Labour, in other words, will do smoke and mirrors or make someone else pay for an election promise, as has been done in the past with ACC. There is no free lunch.

Yes yes, it’s all about John Key right now today. New policies that might stand for decades must be made up right now to stop him. His policies are evil, change is bad.

You keep up the good fight, lets ignore what actually might work and might not and lets just have the status quo – yeah yeah yeah.

Yes I’m onto the fact one is an Act and the other is an monopoly govt administration backed by an series of Act’s. That’s not problematic for me Steve. Did you visit the link I provided? It was a ‘History of ACC’ from the ACC website. ACC kinda say they evolved from the WCA?

In your haste you completely stampeded through what I was saying to Janet and grabbed something you could bat me with. Great.

Do you think I’m really confused about the WCA from 1900 and ACC today? Janet said “ACC was set up by politicians who agreed they never wanted people to have to fight for accident or injury support again. We dishonour them by dismantling it.”.

The question is Steve, who are we dishonoring? How have they already been dishonored by the changing implementations and iterations of ACC? How have they been dishonoured by the proliferation of it’s collection points? It’s subtle but steady slippage to user pays and the general lack of it’s transparency to the consumer today?

The initial system was honorable, I agree with Janet on that. Is it still an appropriate solution 108 years later – I’m not so sure.

I have had a read your posts above and essentially the only thing I disagree with is how we deliver a minimum level of cover for everybody. I don’t think a one size fits all model is the answer. I’m however all for (along with allowing private insurers into the frame) having a set govt premium much like today. General cover much like today. You can even call it ACC. Having tax deductible private insurance premiums changes the scene considerably. Same for health care & schooling. If we look at other growing economies this is generally one of the elements of how they manage the greater social good without being prescriptive in the delivery.

Perhaps we could discuss compulsory third party motor vehicle insurance instead of ACC, I think it’s the same concept as ACC. Unless you think that all motor vehicle third party insurance must move solely to a state monopoly we can continue to debate this without the emotion that ACC seems to muster.

Now onto Steve P. – Deep breath and start a new comment.

You could also try rebutting some of my arguments, which you’ve conveniently ignored once your position has become untenable.

Come on, burt, you can do better.

L

you don’t understand what the purpose of suing is or what ACC does.

Sorry can you re-post the shit you wrote after that – I switched off when you claimed to know more about my thoughts than I do.

you don’t understand what the purpose of suing is or what ACC does.

You sue to be compensation for the damage done to you by someone’s action. That’s why the payment you receive (if you can afford to sue, if you are successful) is called damages. Usually, damages do not fully compensate for costs and exemplary or punitive damages (that make ‘an example of’ or ‘punish’) the wrong-doer are extremely rare. the US situation in that respect is exceptional, in all other common law countries punitive damages are rare. Suing someone is not about ‘holding them to account’, it is about getting compensation for what you lost.

Now, the beauty of ACC is that you get that compensation without having to be rich enough and lucky enough to win a court case. It frees up the court system and everyone gets compensation. The incentive to reduce accidents comes from OSH, which can prosecute employers who have dangerous conditions regardless of whether accidents have actually occurred yet

Perhaps you could have a read of this ( History of ACC ) and have a think about how much ACC now resembles the original scheme.

In the original scheme Injured workers also had the right to sue an employer for negligence. How much did we dishonour the politicians who designed the original scheme when we removed that basic right – the right to hold someone accountable for being negligent and causing you injury.