Accident Compensation Amendment Bill

Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. It’s a pleasure to do so in this third and penultimate reading here in the House this evening. This is a very good piece of housekeeping legislation. It’s a tidy-up, and it has, generally, two broad objectives, which are to meet society’s expectations and improve the Accident Compensation Act 2001.

New Zealand, we’re a pretty fair nation. We pride ourselves in our fairness, and restoring the historic fairness to ACC is what this bill is all about. These are sensible and timely amendments and pretty much just technical adjustments to the legislation. So we like this particular piece of legislation. We’re pleased to continue our support of it.

I just note that in the Minister the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway’s first reading speech, he asked the officials to take a careful look at ways to improve the accident compensation scheme, and he did note also too that at some point in the future we may look forward to a more substantive bill, which could in fact follow; noting also too that in the Minister’s third reading speech last week, he described that this bill is more about the boundaries rather than the core, and therefore has significant meaning for just a relatively small number of people but significant meaning for that group of people that this bill will ultimately affect.

Just looking at some of those who will be affected through these changes through this amendment bill, it clearly will be beneficial for some older people. They’ll be provided a fairer, more consistent relationship between weekly compensation and their superannuation by allowing an injured person’s financial situation to more closely reflect their income had they not actually been injured. So this bill will remove the requirement for claimants to actually choose between ACC and superannuation. There is going to be a just transition, and it’ll be extended out to two years, where they’ll be able to receive their ACC as well as their superannuation if they’re injured around the time of their retirement—the time when they get their SuperGold card. So we think that the Education and Workforce Committee landed in a really just place—a pretty fair place—and that’s what New Zealand First particularly likes about this piece of legislation. It will be fair, particularly for those 24 percent of people over the age of 65 who continue to work and those who actually would be retiring anyway at the age of 65.

Some other changes to the bill: there’ll be a further amendment relating to the entitlement of weekly compensation for a surviving spouse or partner. They will no longer be affected by whether or not they’re receiving weekly compensation. This is now being pushed out to five years of weekly compensation based on the deceased spouse’s or partner’s earnings at the time of the fatal injury. So that’s really fair, and we’re pleased to support that. Another amendment: there was a bit of a gap in the ACC coverage for families of employees who happen to be posted overseas. So that particular group of people—there was a bit of a gap for them. So we’re pleased to ensure that there will be ACC coverage for them when they’re working overseas in other jurisdictions—that they will still be able to be covered.

So in conclusion—just a short call this evening—I’d like to make note of the Minister, the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway, for bringing this to the House; the Education and Workforce Committee for all of their work; and also, too, the previous Minister for ACC, the Hon Michael Woodhouse, for his work initially. Many submitters shared their stories, and it’s always really hard for people to do that—to tell their stories at select committee, particularly if they’re emotional stories—so I’d just like to acknowledge them as well. Finally, New Zealand First is pleased to support this bill, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you so much, Madam Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to speak and take a short call on the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. We’re here at the final reading. We are in support of these changes. It’s worth noting that this is a bill that started under the National Party - led Government, and we’re incredibly pleased to have reported that ACC made quite a big turnaround and delivered a much better performance under our Government and under our watch. Tonight what we’re doing is mostly technical improvements, not so much substantive policy changes, but none the less this is important for us to do.

I am on the Education and Workforce Committee. These changes came through, and it was good to team up with the committee, which has some vigorous debates and discussions from time to time. Twenty-five submissions came in on this; 15, it’s worth noting, were out of scope. So the topic around ACC and fairness and equity and payments—and some really heartfelt stories came out during that select committee process; some of them a little bit hard to hear, actually. But that’s quite a substantial amount of out-of-scope submissions, so it might be worth noting for the work programme for this House going forward that clearly there are some heartfelt—possibly even substantial—feelings out there in regards to the ACC scheme.

This bill’s addressing fairness and sustainability issues, and I’ll just finish on one rather amusing note, I guess. It’s not often in this House that we disestablish things, and that’s exactly what this bill does in clause 8. There’s a new section 402 that deals with the disestablishment of the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority. It’s on page 6 of the departmental report. And on that note—that disestablishment note—thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. We support this bill.

Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. I’m pleased to rise tonight in support of the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. At the heart of the changes being made in tonight’s legislation—and it’s a short call, but to make sure that the Greens are on record for wanting to support a more fair system of ACC payments.

As I was reading through the bill and the debate pack, I particularly wanted to acknowledge people like Mr Heads, who made a submission on the bill and said he was eagerly awaiting his chance to speak to the select committee. He outlined, as the previous speaker, Denise Lee, said, that there were some—I mean, this is about human stories. This is about people already suffering from either a loss or an injury and then having to suffer again through a slightly traumatic system of ACC, where they couldn’t access the payments that would just keep their lives running, let alone celebrating. So I just wanted to acknowledge some of those stories and submissions that came through, like Mr Heads’. One quote in particular stood out, where he said, “A lot of the people who would have benefited will be dead by now, and I feel very sorry for them.” I acknowledge those losses but that we are—and congratulations to this House—able to put through some changes, and I absolutely acknowledge Minister Lees-Galloway.

The particular change that those submissions were referring to was that we would extend ACC cover to spouses, partners, and dependents of New Zealand employees posted offshore. That’s one of the big changes, but—sorry, my mistake. That particular change was about removing the requirement for ACC claimants to have to choose between weekly compensation and New Zealand super after receiving a year of both. I think it was, again, Mr Heads and other submitters who said those should be seen as entitlements rather than benefits. I’m really pleased that this House was able to come to an agreement and ensure that that equity and those changes for a fairer system were put in place.

I cannot stand tonight without, as other colleagues have done, looking forward to supporting a wider-scope review to make further changes, some that are quite unjust gaps and were, I think, never intended. Some of the submissions were out of scope and so I do, and the Greens will, support having a more fuller look at a proper review to make sure we are plugging some of those injustice gaps and payment gaps going forward. So thank you for the opportunity to be able to support this tonight, and we absolutely look forward to further changes. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

I’m very pleased to take a short call—it seems a bit of a theme tonight—on this Accident Compensation Amendment Bill.

💬 Andrew Bayly: Oh, come on, you could make a better contribution.

Look, I could—a colleague says I could make a better contribution. I could, but I have assessed the risks, and there could, you know, be an accident. I could damage myself somehow, a vocal cord, trip up—you never know, and I don’t want to cause any injury.

A good bill—no surprise; this is, effectively, a National Party bill. In fact, it’s becoming synonymous with the Order Paper at the moment that just about everything that’s coming through the Parliament has been endorsed by the National Party and was in the pipeline. It’s one of the reasons we’re taking relatively short calls. First and foremost, we are in support of them. There has been a change. I mean, one must admit, when we look at this legislation, there’s been a change: they’ve changed the name of the ACC Minister to whoever the current one is at the moment.

It’s a good bill. It’s doing, effectively, two things: one is—and the speaker who just resumed her seat, Marama Davidson, indicated it—it’s aligning superannuation and ACC much better and more fairly. It’s a fairly complex—well, not complex; probably more complicated. I think that’s going to be good, to have that sorted out. The second is, as Denise Lee, the very good member for Maungakiekie, noted, some changes around the appeals authority—reducing it to one—and I think that’s incredibly, incredibly positive. But, as I say, a good bill, and before I make some sort of, you know, faux pas or accident around this bill, I’ll just commend it to the House.

I understand this is a split call. I call Jan Tinetti—five minutes.

I’m delighted to stand here, just as everyone else has said before me, to take a short call here this evening on this Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. Having sat on the Education and Workforce Committee, I agree with my colleagues on both sides of the House. We heard a lot of very difficult stories, at times. People saw the words “accident compensation” and “ACC bill” and thought this was the time to tell their stories. As the member over the House, Denise Lee, said, most of them were out of scope for this particular bill. That doesn’t mean to say, though, that we didn’t hear those stories. We absolutely did, and listened to them quite intently, and it gave us an indication that further work needs to be done after this bill goes through.

This bill makes eight changes to the ACC legislation—mostly, as we’ve heard, minor changes, but for those people that it impacts upon, very, very big changes. We heard here this evening about responding—how the bill responds to the declaration that was made by the Human Rights Review Tribunal when they said that forcing surviving spouses or partners to choose between New Zealand superannuation and ACC was discriminatory on the basis of age. This bill actually deals with that and puts that right. I’m quite proud to stand here for a bill that can actually be responsive to that.

The one that I’ve talked about before, here in this House, was the one where ACC cover will be given to spouses and dependents of people that are posted overseas with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade—so our post people. We have heard stories of where that has actually been a big consideration for those people, as to whether they took up those posts, because of the fact that their spouses or dependents couldn’t actually go with them, because of the medical cover that they wouldn’t be getting under that. I think that this puts that right. The fact was that it used to be there, and it was only in the late 1990s that that was taken away, and the record of Parliament doesn’t actually show the reason why that was actually taken away—it’s been lost. So I’m very proud here this evening that we’re going to be putting that right and making it easier for those people to take up those posts that they’ve been trained in and that’s been their career to be able to do. So, as I said, I wanted to take a short call. I don’t want to prolong this any further. I commend this very good bill to the House.

It’s a pleasure to take a short and brief call at the third reading of the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. It will be a very short call because we have traversed a lot of the advantages of this bill. [Interruption] I know that will disappoint the member opposite me, Kieran McAnulty, because I know he enjoys hearing me speak. None the less, it is a very good pleasure to speak in support of this bill.

Let us not forget the importance of ACC. It’s a world-leading model that was developed many years ago, and it’s something that we as a country should be really proud of in terms of the way it encourages people to make sure they’re covered, but also encourages them to get repaired and recuperated and get back to the workforce—

💬 Stuart Smith: No-fault too.

And it’s no-fault. It is exactly as my learned colleague—

💬 Stuart Smith: Esteemed.

—esteemed colleague Stuart Smith said: it is a no-fault scheme. It is also a world-leading scheme. This bill is a technical bill. It, essentially, makes eight core changes, and some of the objectives of these changes are very, very clear in terms of making sure that ACC is able to meet its objectives, its entitlements, in a consistent and sustainable way, but also in terms of making sure that it is going to be an efficient and effective scheme well into the future, which is what we want to have happen.

So it is a pleasure, of course, to speak on behalf of this. This bill addresses and meets those objectives very clearly by reducing any duplication, any waste, and also by keeping the regulatory systems up to date with respect to the needs of the workforce. So it’s a very great privilege to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the third reading of the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. I’m very pleased to take a call on the—

💬 Stuart Smith: Ten minutes, Jo!

—third reading of this bill. I don’t think I need to take 10 minutes, because what I have to say is short and concise and straight to the point.

First of all, I’d like to thank the committee chair, Parmjeet Parmar, for her chairing of the Education and Workforce Committee through this process. I’d like to thank the members of the committee, who’ve done a really good job shepherding this bill through this process, through select committee, and here into the third reading. It’s been a pretty collegial group around this particular piece of legislation.

This is a short bill. It doesn’t change—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: A bit like Bidois!

—any of the core parts of ACC—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! I can hear you, Mr McAnulty.

—but just skims around the boundaries of it. What this bill does is it provides better consistency, it’s more streamlined, and it provides better continuity for people.

What I particularly like about this bill, though, is, for example, when you have a couple who have been married and the partner has been fatally injured, shall we say—it’s very, very hard for someone to lose somebody they love, particularly if that person may well be the main income earner in the family. So if that person is to pass away, this bill does allow the spouse to have a maximum of up to five years of weekly payments of compensation, regardless of their age, with regard to around 80 percent of their spouse’s income, which is extremely important, particularly when I think about people as they are getting older into their twilight years. To lose a spouse is extremely hard, but at least in this situation it does provide a little bit of certainty around income stability, I guess, in a way.

Here in New Zealand, we really value the family unit. So when you’ve got a person who is posted overseas for work and they do take their family with them, they now have the comfort of knowing that should something happen to a family member while they’re overseas, when they do return to New Zealand that family member will be covered under our ACC—and it is going to be retrospective. Prior to that, that wouldn’t have happened, and so now that person who may be posted overseas has the security of knowing that their family members, should they be injured whilst overseas, will be covered by this piece of legislation.

So I won’t go on for too much longer. I just want to say that I’m really pleased to commend this bill to the House.

I rise to speak in this, the third reading of the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. I sat on the Education and Workforce Committee, which deliberated on this bill, and I want to thank all of the submitters who came before us to share their views on how the ACC scheme can be improved. Of course, ACC is a world-leading no-fault scheme which trades on the concept of fairness, whether New Zealanders have an accident at work, playing sport, in a vehicle, or at home. So it is appropriate that in this House we have agreement on both sides about making improvements to continue to keep this Act working well for the New Zealanders that it serves.

In listening to the submissions to the select committee, it was clear that there were a number of issues that fell outside of the scope of this bill, and so amendment has not been made, but we did undertake to those submitters that we would ensure that their views would be listened to by the Minister in future and that there is, in fact, room for future amendments to the scheme beyond the scope of this bill.

Of course, what this bill does is make largely sensible changes which had been identified through the National-led Government’s time and were in the pipeline. There was a particular process that I want to commend to this House, that was used to find those improvements, and that was having a regulatory systems work programme overseen by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which saw a number of small but important changes that could be made to keep regulatory duplication, gaps, errors, and inconsistencies out of the way of ensuring that the services intended to be provided are.

So, in conclusion, these are changes that ensure fairness for those who are injured near retirement age and that streamline the complaints process to remove confusion. They are important changes, and National supports them. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker, and thank you for this opportunity to speak on this particular bill, the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. Can I point out to the House, from the outset, the irony of many of the speeches from that side of the House, where those members on that side of the House stand there and proudly pat one of their colleagues on the back for this particular bill, yet in the same breath often discuss that the submissions weren’t met in the scope of this bill and that perhaps more should have been done. So my advice to that side of the House is to look inside the camp before they actually start having a go, if you like, at this side of the House on what is, essentially, a good bill.

In particular, I hear a number of the speakers talk about the retrospective look at those who represent our country in and around the world. It’s fantastic to hear this particular step is being made. I speak from a very particular point of view on this matter, given I’m a “diplobrat” myself. My father was a foreign affairs diplomat, and in our time overseas, I wonder if in particular this part of the Act would have come into his psyche or into his thinking when—

💬 Hon David Parker: He would have been covered.

He would have been covered, that’s right. However—

💬 Hon David Parker: It was accidentally repealed.

That’s right. We were getting there, Mr Parker, but thank you for highlighting that. But, as a diplobrat myself, I think these are good moves to ensure that those who do represent our country—and I know they do a great job overseas, and we want to make sure that they and their families are well looked after.

The other side of the House also talked about the review process—section 402—and I want to touch just briefly on that because what we are actually doing here is making a step in the right direction to ensure that the review process that’s available to clients of ACC is actually far more robust so that there isn’t confusion in this space.

As Associate Minister for ACC, one of my delegations is around the correspondence that is received by ACC, primarily from those clients who either feel that they haven’t received what they’re due or are disgruntled with the review process that they’ve entered into to make sure that their claim is heard fairly. I think this particular part of the bill will make sure, as well as other pieces of work that are done outside of this legislation by ACC, that that review process is far more robust and will allow for a fairer hearing for those clients, who, from my experience with the correspondence that comes through to my office, often feel that they’ve been let down by the system. So I think that’s an important part.

One of the other components of the bill is—and the member Jo Luxton mentioned it—around when the family earner, the primary wage earner in the family, should pass away and there are discrepancies between superannuation and what they might receive as compensation through the ACC scheme. It’s important that we clear that up. I recall that as this bill was going through the House, there were some questions about why the Government was prolonging the process of this particular bill when there seemed to be agreement right across the House, but it was important to make sure that when matters of eligibility are always in question—and that’s what this particular part of the bill sets out to do: to clear up matters of entitlement, which are really important because the majority of the issues that come through to my office with regard to ACC are all about entitlement. If we can clear up some of that with those who receive superannuation and are also eligible for ACC payments, I think that’s a fantastic way forward.

Others in the House have already mentioned how some of the other changes are more minor and technical, but I do want to touch on a point before I conclude, and that is that this Government will be looking towards that side of the House at a future date when we consider some perhaps more substantive changes to the bill. We need a bill that is fit for purpose. We need a bill that shifts and is more fluid with the style of work and the future of work that our country looks forward to to make sure that those workers who do a great job for our economy and in their jobs actually feel covered and feel that they have a piece of legislation and a scheme that serves them well.

So I look forward to the support of the other side of the House. They’ve already mentioned that they have been with us on this particular journey, and we look forward to that into the future. This is a good bill. Congratulations to the Minister, and I look forward to its royal ascension.

Bill read a third time.