Minister says ACC turnaround showing early signs of progress

Wednesday, 17 June 2026

ACC Minister Scott Simpson says he wants to get the state-owned insurer “back to basics” but the Government has shelved any changes to its scheme boundaries — code for what types of injury ACC covers.

The Government previously drafted legislation that would have cancelled sexual abuse victims’ entitlements to more than $3 billion of compensation before conducting a U-turn.

Giving evidence to the Education and Workforce select committee on Wednesday morning, Simpson again drew attention to court cases that had expanded the boundaries of ACC’s cover.

“But I want to make it clear at the outset that whilst those decisions have increased the costs of the scheme substantially, the Government is not currently considering any significant changes to scheme boundaries,” he said.

Read more:

• ‘Financial incentives for GPs’ one of the wide range of ideas cash-strapped ACC considered

• The big assumptions behind ACC’s $25 billion turnaround plan

• Government considered cutting more than $3b of ACC sex-abuse claims

The hearing took place as ACC released a new report calculating that the two million injuries it covered last year resulted in the loss of just under 21 million days of work, at estimated cost to the economy of $8.7 billion.

It received 14,000 new claims related to sexual violence, which it said was an increase of 30% on five years ago.

Despite that, Simpson said ACC was making progress on a “turnaround plan” released in January that was designed to see it get on top of its funding deficit, which stood at $13.8 billion in June last year.

“We're in the early stages of that turnaround plan, but we are starting to see already, I think, some positive results.”

The select committee is currently separately considering controversial health and safety reforms championed by Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden that are designed in part to reduce what she has characterised as unnecessary compliance costs for businesses.

ACC officials have warned they expect that some of reforms would result in more injuries and increase its costs.

However, Simpson declined to be drawn into that discussion, saying the legislation hadn’t been passed, questions about it were best addressed to van Velden and ACC “responds to the environment it is in”.

Instead, he championed gains that had been made in injury prevention.

These included the absence of any workplace fatalities in the forestry industry over the past year, which he attributed to an industry initiative that had been supported by ACC, and a safety programme promoting warm-ups before netball games which he believed had prevented 12,000 potential injuries.

“Often we hear about things that may be less than perfect, and that happens in many agencies of the Crown, but here are some good examples of programmes that are measurable,” he said.