Brought to you by:

NZ personal injury insurer to cut 70 jobs

New Zealand’s state-owned personal injury insurer the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) plans to axe 70 jobs at its Wellington head office.

As part of a restructuring under the National Party government elected last November, 100 roles will move to frontline services.

CEO Jan White is reported to have sent staff an apologetic email after the redundancies were announced in Parliament before the affected staff were told.

The ACC has already removed 150 contractor roles from the business.

A $NZ2.6 billion ($2 billion) blowout in the corporation’s costs, blamed on the former Labour government of Helen Clark, has ostensibly stalled plans to open the nation’s personal injury insurance industry to private competition.

But new Labour leader Phil Goff says the Government is using the cost figure to “soften up the electorate” before it privatises ACC accounts.