When Nick Smith told a pack of lies around the appointment of John Judge as ACC Board chair, including to the Select Committee I sat on, the Labour Party focussed on Smith because Judge had a good reputation for commercial nous and had done a good job as Te Papa Board chair.
His statements yesterday are a real worry.
He is working on the false assumption that money for all the future payments for past injuries has to be collected this (or last) year. That is just nonsense.
Our government took a decision to collect a bit more each year to shift the scheme from one that was “pay as you go” to one where the future costs of this years accidents were collected this year and a bit of the future costs of previous years accidents was also collected.
Levy levels depend on how many years are taken to do the catch up. To characterise it as a scheme at risk of falling over reflects badly on Mr Judge.
That made for pretty chilling reading, cutting length of time people spent on Acc and finding cheaper rehabilitation providers. Surely, if someone is on ACC on term then they must need to be. Let’s harrass the sick and injured.
Cheaper? So surely in some cases the quality of the treatment will go down and maybe more errors will be made. And what entitlements are they cutting?
Can’t ACC be funded in some other way?
I meant long term.
Trevor .. if Smith lied does that mean he will be taken to task and maybe dismissed?
The report ( written by the CEO) seems to have some good points, including the fact that premiums are lower than for Australia. And the invested reserves seems to be ahead of benchmarks for the returns. However some of the returns seem to based on speculation
Is there a pattern there from Smith : ACC Board runctions, ETS legislation, ACC Annual Report
Creeping privatisation. You guys really need to pick your game up and make a connection with the voters. You can see that this lot’s second term would be a whirlwind of short-sighted idiocy. You can just see how they’re shaping up. C’mon. take ‘em out at the next election!
trevor,
That is quite a serious accusation! I suggest you make it in the house.
Smith , like English, is a throwback from the nineties. There is no personal charisma, but strangely gets a free ride from the media. The Copenhagen event will be a chance for him to shine on a world stage, or more likely a mediocre experience spun madly some some high priced comms advisors.
You seem to be having trouble with simple maths, Trevor. Each year the ACC blowout is increasing by about $2 billion dollars (the $4 billion this year was due to some accounting re-estimates). These were Labour’s figures as well as the Nats.
While you may be able to spread out the current $24 billion deficit over 15 or even 20 years, you have to cover the annual increase annually, otherwise the deficit just keeps getting bigger. This means that Smith and English need to find another $2 billion every year. This is a far cry from Labour’s token annual increments.
No, in all cases quality will go down as that’s the only way to get cheaper services while maintaining profits.
Macdoc – I think I understand this just about as well as anyone in Parliament and you are correct that accounting changes have been a very big factor. But probably the biggest driver has been widely fluctuating estimates of both future costs and the value of the large investment portfolio.
I have no doubt that there needs to be an ongoing funding review, and that treatments need to be kept under review especially to ensure that developing technologies and cures can be brought on quickly which will help both users and the scheme.
But suggesting the scheme is at risk is just fearmongering not becoming of its Chair and much more like Smith,
They don’t seem to be having any trouble finding $2b/year to subsidise the polluters.
Or Blinglish’s house
Please try and stay on thread Trevor
When the same lying was tried on in March, a good fisking was offered by specialist business journalists Brian Fallow and Rod Oram.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/business/2262350/Rod-Oram-ACC-the-political-claims-and-the-reality
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10561167
[...] maybe not. It seems like it is suddenly going to get a whole lot more expensive. Trevor Mallard seems to think that the government is fear-mongering. He, along with Brian Fallow and Rod Oram, [...]
Thanks Sacha – good articles links working now. I see from SST we are being softened up to accept rapid Cabinet decision to increease tax especially on low income Kiwis based on Nick Smith’s understanding of finance. A real worry.
Warning trolling Ban next time Trevor
Please try and stay on thread Trevor
The Lies being fronted by Smith and Key need a strong response from Labour and fast!
I’m looking forward to Labour’s strong and fast response. I assume we will see this soon in the major news media?
No doubt you’ll be able to set the record straight that there is no deficit in the ACC budget and it’s all just scare-mongering from National?
No doubt Labour will be able to produce solid evidence that everything is actually hunky dory with ACC and that we won’t need extra levies to sort it out.
Just read the CEOs report from ACC L-rat. You wont find the scare mongering from Smith and Judd there
http://acc.co.nz/PRD_EXT_CSMP/groups/external_communications/documents/reports_results/prd_ctrb118047.pdf
Also couldnt find mention of $4 Billion ‘loss’ from the CEO.
Thats because it came from Smiths spin doctors
I’m reading the report, very enlighting. Am most curious as to why (and under a National government) the number of staff paid over $100,000 has jumped from 192 to 259 (a 35% increase)
I also see John Judge calls the financial situation ‘unsustainable’ and note in the last year the deficit between assets and liabilities grew $5 billion to $13 billion.
Are you suggesting that Jan White would dispute the figures?
John Judge is just Nick Smiths parrot. The CEO doesnt seem to mention any alarming figures which suggests there arent any
Seems we can officially call ‘jumped the shark’ on this thread lol