ACC not nicked, not yet

Struggling ACC minister Nick Smith explained to Radio NZ this morning that opening the Workers Account of ACC up to competition is “not a priority.”

So I have to ask Mr Smith as respectfully as I can, “Why the hell not, you moron?”

After all, the whole of ACC is in a shambles – and not just the Workers Account, which is only one third of the whole creaking, shambolic, law-unto-itself bureaucracy – so why the hell wouldn’t you make it possible for private business to save other businesses money by taking themselves and their business away from this morass?

And after all, opening up the whole of ACC to competition – and not just the Workers Account – was a key manifesto commitment of your party. So why the hell wouldn’t you do what you said you were going to do, why not open up the never-listen, never-tell, never-ever-respond bureaucracy, especially when the shambles you’ve discovered since the election should make it even more necessary to stop money going down the bureaucratic black hole of this accident-waiting-to-happen.

And finally, since Labour and its lackies are accusing National of preparing ACC for privatisation, rather than just for being opened up to competition - doing it so successfully that everyone all but believes it - then why the hell wouldn’t you just do that anyway? Why the hell wouldn’t you remove the monopoly, remove the ridiculous “no-fault” law that props up this bogus industry and keeps a failed monopoly in place, and then get what you can for an organisation that is nothing but a drain on every business and every person in the country.

At least, that’s what you might do if you weren’t a struggling minister with a big-government fetish and a meddler's sense of power lust. Changing the board members is just shuffling deck chairs on a sinking disaster. The lifeline NZ business needs is to have this dying leviathan taken outside and shot.

Time for you for once to have some courage.