Bennett David: Urgent Debates — Accident Compensation Corporation—Release of Personal Information 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett David: Urgent Debates — Accident Compensation Corporation—Release of Personal Information 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2012. Volume:678;Page:1083. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 I would just like to follow on from my colleague Michael Woodhouse with regard to this matter. I think everybody in our community and especially in this Parliament understands the pressures that ACC has in the work that it does. It is not an easy organisation to run and it is not easy work for those within ACC to undertake. They have a very vital role in our community. Many years ago this Parliament made a decision on how it would deal with accidents and injury and ACC was born out of that. The Green Party member mentioned the Woodhouse principles and my colleague just mentioned the fundamental basis of ACC. In doing that complex job there will sometimes be mistakes made. I am sure that those involved would like to have their time again and not make those mistakes but at the end of the day things like that have happened and do happen and then it is up to really this Parliament and also the corporation to deal with those mistakes. The mistake has translated into a bigger result than I guess it could have been if the email was returned and no action was taken by the recipient. But at the end of the day we are in this position now and I think everybody recognises the pressure that will be on ACC in this regard. 
The Minister has made it quite clear that there will be a review and that the review process will look at ways forward and I think it is important for this House to focus on that. We want to be able to help ACC as much as possible. In any organisation there is learning within and development of that organisation and sometimes through the mistakes that are made an organisation or individuals can learn and grow. Through this process I am sure there will be some suggestions made and those suggestions will be for the best interests of the corporation and all those individuals who may be claimants or may be working within the corporation. There will be claimants who will feel that this information should not have been released or that this issue should not have got to this stage of the process in the sense that it is becoming a very public issue for them. Our thoughts are with those people because it is their personal information and they will be very guarded about it and rightly so. 
But it is a situation that has arisen. It is a situation that many people involved within the corporation and also those individuals who may have had their cases exposed in the public arena would wish had not happened. That is something that we cannot change in this House. But we can look forward and we can look at ways we can deliver better services and a better corporation going forward. I think that is the focus of what we need to do here today and looking forward through this situation. A corporation like ACC has to deal with over a million cases a year which is a big drain on any organisation and that will stretch the ability of any individual or corporation to be able to deliver perfect services all the time. That is something that I think we need to be mindful of in the sense of the proportionality of what ACC deals with. It is a very big organisation and it deals with very sensitive and individual issues and information. Nobody wants a situation to arise where that personal information gets into the public arena. It is very unfortunate that that may happen but in some cases as in this case that is the unfortunate result. We need to be aware of that and look forward to what we can do to make sure that these situations do not arise in the future. Also we need to be aware of and have regard for those who may have been affected during this situation.