Hard News: Do these people even talk?
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Sir Owen Woodhouse says the latest changes breach the ACC scheme's principles. Given that he designed them, I'd listen, even though it's that notorious left-wing rag, the Herald.
Its five principles were community responsibility for accidents and supporting accident victims, comprehensive entitlement regardless of what caused the accident, complete rehabilitation, compensation for the whole period of incapacity at 80 per cent of previous earnings, and administrative efficiency.
Sir Owen said he saw the scheme as part of the social welfare system, not as an "insurance" scheme in which all future costs of this year's accidents needed to be funded immediately.
The "blow-out" in losses that led to last week's changes stemmed from a decision by the last National Government in 1998 to allow private sector competition for accident insurance, which required transforming the Accident Compensation Corporation on to the same funded basis as private insurers.
Sir Owen said: "If you have children you'd be concerned if you found that they estimate your child will be at school for so long, will or won't go to university and will cost so much, and that that full cost has to be paid at the age of 5 when they start school.
"It's the same thing with accident compensation."
So 'full funding' comes from the last time the Nats tried to privatise the scheme (oh, I mean 'introduce competition'). That agenda is not 'secret' at all - Key noted recently in a relaxed fashion that it's their pre-election policy to consider it, (but how dreadfully unfortunate that Rodders is demanding it be done right away).
You only have to listen to economists and policy experts like Michael Littlewood to understand that introducing competition for the only profitable part of the scheme is just creaming large amounts of public funds into private pockets while leaving taxpayers with most of the risk. That's why the insurance industry were salivating at those pre-election briefings. I'm sure they don't much care how it's described. I wonder how keen they would be though if they had to buy the whole thing including the future value.
However, to complicate matters politically, the boomer chestnut rears its bipartisan head again:
Labour's shadow ACC minister, David Parker, said Labour also supported moving ACC on to a fully-funded basis.
The alternative was to load future costs on to future taxpayers at a time when there would be far fewer taxpayers for every older person.
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The alternative was to load future costs on to future taxpayers at a time when there would be far fewer taxpayers for every older person.
Don't younger people have more accidents? the numbers would balance out surely?.
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Take that you money grabbing Christians...
Tapu Misa: Casting the socialists out of the templeThe proposed ACC changes come from the same bucket of poo. -
Briefly back on topic...
Can I see the whole thing becoming our mini-Montreal '76?
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World Cup losses rocket to $39m
I want to see a list of expenses. Where is the... most of a hundred million $ that ticket sales will earn going? Apart from selling tickets and putting the actual games on.
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Looks like Maori TV have got squashed.
The All Blacks' quarter-final defeat against England will be on One, Three, Maori (and Sky). All the knockout games will be shared, and the opener.
So "leading the bid" means pool games only.
(Edit: No, not even that. Scoop reports New Zealand vs France (pool) will be live on TV3 as well as Maori Television. So Maori TV just get the ABs versus Canada, and "Asian qualifier" - probably Japan.)
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introducing competition for the only profitable part of the scheme is just creaming large amounts of public funds into private pockets while leaving taxpayers with most of the risk.
This this oh god this. And it's not just the most profitable parts, it's the most profitable people (i.e. leave ACC as a last resort provider - sweeeeeet, say the insurers, have all our costly bad risks)
The half-privatisation of ACC seems much worse to me than the full privatisation. And that's not a push for full privatisation btw =)
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I really don't get why most RWC games are to be shown on (at least) 4 different channels at the same time? Why exactly does TVNZ, MTS, TV3 and Sky all need to show the same thing?
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Gareth, it's like a newspaper spoiler. If Maori TV had exclusive (free-to-air) coverage of all the All Blacks' pool games, then people might get into the habit of watching the channel, then stick with them for the 'big' games, from quarter-final on.
As it is, Maori TV won't get any traction from this at all.
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Just to get back to ACC, this article has a wonderful (for values of wonderful that equate to "not in the least") quote from Key: "need to be convinced that there were benefits both to the Government and the private sector".
What about the public, John? What about the workers? You know, those awful, horrible people who actually use the cover that ACC provides. What about them?
Given that the workers' account is the only part of ACC that's self-funding, we're yet again seeing the "privatise the profits, socialise the losses" mentality at work. Hat-tip to my brother for pointing that bit out. Strip out the bit that pays its own way, and leave the taxpayer to prop up the unprofitable parts. Fucking typical.
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Given that the workers' account is the only part of ACC that's self-funding, we're yet again seeing the "privatise the profits, socialise the losses" mentality at work. Hat-tip to my brother for pointing that bit out. Strip out the bit that pays its own way, and leave the taxpayer to prop up the unprofitable parts. Fucking typical.
The insurance industry lobby seems to have its fingerprints all over it. I'd be rubbing my hands in glee if I was an ambulance chaser.
As an aside, I've had to deal with insurance politics on behalf of customers whose machines were zapped by Zeus or stolen.
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On nzherald.co.nz:
"Breaking News: MMP referendum to be held with election in 2011... details soon"
*Bangs head repeatedly on desk*
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Not sure where to post this question.
Has anyone else heard of igovt? I just read about it.
https://www2.i.govt.nz/
Is it just me or is this a bit insidious? -
Dinah, why do you consider it insidious? There're an awful lot of data-sharing arrangements between departments as it is, so it's not like there's anything in the proposal that is particularly new and scary.
The single sign-on (SSO) concept for accessing e-government services is, I think, very worthwhile. The biggest concern is, of course, security. SSO's convenience is also its major risk, because the compromise of a sign-on account gives access to a multitude of services. -
And please don't feel I'm poo-poo'ing your concerns, either. I'm genuinely curious as to whether I've missed some aspect of the scheme that could warrant further investigation.
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Looks like everyone knew about the MTS bid for RWC, but because they never spoke about it amongst themselves they could claim plausible deniability:
Despite Mr English's apparent awareness of the MTS plan, Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman said he didn't know about it until last month.
Mr English today told reporters he remembered having discussions with Dr Sharples over the issue in June, but was hazy on the detail.
"As minister of finance I can have a dozen conversations in a day with ministers about what they might or might not want to do," he said.
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Still on ACC, would you believe it...
The issue also met with condemnation from the Employers and Manufacturers' Federation, which issued a statement opposing a repeat of the 1999 exercise, saying employers were wary. Its health and safety manager Paul Harvie said 1999 had turned into a bun fight between insurers offering artificially low premiums to try to shore up their market share.
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DeepRed, I did think it was rather chilly this morning. Run on ice skates and skis in the depths of Hades?
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Perhaps someone can explain this to me:
What on Earth is a unique viewer?
Apparently, Maori TV were expecting 7.1m of them a month if they broadcast the Rugby World Cup. Maybe their broadcasting range is a bit bigger than we've been led to believe?
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Apparently, Maori TV were expecting 7.1m of them a month if they broadcast the Rugby World Cup. Maybe their broadcasting range is a bit bigger than we've been led to believe?
The story (now?) says 1.7 million "unique viewers" monthly. The term isn't often used in the broadcast context, but it must mean that 1.7 million different people watch MTV at some point in a month. Rugby test audiences are usually 500 to 700k.
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Well, that's quite an funny mistake to make. But it doesn't really alter it ... the article as I see it says:
The papers show Maori TV earns $1m a year in advertising and has 1.7m unique viewers a month. The rugby would bring seven million unique viewers a month.
So the seven million became 7.1m because I transposed their current 1.7m, but they were still expecting a hell of an influx!
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What on Earth is a unique viewer?
One you unique on so he doesn't know he is being observed?
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If it's 7 million I presume that means 7 million times a person will view a programme on MTS. So if a person tuned in 10 different times they count as 10.
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