Robertson Grant: Urgent Debates Declined — Skycity Convention Centre—Inquiry into Expressions of Interest Process; Urgent Debates — Accident Compensation Corporation—Resignations 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: Urgent Debates Declined — Skycity Convention Centre—Inquiry into Expressions of Interest Process; Urgent Debates — Accident Compensation Corporation—Resignations 
[Sitting date: 13 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2921. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 New Zealanders should be proud of ACC. New Zealanders should be proud of a scheme that has lasted over decades. I want to say this too: Sir Owen Woodhouse is a great New Zealander a fantastic New Zealander. National Party members were the people he had to really convince about establishing ACC. He had some alignment with them I think at the time but they are the persons who had to be convinced about having the scheme. New Zealanders should be incredibly proud of a 24/7 no-fault scheme—the scheme that is the envy of the world. The PricewaterhouseCoopers report that came out said that this scheme is the envy of the world. And yet this Government has systematically trashed the reputation of ACC. From the moment it got into office it has systematically trashed the reputation of ACC. 
We have been over it once already in this debate but we need to go over it again. What the Government did on first coming into office was to manufacture a crisis in ACC. That is what it did when it first came in. And the Hon Nick Smith stands up in the House and reads out the numbers that were going on in ACC’s accounts at the time conveniently forgetting something that Mr English likes to bring up from time to time—a little matter called the global financial crisis. And what was happening—[ 
Interruption 
] The GFC which is not to be confused with  
The GC 
 Mr Mallard. That is Mr Mallard’s favourite show. The global financial crisis is what actually caused those problems for ACC. But Dr Smith does not want to hear about that. Dr Smith wants only to hear about the fact that he cannot be held responsible or that he cannot take any of the blame for what happened in ACC. But the truth is that a financial crisis was manufactured in ACC and the people who bore the brunt of that were the levy payers right across this country—the employees and the employers right across this country. They are the people who bore the brunt of Nick Smith’s manufactured crisis. 
In the meantime he sacked the board of ACC that he inherited and began the planning for privatisation. Let us not forget—hearing David Bennett stand up and tell us what National cares about with regard to ACC—that the plan of the National Party is to privatise ACC. That is the plan of the National Party. For once that is actually what the National Party went to the country and said before the election. It has done it once before Mr Bennett. The track record from the 1990s is there. We had to come in and reverse it. National was planning it again. The privatisation agenda is what Nick Smith was setting up. He manufactured the crisis he sacked the board and he began bringing in people who would implement the privatisation agenda. 
Every electorate MP in this House knows what happened after the 2008 election: the number of ACC cases went up. And the reason those cases kept coming in the door of MPs’ offices is because the National Government’s agenda for ACC the privatisation agenda was put in play. So we had the assessments that began to talk about the existing injuries that people had—no matter that they had nothing to do with the new injuries that people had—and people were turned down. I went with constituents as a constituent MP to help them prepare their cases because there was nobody out there who could do it for them. These were people who were genuinely injured. Constituent MPs right across this Parliament know what happened there. 
Then we had the disgraceful cases of people who had been victims of sexual abuse who had their counselling support taken away. It was a disgraceful situation that this National Government—and Nick Smith as well—has never fully taken responsibility for. We have also seen it with hearing impairment. Disentitlement is the legacy of this Government when it comes to ACC. It is not something that the other side of the House can be proud of. It is disentitlement—taking away from people what they were entitled to taking away what New Zealanders were entitled to when we gave up the right to sue when we said we will have this scheme that will protect us all 24 hours a day 7 days a week. This Government comes along with its agenda to privatise and takes away entitlements from people. It is a disgrace. 
But then it carried on from there under this Government. It moved on from the privatisation agenda to undermining ACC itself—cutting staff. Then we had the situation with Nick Smith and his letters on behalf of Bronwyn Pullar. Let us be absolutely clear. What that looked like was that if you knew someone in the National Party you would get treated differently by ACC. That is what it looked like and that is the perception that New Zealanders have: if you knew someone in the National Party things would be different for you in ACC. A Minister wrote letters on ministerial letterhead that endorsed a claimant and talked about the ability of a claimant to return to work. What is one of ACC’s main issues and interests? The ability of someone to return to work. And that is what Nick Smith wrote about. For Nick Smith to stand up in the House today and refuse again to accept responsibility for what he did shows that he should not return to Cabinet because he clearly has not learnt the lesson of what happened there. 
The saddest thing of all of this is that this Government is so totally distracted by scandals and mismanagement and cronyism that it is letting go of one of the great things that New Zealand has ACC—let alone the fact that it is not at all focused on trying to grow the economy or any small matters like that. The Government is so focused on its own mismanagement and its own cronyism within the organisation that it is completely distracted and ACC is in trouble as a result. 
The Minister for ACC spoke of the need for a culture change within ACC. There are many of us on this side of the House who would agree that there are aspects of the way things have gone in ACC that we would like to see changed. But the Minister’s idea of a culture change and our idea on this side of the House of a culture change are very different things. The culture change that the Minister is talking about is a culture change towards more privatisation. That is the culture change the Minister means. She does not mean a culture change where we get back to the default assumption being that somebody who comes before ACC is a New Zealand citizen who has a right to the entitlements that ACC offers. Yes there will be people who try to rip the system off and we should root out those people and make sure that they do not get their claims fulfilled. But the vast majority of New Zealanders who come before ACC come because they have been hurt or injured and they expect ACC to be able to provide the support and the services that they need. The culture change this Minister wants is to take more entitlements away and to have a greater role for the Australian insurance companies which benefited the last time when National wanted to privatise ACC. They are what will benefit. The interests here are not those New Zealanders who get hurt or injured or their families. The interests being perpetuated by National are the Australian insurance companies which will benefit from privatisation. 
So the culture change that this Government wants is not the same culture change that we want. We want a culture change that sees ACC back to its core principles back to the Woodhouse principles the things that make New Zealanders proud. But you know what? We know where this culture change is heading because of who the Government has decided to put in place to run ACC now and that is Paula Rebstock—Paula Rebstock the go-to person for the National Party the person whom the National Party is turning to as it looks at its agenda of welfare reform as it looks at its agenda of undermining social security in this country. It is bringing her in as well to look at ACC. It brings her in to oversee what is happening at ACC—further proof that the culture of change that this Government is looking for is a culture of change that is around putting privatisation in place. 
This is a distracted out-of-touch Government. These are people who no longer understand why they were elected—to promote ACC and to promote the well-being of New Zealanders. They have got themselves so mired in scandal and cronyism. We have now a Minister for ACC who is incapable of dragging ACC back to where it should be. This Government needs to get New Zealanders in a position where they can be proud of ACC again. At the moment they cannot be because this Government has mismanaged ACC it has manufactured a crisis and it has introduced cronyism into one of the most important institutions in our land. Those members should be ashamed of themselves. ACC is in a shambles and it is this Government’s fault.