CHANGES, THEY ARE ACOMIN’ FOR ACC?: ACC Minister Nick Smith is announcing changes to ACC on Wednesday. What will the headline be? Will the changes mean privatisation? Or partial privatisation? Will the changes be the end of ACC as we know it? Or will the changes ensure ACC is there for future users?
FOR SALE?: Asset Sales are a big election topic. National is running on the idea that a partial state-asset sale will give businesses the capital needed to expand their business and keeping them off government funds. While Labour is running on the promise there will be no sale. Will asset sales have a large impact on the election? Should asset sales go ahead? Is 51% ownership enough? Or will a mixed-ownership model give our economy the injection boost we need?
LIVE pub politics from the Backbencher Pub: Wednesday, 1st of June. The panel : Green Party MP David Clendon, Labour MP Chris Hipkins, National MP Katrina Shanks, and United Future Leader Peter Dunne.
Mixed-ownership will give the capitalists the extra wealth they want and it will be coming from the rest of us. Meanwhile, our economy will falter and slow producing more poverty and unemployment.
Go Chippie!
!
They will gut ACC and feed its carcus to the insurance companies!
!
And then they will force the bennies to work for slave wages
!
I hope they know to talk about what this means in relation to the welfare changes, and how people kicked off ACC won’t just be given the sickness or invalid’s benefit, but will go directly from earnings related compensation to receiving an inadequate and fully work-tested benefit.
Key and English don’t realise their welfare changes will cause riots.
@ Anton’s suggestion that “welfare changes will cause riots” speaks to a sense of entitlement among beneficiaries.
Beneficiaries shoud be grateful that other go to work to earn the money that keeps them. because others work and pay tax, the benficary does not starve or is not compelled to work themself. To demand (even?) more – and to raise the notion of a riot should it be withdrawn – is ungrateful at best and parsitic at worst.
Further, Anton’s imlication that the masses need to be pacified through payment is offensive, for it suggest that the taxpayer must pay to maintin order under threat: ‘give it to us, or we’ll take it’ appears to be the message that Anton is condoning.
@Spud
If ACC is so great, and so efficient, and so wonderful, then it ought o have no fear from the (inherently inferior?) market.
If (a-not-for-profit) ACC can supply a given cover cheaper than a (for-profit) competitor, then the competitir wont stay around in the market long and the default situation we have now will reign.
So what are you afraid of?
I put it to you that the anti-ACC-competition people are deathly afraid that ACC-as-overblown-welfare might not be available, and that is what scares them.
@Misanthropic Curmudgeon:
May 31, 2011 at 2:27 pm
This is what we’re afraid of . . .
from this morning’s Financial Times:
Britain’s private care faces crisis
Britain’s care homes face a deepening crisis as some private-sector companies that piled into the sector struggle with their financial miscalculations amid fresh evidence that they provide worse quality care than their non-profit rivals . . .
The private sector pays lower wages on average than the non-profit and public sectors and has higher staff turnover rates, according to industry data . .
The increased financial pressure on the industry coincides with weakened regulatory oversight. The FT investigation found that the CQC, hit by its own financial constraints, reduced inspections by 70 per cent in the six months to March this year compared with the previous six months . . .
“Fundamentally, it’s now got to a point of being dangerous [for residents] – and it’s going to get worse,” said one CQC inspector, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “If I had a relative who needed to go to a care service, I’d be concerned” . .
“At a time when the private sector is being promoted for its astute business strategies, they’ve made a pig’s ear out of it [residential care]” said Margaret Flynn, a senior associate at social care consultancy CPEA.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/307bbd3e-8af5-11e0-b2f1-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1NuDa9sTF
@MC – I’m not afraid of the market!
I just don’t want ACC to be privatised and / or opened up to competition.
The bennies should be fed, there are no bleepin jobs, therefore they are bennies!
Isn’t David younger than you? And Peter is a mere three months older? And Katrina just into her 40s? Hmmm, never thought you’d admit to being old!
And wasn’t the only insurance company to fail after the Christchurch earthquake the mutual company (i.e. non-profit)?
@Hugin, and what makes you think the ACC monopolistic model would avoid what you are scared of?
@Spud,
You say you are not farid of the market, but dont want competition: why?
Misanthropic Curmudgeon – why don’t you turn your spell checker on – it would make your rants far easier to read!
Misanthropic Curmudgeon – your comments are so pathetic they’re not really worth responding to, but I’ll give you a wee taste. {Deleted, please try to avoid personal comments like that, Grant}
You assume that government money used to pay benefits remains the personal property of taxpayers therefore beneficiaries should feel grateful to them (the taxpayers) for “going to work” so that they (the beneficiaries) can be “kept” by the taxpayer. This is utter nonsense. Paying tax is something people are reuired by law to do. Once it’s paid it no longer belongs to the “taxpayer”. If a taxpayer doesn’t like the way government spends government money then the remedy the taxpayer has is at the ballot box, not by trying to make beneficiaries feel personally grateful towards taxpayers personally. Our social security system is something NZ’s regarded as important since its introduction during Michael Joseph Savage’s reign in the 1930s. It’s clearly been under attack over the past twenty years or so, and much of it has been dissembled, but what’s left is there for a reason. And meeting the criteria means that receipt of a benefit does become an entitlement.
You seem to think I support the idea of beneficiaries rioting. I didn’t say say this at all. I said that National’s planned welfare changes will cause riots. You need to read properly.
To say that rioting is akin to threatening the taxpayer goes back to that ridiculous notion that taxpayers remain the personal owners of the tax they pay. If beneficiaries rioted, individual taxpayers would be the last thing on their minds. They’d be thinking about how to feed their families and how to meet medical bills or disability costs and how to stop the mortgagee sale, while at the same time looking for work, or being forced into low-wage or unsuitable jobs by public servants instructed by Key/English/Bennett et al to kick as many people off benefits as they can, regardless of the consequences on families. This is why people will be rioting – nobody will be thinking about you and the tax you’re legally required to pay.
{balance deleted. As Lockwood would say, likely to lead to disorder, grant}
Because ACC is a wonderful no fault scheme that is world class. Why break it up and feed bits of it to private companies?
@Jilly Bee – Hi ya
@Misanthropic Curmudgeon
May 31, 2011@ 8:01pm
In the case of ACC, the state owned monopolistic model has already resulted in a better outcome.
Oh, and by the way, what makes you think that privatization will lead to a more competitive outcome?
wow I guess if Nact succeeds NZers should look foward to a privatised health system similar to what the bush administration had in place and we all know how much of a glowing success that was.
I mean under the bush administration people were forced to have limbs amputated because it was the only affordable option sourced from “Capitalism a love story”
And if the Rural broadband iniciative is Nact’s idea of competition NZers are doomed
beneficiaries are of course the least likely to riot which is precisely why govts feel safe picking on them. The ones who kick up a stink when the taxpayer (him again) doesn’t bail them out are the rich eg the bankers worldwide.
benerficiaries are tax payers as well as children with bankaccounts not to mention the over 55′s who national has lovingly stamped with used by date they spent all their lives paying tax for what so nact could fiddle with their retirement scheme and serve them a romantic candle lit dinner of sloppy cat food
nz the nation of haves and have nots
MC I would agree if you were comparing apples with apples but you’re not. ACC is not a traditional insurance company and was never intended to be. While we’re not comparing apples with apples, does this mean you support bring back the right to sue for personal injury by accident, that would complete the model you and others prefer?
“or is not compelled to work themself” Nonsense in 2007 the then Labour government cracked down big time. I know of one member of my extended family currently on unemployment. He did not attend a seminar and so was stood down for 6 weeks. He secured a 3 month contract starting in June and boy is that a hard concept for WINZ to get their heads around.
@Powerfreaks assertion that beneficiaries are taxpayers too is simplistic to the point of dishonest: yes, they pay GST and therefore pay tax, but their benefit comes from the taxpayer. To claim that a beneficiary pays/contributes to the taxpayer is akin to claiming that a hole in a bucket of water helps fill the bucket due to evaporation and condensate: clearly absurd.
Beneficiaries are by defintion a tax-sink, which when in conjunction with an inability to constribute is fair enough. But the issue is those who choose to be a tax sink.
I fail to see what is “vile” and “terrifying” about requiring beneficiaries to make real and concerted efforts to get off a benefit, such as kicking a drug/alchol habit, working a few hours a week when the kids are at school, or tying the DPB to a requirement that the kid actually goes to school.
@Anton’s willingness to divorce the source of the money (ie the taxpayer) from the distributor of the money (ie the state) is disturbing for its naive simplicity.
Anton’s comments about the merits of the welfare state and the attack it has been under fail to deal with several issues: the welfare state (which has been maintained and enhanced by both National and Labour, as well as been pruned by both National and Labour) was not designed fnor developed to cope with institutionalised welafe dependancy by choice. It is/was a safety net, and not alifestyle choice.
We now have beneficaries crying poor because their kids dont have a playstation, and cant ‘engage and participate in the community’ This is not what welafe is about.
The attacks on welfare have not been from those who seek to have welfare be a help (from both sides of the political spectrum), but from those (one the left) who see the welfare state as a right to a middle-class lifestyle choice.
@Spud, ther eis no proposal to ‘break up ACC’ as you claim, but to open up a monoploly to competition. If ACC is as wonderful as some commenatators in this thread suggest, then it will drive the private sector away (profitless). Any self-respecting statist/lefty should relish the possibility of private enterprise being sent scurrying away with its atil between its legs, surely?
“about requiring beneficiaries to make real and concerted efforts to get off a benefit” You are showing your ignorance of the current system. They do, in fact, have strict criteria, ongoing to meet. In addition a political decision was made some decades ago that it was cheaper to pay unemployment benefit than to try to get to full employment.
The majority of beneficiaries are not lazy, are not there for a lifetime, do not enjoy being on it, and find it hard t make ends meet on it, and tarring everyone with the same brush in this regard is as nonsensical as stating that if one director committed fraud, all company directors are fraudsters
Again MO you continue to compare a standard insurance company with ACC, this is not apples versus apples. At least take the time to read the 2008 PWC report. I have been teaching ACC legislation for some years and studied it at university.
The insurers will cherry pick, that’s how they make a profit,and the state will be left with the high end, high risk coverage with no low end low risk to offset it. Stop comparing a social contract with an insurance profit model.
Do you accept Nick Smith was wrong when he said in 2009 that ACC had to be opened up because it wasnt able to financial sustain itself?
IF you want to propose a competitive insurance model than do it properly, and bring back the right to sue for personal injury by accident. I mean, what would it matter? All these employers you and others talk about will be bending over backwards to have safe workplaces (for some magical reason that they don’t now) so have nothing to fear from being sued???
Misanthropic Curmudgeon – You say “Beneficiaries are by defintion a tax-sink, which when in conjunction with an inability to constribute is fair enough. But the issue is those who choose to be a tax sink.”
Don’t you think that those who are unable to “contribute” (assuming your definition) must include those who genuinely cannot find work because there are no jobs? Even this government accepts that most people who receive a benefit want to work. This is backed up by the statistics for the length of time most people stay on a benefit, which are almost invariably short periods, affected by rates of job growth. The group you refer to as “choosing to be a tax sink” the government accepts is very small, yet its policies assume that everyone is able to work, despite disability, caring for children, or whether the jobs are there or not.
@Antons claim about “those who genuinely cannot find work because there are no jobs” is patently incorrect, when NZ imports (unskilled) people specificially to do jobs that beneficiaries refuse to do. Recall that the last Labour government copped flack for expanding the migrant worker scheame on this.
The claim ‘there are no jobs’ is patently false. There might not the sort of job they want, but there are jobs. That NZ imports labour proves it.
Please note that my comments on benficiaries are (hopefully) phrased to exclude those oft-referred to as the ‘genuine needy’, such as disabled, or recently redundant. The ‘genuine needy’ are not, IMNSHO, those who choose to be on a benfit because they cant be bothered getting up, its just too much effort, or the wage/conditions dont match their inflated sense of self-worth. If these people choose not to work (which is a legitimate choice everyone is entitled to) then they should supprt themselves and not rely on the taxpayer to fund their lifestyle.
“Unemployment is not a mere accidental in a private-enterprise economy blemish. On the contrary, it is part of the essential mechanism of the system, and has a definite function to fulfil.” Sir William Beveridge
“those who choose to be on a benfit because they cant be bothered getting up, its just too much effort, or the wage/conditions dont match their inflated sense of self-worth” What percentage does this group amount to MC?
You guys must be gutted. No TV coverage. Looks like handing a multi-billion dollar public business over to the Tories’ business mates is not real news these days. I guess after all those years of ‘corporate’ hospitality, those who make the ‘news judgements’ in TV are no longer capable of seeing corruption when it slaps them in the face?
@ Tracey’s questioning opf a percentage of the unempolyed who cant be bothered getting up or have an infalted sense of worth is hard to quantify, but is in excees of the numbers of migrant-workers imported by both Labour and National governments to do work the beneficiaries refuse to do.
MC, source/evidence for that statement please?
@tracey, source of evidence for what?
That both National and Labour governments have created/mainatined a miogrant worker scheame?
That these migrant workers do work in areas where there are pleantly of unemployed who (by definition) choose not to do that wrk themselves?