Headline: What has ACC Minister been doing?
Judith Collins has made such little progress on ACC’s unacceptable privacy practices and needs to be held to account for this
The ACC Minister needs to front up and explain what, if any, changes she has made to the broken culture of ACC rather than denying that she has any part to play in the dysfunction of her Ministry, the Green Party said today.
Yesterday, the District Court ruled that the standard ACC release of information form has been administered in an illegal manner, forcing people off ACC if they don’t sign the form that would give their consent for a wide range of their private information to be collected and stored
“When she became Minister, Judith Collins promised New Zealand that she would change ACC’s cavalier attitude towards privacy but today she is shrugging of this latest disaster as if it has nothing to do with her,” Green Party ACC spokesperson Kevin Hague said today.
“Judith Collins has made such little progress on ACC’s unacceptable privacy practices and needs to be held to account for this.
“Issues with this form were specifically raised in the 2012 privacy review which went on to recommend a full overhaul of all privacy processes within no more than a year.
“The failure of ACC to accomplish this transformation suggests that they have not taken this recommendation seriously, and that failure lies directly at the feet of Judith Collins.
“ACC’s broken attitude to privacy is not an operational matter, it is a governance matter and Judith Collins needs to be held to account for the lack of progress she has made and the impact this has had on thousands of New Zealanders’ lives.
“We have known for a long time that this form is intrusive, oppressive and overreaching. Now we also have confirmation that the way ACC is using it is illegal. It should have been one of the first things that the Minister had addressed.
“ACC’s culture of disentitlement has been reconfirmed with this latest court ruling.
“The Green Party would restore ACC to its founding principles to look after people who need help, not try and get rid of them,” said Mr Hague.
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