Woodhouse Michael: Urgent Debates — Accident Compensation Corporation—Release of Personal Information 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Woodhouse Michael: Urgent Debates — Accident Compensation Corporation—Release of Personal Information 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2012. Volume:678;Page:1082. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 Sometimes people make mistakes. ACC is a very large corporation dealing with about 1.8 million claims a year and billions of dollars of taxpayers’ and levy payers’ money. I cannot imagine the sheer horror that must have been experienced by the ACC staff member on the realisation that he or she had inadvertently emailed a document to a person who did not have any right to have the document. I am actually a bit surprised by the lack of empathy from the deputy leader of the Labour Party about this the so-called shadow Minister for Bureaucrats. In his long call he made very little if any mention about the staff member concerned. But I have some compassion for that staff member. I have worked for ACC; it is a big complex organisation. There are many balls in the air being juggled—a bit like being a senior whip I suppose—and sometimes a ball is dropped. But that is not why nearly 9000 people are upset and disappointed that potentially private information has been disclosed. They are upset and disappointed because the person to whom that information was sent—in an email that probably had a trailer on it that said “Information contained in this if it is not for the recipient should not be used and should be sent back to the sender”; That is a pretty standard sort of trailer that gets put on every single email and according to the information that has so far been disclosed that did not happen. There will be a police investigation and there will be a Privacy Commissioner investigation but to me that lies at the heart of why those 9000 people are now going through the stress and upset that they are. 
Mr Robertson talked about ACC performance—that this is an issue about performance. Mr Hague also said that this was an issue about ACC performance and I absolutely agree with him. In the 3½ years since I have been in this House the shadow spokespeople for ACC—Maryan Street Chris Hipkins and now Andrew Little—have said an awful lot about ACC but the one thing they have not said is the thing that the public have been dying to hear and that is an apology; an apology for the appalling mess that was left by them when they left office for their contribution to $7.2 billion of financial deficit that was left as a legacy by a softening Labour Government that saw ACC as a social cash cow for people in the grey area between accident and medical. I have direct knowledge of that. 
I heard Mr Hague in his call talk about a culture of disentitlement. What I would suggest is that this is about a culture of more accurate entitlement according to the Woodhouse principles which he espoused. I can give him an absolute assurance that those principles remain sound and that this Government is committed to them. But it has simply got to an unacceptable level and the level of acceptance of claims on ACC in dubious circumstances was simply not able to be continued. The unfunded liability that this Government was left with the billions of dollars of levies—extra—that had to be paid by levy payers in this country which thankfully this Government has turned round is what it is about in terms of ACC performance and if members want to have an urgent debate I would suggest that that is really what this is about. The Labour Opposition continues— 
Andrew Little 
: Tell us about Nick Smith. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: Nick Smith has very little to do with the actions of Bronwyn Pullar. I feel very sorry for that claimant. I have had a number of people thanks to Labour members in Dunedin sending all their ACC clients to the National office in Dunedin and based on the experience I have had with them they have had very good outcomes with an excellent ACC team down there on extremely difficult issues. But let us be very clear about what this is about. This is about the actions of a member of the public exploiting a mistake made by an ACC officer. The questions raised by Mr Hague in question time today do a disservice to the Privacy Commissioner and her independence. I have every confidence that she will get to the bottom of what has happened and that some very good outcomes will come from it. But this is about ACC performance and we are still waiting for the “sorry” from Labour.