Media release on behalf of ACC Futures Coalition – 27 February 2012

Government struggling to make their ACC policy workable

John Key said today that the Government is thinking about “choice” for the ACC work account, but that the Government is finding this policy “difficult”.

“The decision to introduce choice has already been delayed by 6 months and Judith Collins has told us that National’s pre-election policy was “very hypothetical”. The National led Government is struggling to find a politically palatable reason for sending the profits off shore to Australian insurers who will be the only beneficiaries of privatising cover for work injuries”, said Hazel Armstrong, spokesperson for ACC Futures Coalition.

“The real problem is that the policy is unworkable,” said Ms. Armstrong. “ACC is already a highly efficient model for the delivery of accident compensation services. Competition will not make it any more efficient. In fact it will introduce costs that are not there at present as reports such as the Price Waterhouse Coopers review of 2008 have demonstrated. The Government has now got itself in a pickle because the only way in which private insurers can be competitive is if ACC shackled in some way by being required to pay a return to government and be made to pay taxes.”

“If the Government goes ahead with their policy they will be either adding costs to employers and workers by way of increased levies or cutting coverage and entitlements even further than they have over the last three years,” said Ms. Armstrong.

“It is time that Government recognised that their policy is unworkable and bad for Kiwis.”

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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