Another Hodgson half truth

Pete Hodgson takes a break from his normal dirt gathering on John Key operation, to try a half truth. He blogs:

Declare ACC to be in big financial trouble, even though it collects about $1 billion a year more in revenue than it pays out in claims.  Rachet up the levies for everyone.  Single out motorcyclists for an especially harsh increase.  Then cut the cover for lots of things such as hearing loss.  Make it really hard for the victims of sexual abuse.

Monty comments on the post:

You just don’t do this very well do you? This post is one of the worst I have seen from labour MPs – but it is short on facts. The increase in levies is to future fund the committed claims and is actually an extension of what Labour were already doing – in fact Labour’s target was more ambitious than National’s Target which was extended.

Hodgson is just doing his normal smear with his claim that there is no need for levies to go up, and that ACC is collecting far more money than it needs.

If, and this is a big if, Labour were against ACC being “fully” funded to cover the future treatment costs of today’s accidents, then he would not be a total hypocrite with his post.

But Labour is in favour of full funding. They fucking introduced it. They in fact had, as Monty said, a more ambitious target.

One can have a legitimate debate about the merits of full funding ACC. But it is a desperate smear to attack National for running a cash surplus in ACC, when Labour’s policy is to do exactly the same thing.

UPDATE: I’m informed that the policy to fully fund ACC actually was initiated by National in 1998, so Labour did not introduce it, but they did maintain it for nine years