Carmel Sepuloni must fix ACC | The Jackal

23 Jun 2021

Carmel Sepuloni must fix ACC

You may have noticed that the Accident Compensation Corporation, or ACC for short, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately. Not only has newish research shown that the claims process discriminates against woman, Māori and Pasifika people, ACC apparently also penalises Kiwis depending on how and when their injuries occur.

It’s another huge mess that the Labour Government, and more specifically ACC Minister Carmel Sepuloni, needs to remedy without delay.

On Monday, RNZ reported:

ACC biased against women, Māori and Pasifika - agency's own analysis shows

Women are less likely to make ACC claims, more likely to be declined when they do, and they receive far less compensation than men, the figures show.

Over the past five years it has become even harder for women - especially Māori and Pasifika women - to get an ACC claim accepted.

The decline rate for women has increased from 2.2 to 2.6 percent. In comparison, the decline rate for men only increased from 1.9 to 2.1 percent.

If women did get cover and were entitled to weekly compensation payments, they got a little over half the rate of men.

Despite women, who make up just over half the population, accessing health care more often than men, men filed 4 percent more claims than women.

The inequities are laid out in a series of briefings, obtained by RNZ under the Official Information Act, from ACC to its Minister Carmel Sepuloni, after the corporation analysed claims data between June 2015 and July 2020.

At least the current Minister is interested enough in ACC’s problems to get a briefing on such matters, which is more than can be said for Michael Woodhouse. The former National Party Minister for ACC would often just ignore the media when they asked questions about ACC. He also made it even more difficult for Kiwis to receive the cover they required.

However what we need to see now isn't more finger wagging, it's some action to clean up ACC.

The scheme's definition of "injury" favoured the types of injuries suffered by men, the ACC briefing said, but women and minorities were also more likely to face bias from health professionals who filed claims on their behalf.

The types of injuries women were more likely to experience in the workplace were less likely to be covered.

This included a lack of cover for cumulative stressors present in 'caring professions' dominated by women such as nursing and teaching, the paper said.

In effect ACC is bigoted against nurses and teachers. It would therefore be highly prudent of the Government to remove these sexist penalties, especially if they want to encourage more people to take up teaching and nursing.

Otago University law lecturer Dawn Duncan, who highlighted these inequities in a study published last year, said the ACC legislation needed overhauling to reflect "a more principle-based system that deals with more complex health problem."

But simply updating some of the cover tests that determine whether a claim is approved would also reduce inequities, she said.

"Those cover have become narrower and some of them are quite out of date. Some of them reflect medical thinking that's now 50 years old."

There you go Minister...there’s already one easy way to reduce the inequalities Dawn Duncan has been kind enough to highlight. No need for a lengthy investigation into what to do, which ACC would likely stuff up anyway. Just rewrite the cover tests so that all injured people are covered.

It’s unlikely that anything will change anytime soon though. The Labour led Government is far too concerned with optics, especially when it comes to sensitive topics such as the ACC. This is a pity because unfortunately the ACC’s inequitable treatment of certain claimants doesn’t end there.

Yesterday, RNZ reported:

ACC law biased against those disabled before injury, agency's analysis reveals

In its fourth briefing paper on how ACC treats "priority populations" to its Minister Carmel Sepuloni, ACC said people left disabled by injury are treated far better and paid more compensation by ACC than those who are born disabled or become so through illness.

"Rehabilitation provided by ACC (which comprises treatment, social rehabilitation and vocational rehabilitation) is available to ACC claimants on an entitlement basis, unlike Ministry of Health-funded services for disabled people, which are rationed," the paper said.

It also found injured disabled people who needed help because of that injury had to juggle the ACC and welfare systems at the same time, which often treated them very differently.

It would also mean that these vulnerable people wouldn’t necessarily receive the treatment they require, which is pretty ridiculous considering the huge profits ACC makes each year.

Disability Strategist Sacha Dylan said such inconsistencies had been highlighted by the disability sector for "many years".

"That loss of potential earnings subsidy is interesting, because it's young people who haven't actually had a job. It's ACC's way of trying to say, well, if they did have a job, how would we assess the potential earnings? And of course, it's like 80 percent of the minimum wage, which is a lot higher than the benefits that disabled people can get paid through."

It was also "fundamentally wrong" to have two systems treating disabled people in different ways, because of the way they became disabled, Dylan said.


In other words its own research shows that ACC is racist, sexist, ageist as well as discriminatory against people who are injured at birth. This doesn’t just mean the scheme is unfit for purpose, it means that there are numerous Kiwis out there who aren’t able to reach their full potential because the Government’s out-dated policy and ACC’s discriminatory procedures are holding them back.

So what's the Minister going to do about it?

Carmel Sepuloni, who is also Minister for Social Development and Disabilities Issues, did not think a radical overhaul of the scheme was needed, but some changes were likely.

"What we want to do is make sure it works for all New Zealanders. Some of the statistics that came back that the media have now seen, that I've commissioned, shows that actually there are some differences with regards to how groups benefit from the system. So I don't know if that requires an overhaul, or let's just get in there, make some changes."

What those changes are remain to be seen, but Sepuloni said she had requested policy advice on including birth injuries in the ACC scheme. She had also asked officials for more information about the inequalities facing women, Māori, Pasifika and disabled people.

If the Government is serious about helping the disabled, which could also reduce the number of suicides in New Zealand each year, then they must ensure that anybody and everybody who gets injured, but especially people with long-term disabilities, receive the financial assistance and health treatments they require. Because without proper assistance many people’s lives are being unnecessarily made even more difficult than they should be.

What we don’t need however is another round of research into what the problems are. We already know what needs to be done…so get on with it and fix ACC already.