Mental Problems

Nick Smith has reiterated that ACC has become another branch of welfare rather than an insurance company. He is right. Perhaps the most obvious indication of this was the ridiculous inclusion of mental stress and overuse injuries in the workplace compensation scheme.

Mental illness has no place as part of an insurance scheme for accidents. It is not an accident, but a consequence of emotional response to a stimulus. It may well be that the employer has been abusive or negligent about abuse amongst his/her employees. In which case this is an employment compensation issue, not an accident. Government has no business propping up poor employment practices by providing compensation for them.

The same goes for repetitive strain injuries. The majority of these are caused by poor workplace environments and inadequate tools. Even the most demanding of jobs has equipment available that will make the job easier and avoid the repetitive strain. Therefore these “injuries” are almost certainly due to bad workplace practices which should not be reinforced by removing liability.

Note that if an employee refuses to use the equipment designed to protect him from injury, repetitive or otherwise, this should be grounds for immediate disciplinary action. Repeated infractions would see the employee fired well before an OOS injury occurs. There should be no tolerance of sloppy work practices – a tolerance encouraged by ACC compensation.

Government intervention in workplace practices should be confined to encouraging good safety procedures. ACC does the exact opposite, it encourages poor practice on the grounds of no fault compensation. The original intent of such compensation was to make things easier for the accident victim, not to make sloppy work practices easier to get away with. This creeping welfarism in ACC has made things worse for the workman in the workplace, not better.

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