Sometimes fisking is just too easy.
More controversial policy dumped just before xmas so it can be buried in the holiday “silly season”:
Apparently “controversial” in this context means something like “a policy unchanged this century”. I’d have thought releasing such a policy when there’s no other political news around is an amplifying effect* (and even if it was there’s the Streisand effect), but maybe that’s just me.
the government is planning to privatise ACC by opening the workforce market to competition from foreign insurance companies.
Full marks for gratuitous use of the word “foreign”.
A 2008 report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (since sanitised from ACC’s website, but you can read it here) found that there would be absolutely no benefit to New Zealanders from this move.
So under Labour ACC published a report saying that ACC should stay as is? Wow, what are the odds?
But Australian insurers (including John Key’s old firm, Merrill Lynch)
That’s a big check in the “make dark suggestions about John Key‘s past” box…
will benefit by an estimated $200 million. That’s $200 million in pure wealth transfer, in the form of higher premiums, denied claims and worse service,
…and one in the “make baseless claims that go against actual real-life experience“. (I’ll come back to that.)
that we will pay for the benefit of John Key’s rich mates. And people wonder why I regard privatisations as inherently corrupt…
Actually most of us just wonder why Idiot can’t make a case for something he believes in without throwing mud around. If the facts are there, use them. If there’s not, talk about how rich John Key is.
Last time National did this, in the 90’s, Labour reversed it the moment they got into government.
Now, when you say “last time National did this” you’re supposed to tell us how badly it went. But apparently the worst thing about it was that Labour reversed it as soon as they got into power. Myself I’d say that says more about Labour than anything else.
I expect them to do the same this time. The evidence shows that ACC is best left to the state, rather than the private insurance industry. And if Aussie insurers think differently, they can expect to lose their money.
As we all know, if you want objective evidence of whether or not to privatise, an organisation that is basically a hangover from the dark days of socialism is such a good place to start!
Oh, and according to Wikipedia, Merril Lynch is a division of that great Aussie institution, Bank of America.
*Update: Sure enough, this was the top story on Checkpoint tonight. Interesting to hear a few of the myths exploded too.
Something should go here, maybe later. 