KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's no fault, no liability accident compensation system is a great idea. And it means we should never get to the situation overseas where someone who spilt coffee over their groin at a McDonald's drive-thru can sue the Golden Arches for making the coffee too hot.
But our ACC scheme is not without its serious problems. Some people due back at work during January will no doubt phone in to say they have met with an unfortunate incident and are on ACC. But the chances are they won't have heard from anyone in ACC about getting them rehabilitated, and this limbo state will likely last until the end of February or even into March. ACC often seems to behave as if there is no urgency notwithstanding their "clients"' injuries and need for some help.
Some say that's because it is a monopoly. The organisation responsible for rehabilitation sets the ACC levies, so they can simply increase levies to cover their own inefficiencies and blame the rest of New Zealand for being increasingly accident prone.
ACC also places little if any emphasis on injury prevention. For it, injury prevention is virtually non-existent in practice though these are the first words in the ACC law.
A reason for this is that the responsibility for injury prevention is split between two government departments - the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) division of the Department of Labour and ACC. The two appear not to be on speaking terms with each other, or worse, engaged in a perpetual patch protection battle.
Sure, we see a few TV advertisements and other PR exercises aimed at preventing injury and that's about it.
Of course, when injury prevention fails, we need ACC, which is why it is so concerning that injury prevention is accorded such a low priority.
But turning ACC into a political football to fix these matters would be disastrous to the proven value of the scheme. Simply keeping ACC as a state monopoly is ideologically driven, which means good and useful ideas are not given the time of day.
On the other hand, the view that the private sector would automatically be better at running the scheme is just as ideological. We need something in the middle that works, and will remain in place as governments come and go.
Workers are suspicious of the motives of private insurance companies becoming involved in ACC. They suspect the outcome will be substandard rehabilitation services offered to attract employers and others with lower levies.
Some, mostly smaller employers, are just as wary of private insurance companies as they cannot be expected to keep up to date with all the complicated issues around workplace safety insurance and ACC. The simplicity of a government-decreed scheme has its fair share of supporters.
Nevertheless, the setting of ACC levies, and the rehabilitation of the injured should not be managed by the one and same organisation. They need to be kept separate. The poacher should not be allowed to be the gamekeeper.
Neither should inefficient rehabilitation and the failings of accident prevention be blamed on ordinary people wrongly accused of becoming careless and accident-prone.
Second, there is no rationale for separating accidents occurring in workplaces and those not in workplaces. The division of them between OSH and ACC is totally artificial. Let's combine the two. People who are safe at work are safe everywhere else too.
* David Lowe is manager of employment relations services for the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern).
