This memo was sent by the Insurance Council to its members in 2005 but it may as well have been sent this week. Because as sure as National was keeping its agenda secret and having clandestine talks with the insurers about privatising ACC in 2005 they will be having the same talks under wraps while the farce of an ‘experts panel’ looks into ACC over the next six months. It’s not a matter of wondering if they might be up to the same tricks again. Instead ask: why would we think that anything has changed?
National was set up to advance the interests of big business and has been doing so at every opportunity for 70 years with the same set of policies – lower taxes for the rich (paid for with public service cuts, I mean ‘trimming government waste’), public largess for large businesses, lower minimum wage, weaker work rights/unions, weaker social/environmental restrictions, selling off public assets for a song.
National secretly works with big business to design policies that ensure big business gets a bigger slice of the economic pie (oh, you think it’s about making the pie bigger? that’s a laugh, the economy consistently under-performs when the Nats are in charge). Big business funds National and the various right-wing lobby groups from the Business Roundtable to Sensible Sentencing to the Road Transport Forum which repeat and amplify the party line. The Insurance Council gave $1 million through National’s secret trusts, according to Nicky Hager.
Except for the secrecy there’s nothing wrong with a class supporting a political party, indeed what are parties but vehicles for the interests of classes and interest groups? (left-wing parties openly receive a little funding from the unions). Let’s not pretend that it doesn’t happen.
Let’s not pretend that parties don’t operate to advance the interests of their supporters and backers. Let’s not pretend that National has any other objective in privatising ACC than the objective it had in 2005 and in 1998, which is the objective it has always had – more profits for big business.
And let’s not forget where that money has to come from – your pocket, through higher premiums and reduced coverage.
The memo above is from 2005, but don’t fool yourself, they’re writing similar memos right now. We just don’t have copies yet.
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