ACC

After a recent appeal decision, Dunedin ACC campaigner Denise Powell is urging ACC to "do the right thing" by reinstating compensation payments to about 170 people, including sexual abuse victims.

The Labour Party Maori caucus spent yesterday in Dunedin, as the six Maori MPs sought to reconnect with voters in the South.

Levels of "frustration and mistrust" have been increased by transferring the administration of more than 250 Dunedin-based long-term ACC claimants to offices in Alexandra and Timaru, critics say.

A protest rally at Parliament yesterday had successfully highlighted concerns about proposed law changes to the ACC scheme, a Dunedin ACC campaigner said.

ACC has been buying former police radar equipment in a clandestine plan to thwart speeding motorists who use radar detectors.

Bikers who roared onto Parliament's forecourt in November protesting about ACC levy hikes are coming back, this time campaigning for others they say are being hurt by changes to the scheme.

Over the almost four decades of its existence, the idea seems to have taken hold, particularly among some of its beneficiaries, that placement on an ACC earnings-related compensation scheme is a sinecure.

More than 40 long-term ACC claimants in Otago have been asked to undergo further medical assessments or other tests in recent months, in what critics say is a "return to the bad old days" of removing claimants from the scheme.

How many medical reports is enough?Dunedin resident Mel Hollis, a long-term recipient of ACC weekly earnings-related compensation, says he is being asked to undergo his 63rd medical report in 18 years of ACC support.

An ACC employee who told a grieving widow she was "not God" has been reprimanded.