The wheels are starting to come off National’s PR campaign to undermine ACC as more and more people notice the gap between their spin and the reality.
This morning’s Dom Post has an interesting article [offline*] where the managing director of actuaries Eriksen & Associates refutes Nick Smith’s lies about the “cost blowout” and the corporation being insolvent.
Here’s the money quote from John Eriksen:
“All this talk of liabilities being blown out is complete nonsense. It’s ill-founded scaremongering, which, given the current economic picture, is the last thing people need to be told.
“All this nonsense is easily explained. Assets have basically dropped in value, helped in no small part by the collapse of the markets. But the ACC has also taken a hit on the liabilities side. So, on paper the losses have ballooned, when in reality there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Eriksen also added that new international accounting standards had made a difference because the new discount rates had added billions of dollars to ACC’s liabilities, when in truth that might not be the case.
If Nick Smith were honest he’d apologise for lying to the public, reinstate Ross Wilson and cancel his plans to cut services and hand ACC over to the private insurance industry. But somehow I can’t see that happening.
* Business section, C1.
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