John Key is calling for answers from ACC over the Bronwyn Pullar case; Stuff reports:
Prime Minister John Key says "valid questions" need to be answered over apparently misleading comments by ACC executives about whistleblower Bronwyn Pullar.Opposition parties are calling on ACC Minister Judith Collins to sack chairman John Judge and chief executive Ralph Stewart.It comes amid growing controversy over the corporation's complaint to police that Ms Pullar had tried to extort compensation after she was inadvertently emailed the private details of more than 6500 claimants.Police announced last week they would not be taking action because no offence was committed at a meeting between Ms Pullar, her supporter and former National Party president Michelle Boag, and two senior ACC managers.Ms Pullar, who has been an ACC claimant since suffering a head injury in a cycling accident in 2002, recorded the meeting and provided police with a copy of the tape.Mr Judge and Mr Stewart last week stood by their decision to go to police and said that, despite requests, police had not provided them with a copy of the recording.But on April 30, The Dominion Post revealed that senior ACC staff, including Mr Stewart, had been played the tape.And on TV3's 60 Minutes on Sunday night, Ms Pullar said her lawyer had played Mr Stewart the recording which featured the senior managers, not Ms Pullar, saying they wanted the email back if her claim was resolved.
Sunday night's 60 Minutes story about Bronwyn Pullar raised as many questions as it answered. But the revelations above definitely place a question mark over the credibility of the chairman and CEO of ACC.
It appeared from the portion of the taped conversation played on 60 Minutes that the suggestion for continuation of Ms Pullar's benefit came from the ACC managers with whom she was meeting. That of course is completely at odds with the allegations from A
CC that Bronwyn Pullar tried to extort ACC. We do however say "It appeared", because the tape was not played in its entirety, and selective editing can make a difference to context. It would be interesting to see a transcipt of the full exchange.
And the Herald reports that Key and ACC Minister Judith Collins are refusing to publicly back ACC:
Prime Minister John Key and ACC Minister Judith Collins have refused to back ACC's most senior executives in their dispute with claimant Bronwyn Pullar but do not want to speak more before two inquiries are completed.
Last week's announcement by the Police that there would be no prosecution because no offence had been committed was a damning indictment of ACC. But there are two other investigations underway, which explain Judith Collins' silence; read on:
Mr Key said he would not comment further until investigations by the Auditor-General and the Privacy Commissioner were completed.Mrs Collins refused to discuss Ms Pullar's allegations but issued a statement saying it was a high priority to rebuild the public's trust in ACC."I cannot emphasise enough how seriously I view recent privacy-related issues. Privacy and information security are the biggest challenges facing ACC at present," she said. "At this stage, I am not yet satisfied ACC's privacy provisions and protocols are appropriate, or are being complied with to the level they should be."
10 comments:
You know, the Nats used to have a reputation for visionless, but competent administration. Still got the visionless thing happening - Joyce is in charge of that - but now they can't even administer the policy other governments put in place half well. ACC, McCully's appalling job with MFAT, the teacher thing, pointless structural tinkering, taxing the paper boy to pay for tax cuts for themselves. You must be pulling what's left of your hair out.
Why is Key such a poor manager do you think? Did people know how bad he was when they put him in charge?
John Key is very good at doing what he does best:
As Merrill Lynch's global head of foreign exchange he successfully gambled and traded foreign currency, earning himself around $3 million dollars a year. According to Wikipedia he was also given the name "the smiling assassin" for maintaining a cheerful disposition while sacking dozens of staff during a recession.
Key's past employer, Merrill Lynch, did not come out of the financial crisis well, they were heavily involved in the mortgage based collateralised debt obligation (CDO) market and bought First Franklin Financial Corp, one of the largest subprime lenders in the US. When the value of CDOs collapsed, Merrill Lynch resorted to all manner of dodgy dealings to remain afloat; shifting funds, avoiding tax and dishonestly representing their financial position to investors. The company was sued for fraud by Rabobank, was fined $100 million for publishing misleading research and in 2007 had a suit brought against it for disregarding the civil rights of employees. To top it all Merrill Lynch received a $45 billion bailout from the US government and promptly spent $3.4 billion in bonuses to their top 14 executives, even though the company had lost $15 billion in the previous quarter.
While there is no way John Key can be held responsible for the behaviour and management of his past employer, it still represents the business culture that he came from (and was obviously comfortable with) and there are so many parallels with the management style of his old firm and the way he has approached the governance of the country. We have seen a huge growth in the salaries of CEOs, a cutting of the taxes to the wealthy, over 3,000 jobs cut from the public sector (providing some credence to alleged nickname) and a constant stream of misleading information to support government initiatives from National Standards through to the funding of motorways.
Banks, understandably, have also done well under Key and the government's main banker, Westpac New Zealand, is the highest performing section of Westpac and it returns billions of dividends to the Australian mothership and also provides the local CEO with an annual salary of over $5 million. Key's past wheeling and dealing and gambling in foreign currencies has enabled a high comfort level with gambling in general and making cosy back room deals.
There is even a parallel with the sale of State Assets and the Government bailout of Merrill Lynch. Both involve using public funds to rectify poor financial management and the main sacrifice coming from those who deserved a better return from their taxes. In both cases much of the funds will end up supporting the salaries and lifestyles of those who created the crisis in the first place.
What do you think of Key's management, KS? The general consesus across the board seems to be that he's disappointed everyone.
If by "across the board" you mean Judge Holden (almost as much a John Key-detester as Robert Guyton) and bsprout (self-confessed Green Party supporter), I suggest that you need to get out more Anon.
The handling of the class sizes/teacher quality debate was poor, as I have acknowledged several times. MFAT was a McCully special, and ACC has been the bane of successive governments. Collins is doing the right thing by not commenting until other inquiries are completed.
Overall, Key needs to get the message across to those Ministers who are not performing. He is not a micro-manager as Helen Clark admitted that she was; perhaps he needs to become morese.
"He is not a micro-manager..."
This is true. What's increasingly apparent is that he's not really any type of manager. His office spends its time trying to clean up the messes being made by the people Key is supposed to be directing. It's great stuff, except for how damaging it is for the country.
The problems with ACC were because those placed to manage it were not put there to manage a service sustainably as their main role, but to make savings.
The National Government have forgotten who they serve, the New Zealand people, they have put flawed ideology ahead of planning a sustainable future. Advice and research has been ignored and false crises have been invented to enable unnecessary change.
ACC is not broken it is now generating huge profits when that is not its purpose.
Our education system is not broken it is one of the top performers in the world and child poverty has more to do with lack of achievement than poor teaching. National Standards, Charter Schools and PPPs don't add value. Re-employing sacked school advisors and providing good professional development for teachers would.
There is no need to create a low wage economy when most corporates and the wealthiest New Zealanders have seen profits and incomes up by 20%. Our domestic economy suffers through dropping disposable incomes for most New Zealanders (median income now only $27,000).
Pure Advantage represents the thinking of our most successful business leaders and in their recent report they describe the economic, social and environmental decline of our country under National and what we need to do to reverse it. It's worth a read: http://www.pureadvantage.org/PUA0018_GREEN_RACE_REPORT.pdf
The New Zealand Institute is supported by the Business Round Table and their New Zealand Report Card highlights the areas of poor performance and best performance according to widely accepted OECD measures. It is interesting that National is giving all its attention to change and manage the areas of success, like education, and yet practically ignore all areas where we do need attention: http://www.nzinstitute.org/index.php/nzahead/
It does make one wonder who our Prime Minister listens to for advice because it doesn't appear to be those who are the best informed. When Russel Norman makes more sense economically than Key and English (and many independent commentators are saying this), something is seriously wrong with National's current direction.
I disagree bsprout; ACC has been dysfunctional for more years now than National has been in office.
I agree with the history of disfunction, KS, but Nick Smith's fake crisis and increased pressure to cut services didn't help. All those over fifty who had claims dismissed because accidents became "age degeneration" occurred under National's watch.
The Nats running down ACC serves to purposes. Firstly it's penny-pniching, which they're quite good at. It's the big stuff they're too scared to deal with. Second it softens up the populace for the privatisation of accident compensation insurance, starting and probably ending with with the profitable bits. They have donors to satisfy after all. It's called governing in the intrusts of all New Zullunders.
That should be "two purposes" FFS.
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