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June 11, 2012 12:00pm by David Farrar

60 minutes

Did you watch 60 minutes last night? What were your impressions?

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Comment46

NZ Politics
ACC
Bronwyn Pullar

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Two further developments in the ACC saga
The ACC recording
Pullar not charged

Comments (46)

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Alan Wilkinson

Yep. Judge is incompetent.
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June 11, 2012 12:18pm
expat

I caught part of it.

ACC from the Chairman down looked like duplicitous tools/fools.
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June 11, 2012 12:19pm
rolla_fxgt

My impression was that 2 senior managers will soon be looking for a new job. And one Doctor Burgess should be facing the medical council to explain why he should keep his medical licence.

Pullar came across all right, a bit angry/peeved, but from my experience that’s par for the course after dealing with ACC for more than a few months.

The whole Police thing just makes it look 100% like ACC, or at the very least the managers, were out to discredit Pullar, at all costs. Both my partner and I both looked at each other, and wondered if the managers panicked when questioned by the board or CEO, and had to come up with something quick that didn’t make them look, like well they don’t actually do any work.
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June 11, 2012 12:24pm
Mlec

Should we be entrusting our hard earned ACC levys to these clowns?
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June 11, 2012 12:25pm
Emma

I think Bronwyn was vindicated for the most part but the interview was biased and cumbersome. This was not high quality reporting.
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June 11, 2012 12:27pm
trout

Boag is one clever operator; it may not have been extortion but she and Pullar made clear at the outset of negotiations that they had a strong lever (personal ACC files) to bargain with, and the ACC flunkies responded. In view of Pullar’s history with ACC and the shenanigans she has uncovered I understand her frustrations and her use of the files to lend power to her side of the negotiations. Her later release to the media of the files can be seen as an attempt to punish ACC – no doubt also because of frustration. As to her case for proper compensation; it looks pretty genuine to me.
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June 11, 2012 12:29pm
Pete George

More confirmation of longstanding and very concerining problems with ACC, and confirmation the management is not up to dealing with it. An inquiry into the management, culture, privacy security and direction of ACC is overdue and essential.
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June 11, 2012 12:36pm
Dan

What puzzles me is how it has been asked/expected that Pullar would return the files that had been sent to her.

It’s email.
How do you ‘return’ files that have been emailed to you?
Or does everyone actually understand/agree that ‘return’ is simply a metaphor for Pullar deleting the email she received?
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June 11, 2012 12:40pm
wf

Didn’t catch it all, what is it that Pullar wants, exactly? I thought she had settled for an undisclosed sum with her health insurers.

My feeling is that with Boag’s encouragement she is pulling a political stunt, and like many brain-injured people has become fixated on one thing.

But as I have never had any dealings with ACC, I can’t really comment.
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June 11, 2012 12:41pm
ross69

ACC is completely and utterly dysfunctional, and Minister Judith Collins should concern herself with sorting out the department rather than worrying about her tarnished reputation. Oh and if I’m ever in the unfortunate position of needing ACC’s assistance, I will ensure than any conversation is recorded.
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June 11, 2012 12:46pm
Alan Wilkinson

Emma, I don’t agree. Melanie Reid is a very good reporter. We’ll see if it was selective by ACC’s response. So far it looks as though they have none.
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June 11, 2012 12:49pm
ross69

John Key has gotten himself involved in the issue and, perhaps unsurprisingly, has made a dick of himself in the process.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/7079141/PM-wades-into-ACC-Pullar-debate
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June 11, 2012 12:53pm
Matthew Hooton

[email protected] pm – I have thought the same thing. The way this has been reported it is as if we live in a world without email, where the documents were posted to Pullar. Not only that, but photocopiers have never been invented. Nor mimeographs. Nor even monks copying out bibles. What is the deal with her “returning the file”? The issue surely is that she destroy it and all copies and computer memory of it?
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June 11, 2012 12:55pm
Adolf Fiinkensein

I have personal experience of Melanie Reid’s reporting for Sixty Minutes. She [deleted by DPF] then and I have no reason to think she has changed.

You need to take this show with a very large grain of salt and much suspicion.
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June 11, 2012 1:00pm
hmmokrightitis

Alan, “Yep. Judge is incompetent.” LIke there was doubt about that 🙂

Hell, the man couldnt even keep his ‘other home’ a secret for long 🙂
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June 11, 2012 1:05pm
Liberty

There is a number at ACC who should be shot at dawn.
But they will then want a payment form ACC for having a bad day.
Better just to give them a DCM.
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June 11, 2012 1:08pm
Julian

In my opinion there was an implicit threat, when Pullar and Boag said they possessed the data. (I note there was a five minute conversation about it which it would be useful to hear). The ACC managers appear to have overstated the threat though, and effectively said that it was explicit. Either way, ACC probably had no choice but to call the police when Pullar wouldn’t destroy it immediately. (The destroy/return issue is a red herring).

ACC should have just released a statement saying ‘we believe it was a matter for the police to sort out’.

Judge’s handling of the issue, and his interview, were both incompetent and confrontational. He needs to go.

Pullar seems to have a legitimate claim, but it’s hard to tell because the information shown on the program was so selective.
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June 11, 2012 1:12pm
wynkie

Julian, Pullar DID return the file to ACC and ACC confirmed receipt of it.

Clearly you are still believe this bullshit spinning out of ACC.
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June 11, 2012 1:20pm
Alan Wilkinson

Actually I think the implicit threat came from ACC.

By talking about making the approval of further support conditional on “return” of the data I suspect they were actually going to draft a legal commitment that would silence her regarding its illegal and incompetent release to her.

As others rightly point out, all she had was a copy which obviously they didn’t want returned since they already had it. Instead they wanted her to commit to deleting all versions of it and not show or send it to any other party. 99:1 they would also have phrased the disclosure clause so that it prevented even disclosure that it had been sent.
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June 11, 2012 1:25pm
Julian

Wynkie: Not at that point she didn’t. They admitted that last night. The settlement they discussed in the meeting stipulated that she would have to return/destroy the file.
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June 11, 2012 1:27pm
Ross12

Ross69
I heard Hosking’s interview with John Key and I don’t think he ” made a dick of himself”. He made it clear he did not see the TV3 interview and also made it quite clear he saw it as an operational metter at this stage. ( The comments by Boag in the D Levy article is really a matter of semantics –there is no way the listener to Keys comments would infer that Pullar had some sort illness prior to the accident)
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June 11, 2012 1:31pm
alex Masterley

Ross69
What Ross12 said.
I heard the interview as well.
You need to take what you read in Stuff and the Herald with a grain of salt.
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June 11, 2012 1:43pm
Nookin

I agree with Ross 12 and Alex.
Key did not “wade in”. He was asked a question and gave a qualified answer.
Key did not say that Pullar had a pre-existing conditon but said that this was the issue ( to be determined by ACC at operational level).

It must be clear to all concerned that Ross69 is wholly incapable of any objective view on anything involving National. He is, in a couple of words, a shameless troll.
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June 11, 2012 1:52pm
ross69

You both must have missed Key’s comment:

”What is clear is that ACC deals with a huge number of complaints, a huge amount of data and there are always people who feel the system hasn’t treated them fairly and that is partly because the big dispute always comes around the definition of a pre-existing condition,” he told Newstalk. ”That at one level is at the heart of what sits with this Bronwyn Pullar claim.”

Clearly, the inference is that Pullar – according to Key – had a pre-existing condition.
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June 11, 2012 1:53pm
PaulD

@ Ross12 “there are always people who feel the system hasn’t treated them fairly and that is partly because the big dispute always comes around the definition of a pre-existing condition,” he told Newstalk.

”That at one level is at the heart of what sits with this Bronwyn Pullar claim.” How can the listener not infer that Key thinks that at some level the dispute is about pre-existing condition? Unless he was thinking of the attempt to get a group of Nats to attest to her high level of performance prior to the accident.
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June 11, 2012 1:54pm
ross69

Thanks, Nookin, for adding nothing. Work must be quiet.
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June 11, 2012 1:55pm
ross69

PaulD,

You’re talking to the Rabid Right on here…appealing to their common sense is never going to work because it isn’t so common.
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June 11, 2012 1:57pm
103PapPap

I observed several things.
I thought Melanie Reid’s conclusions were overly dramatic. She saw things in emails that weren’t there. She claims to have listened to the whole tape, but Pullar previously admitted that she had edited the tape ‘to remove personal information’.
I got the impression that Pullar was ‘playing for the crowd’ with her dramatic tears and semi-faints.
My understanding is that the emailed spreadsheet was mainly a list of names, but no actual information about those people named. This makes the claim about ‘personal information’ over the top.
I observed that Pullar was ‘out to get’ the ACC and ‘teach them a lesson’. I got this because Pullar said those words. Also by getting an attack dog (Boag) involved, she has made it plain that she is after vengeance, so ACC must be very careful.
It does appear that the bureaucratic monster that is ACC hasn’t always got it’s ducks aligned before firing.
Looks like a lose-lose to me.
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June 11, 2012 2:20pm
Nookin

A pleasure Ross. Now you know hoe every else feels about every one of your posts. Work is far from quiet. I do get a coffee break every now and again.
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June 11, 2012 2:22pm
3-coil

There was more communication at the face-to-face meeting than the recording on the tape.

The detailed discussion re the return of the ACC client details made it clear that it was part and parcel of any agreement between Pullar and ACC regarding her continued payments, yet we didn’t hear any of that previous conversation – we are only getting selected bits of the story. Why have TV3 censored some of the vital information out?
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June 11, 2012 2:30pm
Ross12

Ross69

“Clearly, the inference is that Pullar – according to Key – had a pre-existing condition.”

Ross your mate PaulD has sort of clarified it for you. What Key was saying was simply that the dispute with ACC and Pullar is that the ACC think Pullar had a pre existing condition — and that this is often at the base of disputes with many ACC cases.
Key DID NOT say that Pullar had pre-existing condition.
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June 11, 2012 2:37pm
sifty

Its a well known proven medical fact that the higher the amount and prospect of compensation the less the chance of recovery. I strongly suspect that Ms Pullar already had a case of what is called FITH Syndrome ( don”t expect to find a definition in the medical books but most doctors will be able to tell you what it is) which has been exacerbated by her obsession with further compensation than she already has received. 103PapPap has summarised the whole sorry saga well.
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June 11, 2012 2:50pm
PaulD

@103PapPap As far as the spreadsheet goes, apparently there was enough to identify that 250 people had “sensitive claims”. Even that would be more detail than those people would want disclosed.
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June 11, 2012 3:07pm
Nostalgia-NZ

I wish Key had moved the matter of ‘pre existing condition’ on a bit, it seems to be the most unfair, and possibly the highest cost-absorber in the service ACC are meant to be providing. Levies don’t go down in anticipation, or for pre existing conditions, but they’re on the table straight away when it comes to a claim. Be interesting to know how much of ACC’s budget is spent on ‘defending’ or minimising claims.
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June 11, 2012 4:27pm
ross69

> we are only getting selected bits of the story

You would know that because you were at the meeting? Tell us what was said. Of course ACC could tell us but they are only interested in smearing. Weird.
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June 11, 2012 4:54pm
ephemera

If “it isn’t just about Bronwyn Pullar,” why not bring other people with similar experiences into the picture and build a campaign?

It’s a one-woman crusade, which doesn’t look great if your trying to convince people your grievances aren’t petty and personal.
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June 11, 2012 4:57pm
ross69

> My understanding is that the emailed spreadsheet was mainly a list of names, but no actual information about those people named.

Your understanding is wrong. Which might explain why ACC has had to apologise to each of those affected by ACC’s breach of privacy.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/6569710/ACC-to-send-mountain-of-apologies
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June 11, 2012 4:59pm
joana

Excellent..Does anyone know whether the ACC profit figure for last year Bronwyn quoted is correct?
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June 11, 2012 5:38pm
Whaleoil

Actually Ross69 it is you who is wrong. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10806677

“ACC’s Bronwyn Pullar email blunder was at the lower end of breaches for the individual claimants affected, the Privacy Commission says.

But one angry ACC client says the response minimises the distress caused by the breach.

The woman’s “sensitive claim” status – identifying her as a victim of rape or sexual abuse – was part of the information mistakenly emailed to Ms Pullar by an ACC manager last year.

The ACC claimant complained to the Privacy Commissioner after the privacy breach involving 6700 claimants was reported in March.

Yesterday, she received a response from assistant Privacy Commissioner Mike Flahive in which he noted the commission was investigating the breach and wider privacy issues at the corporation with the help of accounting firm KPMG and the former Australian Privacy Commissioner Malcolm Crompton.”

There has been a great deal of scare mongering over this file. Most of it frankly is appalling journalism from the Dominion Post and one journalist in particular.

Having been interviewed now by the aforementioned Mike Flahive regarding this matter I find it incredible that the media still don’t have it right about the file itself.
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June 11, 2012 5:51pm
Chris2

It is apparent that there are failings with ACC’s handling of the case, and Pullar’s behaviour too.

Pullar sure has the goods on ACC and they have alot to answer for. Pullar seems obsessed with the ACC (ie the taxpayer) funding her lifestyle. If she has so much energy to spend almost a decade in this pursuit than maybe the time has arrived for her to put that energy into doing a proper day’s work. She can’t really claim an inability to work when she has roomful of correspondence with ACC.

I think the public might have been better placed to asses Pullar’s entitlements if the reporter has asked Pullar how much her privater insurer has paid her, and how much ACC has already given her over the last decade. My understanding is that collectively, it is well in excess of a million dollars.
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June 11, 2012 6:20pm
Alan Wilkinson

“ACC’s Bronwyn Pullar email blunder was at the lower end of breaches for the individual claimants affected, the Privacy Commission says.”

Yes, but because it was only disclosed to Ms Pullar who didn’t give it to anyone else. Not because the data was innocuous.
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June 11, 2012 7:13pm
big bruv

From what I know of this case Puller is no better than a certain bludger who thinks he has a right to our money to fund his lifestyle.
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June 11, 2012 7:23pm
RKBee

The ACC is using capitalist ideas on a socialist set up… it only works well in accountants books.
I also think Bronwyn Pullar was laying it on a bit think… for her own personal reasons… but she makes a good point… there are lots of genuine ACC claimants now being denied their rights for full entitlements to ACC because of ACC bulling tactics… designed to cut costs. I would say the same system is being applied right through the Govt Social Services and genuine claimants are being denied the same. The system needs an overview so those with genuine need are not panished.. by a cost cutting venture designed only for the accountants books only.
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June 11, 2012 7:28pm
expat

big bruv – speaking of too much time online…
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June 11, 2012 7:33pm
ross69

> Actually Ross69 it is you who is wrong

I don’t think so. I’ve had the misfortune to deal with Mr Flahive and his job, it seems, is to minimise the effect of any privacy breaches. Alas he cannot be trusted.

http://laudafinem.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/10730/
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June 12, 2012 5:39pm
expat

Oh do fuck off ‘Ross’ and take the link whoring to your sad union hack blog with you. 🙂
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June 12, 2012 6:26pm

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