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.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress