Accident Compensation (Access Reporting and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

There’s been a bit of a theme in politics over the last week. It’s been a theme of the “nice-to-haves” versus the must-haves. For example, on that side of the House, access to medicine is a “nice-to-have”; on this side of the House, it’s a must-have. On that side of the House, access to contraception is a “nice-to-have”—let that sink in—on this side of the House, it is a must-have. Listening to the debate on this bill on Tuesday evening, it sounded like the Opposition members were saying that the data on who is and who isn’t accessing ACC is just a “nice-to-have”—put out a request and see what you get. On this side of the House, we say that it is a must-have.

I wanted to respond to some of the tensions that I heard in the House on that Tuesday night. The first is: request or require. There’s a core question about whether data is a “nice-to-have” or whether it is a must-have. It’s true that we will not be requiring, through legislation, data about every single aspect of Government, but there are issues where we must know the data, which is why we’re requiring, as legislative directive, for data to be provided in relation to ACC access.

The second question is what sort of data you are requiring and how you require it. Now, what we heard on Tuesday night was that we already have the information; that’s what the Opposition was telling us: “Just request it. Just put it out in your letter of expectation.” But Jan Logie actually responded to this really well. She said that there’s not information about access to all parts of the ACC scheme; there is more research needed. She also pointed out that it is different to require reporting to the House. In short, it is about broadening the content of data that’s coming to us, and strengthening the weight of that data by ensuring reporting to the House.

Finally, I want to talk about operationalising the data collection and reporting. I think it’s very easy for us as parliamentarians here to request a variety of information. What we very rarely think about is how that lands with agency managers on the other side. It is very different, asking a manager for a snapshot or even a period of review, as opposed to creating systems that collect enduring data. There is a very valid reason for putting it within legislation. It allows greater reach and an investment in a robust data set. Data in this area is a must-have. I commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call. I call on Tama Potaka—five minutes.

Hine tū, hine ora; hine noho, hine mate. Talofa lafa. Taeao manuia aiga. Happy Samoan Language Week.

Look, there have been a few winners this week. Speakers have reincarnated themselves using wondrous fiction and weird hashtag bluster to persuade us of unconvincing statute making - based whakapapa profiling. Aotearoa New Zealand is not built on unbalanced leanings, which the Government seeks to reshape currently using cultural orthodoxy through legislation. No, whānau, it is built on personal responsibility and an absolute aspiration for safety, prosperity, and success—including around accident prevention. Requiring agencies to, and letting departments, pick a specific group in society based on one whakapapa profile and then report on it, no matter how worthy that group is, seems to be a step—nay, a stumble—too far at this point of our young country’s catharsis.

Thanks to my taokete Minita Henare for presenting this bill, which the National Party and I continue to respectfully oppose. Since my last comments on this matter, I’ve been lucky enough not to be involved in any accidents and complete more ACC claims—no injury visits to Peter Hunt, physio, at Central Physiotherapy Clinic on Pembroke Street in Hamilton West; no acupuncture treatment over madam Su’s in my Chiefs brother Jamie Strange’s electorate.

This run of good luck has been enhanced with me declining the recent parliamentary rugby team’s invitation to play the South African Buffalos, or avoiding buffaloes and potholes laced across Whatawhata Road in Dinsdale.

💬 Barbara Kuriger: Hard to avoid the potholes.

That’s right. The bill seeks to legislatively require the ACC to report annually—yes, annually—on how Māori and other populations are accessing the scheme, and on identified disparities and barriers to access. Why? Why not trust the ACC management team, or do it by ministerial directive or good governance rather than legislation? We could even match it up with the census—if it was reliable.

I wonder how much resource is required—how many more bureaucrats are needed—to run this work stream. Maybe we get one of the big four to provide a framework, a recruitment agency to find more staffers, and a PR company to run a barbecue down at Mount Smart to ask accident questions of Māori punters attending the next Warriors game. The resource implications of the proposed legislation are unclear.

As you know, as one of the few Māori here in the House today—I see Soraya over there; e mihi ana ki a koe te tuahine—I feel like the last butter chicken pie sitting in the BP warmer on a beautiful Te Kūiti afternoon. Everyone’s looking to me to see if I’ve got enough pastry; enough chicken. Or am I dry and pasty instead? Is there something wrong with me? Why force an agency or department to legislatively report on something they’ve previously reported on, voluntarily, between 1982 and 2006 and can do so again with ministerial directives or trust in the actual ACC governance team to do the right thing?

It goes against limited government, it goes against the principle of free and frank advice, and it demands further resource across the whole of Government that is now carrying a very growing and heavy debt burden. Demographic projections reinforce that that debt will be borne disproportionately by the very Māori and their mokopuna who apparently this legislation seeks to protect. Every fanciful idea like this costs money that is funded by more debt or tax that the Government is scheduling—say, a levy on whānau trusts and the very iwi trusts who woke up last week; they’re facing 39 cents.

Folks, I won’t repeat but can reiterate: I don’t need another statistics inquiry about my life when I get injured or about how long my showers are taking—albeit I did have a cat wash last night in the parliamentary gym and missed all the hazardous moments drifting in through that facility. Uncles Woodhouse and Watts refer to this being a well-meaning waste of House time, and I can’t do anything but tautoko that view.

It’s yet to be evidenced that we require a special report, but apparently we need one. Yet women, transgender people, and other population groups do not need a special demographic inquiry and reporting through this legislation. But Māori? Yes, we need a new report. I feel like I’m starting to be a caged animal at the Hamilton Zoo in Rotokauri—studied, researched, and assessed on a regular basis by bureaucrats and perhaps more consultants.

At this moment—in the year of our multi-lingual atua, 2023—spending more money on gathering statistics for statistics’ sake is not good enough. We don’t need another clunky effort to count Māori. What we need are better outcomes by encouraging community-driven efforts through Whānau Ora and other programmes originated through National, or events like Iron Māori or the national Waka Ama Championships, or ACC’s investment arm looking at social bonds based around injury prevention.

I honour my admired and esteemed peer, the Minister for ACC, the Hon Peeni Henare, for his dynamic and honourable vigour in presenting this bill—but oppose it today. As Scribe would say,

You pick me up every time that I fell

When I was going through hell, you told me that I would prevail

In a world of slip, trip, and fall, we don’t need whakapapa profiling legislation to make us better; we need good investment and good governance to prevail. Tōfā soifua. Ka kite.

It’s great to speak in the House this afternoon. I was enlightened by—I just heard one phrase there: butter chicken pie. That got me excited! It made me think I need to avoid some of those pie shops down The Parade in Island Bay. Thanks to the previous speaker, Tama Potaka, for highlighting that.

Look, I’m taking a short call on this bill by the Hon Peeni Henare in Samoan Language Week. That made me think—one thing I did do yesterday was I had chat with a good friend of mine Taulalo Fiso, who was in the Accident Compensation Corporation—ACC—prior to 2010. We had a good chat about this. We weren’t there to talk about this, but I knew that I might be talking about this today.

So, look, I just want to reiterate a couple of things for the House in terms of what this bill is going to achieve, and that is to really improve the focus on and the understanding of how people with personal injuries are accessing the ACC scheme and, secondly, to increase the transparency of the levels of access to the scheme—the key point here is to look at, or include, any disparities in accessing the scheme by Māori and identified population groups—and, number three, to give better effect to the purpose of weekly compensation.

That’s something that Taulalo and I had a good chat about, because that’s the key thing in this: it will bringing forward the eligibility for the minimum rate of weekly compensation from that sixth week to the second week of the claimant’s incapacity to work. I think that’s key to this, and it will impact 10,000 New Zealanders. I think that that’s an amazing contribution that this bill will achieve. So I commend this bill to the House.

It’s a real pleasure to be speaking on this bill, the Accident Compensation (Access Reporting and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge that at the time of the drafting of the bill I was not a member of the Education and Workforce Committee, so I do thank the committee for their work and especially the submitters, who took the time to put their views forward.

We’ve heard the purpose of the bill is to improve the focus of and the understanding of how people with those personal injuries can get access to the ACC scheme and have help earlier, but also to improve the transparency and the levels of access to the scheme, because sometimes the very schemes that are there are not clearly understood by many people in our community—because of the languages and the understanding, sometimes, of what they are entitled to. There are disparities in the access to the ACC scheme, specifically for Māori, Pasifika, and other groups.

The amendment bill will give better effect, specifically to the weekly compensation. It is not about the Government being noble—as I heard from other speakers the other evening—but it is the right thing to do to especially allow for those who need compensation earlier, down from the six weeks and that long wait of another four weeks. They can actually receive it in the second week. That is the main change. So it is an important bill. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I always love it when the Speaker pronounces my difficult last name correctly, so thank you for that. All this talk of pies has got me quite excited! I know people say the Prime Minister’s a real pie man. He might be the sausage-roll man, but I love my pies. Paul Eagle and Tama Potaka were talking about them. I just want to admit that I had another one for lunch today, and it was fantastic. On this bill, the Accident Compensation (Access Reporting and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, at its third reading, I’m very glad that I didn’t burn myself with the pie, which is quite fortunate. It was a bacon and egg one. If it had been mince and cheese, it could have been a little bit different!

💬 Paul Eagle: “Always blow on the pie.”

Thank you, Mr Eagle, for the advice to always blow on it. I usually do. Thank you for that.

We stand here talking about this bill, and I am just wondering whether there are other things that we could be talking about except for a bill which probably doesn’t need legislation to deal with it. We do note that previously this reporting had been done from 1982 to 2006, when the then Clark Government stopped that. If the idea was to gather statistics, potentially just doing what is necessary to turn that back on could have been the more appropriate way to go about it. We do work through this, though. I note that there is a provision in here to move the compensation back from starting in the sixth week to the second week. In principle, I think that’s probably a fairly reasonable step to take, because, if you’ve injured yourself, whether you’ve burnt yourself with a pie or you’ve twisted your ankle in a pothole and can’t go to work, or you’ve spent too long in a hot shower—six minutes potentially; you’ve got a bit of scalding and you need to take time off work—it’s probably good that you do get those earnings sooner rather than later, especially in the middle of a cost of living crisis, when people are really struggling to pay the rent or pay their new mortgage rates which they have just switched on to.

So I think that is probably a good step in that regard, but I do question why we are here debating something which, as I have mentioned before—whether it really did need a bill to adjust and whether it’s something that could have been adjusted some other way. My colleague, the very astute and always entertaining Tama Potaka, talked about why his whakapapa is the thing that is being looked at and how he feels a little bit affronted about why he’s being treated as another statistic. I won’t comment any further on that other than to recognise what Tama has said. I don’t know if people ever do statistics about me—probably not—but, if they did, I would just like to think that you could collect that information through the channels that were already established. Also, what are you then using that information for? It hasn’t really been shown through this bill that there will be any definitive outcomes through that. There is nothing to show that certain whakapapa have more difficulties accessing ACC.

So I’m at a bit of a loss, and I would think, if you wanted to improve the functioning of ACC, there are probably better ways and better use of the House’s time as well—

💬 Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Such as?

—as opposed to pushing through this bill—such as speeding up the bureaucratic process, because we do know that people do spend a lot of time. They call up, they get caught in bureaucratic tangles, they get bounced around on phones, backwards and forwards to Wellington, back to the ACC office. For people who are sitting there, who have recently been injured, and who are looking at a loss of their income, for what would have been up to six weeks, now looking like that will come down to two—

💬 Hon Member: Stick to the bill.

Stick to the bill? That is actually in the bill, thank you. It does go from six to two. I appreciate the kind suggestion, but it is here. It’s also in my bill notes; so there you go! For the people there, you could speed it up; there are other ways that we could have used this time, as opposed to producing this. I would really be focusing on the bureaucracy and the operational processes within ACC to make sure that that is being sped up.

These are vulnerable people that we’re dealing with. These are people who have injured themselves. They most likely have dependants or family to look after. They probably don’t have income-continuity insurance, and they are faced with a potential loss of livelihood and all of the negative consequences that come with that. How are they going to put food on the table? How are they going to pay the rent? How are they going to buy the kids’ footy boots? How are they going to do all of those things that they used to do?

💬 Tama Potaka: And inflation.

And they are also suffering with inflation. Tama, that is right. Is it not better that we speed up that process instead of wasting all of the parliamentarians’ time—and, no doubt, all of the hard-working officials’ time in ACC, drafting and coming up with legislation that isn’t necessarily required? Shouldn’t we have said to them, “Look, this is what the issue is: it takes far too long to work through stuff. Can you have a look at your operational processes, look at where there’s a bit of wastage, look at where there’s duplication, look at where we could speed things up, and let’s focus on that.”? You know what would also be a really good idea? Let’s look: you’ve got six steps here, for instance—just being hypothetical, Madam Speaker. Shall we look at what’s involved in each of those and then set time targets around that? OK. Do we then want to put some sort of compliance process on top of that? That would then make sure that everyone is hitting those benchmarks, and if they aren’t, what are the remedial processes that we need to implement to make sure that people are working a little bit faster? And, ultimately, the person who’s had the injury is then getting the payment faster, and they’re also not stuck with the uncertainty and stress that they already have by having to spend hours on the telephone.

So I would have liked to see us focus more on that. I note that we haven’t. Our position, on this side of the House, is that we see this bill as unnecessary. We think there are better things that we could have focused on and that we should be prioritising. As a result, we will oppose this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a real pleasure to stand and take the last of the last calls on the Accident Compensation (Access Reporting and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. There’s something very circular about this conversation in that there’s a feeling of completedness when you can come back to an election manifesto promise and say to the electorate that we have delivered upon it. That’s really important that we can do that.

And it’s really interesting: over the last few days, we’ve started to talk about what we will restore or what we will cut and how things might look. And so it’s really great that this bill is a really good example of how we’ve had—one aspect of this bill is about restoring and replenishing entitlements that have been taken away. And we hear the Opposition talk every day about recommitting to cutting things, and then we have to come along and restore them. And, you know, that’s the tiring and wasteful bit.

I do want to acknowledge the confusion, I guess, about the intent of the data that we are requiring ACC to gather now and the discipline that comes with that requirement. The interesting thing is it was suggested that we should just trust the officials to get on with it. Well, that would be great, except the politicians—it doesn’t matter which side of the House we’re talking about—interfere, and that means that we have had interruptions to what is a really important aspect of data gathering and evidence, which is about it being longitudinal. And so, actually, the really important thing is this helps the officials to start to build a really strong database and it gets the politics out of it. And what it means is that we can return ACC to its original purpose of assisting all New Zealanders who have had an injury, not just claimants. I wish to thank the two Ministers who had helped to shepherd this bill through the House, and I’m very proud to commend it.

Fa‘afetai tele lava.