Cunliffe David: Ministerial Statements — Accident Compensation—Ministerial Inquiry into Disclosure of Funding Shortfall in ACC Non-earners’ Account 
Cunliffe David: Ministerial Statements — Accident Compensation—Ministerial Inquiry into Disclosure of Funding Shortfall in ACC Non-earners’ Account 
[Volume:652;Page:1543] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 The Minister of Finance Bill English should be hanging his head very low today. His attempts to portray the actions of the previous Government’s Ministers as inappropriate in respect of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) have proven to be the political charade that they always were. The previous Minister of Finance Dr Cullen and the previous Minister for ACC the Hon Maryan Street have been exonerated by this report. The report found that officials did not provide the appropriate advice either to Minister Street or to Minister Cullen and it makes recommendations about improving the processes at Treasury the Department of Labour and ACC. 
Quotes from the report are instructive: as well as Treasury’s failure to act “by the date of PREFU in October 2008 … DOL had yet to: complete its detailed scrutiny of ACC’s premium proposals” it had yet to “decide whether or not to recommend to the Minister for ACC support for ACC’s proposals” and it had yet to draft the necessary papers for Cabinet. Because Cabinet had not been presented with those papers Treasury took the view that there were no agreed changes to appropriations to include in the forecast financial statements and it decided it need not conclude the matter because it was not under active consideration with Ministers. As the report goes on to make clear this followed a standard process with officials operating as they had always done. 
The report concludes that that process itself needs to be improved. In no way does it implicate Ministers in the failure of officials to adapt their time line to the electoral cycle. Clearly Treasury in particular failed to properly uphold its responsibilities under the Public Finance Act and we welcome that the Secretary to the Treasury John Whitehead has accepted responsibility for this and is to make the proposed changes. 
It was regrettable that the Minister of Finance repeated in question time today his misrepresentation of Treasury’s apology as being given only “for its part of the error.” On the contrary the secretary’s apologies and regrets were unreserved. Mr English does no credit to himself or more broadly to the Government by attempting to slant this very honourable Treasury response for his own vindictive political purposes. 
Certainly if the report’s author the esteemed consultant Michael Mills had believed that his report made adverse findings against either Minister he would have seen himself bound by natural justice to interview them and seek their input. He did not do so. Those Ministers—both of them—were not interviewed. Neither Minister was interviewed. Dr Cullen’s request to Treasury for his papers was declined by Treasury on Mr English’s personal letterhead for which it has since apologised. In hindsight Mr English is probably regretting the rather shameful refusal to undertake that disclosure. 
Mr English should also be ashamed that having inherited by his own admission to the Finance and Expenditure Committee last week a very favourable set of Crown accounts from his predecessor Dr Cullen he was intent after all of these results on demolishing the reputation of his predecessor who has given three decades of service to this House and a decade as Minister of Finance. Members on this side of the House believe that Dr Cullen deserves better. 
This raises the question of why the charade was undertaken. The answer to that question is probably revealed in the Minister’s own statement to the House this afternoon. ACC was funding a shortfall. It had expanded cover for treatment injury. It had increased the non-earners account funding and the change on the basis of this treatment had left it worse off. It is actually the quantum of the unfunded liability that the Minister is most concerned about. How interesting therefore to discover with a bit of research that the percentage of unfunded liability that the previous National Government passed on to the Labour Government in 1999 was greater than the one it inherited by some 60 percent of the total to some 40 percent. I wish National members had done their research before lambasting the outgoing Government with something that they themselves were more guilty of if it is a sin at all. 
The Labour Opposition concedes that there was a failure of official process. We support the point that that process should be improved to ensure that other Ministers are not left in the position that Labour Ministers were left in near the change of Government. But the real reason for this charade is the Government’s new-found intention to deal to ACC. Let us cast our minds back. This was first alluded to in a brokers’ report by Merrill Lynch. It leaked to the press before the election its certainty that the National Government would privatise ACC. Let National members deny that they are concerned now about its so-called sustainability. Let them take privatisation off the agenda or let them not I tell Dr Smith. If they do not have the courage of their convictions then they should not try to pin the problems on two former Ministers who have worked hard and acted honourably in the service of their country.