12 August 2014

Minister has failed to change ACC culture

The latest damning report by the Auditor General shows that the ACC Minister has failed to fulfil her mission to fix the sick culture at ACC and real change will not come till a new Government is elected, the Green Party said today.

An investigation by the Auditor General, just published online, is critical of the way ACC handles complaints from complainants, describing it as “not effective”, non-responsive, flawed and failing at times to even record complaints as complaints.

“The Green Party is just one of several groups and individuals who have been pointing out the failures in the ACC complaints system for years,” Green Party ACC spokesperson Kevin Hague said.

“It’s unacceptable that it’s taken the Auditor General to report again before ACC takes long-standing concerns about its complaints process seriously.

“ACC Minister Judith Collins came into the job over two years ago claiming she’d fix up the culture of disentitlement at ACC, but this report shows she has failed in that mission.

“The only real solution is to change the Government and get ACC back to its core principles.

“Again, the Auditor General has shown that ACC views its role to be about cutting costs and its default position is to decline claimants and saving money.

“The Green Party has previously laid out a ten point plan for rehabilitating ACC and bring it back to the core principles it was founded on.

“The latest Auditor General investigation shows how an ACC ombudsman is urgently needed to deal with ACC’s poor complaints processes, and the high number of ACC decisions that are overturned on appeal.

“ACC is suffering from multiple system failures driven by a very sick culture that the Minister has failed to change,” Mr Hague said.

Link to Auditor General report here: http://www.oag.govt.nz/2014/acc-complaints

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