Smith uncowed over ACC gaffe

Labour MP Grant Robertson failed to extract an apology from ACC Minister Nick Smith in Parliament yesterday over his public gaffe about redundancies.

During a parliamentary debate on Tuesday last week, Dr Smith talked about looming redundancies at ACC before staff had been made aware of them.

The gaffe pre-empted an announcement the next day at the corporation that 70 jobs were to go as part of a head office restructuring.

Yesterday, Mr Robertson asked if Dr Smith would apologise to ACC staff for pre-empting the announcement.

Dr Smith said he had understood at the time that the announcement had already been made public, and discovered only later that senior staff were the only ones in the loop.

He suggested Labour should apologise for allowing ACC head office staffing to increase 30 per cent over the past five years.

- NZPA