Robertson Grant: Urgent Debates — Accident Compensation Corporation—Removal of Chair of Board 
Robertson Grant: Urgent Debates — Accident Compensation Corporation—Removal of Chair of Board 
[Volume:652;Page:1773] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Speaker. What we have seen from the National Party with the sacking of Ross Wilson is simply stage one of its plan for accident compensation. It is a plan to move to privatisation to reduce coverage and to increase the role of private insurance providers—largely Australian private insurance providers. It is a message of “cut and sell” and it is petty politics to sack Ross Wilson from the role of chair of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) board. Ross Wilson is a person with years of experience in ACC. He is somebody who has been there and done that at the worker level and at the board level of ACC and sacking him is simply a matter of petty politics from Nick Smith. 
National’s agenda for accident compensation began before the election. Merrill Lynch gave it away to us. It told us that the work account was going to be opened up to private insurance. We have heard a lot today about the principles of the accident compensation scheme the principles that Owen Woodhouse put forward. One of the things Owen Woodhouse said was that involving private insurance providers in the scheme would fundamentally undermine it because their motive of profit fundamentally goes against a 24-hour no-fault scheme. As Owen Woodhouse said the compensation regime before we brought in universal coverage was a lottery and that is what National wants to return us to: a lottery where New Zealanders are exposed to litigation. 
We have given away the right to sue. New Zealanders should be and are proud of the accident compensation scheme because it is our scheme. It is Kiwis looking after Kiwis. It is our collective response to injury to accidents and to rehabilitation. It prevents New Zealanders from being exposed to an American-style insurance scheme and that is the scheme that the National Government is taking us back towards. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Rubbish! 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I ask Dr Smith whether he said to the Australians that this scheme was going to be opened up for private insurance because if he did then he is fundamentally undermining the scheme that Owen Woodhouse put forward. Owen Woodhouse said that this was our collective response to injury and accidents and it would be undermined by the role of the private sector. 
We need to be clear today that Nick Smith has put up a straw man to show that New Zealanders cannot afford the accident compensation scheme. We are saying to him that that straw man is based on a loss of investment income on interest rates going up and on some accounting changes. Yes there have been some costs but fundamentally the accident compensation scheme is affordable with the coverage we have now. The agenda here is to reduce coverage. National needs to come clean on its agenda for accident compensation because it is not acceptable here in this House that the principles that Owen Woodhouse put forward are somehow being upheld by a National Government that wants to bring in private insurers. Private insurers are driven by a profit motive. This is a scheme Kiwis can and should be proud of because it is a universal no-fault scheme that looks after New Zealanders throughout their lives. It is a scheme that Labour in Government has tried to uphold. 
National has never liked the scheme and in the 1990s it brought in private insurance to undermine the scheme. We know that private insurers in this scheme will cherry-pick to ensure that they pick off those cases that can be easily dealt with. That will leave the Government provider ACC as the default provider and the last-resort provider putting further pressure on the corporation. It is an unacceptable approach and it is the approach that the National Party is taking today. 
New Zealanders should be proud of the accident compensation scheme because the PricewaterhouseCoopers report has shown that it is working best in the world for accident compensation schemes. It is supported by a range of people across the board and it is supported because the costs have been very internationally comparative. In New Zealand it costs 78c per $100 of worker wages to fund workplace accident compensation. In Australia it is an average of $2 in every $100 of wages. In New Zealand 88 percent of people return to work within 6 months of being injured compared with the Australian average of 85 percent. In New Zealand the cost of managing claims for accident compensation is 8 percent of ACC’s total expenditure and in Australia it is up to 32 percent. 
That is because we are not focused on management costs. Private insurers are focused on management costs as that is where they make their money. In New Zealand we have a scheme that is focused on rehabilitating people and on people getting back into work. That is the kind of scheme New Zealanders should be proud of. That is the kind of scheme that Ross Wilson spent 25 years working on and ensuring that it works well.