Little Andrew: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Little Andrew: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3336. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 There is no question: ACC is in crisis. It is in the deepest crisis it has ever been in and I suspect it is the deepest crisis that any Government agency or department has been in for decades and decades. It is probably unprecedented in the history of the New Zealand public sector with perhaps the exception of the New Zealand Tourism Board under Bryan Mogridge but that is a different story. 
That address we have just heard from the member Michael Woodhouse just frankly defies credulity. There is no question that people who have been on ACC legitimately properly—trying to be rehabilitated entitled to compensation and entitled to treatment—have been pushed off it when there are no grounds to do so. They have been pushed off it not because they are rehabilitated not because they are capable of returning to independent living and being without support not because they are ready to go back to their old job but because this Government introduced an incentive scheme to claims managers and the management of ACC to push those people off to make the figures look good and the bottom line look better. Under this Government ACC has lurched away—lurched in a direction far removed—from its founding principles. Those principles are community responsibility proper rehabilitation and injury prevention. 
We now know how this crisis has unfolded. It started with Nick Smith’s declaration of a crisis in 2009—a financial crisis that did not exist. It did not matter that ACC was generating surpluses— 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: It did exist. Outrageous! 
Jonathan Young 
: Of course it existed. Tell that to the levy payers! 
ANDREW LITTLE 
: —of a billion dollars a year Ms Tolley. It did not matter Mr Young that it had reserves then of $11 billion—now of about $18 billion. So National declared the crisis. It hiked levies totally unnecessarily. What we now know from the most recent media reports is that there was a crook deal done between Nick Smith and the management of ACC to set up incentives to drive long-term claimants off ACC. Let us be under no illusion. What ACC has done in the last 3½ years has been done at the direction and directive of this Government. It is totally the political decision and directions of this Government that have driven ACC. I say to those who want to exculpate the present Minister and the previous Minister for ACC that they miss the point completely. ACC has acted in accordance with the instructions of its political masters and we should not let those political masters off the hook whether it is Nick Smith or Judith Collins. And those who are looking to the present political masters and the present Minister for a solution to the current problems are looking in the wrong place. I make no apology for saying that. 
Let us see what happened under this great regime. The surpluses at around 2008 were about a billion dollars a year. Last year they were $3.5 billion. The reserves are now at $18 billion to $19 billion. But the price of that has been paid by the claimants—the long-term claimants. They have been subject to a brutal managerialism that has taken over ACC. The number of long-term claimants has gone down 25 percent in 3 years. What on earth logic applies there—that in 3 years a quarter of your long-term claimants are miraculously rehabilitated and can go back to work? Jesus could not do as good a job as that! By way of comparison in the 5 years to 2008 there were 12 percent of claimants who went from ACC on to benefits because they were rehabilitated and there was no job for them. In 2010 it was 19 percent. What is the miraculous remedy? It is not because rehabilitation improved; it is because claimants have been shoved off it. 
Let me read from some correspondence I have had just in the last couple of days. It does not take much to cite evidence when it comes to ACC. I just dip at random into my “In” pile for the current day and you get something like this. Here is what this Wellingtonian said: “At the end of January 2010 I had an accident coming down a ladder while off on holiday. When I first applied for ACC they queried whether it was due to any pre-existing conditions and whether I could get anyone else to help me apart from ACC.” That is January 2010. Fast-forward to the end of 2011. The old case manager went; “a new case manager was appointed and at our first meeting after introducing herself she simply stated that her job was to get me off ACC. Alarm bells rang. Where was the rehabilitation? Where was the job training?”. That question is being asked by hundreds of innocent New Zealanders up and down the country right at this moment because ACC is in crisis and they are paying the cost. 
The issue in ACC is no longer just one of confidence in ACC. It is about how the issues are handled—politically. The present Minister is not up to it. The top echelons of the—