter quite seriously, because it is a continuation of an approach that has been taken around amendments being submitted by the Opposition. The only mechanism that Opposition parties have in order to have influence on legislation in the Committee of the whole House is by way of amendment.

There is a series of points to be made here. First of all, these are all individual amendments. The value of the next amendment cannot be determined by the fact that there might be several other amendments that contain dates that are different from the one in the amendment we are currently voting for. They are separate amendments.

Secondly, this is legislation about the accident compensation scheme. There is significant political debate about the timing in regard to the dates in the scheme. It has been subject to debate and to submissions during the select committee process. During that time the concept of dates becomes critical to the passage of the bill through Parliament. To rule out all the amendments that have been made simply because a decision has been made about one particular date when there are so many dates around this area I think is very unfair on the Opposition, and I do not think it is in the spirit of the ability to make amendments to legislation.

It follows on from what happened previously when the Opposition put up well-thought-out amendments that were dismissed because the Government said that there might be some sort of fiscal impact on it. Those were taken out, as well. What has now been ruled from the Chair is that there will be a determination on Opposition amendments that will deny the ability of the Opposition to make amendments to legislation before Parliament. I regard that as very, very serious indeed, considering that not only is this important legislation but also from a process point of view the rights of members of Parliament to bring amendments to the legislation before the floor of the Committee is a very, very important right and the Chair is proposing to take that away on the basis that there are simply too many. I think that is the wrong way to come towards that determination, simply on the balance of other work before the Committee.

These amendments that have been put in and that are in order ought to be voted on by the Committee on their own merits, and the Government can vote against them. That is the choice before the Committee. But forcing the Committee into a position whereby Opposition amendments are considered only on the basis of what is going on that day, which appears to be what is happening, I think is a hugely retrograde step and it actually takes away rights from the Opposition that I regard as being quite serious. I ask you to give some serious consideration to that, Mr Chairperson, because it may be an issue that we need to seek the view of the Speaker on.

The senior Opposition whip is being rather cute here. We have 1,066 amendments that would involve the Committee in many, many hours of debating. The purpose of this Parliament is to have good, robust debate. If you allow these amendments, Mr Chairperson, you are saying that the Opposition can effectively stall the parliamentary process by simply listing a forward date—1 day, 2 days, or 3 days—and can technically table 20,000, 100,000, or 200,000 amendments, and force this Parliament to a standstill, for what is actually not a principled argument in this Parliament doing as it should, which is robustly arguing issues of concern.

What it effectively will do is say that the Opposition can bring the Parliament and its work to a halt. It can make a farce of the process, and it can tie this institution, which costs of tens of thousands of dollars every hour, in meaningless votes over a whole lot of different dates, when really the principal issue is that Labour does not agree with the bill, not that it somehow wants to defer it off to 1,066 different dates when it might be implemented. We cannot allow our Parliament to be made into a farce. I think the ruling we have had from the Chair is absolutely fair and proper.

There is a kernel of truth in one of the points made by the Minister. Of course, it is technically possible for this Parliament to be flooded, every single day it meets, with unlimited numbers of amendments by Opposition parties. That is true every single time it meets. It is within the purview of Opposition members to take points of order, if they wish, all during question time. Indeed the Minister himself made quite a feature of that during 9 years in Opposition. It was quite an art that he had perfected. All those things are possible, but the reality is that they do not happen, because Parliament operates on a series of understandings and conventions and a will to get things done 99 percent of the time. [Interruption] If the Minister wants to use his open microphone to interject, he can, but the point I make to you, Mr Chairperson, is that these things do not happen, because Parliament’s business must go through, and the Opposition cooperates with that.

But what has become very clear is that the Government is trying to roll over the top of the Opposition this week, shutting down parliamentary question time, for example, so that there is no question time between now and 17 March. We have had amendments that were ruled out by way of financial veto. The Minister, who himself talked about the ability to have robust debate in this Parliament, did not take a call at any stage today in order to defend his own legislation, so we could accuse him of a breach of parliamentary protocol.

What I am saying is that it is very unusual for the Opposition to lodge this number of amendments, but the fact that it has happened, and the fact that there are so many, and that, of course, it involves a lot of work for a lot of people, does not undermine the fact that these are amendments that are in order and it is within the ability of Parliament for the Opposition to do this. You are being asked to take into account a far wider gamut of things than would normally be the case. For example, many times during a normal day where the Government orders of the day take precedence the Opposition puts up amendments. It could be argued that some of them have some level of fiscal impact, but we do not see the Government running around like it did at 2 o’clock today, with the Leader of the House coming in and ruling out all of those amendments. In that case there were only three amendments—all three very substantial amendments; in particular, the amendment of my colleague Mr Anderton who put up a new part around, for example, suicide.

They were very sensitive and serious matters, and I think that what has been done here is for the fact that there is a feeling there is some time pressure and the Government is unhappy about the fact that things are going slower than it would have liked to see—and let me assure the Committee that it is the master of its own destiny, in that particular respect; the Opposition had a reasonable deal to cooperate on all these matters.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: We would have finished this by now.

One of the ironies is that this bill would be law by now if the approach that Dr Smith and Mr Brownlee had taken had not been the case. It would have passed its third reading, so there is a degree of irony in that.

But all of that is just by the by. What is important is that amendments that are in order, that are submitted to the Clerk’s Office, should be able to be voted on, on their own merits, and not be held up in wider political concerns that are not your responsibility as Chairman. Your responsibility as Chairman is to the Committee, and to make sure that the rights of the minority can be advanced here. I think the fact that this is something that happens rarely should be a message in itself to the Government, but to the Committee it is simply a case of our amendments being able to be considered by the Committee of the whole House, and I do not think that other matter should be taken into account.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. [Interruption] Before I do so, I ask that you deal with David Bennett and Gerry Brownlee, who interjected after I was given the call on a point of order.

I am not going to deal with anybody. People on both sides have been guilty of making comments and interjecting on points of order. It has not yet got to a level that I have found objectionable. If the member wants complete silence on points of order, then I suggest to the member and to his own party that they set that standard for themselves and I will judge the rest of the Committee accordingly.

💬 Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The first thing I refer you to, Mr Chairperson, is the rulings made on 7 April 2005 in regard to the Hon Dr Nick Smith and his approach at that time. It is something that I think does need to be looked at. The second point is to ask you: when the Government has a remedy—[Interruption] What is happening now, Mr Chairperson? The Minister is talking into an open—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): The member will sit down. If I want to talk to the Minister and ask him a question as an aside, I can do three or four things at once. I do not need that member to tell me not to do so. Secondly, I had my finger on the microphone. It was not an open microphone. This is the second time the member has interrupted his own point of order. If the member wants to raise a point of order he should stand, make the point of order, and be terse and direct. I will listen to it attentively.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Of course I accept that you can do more than one thing at once.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): The member well knows that one is not allowed to refer to a ruling on a point of order that has been dealt with. The member is relitigating the issue that he raised before. I ask the member to come to his point of order and make his point of order tersely.

There is a long-established method of dealing with changes in commencement dates for a Government that is awake, and that is for itself to move an amendment that rules the amendments out. That has been done here in the past; it was done last year and the year before by a Government faced with this situation.

The fact that John Carter is not here to run things for Mr Brownlee, and that the Government was caught flat-footed, should not be an excuse for it to hide behind this approach. I am sure that the Speaker will be involved in this matter—well, I am not sure, because you might see reason, but it is likely. There is a precedent in this matter. The precedent in the past has always been that the Government deals with this through the tools that it has, rather than having the amendments ruled out. It has been caught flat-footed, and it is my view that it is not your job, Mr Chairperson, to protect them for that.

That was not a point of order; it was a highly political statement and an attack on you, Mr Chairperson, and the Chair. No one would seriously believe that the series of amendments that the Labour Party has put up are the work of people who are strenuously engaged in trying to get better legislation. It is the ultimate filibuster. I think the fact that the Government is able to set aside some of the silly, defensive moves that need to be taken because of what the Opposition should do is something that New Zealanders should be proud of. They need to see the Labour Party for what it is and what it is doing right here today.

The fact is that Labour members are shrugging their shoulders and saying that we will be here for ever—well, that is OK—and that we should have had a question time today. We should also have had select committees sitting today, if there was going to be a question time, but the Labour members do not consider them to be important, at all, unless it is something that they want to do themselves.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): The member is straying into the very area he accused the Opposition of straying into: being political. I have given the member as much latitude as I am going to on this matter. If the member wishes to make a point of order, he should make the point of order, be terse, and be direct to the point he is seeking to make.

My point is that I think for the good order of the Committee, if there has been, by way of a vote, an expression about the desire of the Committee to accept a particular date as being the date we work with, then it becomes utterly frivolous for the Committee to continue suggesting other dates. That is the way you have ruled, and I think it is absolutely appropriate.

I think there are two points to be made from that. They are simple and it is easy to do so in a terse manner.

The first point is that the House has not accepted a date; it has rejected a date. There has not been any acceptance whatsoever of a date by this House; there has not been a vote on that question. The second point I should make regards a reflection on you, Mr Chairperson. Saying that the Government wishes to set aside these amendments as time-wasting, as Gerry Brownlee did—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, I didn’t.

That is exactly what Gerry Brownlee said: that the Government wants to set aside these amendments. This is a decision for you to make, Mr Chairperson, and for the member to imply that you are doing the work of the Government is a reflection that I think is wrong and almost obscene.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Oh, this will be good!

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): We will have quiet.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: After you, anything would be.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): I call for order.

There are a number of amendments in my name, and I want to assure the Committee that they are not frivolous or time-wasting. They are serious amendments in my name, and I ask to be taken on my word as an honourable member, as we had to do for Mr Gerry Brownlee when he said he had official advice. These amendments are not time-wasting or frivolous, and I reject that implication. They are serious amendments and I ask to be taken on my word as an honourable member.

I will not suggest that anybody is dishonourable; I will not make any of those implications. I will make several points about this.

Firstly, the ruling that I have made is, I understand from the Clerk, consistent with other decisions that have been made previously. If members doubt that, then they are perfectly entitled to use the well-worn process of challenging the Chair’s decision. I also come back to the point made by the Hon Darren Hughes, that this ruling somehow takes away members’ rights to move amendments. That is not the case, at all. Members have the unfettered right to move amendments. Whether they are accepted by the Chair is another matter, but it does not stop members’ ability to move amendments.

The next point I come to is about the date and House procedure. Mr Mallard is not correct in saying that the House has made no decision about the date, at all; the House has made a decision about the date at the bill’s first reading and second reading. The bill has been before the House and has been passed, including the date, on two particular occasions. A further point I make is that the bill has been before the select committee and has been through a select committee process. This bill is nothing new to the Committee. Whether or not members like it, the fact is that the material has been through the House and has been well thought through.

Another point I make about the date is that the amendment to change the date one day at a time would have meant that we could have had enormous numbers of amendments that do not change things particularly at all, but are substantially the same. The Committee could find itself in the position of not only just changing the date. We could go through every minute of the day saying that, instead of midnight, it was 11.59—

💬 Moana Mackey: They could, but they do not.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): I am not saying they do; I am saying that we could get to this point. The issue here is substantiality, in my opinion. Does it substantially change the issue or not? This sequence of amendments does not substantially change the legislation; it makes minor amendments to test it. As to the point made by Mr Mallard about the previous events, those were tactics. They were not precedents; they were tactics to change things.

So I think that the key part of this has been that the House has seen this legislation on two occasions before and has seen it through the select committee. The House is well familiar with it. The ultimate test will be whether the Committee accepts it, as it is going to vote shortly on the actual date. That will be the test. If the Committee rejects the date, it is over. The point is that the date is well understood. I propose, to continue with the ruling, that, having voted on one amendment to change the date, to have a succession of amendments that marginally change the dates is out of order.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I would like to get some advice from you about the advice that you are receiving. You make the point that you could change the commencement time from midnight to 3 p.m., or something like that. All those things are technically possible. As I said before, those things do not happen, because the place operates on understandings and agreements. When things are managed in a way that prevents that from happening for whatever reason—which is still beyond us—those things can fall away, and the only—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Shut down select committees; it’s simple!

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Order!

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I was helping.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): No, the member was not helping. I ask the member to stand and apologise to the Committee for interrupting.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I apologise to the Committee for interrupting.

The fact is that those arrangements have not been able to be arrived at. Then, of course, all that the Opposition can rely on are the rules and the procedures that are set out in the Standing Orders. For example, it has been possible over time to get up and seek leave to table each individual Standing Order. The Leader of the House himself did that when he was shadow Leader of the House. In fact, if you look at the Hansard from Thursday, 7 April 2005, you will see Nick Smith, the Minister in the chair, seeking leave to table individual Standing Orders. So these things are not new.

But I am asking for your advice, Mr Chairperson, with regard to the child discipline legislation when it was a bill going through the Committee of the whole House. A member moved many hundreds of amendments around the commencement date of that particular bill. They were all accepted and were due to be voted on by the Committee, and there was a mechanism the Government used in order to move its own amendment, because it was set out separately from the way these amendments are, with their reverse date order. There was no suggestion at all that the member’s amendments could not be considered simply because there were so many of them. I think that is the point we are trying to make to you.

These are items where there is precedent for the way that Parliament votes. Just because we very occasionally—once last year and hopefully just once this year, but we are in February, so who knows—get into a situation like this, I think it is wrong to say that the ordinary rules of parliamentary procedure cannot apply for the Opposition simply because there are so many of them and because that has led to a situation where there is some grumpiness on the other side of the Chamber.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It follows on from that one and is related to it. My colleague has given you the precedent for amendments of this type being accepted. I will accept that there were not as many of them, but there were a substantial number of them and they were accepted by the Chair. You have indicated to the Committee that there is precedent for things being ruled out. You indicated that you had had advice to that effect. All I would ask would be for a reference to Hansard or Speakers’ Rulings for something as specific as this being ruled out.

I draw the member’s attention to Erskine May, page 401, on restrictions on contents of amendments: “Various considerations that render amendments out of order have been described earlier. An amendment is also out of order if it is inconsistent with an amendment already agreed to, or if it is substantially the same as an amendment to the same motion which has already been negatived.” I repeat: “substantially the same as an amendment to the same motion which has already been negatived.”

I would have thought that an amendment that sought to change 1 July to 1 November, which was voted down, and a second amendment to change 1 July to 31 October were substantially the same. We are talking about 24 hours. The point that is being made here is that the amendments have to be substantially different. These amendments, in my view, are not substantially different. If it was a matter on which the legislation turned dramatically, and the legislation had not been before the Committee before, and had not been to select committee, the member might have an argument.

The point I would make to members is that this legislation that been to the House before. It has been canvassed by a select committee, and the select committee report came back without any particular sense of outrage about the date. I think the matter has been well canvassed by the House before, and these amendments are not substantially different. I say to members that I am not taking any more points of order on that. I have ruled. I have ruled the points of order out, and I will proceed to put the vote.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It is a new point of order. Of course we disagree, but we accept the ruling you have made.

I raise a point of order with you, for future practice, about how Oppositions can have some certainty on their amendments, and it may be something on which you will come back to us. This is a proportional representational Parliament; since 1998 the Government has been a minority Government, and there are shifting coalitions of parties around different bills, even within confidence and supply agreements. It has become a feature of our system that minority Governments can regularly be defeated on a particular bill in the House. It is not the end of the world, because they have arrangements for confidence and supply elsewhere.

Let us say you make that ruling, because a majority of the Committee voted against, for example, the date of 31 October 2025 because there was not a majority for that—and there are a lot of amendments in there. If it was the case that a majority of the Committee was in favour of, for example, 30 April 2025, a 6-month difference, which I think would be a substantial enough difference, how can the Chair or the Committee know that, if, as soon as the first vote is taken, it is assumed that there is a majority against every single amendment that has been put up by a member? In the shifting coalitions that take place around bills, it may well be that a subsequent amendment quite further through the ones that are being put up would be able to find the majority of members of Parliament down the track. You cannot possibly know that, at the point you rule out the first amendment. This is an example, but it is a broader sort of issue, which is why we would be keen for your view.

It seems to me that the danger we could get into is that this is quite a first-past-the-post model. It assumes that once there is a defeat on the first amendment, that is it, and there can be no other chance for Parliament to support another style of the amendment that may come down the track.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I think the shadow Leader of the House raises an interesting point. If I can correct him, I say that we have probably had minority Government in this country since about mid-1994. The point is, though—

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: No, 1996. New Zealand First and National—

We have, if we look at our history.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): I want the member to sit down. Mr Hughes has interrupted the point of order. I want him to apologise to the Committee for interrupting.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: I withdraw and apologise.

He is a young man, and he probably does not remember back that far.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Order!

I withdraw and apologise.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I promise not to make fun about his size if he does not make fun about my age. I can do something about my problem.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Can I just say that I am getting a little bit frustrated by this. Members are to make points of order that are about the order. I am not interested in debating the pros and cons of MMP or the sweep of history. I am confronted here by a particular point, and I am about to hold a vote. This is the only remit I have here at the moment. This point of order has to be about this matter.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I think your decision should stand, because the argument that Mr Hughes has just advanced is that in the few seconds that might elapse between one vote being put and the other, the arrangements in the Committee could be reconfigured, such that people might consider 1 day’s movement in the dates proposed to be suddenly acceptable. That is utterly preposterous. As he says himself, we have now had a long history of coalition Governments, and I do not recall any such change in the midst of a vote.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It is close to, but not exactly on, the point that my colleague Darren Hughes has raised. I think it is close enough that we do not have to start a new one. It goes to the question of what is substantially the same. I find a compelling logic in your suggestion that shifting the date by a day would not make a lot of difference.

The question I have is whether a 1-month change or a 6-month change is, in fact, something that is substantially the same. I think that is what you are being asked to rule on. With some reluctance, and I can feel some stares already from the members behind me, I can accept a ruling that indicates that a day-by-day approach is—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: That’s not the ruling.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): I ask the member to constrain himself. I want to hear Mr Mallard make his point of order.

The point I am making is that I can accept, given the compelling logic we have had from the Chair on the point, that a day-by-day approach is one where there might not be a lot of substance in the difference.

The question I have, though, is that if something is a month apart—even a week apart, but say a month apart—whether that is substantially different, and whether the Committee should be given the opportunity to rule on that. What I am inviting you to do is to amend your ruling to, probably, rule out the majority of the amendments, but to allow the Committee to vote on a sample of them, say a month or a week apart, with a ruling that that is enough of a difference for the Committee to be allowed to voice an opinion.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Can I just say to the honourable member that I am certainly not going to do that. The moment I draw a line and say that it is a month or 6 weeks, I can hear another 3 hours of debate and points of order saying that I have got the snapshot wrong. I will not take any more points of order on this issue, but I will make a couple of preliminary comments.

Firstly, it would seem to me that the substantiality argument would be a judgment that would be made at the time by any future Chair. It would be made on the basis of how important the date was, in terms of the implications of the legislation. That would be driven by the debate about the issue, during the Committee stage, or during the discussion of the bill. I have heard no such debate thus far, only at this particular point in time. In respect of the substantiality argument, on some occasions it might be small numbers and on other occasions it might be big numbers but it would be determined by the debate. I will not hypothetically project into the future what substantiality would be. I think any ordinary member of the public would say that an amendment to shift the date from 30 November to 29 November is not substantial. I think the ordinary public would say that it is a minor, technical amendment. I will not entertain any more points of order on this, and we will now move to the vote.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): This has to be a substantial—

It is a motion.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): A motion.

I move, That the Chairperson report progress to obtain the Speaker’s ruling on the admissibility of amendments substantially the same as an amendment that had been negatived.

Motion agreed to.

House resumed.

Speaker Recalled