Response letters from MPs

[sammcj]

I wrote a letter to several MP's.

I've had good responses from Jim Anderton and the entire Green's Party.
I've had nothing but bad, uncalculated, "copy and pasted" responses from the National Party - It seems I've lost what little respect I had for them.

Here is a reply from Nikki Kaye, MP for Auckland Central:

Dear Sam,

Thank you for your email regarding changes to ACC, specifically your concerns regarding how this will affect Motorcycle users. The National-led Government is determined to preserve and protect our 24/7, no-fault accident insurance programme.

ACC is facing some real challenges. Its liabilities have ballooned to almost $24 billion – $13 billion more than its assets. This is unsustainable and unaffordable.


In 2008/09, ACC paid more than $62 million to motorcycle riders but collected only $12.3 million in levies.


The incidence, severity and cost of motorcycle crash injuries are not reflected in current levies. The cost of injuries in motorcycle crashes is about four times higher than injuries in other motor vehicle crashes.


To help make up this difference the ACC Board has proposed a reclassification and an increase to the motorcycle levies. Even with the proposed increase in levies other motor vehicle owners will continue to pay $77 each to cross-subsidise motorcyclists.


We want to have an open and honest conversation with the public as to how they want us to fund the shortfall. If the shortfall is not funded through an increase to motorcycle levies, it will have to be funded from somewhere else.


The proposed increases are currently open to public consultation. We encourage motorcyclists and other motorists to have their say on this issue by making submissions to ACC by 5PM, 10 November.


Following public consultation, the Government will receive advice from the ACC Board and make a final decision.


I would like to encourage you to have your say on the proposals, via this link: www.acc.co.nz/consultation


Thank you once again for letting me know your views.


Best wishes,

Nikki Kaye
MP for Auckland Central
Address for mail: Parliament Buildings, Wellington
Ph: 04 817 8227
www.nikkikaye.co.nz

Which happens to be the exact same email I've had back from several other National MP's.

I wrote the follow back:

Nikki,

With all due respect, I do not believe you have done your research.
You cannot take information fed from ACC as statistical fact; or at least not from the surface.
If you dig through ACC's website you can find the crash statistics from 2008 which will lead you to the following information:


Cyclists:

- 567 active claims

- $12,573,000

- $22,174 per claim



Pedestrians:

- 1115 active claims

- $24,494,000

- $21,967 per claim



Car Occupants:

- 8525 active claims

- $208,305,000

- $24,434 per claim



Motorcyclists:

- 3173 active claims

- $62,523,000

- $19,704 per claim


-How is $19,704 per claim 4x higher than any of the other class's mentioned?
In fact, as you can see the average car occupant claim is $24,434 - they keyword here is occupant there is often more than one person in a Car during an accident, This has not been brought to the public to take into account, it is again another example of ACC quoting only the statistics that benefit their argument.


-This does absolutely nothing to address the fact that:
a) 99% of New Zealander's that own a motorcycle also own a car that they also have to pay ACC for through vehicle registration.
b) A large number of Motorcycle owner's own more than one motorbike (cruiser, classics, sports, learner / day-to-day commuter) there is no good reason as to why they not only have to pay for base registration on each bike but also the already outrageous ACC levees.

Bikes:

-Don't destroy the roads.
-Don't cause traffic jams the way cars do.
-Don't pollute nearly as much as a car.

When other countries are trying to promote the use of smaller vehicles New Zealand is once again taking a step backwards.

-Sam McLeod.

[davereid]

Yeah I got the same letters, so I replied with the factual data and then got the "you have the right to make a submission etc" drivel.

Still, the art of taxation is to remove as many feathers from the goose as you can with the minimum of hissing... this particular goose has not yet lost its feather, is hissing its head off, and preparing to inflict a couple of nasty bites.

[Big Dave]

Don't be too discouraged - Volume, theses e-days is just as valuable and important a currency as content.

The task is to make them aware of the size of the groundswell against the levy and the impact it could have on votes.

They aren't going to read every word of 50,000 emails. It's the fact that they got 50,000 negative emails from voters when it comes time to drafting policy in the committee room that matters.

You can think of it as doing the government a favour. Letting them know that there enough people who will be disadvantaged by the Levy that the number of lost votes will be problematic.

[sammcj]

I've also had several Nation MP's ask me for my Address which I'm not too happy about; given that email was the form of contact that I initiated.

I had this response from The Greens:

Dear Sam



I have been asked to respond on behalf of all nine Green Party MPs Metiria Turei, Russel Norman, Jeanette Fitzsimons, Sue Bradford, Sue Kedgley, Keith Locke, Kevin Hague, Catherine Delahunty and Kennedy Graham, to your email below.



The Green Party opposes the proposed levy increase for motorcycles. We consider this levy increase to be contrary to the original principles set out by Sir Owen Woodhouse under which ACC was established. One of those principles was that of "community responsibility". Sir Owen himself, at the age of 93, has spoken out against the approach the Government is taking to ACC, stating that proposals to double and treble levies on heavy motorbikes and mopeds, and to push accident victims back to work on much lower incomes than they earned before their accidents, breach the principles of the scheme he authored as head of the 1967 Royal Commission that recommended the ACC scheme.



The community responsibility principle recognises that the various activities that we undertake in society are all inter-related, and that harm and benefit flow on to others, rather than rest solely with the people undertaking those activities.



In the particular example of motorcycle use, the community responsibility principle recognises that even though a disproportionately high number of motor vehicle injuries involve motorcyclists, a significant proportion of those injuries are actually caused by someone other than the motorcyclist. It also recognises that increased use of motorcycles where practicable has environmental benefits if single occupant car usage is consequently reduced, since the greenhouse gas emissions generated by a motorcycles are significantly less than from cars and the fuel used per kilometre of travel is significantly less for a motorcycle than a car. From that perspective, the Green Party would want to encourage motorcycle use as opposed to car use - however, the Government's proposed levy increase for motorcycles does the opposite.



It is Green Party policy to restore the social contract envisioned in Sir Owen Woodhouse's report from which the original ACC scheme was derived, including the community responsibility principle, and we therefore oppose pinch-paring measures such as the Government's proposals that attempt to assess the injury risk of every specific activity undertaken in society and set levies based solely on that risk.



Thank you for the figures you have provided. They affirm the view the Green Party MPs already have that much of the so-called "crisis" in ACC is manufactured by the Government to suit its political agenda.





Kind regards

Ivan Sowry
Issues Assistant to Green Party MPs

[Ixion]

Greens have accordingly been deemed Official Good Bastards

Flash protest ride is delivring pressies this Thursday. Midish dayish .

Choccies and thank you card at the Green electorate office

Primary school arithmetic book for the matematically challenged John (What's 43700 times 100000 , John ?) at his Kumeu electorate office.

[davereid]

I've also had several Nation MP's ask me for my Address which I'm not too happy about; given that email was the form of contact that I initiated.

Years ago I wrote to an MP about something, and for some reason I used my work address.

A few days later, a friendly, but official elderly gentleman showed up with an electoral enrolment "survey" just checking everyone at the address was correctly enrolled and recorded.

[Tink]

John Key has a facebook site.... no harm in giving that a good verbal booting either.

[retro asian]

John Key has a facebook site.... no harm in giving that a good verbal booting either.

Everybody poke him....

[Tink]

Everybody poke him....

psml good idea

[rainman]

Everybody poke him....

Ewwwwwww. Hang on, this is some facebook thing, no?

[Rhubarb]

I wrote a letter to several MP's.

Which happens to be the exact same email I've had back from several other National MP's.

I sent 65 letters to all of Nationals MP's, the leaders of the other parties and/or their ACC spokesperson and to the commission.

Every National MP's reply was a copy and paste of the same letter. Obviously they are all 'towing the party line' instead of doing their own research and thinking for themselves.

Tariana Turia's reply used more text correcting my spelling of her name (I put two n's instead of one) than it did addressing any issues. And, the letter started with a sentence I don't understand "Tena koe i nga ahuatanga o te wa"

[Mully]

John Key has a facebook site.... no harm in giving that a good verbal booting either.

Already done.

Plus John Banks and Len Brown asking what their positions (as potential mayors of Supercity (tm)) were with regard to the very real possibility of motorcyclists being forced off two wheels and back into cars. No response yet.....

Plus, any letter from any MP is a copy-and-paste job. I've read the same e-mail from the Greens (with a different last paragraph) on here about 10 times.

Stop believing that MPs are here to serve (any of them; Red, Blue, Green, whatever). Just spam them all with as much shit as you can on the subject and they might get the message
(note; they won't get any information from the message, but they will get the message that a large block of voters are pissed)

[u4ea]

I sent a civil and sincere email to opose the increases and got this reply

On behalf of the Hon Rodney Hide, Leader of ACT New Zealand and Member of Parliament for Epsom, thank you for your email regarding changes to ACC.

The Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and compensation Amendment Bill does not reform ACC. This Bill keeps ACC in its current form, continues to fund ACC through compulsory levies, and does not apply ongoing commercial pressure to its operation.

Unfortunately, they also undertook a massive expansion of the entitlements under the scheme, meaning that despite their promises to have the scheme fully funded, the unfunded liability has in fact expanded - its unfunded liability now stands at $13 billion - up $5 billion in just the past year.

If any private insurance company had the books that ACC has, they would be declared bankrupt. The only reason that ACC is still solvent is that it has the capacity to increase levies. In essence, it is solvent because it can force people to cover its costs.

The only viable way to ensure that ACC delivers results for reasonable prices is if it is open to competition. If people can get cheaper rates elsewhere, they should be allowed to leave. If that means risky workplaces start paying higher premiums, so be it - it will encourage them to improve workplace safety.

The benefits of competition become apparent when you listen to the nonsense peddled by Labour in their opposition to it. The first thing Labour will tell you is that costs will increase, because we now have to pay for the profit margin of private companies. Well, the facts speak otherwise. The last time competition was introduced, premiums declined by around 30 percent. The argument that profit margins lead to higher prices is absurd - by that logic, the Labour party would nationalise everything.

The second thing Labour says is that premiums were only lower because they offered cheap rates as loss-leaders. Well, that's very interesting. A private insurance company has to have their books signed off by an actuary, and that actuary has to say that the income in one year will cover the full cost of all accidents arising in that year. Labour, on the other hand, oversaw a scheme that was meant to be moving towards full-funding, and yet their unfunded liability moved in the other direction and actually expanded. So, who shall we trust - the expert actuary or the Labour party?

The system needs to be fully funded. But should it be open to competition?

Well, look at it this way. Every single monopoly - be it in forestry, shipping, or coal mining, has always delivered more for less when it has been opened to competition. There is no reason to think ACC will be different.

In fact, it is even more important to open ACC to competition. Currently, ACC sets a flat rate levy based on the risk in an industry. Those employers which have safe environments subsidise those who have unsafe environments. There is little commercial incentive to create safer workplaces.

By keeping ACC as a monopoly, and not properly allowing risk pricing to emerge, we are in fact increasing the number of workplace accidents. In the private market we have insurance excesses, we have no claims bonuses, we have risk-based premiums. The private market is all about mitigating risk. ACC, on the other hand, is about forcing the good employers to subsidise the bad ones.

That is why, last time it was opened to competition, costs not only decreased, but so did the number of accidents.

Those that oppose competition in ACC are not just wasting taxpayers' money - they are also ensuring that more people suffer accidents in the workplace..

Also attached is a copy of a media release in the name of Hon Rodney Hide entitled ACC Choice to cut costs for all New Zealanders.

regards



Sandy Grove
ACT Parliamentary Office Manager
Office of Hon Rodney Hide
WELLINGTON
Ph 04 817 6630
Email: sandy.grove@parliament.govt.nz

[slofox]

Yep. Got the same reply. Trotting out the party line. Totally ignored ALL the content of my own mail. As you would expect.

[MSTRS:Me]

That's an attractive bit of spin. And it has to do with M/c levy increases, what?