MEDIA RELEASE

Petition Calls For Repeal Of ACC Threshold

Wellington, March 23 – The National Foundation for the Deaf today presented a petition with 5,552 signatures to Parliament calling for the repeal of the ACC 6% threshold for hearing injury.

“The threshold is discriminatory, it is immoral, and is clearly an infringement of human rights,” NFD chief executive Louise Carroll said in a statement.

“It has no regard for individual needs and is creating distortions in the way medical specialists are assessing injuries, forcing them to make mathematical calculations instead of clinical judgements.

“What this petition asks for is for each case to be judged on its merits.”

Mrs Carroll said it takes a lot of damage to the high tones of hearing to generate a total 6 percent loss, and people’s lives are being adversely affected by damage that amounted to less than that figure.

She also notes that because the average age of claimants to ACC was 70 years old, the elderly were particularly impacted by the threshold and other changes ACC had introduced, including part-charges.

“Hearing damage is the only injury that must meet a fixed threshold before ACC will accept the claim, and the Human Rights Commission believes it is discriminatory,” Mrs Carroll said.

“ACC is using a blunt instrument to deal with this. They are looking at the financial cost instead of the human cost.

“As far as we are concerned this is bullying at an institutional level, and we are grateful to Phil Goff for accepting the petition on our behalf.”

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