Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill be now read a second time.

Every year it is estimated that more than 100,000 Kiwis lose their job through no fault of their own. The COVID-19 outbreak is a stark example that widespread job losses have occurred all too frequently over the last 40 years. As we rebuild the economy, we have an opportunity to put better protections for Kiwi workers in place. For this reason, we have consulted publicly on a proposal for an income insurance scheme that would be administered by ACC. The new scheme would be delivered alongside but separate to the accident compensation scheme. However, it is important to note that the Government has not yet decided whether to establish a scheme or whether ACC should deliver it. We are currently considering submissions and feedback we received, given the closing date for submissions was 26 April 2022.

ACC is currently only able to exercise functions that relate to the purposes of the accident compensation scheme. This means that at the moment it is difficult for ACC to participate significantly in any pre-implementation work on a scheme. It can only do so where it is consistent with what is in the legislation. The bill empowers ACC to support any future work on a scheme and ensures Government has access to the wealth of information and expertise ACC has in delivering social insurance. The authority provided by the bill is time limited and would be replaced by subsequent legislation to establish and govern a scheme.

The bill will be repealed in 2025 in the absence of subsequent legislation. The enabling legislation includes a Te Tiriti provision recognising that decisions made when establishing and operationalising such a scheme will impact on how Māori and others experience the scheme. We want a scheme that Māori can access as easily as others, that responds to their needs as individuals and also as members of whānau, hapū, and iwi. Most of all, we want a scheme that delivers outcomes for Māori and does not perpetuate current inequities that Māori experience in the Labour Party.

I want to acknowledge the support that we’ve had in the House in the first reading, particularly the Māori Party, and we’ve also been supported by iwi leaders with regards to continuing to explore and further development on this particular scheme. And there is great interest by iwi leaders with regards to how this could support Māori whānau. The bill also includes a provision requiring ACC to engage with worker and employer representatives. It goes without saying that workers’ and employers’ views must be reflected in the development of a social insurance scheme such as this. But the provision also recognises the value of the tripartite process that was critical to developing the proposal for consultation and ensures the continuation of the tripartite process where representatives of workers, employers, and Government work together.

I hear the other side of the House mocking the reference to a tripartite arrangement here. We wouldn’t have gone ahead if we didn’t have the support of both Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions with regards to developing this proposal. They clearly see the benefits of such a scheme for workers and it’s very, very disappointing that the National Party can’t also see the benefits potentially to workers in the way in which Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions clearly do.

Also, I will say, listening to some of the first reading speeches, it’s been very disappointing to hear some of the Opposition speeches. They really do highlight how out of touch the Opposition is with New Zealanders. They refer to hard-working Kiwis and then make statements inferring that most New Zealanders have private medical insurance. The reality is that most New Zealanders do not have private medical insurance. And so the comments that Simon Watts made about that in reference to that clearly shows how out of touch he and his party really are with the hard-working New Zealanders that they refer to, the middle New Zealanders that they refer to. Very disappointing, but a revelation, hopefully, for the many people that will be watching this debate across the country, I’m sure, right now.

The bill includes information-sharing provisions that authorise ACC to use the information it receives from Government agencies and other information held by ACC for the purpose of setting up the systems and processes for the establishment of the scheme. ACC already has authorisation to receive and use the information for administering the accident compensation scheme. The provisions in the bill will authorise requests and use of information for the new purpose of establishing the operational requirements of an income insurance scheme. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. It is my pleasure to speak on the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill introduced by this Government. So, for those tuning in, we’re in the Budget debate—no, not the Budget debate; the debate following the Budget. The Budget was dropped yesterday by Grant Robertson, and there were all sorts of talk and announcements about how he was going to spend this and he was going to spend that, and how wonderful he is. He didn’t really emphasise during his Budget speech that we were also planning to introduce a new tax—a new jobs tax. That didn’t feature particularly in his speech.

But the day after the Budget, here we are in the House, talking about legislation paving the way—a bill in order to prepare for another bill, which is pointing towards a new tax that New Zealanders will have to pay. And in politics, like in many elements of life, timing is everything. When you think about this Budget, well, the plan at the start of the year when Minister Robertson outlined his Budget Policy Statement was for the Budget to focus on climate change and the restructuring of the health system. That was the plan. And, then, a little bit before the Budget, they woke up to the fact that “Hang on a moment. Maybe we might have miscued here. Maybe it’s possible that the issue that New Zealanders are actually interested in—more than anything right now—is the cost of living crisis and the fact that New Zealand households are struggling to go forwards.”

In fact, they’re going backwards, because the cost of everything is up faster than their wages. People are struggling. They’re going backwards. They’re being squeezed by that cost of living crisis. So they thought, “Heck. We’re a bit off whack here. We’ve got to come up with something. We’ve got to cook up something.” But he’d already spent the $6 billion, the record amount of money available for new spending. He’d blown that all, and so he had to reach for all the other cookie jars and find some more money in order to pay for the cost of living, additional little payments for a short period of time in order to look like he was responding to the cost of living crisis. Then, the next day, we discover that if you’re lucky enough to be in receipt of this $350 for three months from this Government, the bad news is if you’re on the average wage, you’re also going to be losing $1,000 a year to pay for this new income insurance scheme. So what he didn’t emphasise was “We’ll give you 350 bucks if you’re lucky, for a short time, a one-off; but by the way, for the rest of your life, you’ll be paying an extra 1,000 bucks a year. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.” And not surprisingly, people are waking up and thinking, “Well, that’s a bad deal. That sucks. We’re going backwards.”

That’s the theme of this Government and this Budget—the “backwards Budget”—because every household is going backwards. So the timing is off when it comes to this question of the job tax, which this legislation is paving the way for. It takes more money out of the pockets of New Zealanders at a time when they’re facing more cost of living pressures than ever, when the price of cheese is going up and when the price of petrol is going up. Diesel is going crazy. Everywhere you look, the prices are going up. Rents are going up through the roof, in no small measure, because of the actions of this Government adding cost to the structure. So prices are going up, and at that moment, they think it’s a good time to bring in a new tax that every worker has to pay and every employer has to pay.

Secondly, it’s a terrible time to be bringing in more costs that small businesses have to pay, because as well as employers having to pay this new levy, which is being proposed at 1.4 percent, employers also have to pay an additional 1.4 percent of the payroll as well. And that comes on top of all the additional costs that this Government has piled on to the struggling backs and shoulders of the small-business operators in New Zealand—as well as extending huge increases in the minimum wage, extra sick leave, extra entitlements, and extra public holidays. These all sound very nice in theory, but when you add them all up, they add to the cost structure of New Zealand business, which inevitably—and they don’t like to admit this; they hate to admit this. Michael Wood gets very angry when he has to engage in this discussion, but the idea that if you pile additional costs onto businesses, some of those additional costs may flow through to the prices that people have to pay for things in the supermarket and everywhere else. That sort of idea, they hate to admit it, but it’s true. And that’s what we’re seeing in this country, and it’s one of the things that is driving the increases in costs—not the only thing, but it’s one of the things that is driving the increases of cost.

So, right here, right now, when all of those small businesses are struggling financially—they’re struggling in a whole lot of other ways: they’re struggling from a law and order front; they’re struggling because many retail businesses are waking up, turning up, and finding that their windows have been smashed in because there’s been a breakdown of law and order in this country. But I won’t get too far off topic on that. They’re struggling because of the additional costs being imposed, and this Government says, “Right now, it’s a good time to add another one, and we’re going to bring in an income insurance scheme, which is going to cost about $3.5 billion according to Treasury.” I don’t believe that for a moment. It would be much more than that. This is just the start. These things have what’s called mission creep. You come in with a suggestion around an insurance scheme for redundancy—by the way, there’s a private-sector solution for that now; people can go out and buy that insurance, and a lot of New Zealanders do. So the Government doesn’t think that that’s a good idea. Everything has to be run by the Government, of course. “It’s only good if it’s run from Wellington” is their approach. By the way, people can do this; there’s nothing stopping anybody buying insurance for income insurance or sickness insurance, and a lot of New Zealanders do. So they’re going to bring that in, and then already it’s expanded from redundancy insurance to sickness insurance, and it’ll expand further, no doubt, if they were given a chance. And the cost won’t be $3.5 billion a year; it’ll be $4.7 billion, or, as somebody’s already predicting, it will be more than that.

This is just another slice of costs to the structure that New Zealanders have to deal with. You might say, “Well, that might be justified if there was a reduction in costs elsewhere in the welfare system or anything like that.” But you can rest assured there won’t be if this Government was in charge, because their solution to every problem is for Grant Robertson to just write another cheque and throw some money out with no focus on what we’re actually getting for the money—because he’s addicted to spending. And we all know that. We all know that they’re addicted to making announcements about spending without thinking through how it’s going work in practice. That’s why this bill is very poorly timed; it’s preparing the way for another jobs tax—something that this Government promised not to do: to bring in more taxes. And here we go.

We’re finding that when you see a Budget that’s coming down the track with incredible amounts of new spending, all New Zealanders know that inevitably, somewhere down the line, the bill is going to be sent. And the bill is going to be sent in higher taxes. This Government is sneaky about how it does it. It sneaks in the higher taxes through inflation. It uses inflation to push more incomes into higher tax brackets. It loves that, and that’s why there’s so much more income tax revenue. Now, it’s sneaking in another tax—this income insurance scheme levy—taking $1,000 a year out of the pockets of New Zealanders on the average wage. And they’ll be saying to themselves, “Oh, I thought I was going to be 350 bucks better off.” In fact, you won’t be if you’re on the average wage; you won’t get a cent, but if you’re below $70,000, you might get 350 bucks but, “Oompha, I’m going to lose 1,000 bucks at the same time. It’s not a one-off 1,000 bucks; it’s year in, year out I’m going backwards.” And this is part of the “backwards” Budget for 2022, and that’s why we oppose it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, this piece of legislation itself, the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill, is a very short and quite simple and straightforward bill. It doesn’t put in place a social income insurance scheme, or it doesn’t indicate that the Government has already made a decision about putting in place a social insurance scheme. What it does do is it ensures that we’re in a position to set up a social insurance scheme, if that decision is made, by allowing ACC to engage in the work to develop the scheme.

What we know is that over 100,000 people a year in New Zealand lose their job through no fault of their own. A scheme such as this, if it was to come into place, would provide some assurance, some room to breathe, some time to think, for people should they lose their job and find themselves in that situation.

Simon Watts talked about how it would only be relatively used by up to 50,000 people per annum. That is the nature of insurance. We pay house insurance, we pay contents insurance. We may never use it, but it is there should we need it, should we find ourselves in the position.

So this bill—simple, short, quite straightforward—simply allows us to begin the process of putting into place the preparatory work required should this social insurance scheme come into place. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to stand in opposition to the second reading of the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill being passed—rammed—through this Parliament under urgency by a Government using its absolute majority. And not even with the support of their loyal, trustworthy supporters the Greens, who are for some reason deciding to abstain on this legislation for a reason that is not clear to me, but I would have thought that the best thing to do when you come to Parliament is take a view, take a position. If the Greens are unsure, then they should certainly oppose.

The irony, the great irony of this piece of legislation is that the first probable recipients of it, once it’s eventually passed and the framework that this legislation seeks to put in place is adopted, and then the actual legislation to create the income insurance scheme is put into effect—the irony is that the first recipients are likely to be members of the Labour Party sitting opposite who have lost their jobs at the next election. Those are the people who are likely to be the first recipients, and they should actually declare an interest; they should declare a conflict of interest in this piece of legislation because they are likely to be the first recipients of it.

But this piece of legislation is—as my colleague, the Hon Paul Goldsmith has said—a sneaky little piece of legislation snuck in under the guise of the Budget that was released yesterday. Very little said about this proposal to increase the taxes of hard-working New Zealanders who are already being squeezed in every which way by the economic inefficiency and overspending and over-borrowing of the Government as it leads to the highest rate of inflation in 30 years. So we are opposed to this piece of legislation because we are opposed to the principle that it seeks to build upon.

Now, normally at this point in a debate in the Parliament we would be hearing back from a select committee. There would have been submissions from interested parties and stakeholders. We would have heard from officials and had a departmental report. But no, because this piece of legislation is being pushed through under urgency—and one would have to wonder why, other than to avoid the scrutiny that would occur at a select committee.

Now, this is a Government that came into power, on the back of Winston Peters’ decision, saying that they would be the most open and transparent Government in the history of New Zealand. And here we are on a Friday morning in the Parliament passing—under urgency—a sneaky little piece of legislation without scrutiny, without transparency, without the benefit of any kind of due diligence from members of the public, the voters, or the people who are likely to be impacted for ever and ever, if this Government was allowed to do it. No need to panic, listeners who might be listening to this at home, because a National Government will put this right at the first possible opportunity. So don’t worry too much. If this gets passed eventually, it’s only going to be for a short duration. And then, sensibleness, normality, and some sensible approach to the country’s economy and to taxation and to reward for effort will be reinstituted in this Parliament. Help is on the way.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to take another call about this. I think it’s—maybe it’s the teacher in me, but it’s great to take an opportunity to correct a bit of misunderstanding. It sounds like somebody hasn’t done their homework. Not only is it obvious that they haven’t read the bill but there are people who, maybe, might not have even read the title of the bill, Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill.

There’s nothing sneaky about this. Obviously, there are people on the other side of the House who are so out of touch with business that they are unaware that this conversation has been going on for years. Like I say, when we’ve heard earlier today about the fantastic responses to things like the earthquakes and to COVID, what this bill does—and it is timely—is it helps us to prepare, not just to react but to prepare for shocks, personal shocks, like illness that has been referred to earlier, regional shocks, sectoral shocks, and global shocks. This helps us to prepare.

When I say “us”, I mean workers and I mean businesses. So out of touch on the other side of the House, they have no understanding how important it is that we collectively support businesses in such situations. We are really, really clear that it is important, especially in a tight job market, that we can have space to ensure that we have skills retained, rehabilitated, or progress education. Because we need to make sure that our human resource in our economy is well looked after, that we can ensure productive capacity is where it should be. This is progressive. It is thoughtful. This bill is enabling the development of this collaboratively. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. And I know I shouldn’t bring you into the debate, but I do just want to commend you on your exceptional pink outfit. It really lifts the bar, I think, for all of us. Just to take another call on behalf of the Green Party on the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill 2022. I do recognise that there’s a bit of a difference in debate and the Government members are bringing it back to actually some of the content of the bill. But I do think it is fair to debate a bit wider around the income insurance scheme, even though the Government hasn’t made a commitment to going ahead with it yet, just because the Minister’s first reading speech was talking about the problems it was intending to solve and the development of it being through unions and Government and business, and that we do recognise, as a country, that we have a problem in terms of the impact of sudden job loss, whether that be through redundancy or sickness or disability, and the lack of structural support and active labour market policies in terms of supporting people to retrain.

I do need to remind this House, though, that this was actually a topic that was actively considered by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (WEAG), who spent a really considerable amount of time looking at our whole social security system, and a large chunk of their report was around active labour market policies and how, despite the rhetoric of the National Party saying, you know, we need to support people into work and workers, the pathway out of poverty, ignoring all the barriers to work and, actually, the fact that caring for children and those who are unable or need support is actually good, important work, possibly the most important work—despite all of that, their rhetoric that, actually, the previous welfare system basically just left people with zero support in terms of finding good work, being able to work out what the opportunities were, and being able to support them into training or the pathways to get those good jobs. It was all about any job or nothing, and that served a low wage economy. It kept our queues for jobs long, but people were demoralised and their pay packets were skimpy.

So the WEAG considered all of these things and they very clearly said that we needed to look at overseas models and that there were things that we could learn from countries that operate a social insurance model of unemployment support with strong and entrenched social partnership, employment relations. But the clincher is, after all of that consideration, looking at all that information, they said, “Although we do not recommend changing our social welfare system to a social insurance model, New Zealand can learn much from the [active labour market component] of such models.” So the Greens still retain a concern that this is moving ahead at such a pace while, as at this point, not one of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s recommendations has been implemented in full, and that has been years that we’ve had those recommendations on the table.

They are about addressing the fundamental pain in our society of people not having enough to be able to sustain themselves, and the fact that we have horrific levels of preventable diseases and illness in this country because of poverty and precariousness. It undermines productivity, it undermines opportunity, and it undermines wellbeing. While this policy, which we are moving ahead at speed, will address some of the aspects of that, it also creates more complexity and embeds potentially more inequity. One of the aspects that we’re concerned about in particular—and we notice wage scarring is one of the things that this policy is meant to be addressing. But for women, at least, the major cause of wage scarring—and for people who don’t know that term, what it is is when you leave a job on a particular income and then are out of the workforce and you come back in at a lower rate, or without the same trajectory that you might have had in terms of pay. So there’s been a scarring from that disrupted time outside of the paid workforce. But the major reason women experience wage scarring is through our role doing caring work, that women are still the primary people doing that work. When we compare what’s in the current proposal around the income insurance scheme, it will provide up to $2,517 a week for up to 28 weeks for people receiving the income insurance if they leave for reason of a redundancy or sickness or disability. We compare that to the paid parental leave scheme, which has a cap on it of $621. That’s like a fourth of what this scheme will provide and, yet, we know that that is at least a significant part of the major cause of scarring for women’s wages. So we do have a concern around that inequity.

And there’s nothing for people—well, there’s our welfare system—who are doing the caring work for our elderly. We know that more and more people are ageing in place in their homes and that that often requires support from family members, usually from women, and that saves us collectively as a country a huge amount of money. But when we’re forcing people out of paid work to be doing that caring and putting them on poverty wages and a benefit, then, actually, they are bearing a disproportionate burden of that cost, and we don’t believe, in the Greens, that that serves our community. So we’re hoping some of these issues are going to be resolved out of the consultation and that we get a two-track forward process around welfare and any income insurance, or a decision that actually our welfare system is the best way to do this, and that I’m sure we would be very on board with.

So just to touch on the specifics of this bill, there’s a couple of things I wanted to point to: one which has a recognition clause in it of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. That has been co-written, or developed, between the iwi leaders group and ACC. I’ve got to say, I think that is a fantastic initiative. It’s kind of a little bit—I don’t mean to be churlish about this, but it just sits a bit uncomfortably, the fact that we’ve got ACC legislation in front of select committee at the moment around birth injuries and other matters, and submitters have been calling for a strong Te Tiriti amendment to go into that bill, and we’ve been told it’s out of scope from the legislation. It’s fantastic to see it coming in in terms of this part of the design, and the recognition of the importance of it. I just wish we could get it across all of ACC and our other Government agencies, because that is the way forward. That is the way to ensure that any policy actually delivers for everybody as opposed to what we’ve been doing for ever in this country, which is the Government designing policies based for the mythical average person, who’s almost always white and Pākehā, and, actually, it reaches them and nobody else and definitely not Māori.

So it’s fantastic to see that partnership in there. I was a little bit concerned to read in the explanatory note, though—and I’m sure this was not signed off by the iwi leaders group, where the framing of it recognising the Crown’s commitment to the Treaty of Waitangi / Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles. I’m sure Margaret Mutu did not approve of that presentation of Te Tiriti, or the Crown’s requirement to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

However, the actual substantive provisions in the bill around requiring ACC to, as far as reasonably practical, take into account the views of Māori in the design of the systems and processes to ensure that the scheme is accessible and responsive to Māori, and that the scheme will have the capability in the context of the scheme to contribute to improved Māori economic and labour market outcomes. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I rise today in opposition to the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill. There are a couple of things I’m concerned about, and one of them is the use of urgency. When I first arrived in Parliament and we were having a discussion around what urgency actually was, I was assured that urgency is not something that happens often here—so it must be for something really important. Since I’ve been here, urgency seems to happen all the time. We seem to have forgotten that for making good public policy it matters that we have good consultation. It matters that we listen to the public’s concerns, and when we’re in urgency we skip that process.

As representatives of New Zealand and as representatives of the people of New Zealand, surely listening to their concerns and listening to their voices is the most important part of our job, and it seems that we keep skipping that over and over and over again in this House. I find it quite insulting that we are debating this in urgency, when New Zealanders are struggling to feed their families right now. We should be debating right now how we can make immediate changes to help New Zealanders have more money in their back pocket so they can feed their children, and $350 is an insult—an absolute insult. It’s a dollar a day. How will you feed your children on a dollar a day, and how was that even targeted, and how are these bills going to make immediate changes when our communities are crying out for help?

People that have never asked for help are now asking for help. Have we forgotten that we’re in the middle of an economic crisis as we’re debating a bill that’s going to enable this Government to take more money off the people who are struggling to pay for food for their families? They already can’t afford to feed their families, and this bill will enable the Government to take another thousand dollars a year if it goes through. You say you care and you’re going to give them $350, but you’ll take a thousand away if this goes through—and I’d like to repeat that this bill is a framework for an “if”. Why are we spending money on an “if” bill when we could be putting more money into what we need right now?

ACT wants to have the best public policy in the world, and the only way we can do that is if we consult with the people we work for—the New Zealanders who pay the taxes that pay our wages to stand here and debate things like this. When we avoid consultation and we do things under urgency so often here, we are losing the voice of the people. This bill is an “if” bill, but when you look at what they are thinking about doing, it is just going to add extra costs to the pockets of New Zealanders. It’s going to add extra costs to small business, and it’s not going to be any immediate help for the cost of living crisis we are suffering from right now. We’ve added so many costs over the last few years on to small business, on to taxpayers, and we can’t keep doing this. Inflation is going to be around for a long time, and that is what we should be debating in this House under urgency—if you’re going to have urgency. We should be debating how we are going to immediately help people put more money in their back pocket right now so they can feed their families. That is why I stand here and oppose this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate again the opportunity to speak on this bill, the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill. The speaker who just resumed her seat, Karen Chhour, said “the people that we work for”. I’d like to know who the Opposition actually listens to. In regards to income insurance, Business New Zealand and the Council of Trade Unions have been consulted. Business New Zealand represents all businesses across the country, and the union also represents the working people. I just want to know: who do they work for? We, on this side of the House, listen to people and we work for the people. We listen to the people that we work for.

This bill is short, it’s simple, and it’s straightforward. This bill does a lot of things, but one thing that I like, and Jan Logie just touched on, is the Crown’s responsibility and commitment to Treaty of Waitangi principles by requiring ACC to engage with Māori and to be purposeful in developing a scheme that will contribute to improving Māori economic and labour market outcomes. This is good but also does recognise the need to listen to workers and employers when designing the scheme by requiring ACC to engage with representatives of workers and employers. This is very important. In the last two years, the pandemic has taught us a lot of things, but one of the things that it taught us is to actually value our workers who, through no fault of their own, lose their jobs across this country.

So this bill is a good bill. I’d like to thank the Minister for bringing it to the House. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, my first speech on this bill brought attention to how out of touch this Government was when they felt that this was the time for this bill. My second speech is going to show how beautifully the Minister illustrated how this is a Government who can’t get things done, who can only make announcements about spending through their expensive PR consultants.

The Minister, in her second speech on this, explained to us that this was an enabling development bill for considering possible planning for pre-implementation. I’m prepared to give a chocolate fish to anyone who can find anything that might be in any danger of actually getting done from an enabling development bill for considering possible planning for pre-implementation. We oppose this bill.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on a great bill. A short, succinct bill that provides the necessary framework for us to give more security to our workers, our employers, at a time when the global economic conditions are uncertain and volatile. It’s good for workers to be able to know that if there is a short, sharp shock to the labour market, there is some reassurance that they continue to pay their mortgage, pay their school fees, put petrol in the car, and to keep working at the standard they have in the past.

This is an important assurance not only for those workers but also of employers so they can retain high-skilled, quality, hard-working people and pay them a fair wage. This is a good bill that contributes to more security in our workforce and provides a good pathway forward for both workers and employers. I commend it to the House.

Madam Speaker, thank you. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill. I just want to make a particular point about this bill, in that it is an enabling bill. The bill gives ACC the opportunity to continue work investigating whether a scheme of this nature is needed and how it would operate.

So I just want to be very clear, particularly for members opposite who may be trying to suggest that we’re rushing a bill through without consultation, that it’s actually going to implement such a scheme; that it’s not the case. But on that note, there has already been significant consultation with both Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, and an opportunity for public to comment and provide feedback to Government prior to the introduction of this bill.

This bill gives the opportunity for ACC to do their work and determine whether the scheme is needed and, if it is, what it would look like. On that note, I commend this bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to take a call on the second reading of this bill, and I must acknowledge—I see the Minister Carmel Sepuloni sitting on the other side there, and I listened to her contribution on the second reading. She actually called me out personally and said that I was out of touch. Well, I can tell you what: I’m not a betting man—I’m not a betting man—but I will bet on the table here today that a thousand-dollar tax on 3 million hard-working Kiwis in this country and standing up for those Kiwis in this House is not out of touch.

What you see on that side of the House is a Minister and a Government who are out of touch. This policy will impact less than 50,000 Kiwis, less than 2 percent of New Zealanders, and burden them with a thousand dollar tax, per annum, that will not deliver the benefits that they require. It is a solution looking for a problem, and that is a grave problem. When you listen to these speakers saying it’ll deal with an economic shock in the future, well, what about the economic crisis that Kiwis are facing today? We’ve got a cost of living crisis. They’re paying more and more, they’re paying 20 bucks for a block of cheese at the supermarket, and we’re navel gazing about some economic shock that may or may not happen in years to come, when unemployment is running at 3.2 percent. We have not got a major problem in terms of people becoming unemployed and not being able to get a job; what we’ve got a problem with is that people are sitting on the unemployment benefit who can work who aren’t working. We haven’t got an aspirational Government that is putting the investment into those individuals to help them get back into the workforce and grow our economy and grow our country. National opposes this bill.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill. Look, it’s always good to speak last. You hear the emotion and the punches being pulled. But can I say, that really what this is about is under the current Act it’s difficult for the Accident Compensation Corporation to take on a role in the preparation process that it needs to as a proposed service delivery agency. This bill recognises the need to listen to workers and employers when designing the scheme required by the corporation to engage with such groups while putting in place protections. So, should we decide to establish an income insurance scheme, it will ensure that this is done in the right way and able to deliver to the hundreds of thousands of Kiwis who are made redundant each year. I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is set down for committee stage forthwith. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling Development) Bill.

In Committee