Well, this one isn’t such a surprise, it has been expected. But the timing is classic, as with much bad news coming out at the moment with Key conveniently in Hawaii, and public too busy getting into the spirit of the season / consumerism. We’ll sell Whirinaki, the hobbit thing was a farce to deny workers their rights, the economy is tanking etc etc, but look, there’s Santa Claus!
The disastrous experiment of competition for ACC from the 1990s is to be repeated. Businesses will be allowed to chose a private firm to cover their workplace injuries. Workers won’t get to choose their level of cover of course, they’re just the ones who get injured or killed – why should they have a say.
It was such a mess last time, Labour just had to legislate as soon as they came to power and pretend like it had never happened. Most businesses will probably learn from last time, and stay well clear – it’s a shame National can’t learn. Some cheap-skates will no doubt try and reduce their workers’ cover, profiting Australian insurers. It’s often a wonder if National is really the Australia First Party…
With ACC style competition in Australia, their workers take longer to get back to work. PriceWaterhouseCoopers showed how much more efficient our ACC system is than anything else. But no, National seem determined to add costs to Kiwis to benefit their Aussie mates.
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Bonus: CTU seem to have excellent resources on the move to privatise workplace-insurance.
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