Long-awaited ACC plan to be presented to MPs
A solution to fix the notoriously broken Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) system will today be presented to members of Parliament.
Barrister Warren Forster has completed an almost 100-page reform plan that offers a peoplefocused, single system for all, to replace the current scheme which he describes as disabling and discriminatory and, he says, wastes resources arguing the causes of impairments.
Rather than becoming an ‘‘election football’’, he hopes the proposal will gain cross-party support and co-operation to adopt what he believes would be a cheaper, fairer option within a decade.
He will present the document to MPs at Parliament today, in a move which comes amid Stuff’s ACCountable series investigating the experiences of Kiwis needing support.
Forster, who spent four years researching the country’s social insurance scheme under New Zealand Law Foundation Te Manatu¯ a¯ Ture o Aotearoa’s International Research Fellowship Te Karahipi Rangahau a¯ Taiao, said ACC ministers were kept abreast of the reform during its development.
He spoke with hundreds of people – on top of a decade as an advocate for people facing ACC disputes.
The reform gave a roadmap of how to finish what Sir Owen Woodhouse intended in a 1967 Royal Commission of Inquiry, he said.
The groundbreaking blueprint that Woodhouse laid out to create a single system of care and support no matter the cause of a person’s impairment, however, stagnated at the first stage. ACC was passed in Parliament in 1972, for injuries considered caused by an accident.
‘‘We started this world-leading work but have never taken the intended next steps, and now 50 years have passed and the job is not finished,’’ Forster said.
‘‘As we reflect back on the past five decades, we can see the reintroduction of fault. We no longer have a no-fault personal injury system.’’
Forster’s report states: ‘‘We can become world leaders again in the field of care and support for all of our people, or we perpetuate the fragmented, incomplete and broken system that history has shown does not work.’’
He recognised that its interaction with the proposed income insurance system – for people who lose their jobs through redundancy or illness to receive up to 80 per cent of their usual income for six months – would have to be carefully managed.
But the proposal announced in February would not address inequity where support was higher for accident injuries than non-accident-related health conditions.
Or that most were excluded from employment to begin with, and their need for income support lasted longer than 12 months.
His reform would provide four enforceable rights to social and income support, habilitation, and healthcare, implemented over time, and the development of a sustainable funding model.
Not only would it eliminate fragmentation of services, but he believed billions of dollars would be saved by integrating the administrative costs and removing the requirements for boundaries within and between ACC, and the health and welfare systems.
The reform’s funding would require innovation to become financially sustainable and move away from relying on taxation or levies.
He proposed a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) like the superannuation fund, that would help increase ‘‘intergenerational equity’’.
Forster’s model would spread the return on investment across the system to fund the gap between taxation or levy collection, and health and social inflation.
The new Ministry for Disabled People would consult and codesign the reform, he said, and it would meet the requirements of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and human rights commitments.
Before being presented with the final reform, ACC Minister Carmel Sepuloni told Stuff the Government was addressing ACC inequities for women, Ma¯ori, Pacific, Asian and disabled populations, with changes to be announced before the end of the year.
Plans to realise Woodhouse’s 1967 dream of a social insurance scheme for anyone with an impairment was ‘‘certainly not off the table for a future Government’’, but it was not something it was currently working on.
It was focused on improving outcomes for disabled people through Whaikaha – Ministry for Disabled People and the national rollout of a new disability service model, Enabling Good Lives.
‘‘I also anticipate the current health sector reforms will go some way to improve people’s experience with the health system.’’
Labour politicians have been vocal in the past about ACC’s flaws.
Former Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer’s Labour Government tried hard to expand ACC to cover sickness in the late 1980s, but the bill introduced to Parliament was overturned once National – which deemed it too expensive – won the 1990 election.
Andrew Little – now health minister – advocated for a similar idea again in 2012, saying ACC was ‘‘unjust and discriminatory’’, and called for the next Labour-led government to overhaul it.
Former ACC minister Iain Lees-Galloway pointed out the inequities of the ‘‘taonga’’ system in his 2020 valedictory speech.
‘‘New Zealanders should expect the same support whether they are injured or they fall ill,’’ he said.