National Fails first Rigged Test

Wow, The Standard have really outdone themselves in their weekly roundup.

At the election, National won a mandate for its platform to review the Work Account of ACC, to see whether privatisation might make it better.

I doubt that anyone thinks they’re not going to – after all, it’s been their policy since ACC was last given competition from the private sector.

Of course, we know that they’re not interested in the findings of any fair review, which would show ACC is a worldleading, cheap, efficient system that would be wrecked by privatisation.

Well, Labour certainly weren’t interested in the benefits from what National did last time…

Lacking the mandate to just go ahead and privatise the thing,

Funny, I thought a mandate was exactly what they had, what with winning the election with the largest ever party vote and all…

giving a bonanza to their insurance industry pals,

Oh yes, those evil capitalists might end up with some money, rather than it being wasted by useless bureaucrats.

National/ACT is trying to spin up a crisis around ACC.

And now we enter the strange world that is the left’s view of the world…

It spent this week trying to tell us ACC is in trouble,

Since when are looming shortfalls adding up to billions of dollars not indicative of something being in trouble exactly?

threatening us with higher levies,

Um, there is money missing – not there. I’m sure Labour’s plan involved a lot of fairy dust, but others of us live in the real world!

all to get people annoyed with ACC

Personally, I’d love to be in a world where people were not annoyed with ACC! People get annoyed with ACC when it screws them around with compensation and treatment and that’s been happening for years.

Not supplying the corporation with enough money is the fault of the previous government, and that’s where people are going to get annoyed when their levies rise, because it will come out of their pay packet.

and soften the ground for privatisation (even though privatisation is in no way, shape, or form an answer to the costs coming from ACC’s reserves being hit by the credit crisis).

Given that National’s policy for ACC has never been anything but using private providers since over 10 years ago, how soft exactly are the public supposed to get?

Never mind that the account that first came up (and this stupid line was used on) is not, and will probably never be privatised.

Conveniently too, this ACC beat-up distracted the media from asking any hard questions of Key’s handling of the Thailand situation

Yes, those hard, 3am phone calls about people stuck on a beach for an extra week because they’d rather wait for a plane than take a bus. Oh, the humanity, Key failed at his first real test, failed to avert this horrible, horrible tragedy! Why have there not been photos of the boddies that have not piled up anywhere on the front pages of our newspaper? The hard questions must be asked about these suntans, and travel insurance claims! Key must be held responsible!

or taking a closer look at the tax package National will be ramming through when Parliament sits next week

Yea, because like ACC, that idea that National might cut tax only slipped out yesterday by accident, rather than being National policy since… forever.

Oh, one more thing:

For the sake of the hundreds of Kiwis stranded in Thailand, can’t John just spare us the dithering and let Phil Goff handle the crisis?

Hm, if Goff is so good, why was Winston foreign minister? And why did the planes needed to move these people get sent overseas during the tenure of the last government to be refitted at the same time?

Yes, National have failed their first rigged test. I expect the experts in these things will judge them pretty much the same way over the next 3 years.

Plenty of rigged tests to fail yet.

ACC Risk Not Declared

It was interesting to listen to the National Radio program this afternoon discussing the ACC debacle.

It seems that there is a nice little space on the reports the government fills out coming up to the election for “known risks” and “unknown risks”.

There’s a big fat hole in Labour’s story on this one, and no amount of bleating is going to make it look any better for them.

Privatising ACC – Updated

Yesterday, I blogged on No Right Turns post on ACC Privatising.

What he said:

In the face of damaging leaks from the insurance industry, National has finally come clean and admitted it: if elected, they will privatise ACC again.

I pointed out yesterday the stupidity of claiming that a 10 year old policy was a secret, but as facts have come out, there is another problem with that statement.

It’s a blatant lie.

The insurance industry is claiming that ACC the corporation will be privitised. National’s policy is that ACC the insurance will allow competition from the private sector. Two quite different things.

Now, the two terms are confusing. I was confused. But one thing is not confusing.

National didn’t do previously what the insurance industry was claiming. Under the previous privatisation, ACC still existed and covered workers outside of the workplace. So it’s very wrong to claim that they will do something “again”, or that they have “come clean” on a policy that has been public since it was last implemented in the 90′s. Now, I don’t really know which of those Idiot is claiming, but one is a lie, and the other is as good as.

The industry is made a claim based on “insider” information. Clearly, someone got their wires crossed on this one, and someone got the idea that a public policy was a private policy and meant something quite different. I guess the person who published that information will should have a rather red face about now.