Mark Chapple: Fighting for Fairness

Pete: 00:00:13

Are you frustrated by the constantly rising cost of motorcycle registration here in New Zealand? If you're nodding your head, you're not alone. I'm Pete and this is Keep It Twisted, the official podcast of Mag nz.

This week I'm joined by Mark Chappell, the lead plaintiff in the High court action against ACC's motorcycle levy increase. We originally tried to record this episode remotely, but the it gods had other ideas and the audio was too glitchy to use.

So I jumped on my motorcycle the next day and rode into Christchurch for a face to face chat with Mark. I'm really glad I did. It gave me the chance to sit down properly with him and to get to know him beyond the headlines.

And that's what I hope you get from this episode too.

We'll talk about the legal process and the technical arguments he's put before the court, but we also dive into his lifelong passion for motorcycles, the bikes he's owned, how he's coping with the pressure of leading the fight and his vision for the kind of country New Zealand should be. So let's get to it, let's keep it twisted. It's becoming a tradition on the show, Mark, for people to start the bike.

Pete: 00:01:16

That they're currently riding. What are you going to start today?

Mark: 00:01:19

This is the Desert X of my brothers. It's got the Termagoni exhaust, it's titanium right through.

Pete: 00:01:26

Yeah.

Mark: 00:01:26

Take it out occasionally. So it gets a run because my brother only comes back once a year.

Pete: 00:01:31

Let's have a listen. Mark, I appreciate you're a really busy fella and I'm grateful that you found time in your day to be able to sit down with me and have a yarn.

Mark: 00:01:50

Actually, quite a nice thing to not have my head stuck in an ACC case for a little bit. It's hard to get something to take my mind off it.

Pete: 00:01:57

Well, I was going to ask about that. This seems to have developed into an absolute behemoth of a thing and I'll be keen to find out how you're coping with it on a personal level.

Mark: 00:02:05

After the first court appearance and after effectively having judgments against, I'd say myself, but really against the cause, really, as a result of them.

I just wanted a little bit of time out and needed it because myself, Rick and a couple others had buried ourselves for three weeks trying to get to that point.

Pete: 00:02:29

One of the things that I wanted to do on this episode in particular is introduce you and get to know you as a motorcyclist and set the scene, really, before we get too bogged down in the detail of the court case.

And I wondered if we could go back to your riding history and talk about when you first were introduced to motorcycles and your journey on a motorcycle since then.

Mark: 00:02:49

Well, my father rode bikes. He was a lifetime member of Pioneer Motorcycle Club, which I think is the oldest motorcycle club in the country.

It used to be a very, very large club. It ran everything, including road racing and was enormous. It splintered donkey's years ago.

And in my lifetime it mainly ran motorcycle trials, which is a sport Pioneer Stadium. One third of the build cost of that was donated by the Pioneer Motorcycle Club.

Pete: 00:03:25

Is that their original base then, Pioneer Stadium in Christchurch?

Mark: 00:03:27

Well, once they donated all the money, yes.

Pete: 00:03:30

So with your dad being involved in Pioneer, I'm guessing there were motorbikes at your place from the earliest memory you've got?

Mark: 00:03:37

There were always motorbikes and we were often going to motorcycle events. Being trials which were quite family, you'd have a barbecue afterwards, watch the old fellas putter around.

I got an early memory of jumping on a Ducati and the fella looked over and laughed. He was having a beer with the rest of them and said, if you can start it, you can ride it.

And I did get it to turn it over, but I didn't know how to turn the ignition on or anything. It wasn't going to start, but I spent the afternoon kicking it over, which was two feet bouncing on the flame and things.

Pete: 00:04:11

And can you remember when you passed your test?

Mark: 00:04:13

Ah, day I turned 15. I'd been riding for years at that point.

Not on the road because I didn't have a license, of course, but the day of the test rode my little TY50 into the. It was MOT back then. And you sit down in a room full of about 30 people and it's a written test you need to do and sitting there waiting.

And the police officer comes in and he says, right, first thing, who has driven or ridden here today? And four people put their hands up and he says, right, you lot have failed. Away you go. You can't drive without license and you haven't got it yet.

And he looks at me because I've got a helmet and a jacket and scarves and that sitting on the table. And he looks at me and says, what about you? What about me? Whoa. Did you ride here? Of course not. I haven't got a license yet.

I came here to sit my license. You got your helmet and stuff? Well, yeah, I got dropped off. Don't be silly. I'm not going to be riding. He Looks at me like, so was.

Pete: 00:05:13

There a practical component to the test then? No, just a written theory test.

Mark: 00:05:17

Theory test for a motorbike got you learners which allowed you to ride up.

Pete: 00:05:22

To 250cc and then further down the line you do a full test to get your full.

Mark: 00:05:26

Yeah, I think it was anytime after six months maybe issue I had. It was quite rare for me to have a warranted and registered bike, usually because blooming indicator bulbs would blow and what have you.

And you had to have one to do your practical test.

I think it was two or three years after I got my learners that I had a motorbike that had a warrant and regio, but it was a 370, not a 250 turned out if you take all the stickers off it and you've got your warrant in rego, the nice cop doesn't really check.

And honestly the practical then was they in their car, followed you around the block and if you looked like you were confident, knew what you're doing. Sweet. And that's all it took.

Pete: 00:06:13

Such simple times.

Mark: 00:06:14

Yeah. And it's a reasonable test. You either know what you're doing or you don't.

If someone looks nervous, no matter what size bike they're on, they need more time.

Pete: 00:06:24

Does it make any difference that they follow you in the car rather than follow you on two wheels?

They're looking at how you drive, they're looking at your observation skills, you're looking at your road positioning and whether or not you're following the speed limits.

Mark: 00:06:36

They actually wanted you to do the same speed as the rest of the traffic. The tests now are absurd. The kids have to learn to drive in a way that no one else drives and then they never do it again in their life.

What a stupid system.

Pete: 00:06:51

I know from talking to you before you've had a lot of motorbikes over the years and you might still have one or two in the garage.

Mark: 00:06:58

Strictly speaking they're not mine, but I've had a lot access to a lot, put it that way, when I was 16 was the first time that I ended up kind of looking after more than 10 road going bikes which made at that time a full time job of keeping them warranted because it was six month warrants and ride a bike for a wee while and something would break on it. So you just park that up because there's another one, just use the other one.

But eventually you get to the point where you've got 10 with small problems and inevitably go for a warrant and it would be a broken Indicator bulb or something simple.

Pete: 00:07:36

And were you doing all your own repairs? Are you quite handy with a spanner?

Mark: 00:07:39

Yeah.

Learnt because had no choice and learnt when I was riding trials when I was younger because it was either keep the bike going or don't have the bike to ride.

Pete: 00:07:49

So on the trials I understand you were quite a useful club rider.

Mark: 00:07:53

Yeah, my top result was sixth. It wasn't a national championship, it was what was called an experts trial.

Pete: 00:08:00

Do you remember the first really nice bike you got?

Mark: 00:08:02

Yeah, the first really nice bike was a KLR 600 and I climbed up a really large mileage on that because I had no car.

It was all, well, I just rode bikes and I really enjoyed that and I could go out to the ymac and go over the big shingle piles and do all sorts of things. And at that time I was watching Paris Dakar and it was similar to the bikes that they were competing on there.

So I was just loving the 600 where I could just spit dirt out the back, even though frankly it was quite underpowered. But I didn't know that because I hadn't ridden anything very powerful at that stage.

s was the GSX: 1100

Pete: 00:09:04

If we fast forward then to the current situation with MAG NZ and your involvement there, when did you first become aware of MAG nz? As a Facebook page and as a.

Mark: 00:09:14

Campaign friend of mine. She's a keen Vespa writer and on Facebook she saw magnz and she says, oh, have you seen there's a big hoo ha about ACC putting the levies up.

And I said, oh, we went through this 20 years ago, what's going on? And she says, oh, they're going up to 800 odd dollars. Oh, cross this again.

And so I looked at the page, Now I remember 20 years ago it was Bronze Bikers Rights of New Zealand who were going up against at that time.

I got in touch with them and I said to them, then you want to look at taking legal action against accident, because I think what they're doing is contrary to the purpose of the act and you may have a legal case on. And they had a cursory look at it and said, no, we Just want to organize protests. Okay, leave you to it then, which is fine.

When I looked on the Facebook page, Terry Leach had put up a really good comment with a really structured argument and I thought, this guy knows what he's talking about. I wonder if he understands the legal side of the act as well, because it looked like he did.

So I wrote what was going to be a paragraph reply turned into a couple of page reply as I was going to send it.

I thought, we've got AI now let's run it through AI and see if it can polish it up in a way that my points are easily understood because I quite like these guys to understand it. And I thought, well, you never know.

Pete: 00:10:52

Because it's technical, it's not easily understood and digested if you've not got a legal background. There's some really fine arguments in there.

Mark: 00:11:01

Absolutely. But the Courser argument is quite a simple one.

The purpose of the act is spelled out in the act and it says to create a fair system for the people of New Zealand. And what they're trying to do is not fair.

Then the technicality comes down to how do you show that there are, it's either six or nine separate causes of action that are separate arguments as to what they've done wrong or why or what have you. And that's quite complex.

Pete: 00:11:33

And that sense of it being unfair, I think captures the mood that we've seen the Mag NZ events and if you read a lot of the comments that people make on the Facebook page, motorcyclists feel genuinely aggrieved and persecuted as.

Pete: 00:11:51

A result of this policy.

Pete: 00:11:53

It's actually pricing people off the road. It's difficult to get past that without feeling that it's just simply unfair and unjust.

And that captures, I think, the essence of the claim at the High Court.

Mark: 00:12:07

Yeah, the complexities are spelling out the ways in which it's both unfair and been arrived at in an unreasonable manner. Yeah. So I sent that reply to Terry. He came back on the comment and said, oh, look, if you keep this up, you might get volunteered to go on the board.

So I replied to him and said, well, we'll get in touch if you interested in my views, because I'd be more than happy to discuss them.

Pete: 00:12:36

So where does your legal insight come from, Mark? What's the background there?

Mark: 00:12:41

I did a couple years of law school, which gave me a basic feel, but the more I'm going into this, the more I realise it certainly didn't give me umpteen years of working in the public Law sector. And you know, they don't teach you at law school, they don't teach you anything about the procedures in the high court and everything.

So that's all new and a hell of a learning curve.

Pete: 00:13:04

Fair to say you understood the framework, but the intricacies of the journey through that framework have been a bit of a learning curve for everybody, I think from the magnzed side.

Mark: 00:13:14

Absolutely. So after talking to Terry, I got in touch with Rick and then Rick and I had a phone call at which stage we discussed the legal ins and outs.

He had prior to that, gone off and talked to a couple of lawyers who have said if you take judicial review against acc, it'll cost you a couple of hundred grand in legal fees, minimum, even if you win. What you win is ACC's got to go back and relook at how they've done. You don't win an order saying you must do it this way.

You win an order that might say doing it the way you've done it is incorrect. So a couple hundred K legal fees, which MAG&Z had nothing because they weren't a give us your money type organization. And they're still not.

The donations that have come in have been for the legal fight. And really it's been because we're going to have court fees and travel costs.

On the phone call, he says, well, we don't have money to do this legal fight. And I said, oh no, I'm not suggesting you guys pay a lawyer to do it because you're just. You wouldn't be able to and it also wouldn't be worth it.

And so initially I said, well, you might be able to find a lawyer in amongst your followers that might do it pro bono, which doesn't seem to have eventuated, but if there are any, I really appreciate any help I can get. I'm not a legal expert in this field. I'm reluctantly becoming one.

And I'm saying reluctant because this is a big public law area and I didn't have that much interest in public law.

Pete: 00:14:54

My feeling is that this has become an absolute behemoth and this seems to be consuming a huge proportion of your life. Your phone never stops ringing.

You get constant barrage of emails and pings, whether that's court process or other people wanting to contribute and chip in. But it's just turned into an absolute Goliath of a movement and an absolute mission for you.

Mark: 00:15:15

With that conversation with Rick, they can't afford lawyers. I said, well, I can possibly do it. Kind of had the. How hard could it be attitude?

Because I know that an individual can do these things, they can take High Court action and seek a judicial review, et cetera. And I know from a few things I've done that you can find out how to do the paperwork and you can just sort of bowl your way through it.

When I said that both Rick and myself did not understand how solid of a case we had, we just thought they would give it a go. But the more we've gone into it, and this is where it ballooned to such a big thing was coming up with a statement of claim.

There were so many things that ACC have done that aren't right in our view. And there's a lot of legal precedent saying that one of the biggest ones is their ineffective consultation.

There's some big cases saying you have to consult properly. Failing to release the core data of the figures that you're consulting on can never be seen as adequate consultation.

And they have still not handed over those figures. Under an act, it can empower a minister to make regulations, and that's what's happened in this situation.

The new levies have been regulated and signed off by the minister.

But in the bigger picture, if an act is an act for a purpose of doing one thing, for example, and then you get into government and the minister that looks after that one in this case, ACC is philosophically opposed to the entire thing and has the ability to make regulations, that Minister could, without any oversight from anyone, could make regulations that nullify the entire Act. Well, no, they can't. There's a lot of case law saying you can't make regulations that undermine the act itself that authorized the regulations.

And that is one of our big arguments. As soon as I realized that and then looked up and found, oh, there's a lot of case law saying you, you can't do that.

And we've got a good solid argument saying, you have done that. This is no longer a give it a go. We've got a shot.

Pete: 00:17:46

I'm pleased to hear you say that because there are moments when I've spoken to you where I can see the weariness and the fatigue in you. This must be a huge thing to live with day to day.

But then there are moments like that where you explain it and you set it out very clearly, where I can see the absolute grit and determination and the belief that you fundamentally have got this right and the ACC have fundamentally got this wrong.

And for listeners who don't know you, I think they should be reassured that you've got that level of Conviction and certainty in the face of what feels like pretty overwhelming odds. It's not a small claims matter. We're not up against one or two other people.

We're up against the weight of a government institution who appear to be acting unfairly, illegally. I don't know. But I'm very reassured that I've seen that grit and steel in your eye.

I want you to know that there are a lot of people who are with you and support you completely in this process.

Mark: 00:18:48

One of the great things has been because that weariness, it does get me, and it is a hard Yakur, and I would like to have a break from it at times.

And then when I get on the phone with someone that can help and they do, and the support that's just come from all quarters without me necessarily having to ask for it's being offered. One of the big things is when I'm working on those arguments which have been difficult to get our heads around, but I say ours.

Rick and I have been in constant contact, so that when I get a bit, oh, this is too big a headful because there's. There's so many different directions it's going in.

And then each one of those directions has a lot of intricacies within it, and they are slightly interrelated as well. And so then you've got this big picture that has all the stuff in and you just go, oh, it's too much to try and hold it all together.

Having someone else that understands that whole picture has helped immensely.

Pete: 00:19:53

The point is that you've got a group of people behind you who are providing a huge amount of support and encouragement and advice and opinion. As I've come into this organization, I found that to be very reassuring.

The sense of brotherhood and far now between the members has just blown me away.

Mark: 00:20:10

Some of these guys have been working on these issues for 30 or 40 years. They've been well involved in this stuff and know the history of it. I didn't know the history of it. I hadn't read the Woodhouse report.

I was a little bit embarrassed. I thought, oh, I should be able to. I should be able to do this without having to go too in depth to anything, because it's a fairly basic argument.

We won't need the whole history of how it came about, et cetera.

But the problem is that when you look at the philosophical argument about how it's supposed to run and the fact that over the years national has been trying to change it from how it was set up to a different model and as soon as you start looking into that, you do have to know the history and everything.

Pete: 00:20:56

And that's one of the things that I've heard and I've read. This is about much more than the cost of putting your motorcycle on the road for a year.

There are so many ramifications and wider issues that arise as a result of this ACC policy. The debate is about more than ACC levies.

Mark: 00:21:16

This is the thinning of the wedge of a debate. Asking the question, what sort of country do we want to live in? That's what this is at its core.

And if the answer is we want to live in a dog eat dog type country, American style, say that's the path ACC is going down. If we want to live in the New Zealand I grew up in, where we look after each other, where we spread the costs.

Pete: 00:21:44

The ACC system was set up as a no blame insurance scheme to cover medical costs for anybody who'd suffered an injury as a result of an accident.

Mark: 00:21:56

Part of that they were looking at what happens when it's not the fault of the person who's injured, but it's also not the fault of the person who injured them. Who's more at fault in that situation.

And what was happening in a very blunt system prior to ACC was that the person that caused the accident but didn't knowingly do it and didn't negligently do it, so it was an unforeseeable problem, applied often in workplaces. So as an example, they've got all the safety systems in place that they need.

There's an accident, someone's injured and let's say it gets investigated by Health and Safety and they come out, you've done everything right, you gave the person that right training, blah, blah, blah, and this happened. It's just an accident, you've done everything right. Who's more at fault?

The person who was injured, who didn't cause it, or the person who did everything caused to make sure they had a safe workplace and didn't really cause it. Prior to the ACC act, it was still the workplace that had to pay and that seemed a little harsh.

Now the amount they had to pay was dependent on the injury, but the fault of the employer in that situation might be negligible or next to nothing.

And so the poor old employer's suddenly going bankrupt because someone died on their watch, but they had done everything that they could to make sure it was safe. The Wodehouse report was saying, let's address that.

Pretty much all of the recommendations in the Woodhouse report got turned into legislation which has now been undermined in the later years by national saying that they want a more fault based system. They're calling it risk based.

But and this is one of our arguments, if you simply call risk the cost, which is what they're doing and not the actual risk of the accident happening, the application of the legislation that says you can set your levies based on risk, the way they're applying that is cost. Motorcycle injuries cost this much and therefore the risk is higher, not crept. That's not a definition of risk.

Pete: 00:24:27

Risk is usually a matrix of probability and likelihood probable and very likely makes it a high risk.

Mark: 00:24:35

It's the normal definition of risk. Yes, but they don't use that. ACC are doing a very blunt version of the cost is this, therefore the risk is this.

They're saying this is how they've calculated their motorcycle engine bands. They're saying that they have evidence that the higher CC rating bikes have a greater risk even though they have less accidents.

The lifetime cost of the accident is higher according to their statistics and therefore the risk is greater and therefore we'll charge them more. Which is nothing to do with the normal definition of the word risk.

And the matrix and what have you, like you've described, is the way risk is assessed and by every other government department. But ACC will just make up their definition.

Well, it's perfectly reasonable that we take that question to the court and ask the court to decide what the definition of risk should be in the legislation. Because at the time the legislation was introduced they were perfectly at liberty to put cost in there rather than the word risk.

And had they put in the word cost, ACC would be perfectly valid in doing it the way they're doing it. And they use words in legislation on purpose to mean what they mean.

Pete: 00:25:59

Yeah, absolutely, of course they do. That's the purpose of very well written legislation.

Mark: 00:26:04

Yes, and my view is that that legislative change, because that only come in later years, has been poorly written because the definition of risk should have gone into the legislation at the same time as that clause went in so that it couldn't be misinterpreted if Parliament wanted that. But if Parliament didn't want that, if Parliament wanted the courts to decide what constitutes risk or not, someone's got to take it to court.

Well, who's got a couple of hundred thousand dollars lying around?

Pete: 00:26:34

I'm amazed it hasn't come up before now.

Mark: 00:26:37

No one is willing to put everything on the line in order to go up against them because the costs in this case are likely to be in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And if they're awarded against the lead litigant, which would be me, I'm expected to come up with the money.

Pete: 00:27:02

One of the things I remember very clearly from the protest ride to the High Court, when we lodged the initial claim, was that you spoke about wanting to show that everyday New Zealanders could have access to justice without the need to find many hundreds of thousands of dollars to pursue the case.

But the personal risk to you is that if you lose this case and the court decides that ACC deserve to have costs awarded against you, you could be personally liable for quite a payout.

Mark: 00:27:36

Absolutely.

And that's a mixture of it being a complicated process and that scare of you can have costs awarded against you is what tips the access of justice scale to the. There isn't any.

But part of the bigger reason that I'm doing this is that there are other people that are trying to hold the government accountable on other matters and do it in the same way. Even if you've got a huge amount of money, lawyers won't advance arguments that might be morally right but aren't necessarily legally sound.

It would be unethical for them to do that reasonably because they'll be taking money off you to do something that they know from the outset isn't going to get any traction. I'm free of that. I'm going to put into the court my view of things that I find to be reprehensible.

Whether they're legally sound or not doesn't matter because there's nothing more to lose from it. The entire argument's not based on that.

If this was entirely frivolous, then I would definitely be up for costs and I definitely deserve to have costs of water against me. This is absolutely not entirely frivolous. This has good, sound legal argument. It's not as simple as are our arguments legally correct.

It then comes down to will the judge listen to them and agree with them, not just do we have sound arguments and if we do, we should win. There's a bit up in the air.

Pete: 00:29:14

I know from talking to Rick and Ann, one of the issues that you've come up against in this process is the Crown pushing to have the case heard in Wellington as opposed to Christchurch, where it was lodged. And I wonder if you can just explain some of the rationale behind that that's been presented and where that leaves you as the plaintiff.

Mark: 00:29:33

So the rule says that the proper registry is the one closest to where the cause of action arose. So now we're arguing about what cause of action means and what the cause of action is in this proceeding.

To me, and we've submitted this, the cause of action is the fact that I've got to pay more for the motorcycle registration. And I'm saying that they didn't come about with that lawfully. And so where I ride my bike and where I paid the money is where the damage happened.

So it's where the cause of action occurs.

Pete: 00:30:14

Yeah, that seems to make sense.

Mark: 00:30:15

It does to me. That's Christchurch.

Thus saying the Crown have said the cause of action is the place that the decision was made, not the place where you suffered the damage.

And the judges said the decisions challenged were made in Wellington and the cause of action does not arise at every place where the impugned decisions have effect. They just want to mess with this because I live in Christchurch, they've got better access to the video equipment.

They're not going to be flying to Christchurch, but they can. They've got more resources. What disadvantage is it to acc the Crown to having it in Wellington? They never stated that there was any.

Pete: 00:30:59

So the judges made the decision that this case should now be transferred to Wellington. What impact does that have on you, Mark?

Mark: 00:31:05

As the lead plaintiff, I'm reasonably unimpressed with that. The judge also made in order that I get access to the video equipment in the courts in Christchurch so that access to justice isn't impacted.

But it to me just seems petty of the Crown to have opposed it, number one. And number two, I don't think that that decision sound currently. I don't know because I haven't read the case that it's based on.

Also haven't researched if there is any other case law on that particular matter. And this is where things get cloudy. How much time and effort do I want to spend arguing about venue and researching the law on the venue first?

Researching and looking into the core stuff. Is it venue is just a side argument. It doesn't really progress the argument against ace.

Pete: 00:32:04

Well, that's a really salient point, isn't it? It's a distraction. And do you want to spend your time and effort arguing against something that is not the fundamental issue at hand?

Mark: 00:32:14

Frankly, I do because I think they're wrong, but I just don't have the resource.

Pete: 00:32:21

I know when we went to court on 22 June, you lodged an interim injunction to prevent the initial increase in ACC levies going ahead. And I think the judge came back and denied that injunction.

Mark: 00:32:33

Yeah.

This is the second out of three increases and one of the problems we're up against is they're arguing, well, you should have made this argument before the first one. And we're arguing that, well, you didn't release any info, so we had no info to make the arguments, which is a little weak, but that's all we got.

You'd revise that to we weren't pissed off enough then.

Pete: 00:32:53

The one thing we haven't spoken about is the impact that the increase in levies has had on you.

Mark: 00:32:59

On a personal level, I can't afford to register the bike, so I haven't been able to ride. My brother's bike's registered because he's got it registered, but that's, you know, I can't ride that whenever I want.

It's his and it's pretty new and he doesn't want a huge mileage clocked up on it, so it's meant that I can't ride.

However, you know, I can take up another sport like mountain biking, where I won't pay any ACC levies and I'll go and get injured again, as I have often on mountain bikes.

Pete: 00:33:27

And that's part of the frustration, isn't it, that we just seem to be being priced off the road.

Mark: 00:33:33

Seems to be a policy issue. Presumably someone doesn't like motorbikes. Oh, well, we'll all go ride dirt bikes and watch the ACC funds get depleted and they get less levies in.

It's just gross stupidity of them, either at a ministerial level or ACC level, one or the other.

Pete: 00:33:58

Do you think we'll ever get to a point where ACC realise and accept that what they've done is wrong?

Mark: 00:34:04

They already know that this is wrong, but it fits with their philosophy of making it run more like an insurance company. But they're only half doing it.

They're missing the bit that if it was an insurance company and somebody else caused the accident, the other person would be paying and so they've only got half the equation, which is why it's so inherently wrong.

Pete: 00:34:37

If we think about a remedy, would compulsory insurance provide a softener?

Mark: 00:34:44

The thing is that the Woodhouse report was the result of a Royal commission into all of these questions. Absolutely. Thoroughly discusses all of these issues. We don't need to reproduce it. It's already been very thoroughly done.

If we want to rehab the debate, we need to start by rereading that report and then we'll have a much sounder idea of the debate we're having. It was very, very good. It was covers all of the issues, all of the options.

But the whole idea of us revisiting how do we fund the alleged higher costs of motorcycles versus anything else is missing the entire point. And the entire point is a no faults scheme was put in place for a good reason. And when it was put in place it was an across the board no fault.

And the rationale in that report is really sound. And to half undo that rationale and to do it to only one section of society, effectively only motorcycle riders is not sound whatsoever.

There was never anything in the Woodhouse report that suggested individuals should be paying multiple ACC levies and that that should be linked to how many vehicles that they have. That is not the basis for a sound system.

Pete: 00:36:24

Well Mark, I've enjoyed the chat today.

We've covered quite a lot of grand I'd like to thank you on behalf of all the MAGNZ members and everybody else who potentially stands to benefit from your courage. I'd like to thank you for all the work you're doing and let you know that there's a lot of people who are with you on this.

Mark: 00:36:41

Thanks to everyone who's shown support. I do think I would have given up a while ago if I didn't have such a lot.

The mountain is a lot bigger than I ever thought it would be, but the support is also a lot greater than I could have imagined. So we'll keep fighting the good fight.

Pete: 00:37:09

That brings me to the end of this episode. A huge thank you to Mark for taking time to sit down and share his story.

Mark's very deliberate in his speech and at times I could feel the weariness in his voice, but I could also see a certain steel and depth of character that reveal his true determination. He's an everyman for all New Zealanders, someone who stepped up not because he wants a fight, but because someone had to.

If you support fair treatment for motorcyclists and believe in holding institutions to account, please share this episode, support MAGNZ and follow the case. Visit magnz.orgnz to join the fight against rising levies and stand up for riders rights.

While you're there, check out our Give a Little page and the Merch shop. We've got T shirts, hoodies and more in a range of colours.

With the MAGNZ Rego Freeze and Keep It Twisted designs, every dollar we raise will support the legal fight and help us keep the pressure on.

And if you've enjoyed this episode, please remember to follow Keep It Twisted in your podcast app so you get the next episode delivered straight to your device. I'd also love to hear what you think of the show.

If you have a moment, please drop your thoughts, questions or suggestions on the magnz Facebook page. Alternatively, leave a positive review in your podcast app. Massive. Thanks again to Mark for inviting me around and sharing his story.

Ride safe and I'll catch you next week for episode four. Until then, stands up, visors down and keep it twisted.

Music: 00:38:34

It we're not gonna play anymore.