10 December 2009

Embargoed until 12.30pm

Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill

Today the National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) made an oral submission to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on the Submission on the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill that highlights the negative impact that the changes will have on women.

As a signatory to CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the New Zealand government is required to ensure newly introduced legislation does not discriminate against women. However, it is evident that the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill has not been subject to a gender analysis.

NCWNZ is concerned that the following clauses will have a detrimental impact on women and society:

·         The amendment to Clause 4 where vocational independence will be defined as 30 hours may disadvantage those – particularly women – who are on minimum wages.

·         The changes introduced by Clause 7 have a greater impact for women, who do the bulk of unpaid work in society.  While work done at home is unpaid, it is still work. Injury suffered through that unpaid work should be recognised as equally entitled to ACC treatment as paid work.

·         The changes to be introduced by Clause 119 are of serious concern in light of recent ACC cost-cutting around counselling for victims of sexual abuse. NCWNZ supports the stance taken by the NZ Association of Psychotherapists and believes that a description of impairment should be sufficient proof of mental injury rather than a clinical diagnosis. Women, particularly rural, Maori and migrant women, are experiencing difficulty in accessing resources, and this leads to delays in receiving the assistance needed.  Moving the requirement from primary health care to secondary health care will not improve this situation and could even add trauma to the victim through the stigma of a diagnosis of mental illness with its consequent repercussions in employment, obtaining insurance, and status in society.

·         The impact of levy categories as outlined in Clause 24 has received a fairly vocal reaction.  NCWNZ’s stance is that the risk is held by the driver of a vehicle (no matter what sort) and the levy should be based on driver safety records.  Alternatively, the no-fault ethos of the ACC scheme should apply and all drivers should be levied at the same rate.

As a supporter of the ACC Scheme since its inception, NCWNZ urges the Government to preserve the no-fault, pay as you go nature of the Scheme.  Any improvements that ACC makes to its administrative efficiency should not impact detrimentally on claimants.

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