(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, September 9.)
A letter in last week’s Listener
magazine offered an interesting slant on the workplace safety debate.
The writer was a New Zealand geologist who had worked in
Australia. He had gone there convinced, as most of us probably are, of the
virtues of our no-fault accident compensation system.
He thought ACC was clearly superior to the Australian
alternative, where people injured in workplace mishaps (or in car accidents, or
even as the result of a fall on a slippery supermarket floor) can sue for
damages.
That used to be the way in New Zealand too. Personal injury
cases were a profitable area of practice for lawyers until the well dried up
with the introduction of the accident compensation scheme in 1974.
Under ACC, the state picked up the tab for all work and
non-work injuries, regardless of who (if anyone) was to blame.
At first it seemed a bizarre notion that a burglar who accidentally
slashed his arm while breaking into a house should be entitled, courtesy of his
law-abiding fellow-citizens, to free medical treatment and weekly earnings while
he recovered to steal again.
But we put those misgivings aside because the new regime
seemed preferable to one where compensation hinged on being able to prove
negligence, which involved hiring a lawyer.
In hindsight, ACC can be seen as the high-water mark of
socialism – or, if you like, collectivism – in New Zealand.
Effectively, it was a state takeover of turf previously occupied by lawyers and insurance companies. But more than that, it took fault out of
the equation.
It made us all collectively responsible for everyone else’s
folly, whether it’s a company with lax safety standards or a snowboarder
testing his skills on a slope strewn with rocks.
To put it another way, it absolved people of full personal responsibility
for the consequences of their actions. It meant that if we fell over, the state
could be counted on to pick us up and kiss us better.
This brings us back to the New Zealand geologist in
Australia. He noticed that Australian employers were extremely risk-averse when
it came to health and safety – more so, by implication, than bosses here.
As a supervisor, he was required to ensure not only that
workers wore all the usual safety equipment, but long-sleeved shirts and long
trousers as well, for fear that the boss might be held liable if someone got
skin cancer.
Contrast that with a recent New Zealand court case in which
a forestry worker wasn’t even wearing a high-vis vest when trees were being
felled in the pre-dawn darkness. A workmate didn’t see him, and he was killed
by a falling log.
The geologist wrote that he had been incredulous on reading
about the infamously slack safety standards at the Pike River coal mine. “Our
no-fault ACC system,” he concluded, “seems to mean just that.”
In other words, if I interpreted his letter correctly,
no-fault compensation can serve as a licence for employers to disregard their
obligations when it comes to workers’ safety.
Did anyone anticipate this at the time ACC was introduced? I
don’t know. But it wouldn’t be the first time well-intentioned legislation has led
to unintended and sometimes disastrous consequences. History is littered with examples.
The domestic purposes benefit was brought in to help
struggling solo parents – an entirely laudable aim. It seems no one imagined
that it would incentivise teenagers to have children at the taxpayers’ expense.
The Privacy Act was passed to protect personal information.
Now it’s used to justify schools arranging abortions for girls without having to
tell their parents.
Bike helmets were made compulsory to prevent cyclists
suffering brain injury. Result? Women and teenagers stopped riding bikes
because helmets were considered uncool or just too inconvenient.
In the United States, idealistic zealots successfully
campaigned in the early 20th century for Prohibition – an event that
gave birth to organised crime as gangsters exploited demand for illicit liquor.
It was the best thing that ever happened to the Mafia.
The European Union arose out of a desire to ensure that the
countries of Europe would never again go to war with each other, but its
architects overlooked underlying economic, political and cultural differences
that are now threatening to pull the union apart.
Likewise, when the 1985 Schengen Treaty created
passport-free travel between 26 European countries, no one anticipated that
Europe would be swamped with refugees from North Africa and the Middle East.
Often these changes are championed by idealists from the
political left. Their intentions may be good but their faith in the ability of
laws to control human behaviour is often misplaced.
Of course we can’t use fear of unforeseen consequences as an
excuse for doing nothing. But if the geologist’s perception is correct, it’s
possible that the accident compensation scheme perversely contributed to the
culture of workplace complacency highlighted in 2013 by the government’s
Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety.
I’m sure that wasn’t the outcome the ACC’s creators
envisaged. 
5 comments:
Agree totally about the unintended consequences bit but you've got to throw in the fact that Oz still has very stroppy unions who can enforce safety standards when the State doesn't.
I think the Govt thought ACC would be a huge money spinner because it trapped every employer and employee.. including the tens of thousands that rarely or never had accidents.
Of course if you create a free service you also get endless innovation of how to use and/or abuse it.
I still have my 1999 receipt when competition for ACC was introduced.. $199 for two directors and several employees instead of the thousands we had been playing.. we had been accident free for 5 years. OTOH one of the contractors down the road went from several thousand to over $50,000 because of his appalling safety record.
When Labour closed the shop again a year later it saved quite a few contractors from insolvency as the premiums went way down and costs of accidents were picked up by safe companies.
Since 2000 both National and Labour have apologetically used ACC and safety as a grab bag for all sorts of things.. the man who has a heart attack driving to work is an accident, seeing an accident can cause mental trauma and is covered and of course sexual abuse is now a huge part of ACC. These things can be paid for by squeezing the victims of true accidents in a variety of devious and unethical ways.
JC
Have you ever noticed that many people in this country say things like 'our ACC system is the envy of the world' and then you realise that actually no other country has copied our system....
To some extent, ACC premiums do follow an employer's safety and claim record (not necessarily accurately I might add). The removal of the individual responsibility is a major problem, as is also the discrimination against workers with a history of ACC claims. Try getting a job after some time on ACC, even if the injury had no associated personal liability. Most employment application forms have a question relating to ACC payments, and you just know that when you are honest in your answer about previous injury, that you are in fact just composing your application rejection letter.
Err.... if we are worried about workplace safety, isn't an answer to leave ACC in place, but increase the penalties employers can incur if an accident happens in their workplace? This doesn't seem particularly complicated, or require some engineer who's had a visit to Australia to figure out, surely.
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