Policy Comparison - Health and Safety & ACC

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This comparison includes policy from the following parties: Mana, Greens, Labour, National,

Mana

  • Establish a body to assess the social and environmental impacts of new technologies like nanotechnology, geo-engineering and synthetic biology.

Greens

  • Support and develop initiatives that will enable workplace participation systems to work effectively, including those that increase resources for union involvement and participation in health and safety training.
  • Legislate to provide for reasonable work breaks.
  • Support the development of health and safety obligations and responsibilities for the owner of a workplace who contracts, or sub-contracts, work to be performed at that workplace.
  • Support the development of regulations and codes of practice to strengthen the legislation in key areas such as:
  • workplace-related stress; the control of substances hazardous to health, including control of fumes and particles;workplace and the environment (discharge of toxic substances that originate in the workplace); harassment in the workplace; occupational cancer; lone working; women's health and safety (including a code of practice for pregnant women); men's reproductive health and safety; occupation health services; stress.
  • Require the Department of Labour to effectively enforce legislation in relation to occupational health issues such as workplace-related stress, noise, respiratory disease, occupational cancer, musculo-skeletal injuries and gradual process injuries.
  • Require that, in instances where employers are prosecuted and fined for breaches of Health and Safety in Employment legislation, a portion of the fine is paid by the court to any workers injured as a result of the breach.
  • Remove mine safety from the ambit of the Health and Safety in Employment Act and make it mandatory and universal. Consider taking a similar approach in other industries with high workplace injury risk.
  • All of ACC should remain a public body.
  • ACC should be funded on the pay-as-you-go model where funding is designed to meet annual costs.
  • Retain public provision of rehabilitation and compensation for personal injury, funded through an equitable mix of levies on employers, employees, motor vehicle usage and general taxation.
  • Ensure that all people who have a genuine work-related gradual process injury, disease or infection, including occupational overuse injuries and chemical poisoning, can obtain ACC cover.
  • Ensure that all people who receive unexpected and unintended injuries as a consequence of medical treatment can access ACC cover.
  • Restore cover to people who suffer only mental injury caused by accident, treatment by registered health professionals, or work-related gradual process injury, disease or infection.
  • Rehabilitation to the greatest extent practicable, rather than theoretical work capacity, should be the main focus of ACC.
  • Ensure that adequate and appropriate social and vocational rehabilitation is provided.
  • Introduce a regime under which weekly compensation is treated no differently from other income for benefit abatement purposes.
  • Take into account seasonal workers and people in temporary employment in the formula setting the level of weekly compensation.
  • Adequately fund independent advocacy agencies for people who are injured.
  • Create an ACC ombudsman to take over the functions of the ACC Complaints Investigation Service.

Labour

  • Elevate public awareness and responses around workplace deaths and injuries to where they are taken as seriously as the road toll.
  • Establish a Commission of Inquiry into New Zealand Workplace Health and Safety, tasked with examining why New Zealand’s record of workplace accidents and injuries is not improving, what measures are needed to reduce them, how other comparable countries are able to have a lower per worker rate of injury and death and how changes should be implemented.
  • As a minimum, worker participation, involvement of recognised health and safety representatives and effective enforcement in the workplace will be fundamental to any change.
  • Ensure that any regulatory framework provides for a properly resourced occupational health and safety inspectorate that has the technical expertise to enforce the legislative requirements.
  • Investigate a Safe Rates system in the road transport industry where remuneration and methods of contracting are considered as part of the overall safety requirements in the industry.
  • Investigate whether labour standards are a factor in other high risk injuries and consider linking these to safety requirements, especially where workers are contracted.
  • As a priority, legislate for mining health and safety standards, which will be developed in consultation with employers, unions and workers in the industry.
  • Seek to align the current mining safety legislation with the Queensland State legislation within a New Zealand context.
  • Examine how New Zealand and Australia can share mines safety standard setting oversight and enforcement for more effective safety regulation.
  • Re-instate check inspectors in New Zealand mines.
  • Maintain ACC as a publicly administered and delivered social insurance scheme which provides comprehensive and universal coverage for all New Zealanders.
  • Labour will not privatise ACC and will reverse any privatisation of any part of ACC that occurs before the election.
  • Return to fairer administration of the scheme, with a special focus on those with serious long-term injuries.
  • Improve the Accredited Employers' Scheme to ensure it is fairer for injured workers.
  • Improve the medical assessment and vocational independence processes so there is a fair, balanced and consistent approach to assessing claims.
  • Review National’s changes to the ACC scheme.
  • Increase, as resources allow, funding for health and safety programmes and long term injury prevention strategies.
  • Strengthen workplace injury prevention initiatives through industry taskforces to increase the skill levels and number of trained Health and Safety Representatives.
  • Ensure that there are systems put in place to ensure better coordination between ACC and other agencies responsible for injury prevention, such as the Department of Labour, the Police and the NZ Transport Agency.
  • Move away from the insurance-based approach for ACC and focus more on rehabilitation.
  • Ensure that workers will return to full-time work when they are fully rehabilitated.
  • An injured person should be deemed vocationally independent when they are physically able to work 35 hours per week and their pre-injury earnings should be taken into account.
  • Review the level of funding of ACC to ensure that the scheme will meet the real costs of claimants’ entitlements to treatment and rehabilitation, and the costs of injury prevention.
  • Reverse the introduction of experience rating into the ACC scheme to ensure that claimants are provided with entitlement and rehabilitation to the maximum extent practicable, and consider alternative means of incentivising and encouraging good health and safety measures.
  • Ensure that the Department of Labour is effectively funded to carry out its role to “Promote and Support Safe and Healthy People and Workplaces” through “the provision of information, education, and support for workplaces regarding effective workplace health and safety practice, and enforcement action to promote compliance with the HSE Act”.
  • Investigate transferring a greater portion of the ACC motor vehicle annual licensing fee onto the petrol levy so that everyone pays a fairer share of the Motor Vehicle Account and no one group is heavily burdened
  • Investigate the introduction of a flat rate levy on all employers to fund occupational disease claims.

National

  • Open ACC to private competition.
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