Kerre Woodham: Scalpel will revive ACC health

ACC Minister Nick Smith. Photo / Mark Mitchell

I have very little experience of ACC and for that I'm grateful. Intimate knowledge of the workings of the bureaucracy would imply a serious injury and many months off work and I've never had that.

The most I've had to do with ACC is filling out forms in triplicate when I've slashed my thumb on a can of peaches and, more recently, when I tore my quad kicking a soccer ball in the curtain raiser for the ill-fated LA Galaxy match at Mt Smart.

On the occasions I've been told to fill out ACC forms, I'd have been happy to pay my own costs but that, apparently, is not an option.

When you're dealing with a monolithic state-run organisation, there's no alternative way of doing things but, whatever its failings, ACC is still better than a sue-and-counter-sue system.

The ACC levies so many people resent paying would pale into insignificance if we all had to have public liability insurance and surely bland bureaucrats are better to deal with than ambulance-chasing lawyers. That's not to say the system can't be improved.

Under the past administration, ACC evolved into a giant tit, offering succour and sustenance to all those who'd had the misfortune to suffer life's slings and arrows.

In 2002, the Labour Government voted to allow sexual abuse victims to receive lump-sum payments from ACC.

And blow me down, in 2004, the number of lump-sum payments to sexual abuse victims quadrupled.

That's not so say that victims of sexual abuse should not receive help. They should. But it shouldn't come in the form of lump-sum payments and it shouldn't come under ACC.

I didn't realise until this week that the families of those who commit suicide can also receive payments under ACC.

I'm glad Nick Smith is doing away with that provision and I don't think he should have apologised for pointing out the bleeding obvious. The family of a man who dies of cancer do not get the same help and support from the taxpayer as the family of someone who takes his own life. How is that fair?

And of course criminals shouldn't be getting ACC help if they get their injuries while committing crime. I thought we'd done away with that after the outcry over an escapee getting a payout when he broke his legs jumping off the wall surrounding Mt Eden Prison?

I know people are hot under the collar when it comes to tourists getting free health care while travelling in New Zealand but, again, it's better than having Bob and Ethel from Butte or their insurance company suing the marrow out of a New Zealand company, isn't it?

And I do feel sorry for motorcyclists - if the system is going towards user pays, surely the sale of alcohol must have a massive ACC levy attached to it to help pay for the huge costs associated with alcohol-related injury. The changes are a step in the right direction towards fine-tuning a scheme that might not be broke, but certainly needs fixing.

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