Pay no ACC levy and go on ones own through one own choice of insurance company with the rights to sue, primarily to make the motorists and tourists responsible for their own actions as is with the REST of the world.

This was a really silly comment.

I’d encouage you to have a look at Pararaph 11 of the summary of the Woodhouse Report
http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/data/woodhouse/woodhouse1c.pdf

It absolutey contemplates compensation approaching common law damages for serious injury.

Well lets see now, maybe it’s because the imposition of ACC removes peoples ability to sue? Thus what are you going to do in the case of an accident caused by the negligence of others, take the ACC or risk trying a court case where even if you win the weak justice system in this country is likely to award you the princely sum of $20 000, for the life of a parent !?!

This is why ACC needs to be privatised, and opened up to competition. If its government policy that we all must get Accident Insurance then so be it, but let private enterprize do it. This way it will not be open to the tinkering and abuse that politicians are prone to doing.

Add to this the much higher depreciation for a motorcycle and in most cases a decent size motorcycle is more expensive and less practical transport than a small car.

Also, ACC has been pretty slack in the past at following up GP concerns regarding the veracity of claimants’ stories – there is a space on the ACC forms for the GP to tick if they believe a review is indicated. I’ve never seen it picked up and acted on by ACC.

This is literally how stupid labour were back then.

With respect to motor vehicle levies, I contend that the risk assessment, rating and fee collection scheme is completely askew. There’s nothing about track record (past accident history being a very good indicator of future events) and then there’s people with 5 motorbikes simultaneously paying 5x their actual risk.

Why is the vehicle rated for ACC rather than the driver? Is it fair that the rider of un unregistered trail bike receives ACC for any injury sustained when they’re not paying a levy, while a road rider with 30 years of clear record is the one contributing to the fund?

It’s time for a major overhaul, to purge the ill formed ‘part-taxation part-welfare’ aspects from the scheme and get it back to its risk insurance and rehabilitation roots.

Death benefit – in pre ACC days if a worker is killed through employer’s or workmate’s negligence, the family could sue the employer who was obliged to have appropriate insurance. This necessarily had to be a lump sum. Therefore a ACC death benefit to help the family of a deceased is quite appropriate – this is core to the ACC ‘social contract’. Whether it should be 80% of wages until youngest child turns 18 would the main issue. The ‘present value’ of the ACC payments would probably greatly exceed the pre ACC lump sum (even before the lawyer’s cut). Perhaps the payments could be capped to five years (80% wages) with the option of 50% wages for 10 years. It should not be a lump sum – the temptation to squander it may be too great.

Seasonal workers – For casual workers including retired people who do some consulting there is a danger that they on average may not receive in aggregate the same benefit as full time workers, ie ACC levies merely become to some extent a deadweight tax on these people. IMO over 65′s who are self employed should be able to ‘opt out’ of most of ACC since they can generally bear loss of work income with no problem.

Either every vehicle user should pay the same, or else everyone should pay an amount tailored to their individual risk.

As someone who has been riding motorcycles on the road for 31 years and about 400,000 km without a single ACC claim, why should I have to pay for someone who gets a bike way beyond their skill and experience level (and in fact one that *I* would never consider owning) and munters themselves?

So quibbling about itty bitty numbers is irrelevant really!

That’s come cool back-of-the-envelope guessing

Perhaps we could increase speeding fines and put the extra into the ACC motorists account..