Media release on behalf of ACC Futures Coalition 28.5.10

ACC Budget cash for privatisation

The Government’s allocation of $2million for ‘robust policy advice’ on ACC is further evidence that it intends to privatise the work account regardless of the best advice, says the ACC Futures Coalition.

ACC Futures spokesperson Hazel Armstrong said: “The Department of Labour clearly has not given the Minister for ACC the answer he wants, so now he is looking to manufacture it.”

“The talk of further investigating the option of privatising the Work Account is simply window dressing as the Government’s intentions are clear. ACT supported the passing of the ACC Amendment Bill last year explicitly in return for privatisation.”

“Privatisation is bad for NZ workers and bad for employers. It will cost more in the long term and private providers will have little incentive for giving workers their rights - employers not employees are their clients.”

“The Work Account does not need the so-called ‘benefits of competition and choice’: it is in a healthy condition. All those injured New Zealanders who have been unjustly refused compensation over the last year due to the Government’s draconian cost-cutting will be rightly sickened by this.”

ENDS

The ACC Futures Coalition consists of community groups, academics, organisations representing people who need support from ACC, health treatment providers and unions who have come together around the following aim:

To build cross-party support for retaining the status of ACC as a publicly-owned single provider committed to the ‘Woodhouse Principles’, with a view to maintaining and improving the provision of injury prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and ‘no fault’ compensation social insurance system for all New Zealanders.

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