Dyson Ruth: Estimates Debate — In Committee Procedure 
Dyson Ruth: Estimates Debate — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:618;Page:14431] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister for ACC) 
: 
 I begin by acknowledging the sadness of that speech and saying it issued a very dire warning to the taxpayers of New Zealand because there was a commitment from Paul Hutchison to privatise the Accident Compensation Corporation again. If the lessons of our past 1-year experiment with private insurers in New Zealand were not enough why does the member not look across the Tasman to what happened when HIH went bust? Our private insurers were loss leading in exactly the same way that HIH was. When HIH collapsed it left the taxpayers of Australia owing millions and million of dollars. That has to be a very basic lesson. Loss leading in insurance causes collapses and in the end the taxpayer has to pick that up. 
Despite my disappointment with that speech Dr Hutchison and other members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee had a very engaged and engaging time and I thank them for the courtesy and genuine interest they showed to me as Minister and to the officials from both the Accident Compensation Corporation and the Department of Labour when we considered the estimates. I notice that many of the points I went through with the select committee have been picked up in its estimates report and I would like to share those with other members who may not have had the opportunity to read them in the last little while. 
One of the key focuses for the coming year is to improve access to the accident compensation scheme because unfortunately although the majority of members would consider that we know our entitlements and know how to put forward a claim if we have an injury—it is quite straightforward for us—there are many people who are clearly under-represented in claim reporting particularly Maori and Pacific people older New Zealanders and people who have English as their second language. For those key groups who obviously have the same legal entitlement as others there will be a real emphasis to ensure they have full access to information about their entitlement under the scheme. 
The second focus I want to mention is on improving rehabilitation outcomes. That starts right from the beginning by ensuring that we have high-quality early-intervention rehabilitation programmes available to claimants. It also looks at the business centre where the response time to claimants’ enquiries has been greatly improved. The length of time it takes for the Accident Compensation Corporation to respond to queries has rapidly decreased and that is a very good thing in terms of the frustration of claimants but also their rehabilitation outcomes. 
 That aim of further improvement over the coming years has been reflected though in the claimant satisfaction survey. I want to report to the Committee that since 2002 the Accident Compensation Corporation has improved its percentage of claimant satisfaction from the low 70s to 84 percent which is nearly a 15 percent improvement in claimant satisfaction in the last 2 years. For those who have been on the scheme for a long time the claimant satisfaction level has increased from 78 percent to 89 percent and for those on it for over 52 weeks it has increased from 68 percent to 73 percent. I would like to see continued improvement in those claimant satisfaction levels and I hope that in next year’s estimates I can report a further improvement. 
The other area I discussed with the select committee was my commitment that the Accident Compensation Corporation would work with a whole-of-Government approach so that its relationships with other departments and agencies—particularly with the Ministry of Social Development but also with the Ministry of Health and others—are greatly improved. One of the initiatives we have been working on with regard to the collaboration with the Ministry of Social Development is ensuring that people who under the previous National Government were totally ignored and denied any support or assistance to move off accident compensation and into a decent job are now offered help by experienced work brokers. People who are on accident compensation long term would much prefer to have the dignity and income of a job but a lot of support is needed to get them to that position. That is the gap that we have filled and I am very proud of the Accident Compensation Corporation for doing that. 
The final point I want to talk about is one that we also discussed at the select committee. It relates to the legislation soon to be tabled in Parliament that will introduce major changes to the medical misadventure scheme. The medical misadventure provisions in accident compensation have been an anomaly for a long time in that they are the only part of the scheme where there is a necessity to attribute fault or to meet some bizarre lottery of having both a rare and a severe injury.