We're going to open the show today with a chat on ACC, given that it's managed to go from a $911 million surplus to a $7.2 billion deficit in the year to June. That’s got to hurt.

ACC said, in it's just released annual report, that lower than expected rehabilitation performance contributed towards the deficit, and noted the cost of providing services and compensation to injured people increased by 16% over the year. That makes sense. The price of everything has gone up. The price of taxis has gone up to get people to their appointments, the price of scans, everything that you can apply to ACC for will have risen in price. You can understand that the deficit could be a whole lot worse.

If you are one of those people who have been on ACC and that is, as Mike pointed out this morning, 100% of the Kerre Woodham Mornings team, all two of us. We covered a lot of the costs ourselves. We didn't apply for everything that you're entitled to under ACC. I didn’t get a taxi or house cleaning, and we got extra treatment to aid our rehabilitation and recovery to make it that much faster, and we did that at our own expense and time. We made an investment in our own recovery. And that's partly because we can, there are some people who simply do not have that option, but partly because Helen and I saw it as a team effort – thank you very much, ACC, but we will do our very best to do what we can to get back to work. And I bet many of you are the same. How much have you actually claimed what you could have claimed? I bet the figure could be a whole lot worse, so put that down to the Kiwi attitude of fair play. You've done your bit, thanks very much and we'll do ours.

I did notice too that in the reporting on the story —perhaps they mentioned it in the report, and I haven't read the entire ACC report, I've only gone off the news coverage— when they said lower than expected rehabilitation performance contributed towards the deficit, they didn't make any mention of their failed $74 million restructure that removed personal case managers for nearly 12,500 clients, and then oh that's not working, reinstated them. Maybe they did, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I didn't have time to read the whole report this morning, but surely the “lower than expected” rehab performance could in part be attributed to the fact that they tried a $74 million restructure of case managers that failed dismally, and now personal case managers have been reinstated.

A lawyer specialising in ACC law said the reversal was not a surprise because the agency had been warned the new system would fail. When it comes to the blowout, okay, “lower than expected” rehab performance – that's staff shortages in the health sector, that's holdups in the health sector that means you're delayed in getting treatment, you're delayed in getting to see somebody, and that can attribute towards the “lower than expected” rehab performance. Also, the reason why people are taking longer to get back to work. The average claimant who received weekly compensation for less than a year took 69.7 days to return to work at the beginning of the fiscal year. By the end of the year, that number had risen to 72.8 days. So the delays in the health sector could attribute to that.

And then the other issue that ACC faces is that two court judgements have increased the scope of what ACC covers and the breadth of who's entitled to this coverage. Think of the smashed babies that survive but are so badly damaged that they will never be able to work – ACC has to make an allowance for those babies for life. They will live and they will live well into their middle years, but they'll never work. There is no hope of recovery or rehabilitation for these poor children. They're also having to take into account victims of unreported childhood sexual offending who are unable to work as adults. So they have to make allowance for those people too. So the breadth of what it covers, the scope of what it covers, it could be a whole lot worse.

It's still claimed that this is the best system, that this form of social insurance is still the best system. Do you agree? Do you believe that ACC is still fit for purpose? I do. I think for all of those well publicised cases of those who rort it, remember the famous Auckland businessman who was found playing tennis on his very own tennis court, under flood lights, and he had been off work for ages and ages and was exposed on the cover of the Herald on Sunday or something. He had been rorting in the system for ages. For all of those that rort, there are very many who contribute towards their own recovery and towards their own costs. It could be a whole lot worse. It means we don't have lawyers suing and countersuing, which I think is a very, very good thing. And it does mean that we can be damaged, be fixed and go back to work.

On the whole, I think it's still working. And there are ebbs and flows in terms of making a profit, investing, putting money aside, getting a better return some years more than others. As far as I'm concerned there are problems with ACC – yes, the $74 million restructure that was a U-turn that led to nowhere, unfortunate, but there we go. We have to live with that, reconcile that into the books, learn from it, reinstate the case managers help people get back into work. As far as I'm concerned, I’m still happy to pay my levies, still happy to see ACC continue to provide the services and the treatments it does.