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Speaker 1: AICC, if you didn't already know, has major money issues.

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Speaker 1: Their annual report out shows a one point five billion

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Speaker 1: dollar deficit for the year. That adds to last year

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Speaker 1: seven point two billion dollar hole, so we're now added

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Speaker 1: all up thirteen point eight billion in the red. Warren

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Speaker 1: Foster is an ACC lawyer and also researcher. Back with us,

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Speaker 1: Warren morning, Good morning. What's the problem? Can you make

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Speaker 1: it simple? Is it the money they earn versus the

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Speaker 1: money they spend? I mean, can they earn more or

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Speaker 1: spend less or what?

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Speaker 2: Well, it actually is pretty simple. We need to look

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Speaker 2: at it over a generation. We need to collect money

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Speaker 2: to pay for things. We need to be careful about

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Speaker 2: how we pay for things and what we actually get

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Speaker 2: with them under we spend, and then we need to

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Speaker 2: stop changing how we count how much money we need.

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Speaker 2: So of the deficit this year, ACC actually did really

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Speaker 2: well with its return on investments. It got four point

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Speaker 2: five billion return on investment, but it changed the way

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Speaker 2: it counted how much money it says it needs and

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Speaker 2: says we need five point eight billion more than we

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Speaker 2: needed last year. So that's how they got to this

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Speaker 2: sort of bit in the middle. But we really need

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Speaker 2: to have a good look at ACS and think is

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Speaker 2: it actually doing what we wanted to do and the

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Speaker 2: way we want it to do it, because you know,

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Speaker 2: it's pretty concerning some of the stuff that's happening.

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Speaker 1: Indeed, are they lax, Well, they're either lax or they're bad.

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Speaker 2: But we need to remember that we didn't get in

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Speaker 2: this position by bad luck. We made a number of

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Speaker 2: decisions policy decisions along the way, and we stopped rehabilitating

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Speaker 2: people properly. In the old days, ACC would actually ring

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Speaker 2: up and talk to the claimant, they'd bring up and

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Speaker 2: talk to the employer that helped you get back to work.

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Speaker 2: That stuff is all formed by the wayside of the

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Speaker 2: emails sent backwards and forwards, and we're not actually getting

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Speaker 2: people back to work. The spinners that a SEC has

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Speaker 2: helped eight thousand long term claimants get back to work

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Speaker 2: or independence, and normally there's around three thousand, so it's

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Speaker 2: five thousand more. But of those five thousand people who've

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Speaker 2: been on ACC for more than a year, I'd be

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Speaker 2: really surprised if those people actually got back to work.

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Speaker 2: The people we speak to every day just get kicked off,

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Speaker 2: and it's the same thing we start seeing as that

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Speaker 2: ACC is not actually helping people rehabilitate. It takes forever

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Speaker 2: to get ACC to even make a decision on surgery.

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Speaker 2: Some of my clients are waiting three months or six

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Speaker 2: months to get a decision on whether they can actually

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Speaker 2: get surgery so they can get better and go back

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Speaker 2: to work. And that is the complete opposite of what

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Speaker 2: ACC is meant to be doing. And these costs just

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Speaker 2: blow out when someone's been off work for a year

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Speaker 2: waiting for surgery exactly, it's really hard to get in

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Speaker 2: the back.

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Speaker 1: I think we've all got individual anecdotal circumstances in which

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Speaker 1: we've seen a system that doesn't work properly. Warre appreciate it. Warrenforster,

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Speaker 1: who's an a sc lawyer, also researcher. For more from

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