Source: Radio New Zealand
ACC is trying to avoid a $26 billion deficit by 2030. Unsplash / RNZ composite
A lawyer who helps people with ACC claims says the agency’s plan to get its finances in order appears to be a social licence to remove people from the long-term claims pool.
ACC is trying to avoid a $26 billion dollar deficit by 2030.
The agency said it would hire nearly 300 more claims management staff, with a focus on getting non-serious injury clients back to work or independence.
Lawyer and advocate Warren Forster said data for the last five years shows only 10 percent of people taken off long-term claims returned to work.
“It’s not only going to cost ACC more, it’s going to cost taxpayers more and it’s going to transfer the long term cost of injury to society and the whole purpose of ACC is to reduce that cost.”
He said people who could not return to work who were removed from the long-term claims pool instead sought benefits or support from family.
“Once someone’s been off work for two years it’s very difficult to get that person back to work for a while variety of reasons.”
Forster said the agency had made hundreds of people redundant over the years.
“ACC spent 20 years training and developing fantastic people who were really good at rehabilitation. Then they invented this new computer system, they spent $1 billion on it and fired nearly all of them.
“Now they’re saying they’re going to bring in 300 and it’s going to solve it, absolutely not.”
ACC exited more than 8000 long-term clients in the year to June 2025 and planned to exit 11,000 more by June 2026, using AI to help decide which long-term claimants should go back to work.
The cull came as ACC’s rehabilitation performance was in decline, with more people getting injured and taking longer to recover.
With looming debts and liabilities on its books, ACC Minister Scott Simpson instructed his agency to reduce the number of people receiving compensation for more than a year, which was about 25,000 – the highest it had ever been.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
