Elderly people who can’t afford $50-a-time physio treatment, families of suicide victims and others should have their ACC services reinstated now that levies are being reduced, says Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton.

“ACC services were slashed by 200% for thousands of people, and the government said the cuts were made necessary by ACC losses. Now that levies are being reduced and the losses are exposed as a sham, those services should be reinstated,” Jim Anderton said.

“In 2009, when the National Government increased levies and cut services, ACC had its highest reserves ever - with over $11 billion put away to meet the cost of future claims. It had taken in over a billion dollars more than it paid out in the previous year.

“At the time, ACC Minister Nick Smith claimed the scheme was in crisis - but that was never true. ACC’s giant reserves were hit by the global financial crisis - they soon recovered. The reserves exist because ACC was changing from a pay-as-you-go scheme to one where the future cost of liabilities is fully funded. This is an accounting change. When a more conservative view was taken about the future cost of liabilities, that was not a change in ACC’s underlying success; it was a change in policy.

“Now both of the global economic shock and the change in accounting policies have worked their way through the system, which is why Nick Smith is cutting ACC levies that he never had to increase. The ACC system was never broken.

“The levies were only ever increased to make ACC less popular and support his attempts to privatise it.

“Now that levies are being reduced to where they should be, he should also be reinstating cuts to ACC.

“Examples of cuts included a dramatic and unannounced increase in the number of cases sent for review. One example included a seventeen year old who dislocated her shoulder playing water polo, and whose injury claim was rejected by ACC on the basis that the girl was ‘pre-disposed to dislocate her shoulder.’

“The number of cases like this sent for review roughly doubled suddenly when National took office.

“That is the human cost of the cuts Nick Smith made. Now that he is admitting levies can come down, he should be fixing these cuts as well,” Jim Anderton said.

ENDS

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