Oldest trick in the book

Written By: - Date published: 5:49 am, October 14th, 2009 - 7 comments
Categories: ACC, election funding - Tags:

How do you get someone to change their mind about something they like? Simple, find one negative element to it (nothing is perfect) and blow it into a major issue.

Nick Smith knows how to do this, he’s built a career on it. Now, he’s trying to make compensation payments to criminals the issue in ACC. By focusing on these payments that would strike most people as unjust, he’s hoping to get us saying ‘yeah, ACC sucks, let’s cut it’.

But are any crims actually getting compo? All Nick Smith has said is ACC spent $670,000 in medical treatment (unavoidable, as long as we’re a civilised society) for injuries arising from participation in crimes and that ACC had successful rejected nine claims for income compensation arising from such injuries. So, has any money actually been paid to criminals for lost income due to injuries sustained in a crime? If it has, it obviously isn’t much or Smith would have given us the number.

I assume Labour and the Greens have already lodged written questions to get the figure (Hint!)

It’s clear that Nick Smith is only kicking up a fuss over this to turn public opinion against ACC. Just like with the supposed ‘$4.8 billion loss’. And again, the political media docilely buy it (you need to read the business commentators, people who actually understand financial statements, to see the Nats lies exposed).

Whenever the Nats open their mouths on ACC, you have to remember who their funders are and what their agenda is. It’s about scaring up a crisis over ACC. Not because it’s a bad or inefficient system; it’s one of the cheapest, fairest, most efficient systems in the world. It’s about privatisation. The Nats are trying to break up public support for ACC so that it can be privatised and the insurers that bankroll National can come over here to take the hundreds of millions in profits at our expense.

7 comments on “Oldest trick in the book ”

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  1. lprent 1
    14 October 2009 at 6:36 am

    Nick Smith seems to lie with numbers whenever he feels it expedient. The numbers he was using during the ETS debate were just astonishing abc totally incorrectly used. This looks the same.

    • Draco T Bastard 1.1
      14 October 2009 at 1:06 pm

      From what I’ve seen, Nick Smith will lie with numbers if he has any available, else he just lies. Nationals owners are getting a good deal out of him.

  2. outofbed 2
    14 October 2009 at 9:10 am

    What amazes me is after all these years the media always takes what he says at face value
    I can understand the Nelson Mail doing this because most of the time its nothing more then the ‘Nick Smith Appreciation society’ daily newsletter
    But why the rest of the MSM.
    There is a good post at red alert at the moment Re Smith and the ETS “treasury papers indicate a cumulative increase in Government debt of around 6-8% of GDP by 2050″
    I would have thought that was newsworthy.

  3. Blue 3
    14 October 2009 at 9:42 am

    Labour couldn’t even put up a decent attack in the House yesterday. You can’t expect the media to help you if you don’t help yourself.

    In a contest between Nick Smith’s dramatic wailing about huge losses and cost blowouts, some meek whimperings about public consultation were never going to attract any attention.

    • Armchair Critic 3.1
      14 October 2009 at 9:56 am

      Labour have been generally woeful in the house. The government has presented plenty of targets, Nick Smith is a prime example with the ETS and ACC.
      But Labour have been bumbling around looking dazed and firing off cork-gun questions, almost at random. I miss Michael Cullen and it looks like Labour do, too. While it is not too late, yet, there is less than a year for Labour to get it together.

  4. rocky 4
    14 October 2009 at 2:22 pm

    It is interesting that Nick Smith is trying to drum up things like compensation for criminals as a way of running down ACC. Unless we end up with a monopoly provider contracted to the state, criminals will be eligible for everything that non-criminals are. That is, if we have real privatisation and real competition, we will all have individual contracts with our providers, meaning everyone gets treated the same.

    Of course having a privatised no-faults scheme doesn’t really make any sense. Where could a provider legitimately cut costs without either cutting cover or making someone else pay?

    When will someone answer for me exactly how ACC privatisation could work for anyone except the companies profiting?

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