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Speaker 1: We have an accounting change that reduces ACC's estimated liability

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Speaker 1: by seven billion. Essentially, they're dropping the risk margin from

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Speaker 1: twelve percent down to zero, which makes the books look better.

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Speaker 1: So what does that actually mean, warrenforced, It is, ay

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Speaker 1: an ACC lawyer and researcher, and as well, there's Warren morning,

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Speaker 1: good morning. This is just protection stuff.

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Speaker 2: And is it?

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Speaker 1: I mean it's stuff that may or may not happen,

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Speaker 1: and you adjust some numbers around it. I mean nothing's

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Speaker 1: actually happened apart from attitude. Is that correct?

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Speaker 2: That's pretty much that. Like in the late nineties, Labor

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Speaker 2: and National GOP together and said, look, we're going to

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Speaker 2: fully fund ACC. How much money do we need? And

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Speaker 2: each year the amount of money that they think they

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Speaker 2: needed went up, and just behind that, the amount of

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Speaker 2: money that they had went up. So we've been growing

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Speaker 2: these a SC funds for twenty five years and in

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, ACC had forty seven billion in the bank.

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Speaker 2: It says it needed fifty one billion to fully fund it,

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Speaker 2: so it's about ten percent apart. That's kind of what

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Speaker 2: we see. But in twenty twenty four they did it

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Speaker 2: and they said, look, we've only got forty eight billion

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Speaker 2: in the bank, we need sixty billion. We got a problem.

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Speaker 2: So they just effectively recalculated what they need. But in

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Speaker 2: the meantime they sent the message out that ACC's broke.

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Speaker 2: Levies have gone up, people are being started to be

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Speaker 2: thrown off the scheme. But now they've recalculated, they say, okay,

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Speaker 2: well we need seven billion less, so back in the

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Speaker 2: same territory of sort of ten cent apart. But in

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Speaker 2: the meantime all the levees have gone up and people

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Speaker 2: have been picked off and that sort of you know,

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Speaker 2: now we're seeing the message we don't need that much

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Speaker 2: money anymore. But in effect there's been no real change.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't change how it operates in people's lives. But

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Speaker 2: from a political point of view, they all sort of

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Speaker 2: had each other on the back and say, haven't with nothing.

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Speaker 1: Great exactly, that's very well explained. Congratulations on that. Does

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Speaker 1: this include the sexual abusis court case stuff where they

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Speaker 1: don't seem to know what the number may or may

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Speaker 1: not be. We're guessing that that one as well.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was part of the thing last year

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Speaker 2: and again going back acc used to pay those claims

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Speaker 2: in the late nineties are like oh, we'll save a

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Speaker 2: whole lot of money by not paying those people. And

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Speaker 2: then last year they said, oh, we've got to pay

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Speaker 2: them again, so that they increase what they said was

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Speaker 2: a liability there by three point five billion. But basically

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Speaker 2: what's happened is very few of those people have got

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Speaker 2: any help. Asus has only paid out something like fifty

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Speaker 2: million or one hundred million of that number, and that's

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Speaker 2: because the process is so slow. But you've got to know,

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Speaker 2: if you put aside the politics and you think of

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Speaker 2: the impact of people when all these things change backwards

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Speaker 2: and forwards. People who are paying levies and their businesses

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Speaker 2: or on fuel, people who are injured are at home.

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Speaker 2: Now the government's saying, oh, well we're going to cut

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Speaker 2: there's twenty thousand people here and it looks like nothing's

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Speaker 2: wrong with them, and we're going to rehabilitate them. But

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Speaker 2: actually what they're doing is they're going through one person

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Speaker 2: by person and they say, well, you've only got a sprain,

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Speaker 2: you should be back at work, and they're ignoring the

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Speaker 2: actual injuries that the people have. So it's the same

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Speaker 2: for sexual abuse, it's the same for people who are

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Speaker 2: injured by accident. It's the same for work injuries. We

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Speaker 2: need a mature approach from our political parties so that

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Speaker 2: we can actually do this stuff sensibly and long trim

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Speaker 2: without these sort of lurching for one way to another

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Speaker 2: which we.

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Speaker 1: See constant tinkering. Appreciate it, Warren Well, explained Warren Forster,

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Speaker 1: who's an ACC lawyer and researcher. And of course you've

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Speaker 1: got to remember that the return to surplus, this is

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Speaker 1: Nicola willis the return to surplus, which may or may

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Speaker 1: not happen in twenty eight twenty nine, is predicated on

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Speaker 1: the idea that the ACC numbers aren't in there because

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Speaker 1: she just decided that well, she decided that if they

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Speaker 1: were in there, she wouldn't be returning to surplus. So

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Speaker 1: that's how we're being mucked around with. For more from

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Speaker 1: the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to news Talks it'd

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