Pillay Lynne: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Pillay Lynne: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
[Sitting date: 20 October 2009. Volume:658;Page:7318. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
12. 
LYNNE PILLAY (Labour) 
 to the  
Minister for ACC 
: Does he stand by his statement last Thursday that “In respect of the member’s claims that people in Wellington are making decisions about such counselling I assure the member that those decisions are being made by properly qualified psychiatrists and others who have the clinical skills to make them”? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for ACC) 
: 
 Yes I do. The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) has registered health professionals including psychiatrists and clinical psychologists and that includes a wide range of health disciplines including counsellors psychotherapists and psychologists who are on contracted peer review. All those clinicians are supported by the clinical directorate at the ACC. 
Lynne Pillay 
: Is it still the case that the victims of sexual abuse are suffering from extensive delays in having their claims processed by the ACC and how is this clinically acceptable? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The system by which people make claims is that they receive four counselling sessions without any questions being asked. The counsellor then lodges an application with the ACC. It is reviewed by proper clinical specialists and decisions are made from there. I think that the major difficulty and where this issue has caused controversy is that the legislation requires that in order for a person’s ACC claim to be valid he or she has to meet the provision passed into law in 2001 by the previous Government that requires a mental injury to have been sustained. 
Lynne Pillay 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I do not think that the Minister has addressed the question. The question was quite specific. It was about the extensive delays that victims of sexual assault are suffering at the moment. He has not addressed that question. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I think in fairness to the Minister that the way that the Minister answered the question was by giving a very full answer explaining how the process worked. In doing so I believe that he was actually disputing the assertion that the member made. 
Lynne Pillay 
: Why is the Minister ignoring clinical advice that the guidelines that his Government is introducing next week are not clinical best practice and may potentially harm those who need counselling? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Far from ignoring clinical advice the new guidelines for treatment arise from a study that was done at Massey University and they have been approved by the clinical directorate of the ACC. I have no intention of overriding the ACC’s clinicians in making decisions about what is appropriate for these very sensitive claims. 
Lynne Pillay 
: Will the Minister instruct the ACC to reconsider imposing these guidelines which have been described as clinically unsafe by the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists the Association of Counsellors the Christian Counsellors Association and the Association of Social Workers or are the clinical skills of those people irrelevant? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I think that at the core of this issue is a professional tension between counsellors psychotherapists and psychologists and psychiatrists. If we read the Massey University study we see that the changes that the ACC has made in this area are strongly supported by the research done at Massey University by some of the most highly skilled clinicians in this area.