Meet the Greens – ACC

Labou appear to have decided on a strategy of releasing as little policy as possible, making it difficult to assess the impact on us of a Labour-led Government.

Fortunately the Greens are not shy in releasing policy, so in the absence of Labour policy I am going to look at Greens policy to get some idea of what the costs will be of a change in government.

I will go through their policies in alphabetical order. My brain could not cope with reading too much Green policy in one sitting, so these will be spaced out over a few weeks.

Their first policy is ACC. They key aspects are:

• Extending the ACC scheme to include income support and treatment for injuries, disability, and illnesses, regardless of origin.
• Revoking requirements for co-payments to treatment providers

So what would this cost, and who would pay for it?

A 2013 Treasury estimate put the cost of extending the ACC scheme at $1.5 billion, which would be $2.1 billion in 2026 dollars. Add in 21% population growth and you get $2.5 billion minimum cost.

Revoking co-payments just for physio is estimated to cost $65 million and physio is 25% of treatments so a conservative cost estimate (in reality number of treatments would increase massively) is $250 million.

So total annual cost of just this one policy is at least $2.75 billion a year. Thus would need the following tax changes to fund it:

• Top tax rate on income over $180k from 39% to 61%; or
• Tax rate of 41% on all income over $70k; or
• Increase GST from 15% to 16.5%

Again this is just the cost of their ACC policy, not all their policies.