Last time we talked about ACC, I was critical of the Government for not allowing them to give the sort of cuts to levies they not only should have, but what ACC actually wanted to give.

There was $650 million to give back but the Government only allowed $480 million. Levies for employers  and the self-employed have dropped, as well as the motorists levies.

It seems, does it not, a strange thing from a National government that they won’t actually let businesses get on with business. If ACC recommend something, why is the Government second-guessing them?

Anyway, the upshot is this year looks good too. I’ll give you the numbers in a minute, but in a nutshell ACC have been able to turn themselves around.

Without being too political, under the previous government ACC was a mess; it was in a hole to the tune of hundreds of millions, and its expenditure had blown out. It was paying out for things left, right, and centre and the bills were going up every year.

This current Government saw it, addressed it, sacked a few people and told the new ones to sort it out.

What you’re looking for in ACC is a fully funded system, in other words, not a system exposed to some sort of financial exposure, where they’re paying more than they can afford and hemorrhaging cash.

That’s what we have now, which as far as systems like ACC go, is about as good as it gets. You don’t want them making a fortune because that simply means you’re paying money that doesn’t need paying.

And you don’t want them broke because you can never be sure that the promise of a ‘no faults’ insurance scheme will be there when you need it.

The alternative to all this, of course, is suing people and insurance for those who choose it.

Remembering when ACC was set up – 1974 - even today I am not sure you’d find many that would take a lawyer and a lawsuit over a ‘no faults’ system even with all its inherent flaws

But to the numbers: we paid them almost $5 billion in levies - $5 billion! And they paid out $3 billion in claims - and you wonder why they run those ads about falling off ladders and down stairs.  

There were almost 2 million new claims - that’s almost half of us

Which leads to the question: what the hell are we doing?

I didn’t claim. My wife didn’t claim. I have never claimed apart from once as a child who needed a bit of physio.

So there are a lot of people doing a lot of dangerous and nutty things out there, which is, of course, one of the weak points of the system - stupidity is still covered. Because you can’t tell me that there were 2 million genuine, unavoidable ‘not your fault for being dumb’-type accidents in a year.

It also means, thank god, levies are coming down further next year.

None of this is sexy, of course. This isn’t headline stuff. But it’s a big deal, because as you’ve just heard, the numbers are eye-watering and none of us have a choice as to whether we take part or not.

So given that, the good news is that at long last we can actually say we have a Government department that has its act together...and how often can you say that?