Public annotation – What this OIA shows about ACC’s dispute-resolution spending (reviews & appeals, 2020/21–2024/25)

ACC has now completed this OIA (GOV-044440). The response is largely helpful and I am treating the request as **answered**, but there are some important gaps that are worth recording publicly.

1. What I asked for

This request was a narrowed follow-on from earlier, broader OIAs that ACC refused under s18(f). Here I asked only for **aggregated, finance/ERP-level totals** for:

* external legal / representation costs linked to claimant-initiated **reviews and appeals** under Part 5 of the Accident Compensation Act 2001
* any breakdown by **forum** (District Court, High Court, Court of Appeal) where this was readily available
* the relevant **GL account codes and analysis codes**

I deliberately stayed away from anything claim-specific so that the data could be produced as a simple export from ACC’s finance systems.

2. What ACC released

ACC’s 10 December 2025 response attaches three key datasets (all GST-exclusive):

1. **Appeals – external legal expenditure by GL/analysis code (Table One)**

* Uses GL 43070 (“Statutory Appeals”) and 06020 (“Appeal, Mediation & Review”)
* With analysis codes for each court:

* **DCAPPS** – District Court
* **HCAPPS** – High Court
* **CAAPPS** – Court of Appeal
* Covers 2021/22–2024/25 (ACC says earlier years would require substantial manual collation under s18(f))

2. **Review providers – FairWay & ICRA (Table Two)**

* Annual totals paid to:

* **FairWay Resolution Ltd**
* **Independent Complaints & Review Authority Ltd (ICRA)**
* 2020/21–2024/25

3. **External legal counsel for reviews (Table Three)**

* Annual totals paid to external law firms / barristers working on review matters
* 2020/21–2024/25

ACC notes that figures may include refunds/reversals (hence a few negatives), that amounts may shift slightly if re-extracted in future, and that all numbers are **GST-exclusive**.

3. Headline numbers

Putting the three tables together gives a useful high-level picture of how much ACC has spent on disputes over the last five years:

* **Review providers (FairWay + ICRA):** about **$73–77 million** over 2020/21–2024/25
* **External legal counsel for reviews:** **$6.73 million** over the same period
* **Appeals (all forums combined):** **$8.60 million** from 2021/22–2024/25

On the figures released, combined expenditure on reviews + external legal + appeals has risen from roughly **$13.5 million in 2020/21** to about **$22.5 million in 2024/25** – a compound annual growth rate of around **13–14%**, significantly faster than general inflation over the same period.

In other words, in five years ACC has spent on the order of **$88 million (GST-exclusive)** on running and defending claimant reviews and appeals.

4. Where the money is going

Some notable patterns in the data:

* **District Court appeals dominate.** Of the $8.6m appeals spend, around **89%** is tagged to the **District Court (DCAPPS)**. High Court and Court of Appeal spend is relatively small but volatile, with some years showing negatives due to reversals.
* **Review providers account for the bulk of costs.** FairWay and ICRA together represent by far the largest share of dispute-resolution expenditure. On the raw totals:

* ICRA’s total over the five years is slightly higher than FairWay’s and has grown faster year-on-year.
* Both providers saw marked increases in 2023/24 and 2024/25, which lines up with ACC’s own reporting of a sharp rise in review lodgements over this period.
* **External legal for reviews dipped, then rebounded.** Counsel spend on reviews fell for several years, then jumped sharply again in 2024/25 – consistent with a spike in review volumes and more complex cases flowing from recent Court of Appeal decisions.

Using ACC’s Annual Report and Financial Condition Report, it is possible to derive approximate **per-review costs**. When you divide total review spend (providers + external legal) by completed reviews, the **average cost per completed review looks relatively stable or even declining** over time. The growth in total dollars appears to be driven mainly by **much higher volumes** of reviews rather than runaway cost per case.

5. What ACC says it cannot provide

There are still some transparency gaps:

* **Pre-2022 appeals data:** ACC refused to provide appeals expenditure before 2021/22 under s18(f), saying the necessary GL structure did not exist and older data would require manual reconstruction. This is a partial limitation rather than a complete block, but it does restrict long-term trend analysis.
* **No detailed GL structure for review costs:** ACC again states that there are **no dedicated GL codes** for FairWay, ICRA, or external legal costs for reviews beyond what has already been disclosed. This means there is **no further breakdown** by forum, matter type, or outcome.
* **No GST figures:** The response clarifies that all amounts are GST-exclusive. The original request asked for “including GST”; that hasn’t been done, so the “real-world” amounts paid out will be ~15% higher than shown here.

Given the narrow way I framed this request (deliberately keeping it high-level to avoid another s18(f) refusal), ACC can say it has technically answered the questions. But as with my related OIAs on GL codes and ERP metadata, the **absence of more granular coding and supplier detail makes public scrutiny difficult**.

6. Why this matters

This dataset matters for at least three reasons:

1. **Scale:** It confirms that tens of millions of dollars each year are being spent on **resolving disputes about ACC’s own decisions** – money which ultimately comes from levy-payers and taxpayers.
2. **Trends:** Dispute-resolution spending is growing faster than inflation and faster than overall claim volumes. That aligns with ACC’s own admission that review lodgements have risen sharply, especially in 2023/24 and 2024/25, as more decisions are challenged.
3. **Balance of resources:** For claimants, particularly those who are unrepresented or disabled, these figures underscore the **imbalance between ACC’s resources (including external counsel and specialist providers) and an individual claimant’s capacity to contest a decision**.

I will be using this data in my ACC Permanent Impairment / ICRA case and will likely file separate, more targeted OIAs and/or an Ombudsman complaint about the underlying ERP metadata and GL coding. For the purposes of this particular request, however, I am treating GOV-044440 as **complete** and will now mark the FYI request accordingly.

Further context: what other fluoride-related OIAs show about supply, safety, and accountability

Sovereign Sharna’s OIA is not an isolated case. When you put this request beside other fluoride-related OIAs on FYI.org.nz, the same themes keep showing up: fragmented responsibility, limited traceability of the chemicals actually used, and repeated “we don’t hold that information” responses around safety, exposure pathways, and rights.

Below is a short summary of what those other OIAs reveal, and how they connect to this supply-chain request.

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1. Who is actually responsible for the fluoride chemicals?
An earlier FYI request on “fluoride claims and fluoride composition” led to a clear statement from Watercare: fluoridation is a discretionary activity of the drinking-water supplier, and the supplier is “fully responsible” for selecting the fluoridating agent, how it is dosed, and for justifying the reasons for doing so.

By contrast, Sovereign Sharna’s OIA shows:
• the Ministry of Health partially transferring her questions to local councils under LGOIMA, and
• other parts transferred to agencies or suppliers under the OIA,
• while avoiding a single, integrated explanation of who is accountable for quality, contaminants, and chain-of-custody from import to tap.

Taken together, this leaves the public in a “no man’s land”:
– MoH says “ask the councils/contractors”,
– councils often say “we follow national standards / MoH guidance”,
– suppliers are largely shielded by commercial arrangements and redactions.

For an issue as sensitive as medication of public water supplies, that fragmentation is itself a governance problem.

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2. Evidence gaps on exposure and vulnerable groups
In another OIA, the requester asked the Ministry to provide New-Zealand–specific evidence on the safety of fluoridation chemicals, especially for non-oral exposures (showers, baths, skin absorption, inhalation) and high-risk settings like dialysis or at-home medical use. The Ministry largely responded that it does not hold information on those pathways and relied on generic statements about international consensus and guideline values. 

Across multiple fluoride OIAs you see the same pattern:
• very strong assurances that fluoridation is “safe and effective”;
• reliance on high-level documents such as the PMCSA 2021 evidence summary on community water fluoridation;
• but little or no NZ-specific data on:
• contaminants in actual imported product batches,
• cumulative exposure for people with high water use or kidney/thyroid issues,
• occupational exposure for plant operators,
• or detailed risk assessment for medically vulnerable groups.

Sovereign Sharna’s supply-chain questions go directly to this gap: if neither MoH nor councils can clearly map where the chemicals come from, what quality checks are done at each step, and what contaminants are in each shipment, then it is difficult for the public to independently verify the safety claims being made.

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3. Policy narrative vs. scrutiny of new science and rights issues
Another FYI request asked specifically about discussions within central government after the High Court judgment on fluoridation and the NZ Bill of Rights Act (the “Bottled Water / New Health” litigation). The Ministry’s response suggested very limited documented discussion, despite the judgment finding that compulsory fluoridation engages the right to refuse medical treatment and must be demonstrably justified. 

Combined with Sovereign Sharna’s OIA and others, a picture emerges where:
• the policy narrative (“safe, effective, equity-enhancing”) is heavily relied upon;
• but deeper questions about:
• human rights,
• long-term neurotoxicity research (e.g. NTP work), and
• alternative ways of delivering dental care,
are often sidestepped or answered only in very general terms.

For readers following this current OIA, that context matters: without transparent supply-chain information, it is very hard for the public to test whether the practice is, in fact, meeting the “demonstrably justified” standard required when rights are limited.

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4. Recurrent tactics: transfers, narrow readings, and partial answers
Looking across fluoride OIAs, a familiar pattern appears:
• Multiple transfers – key questions are split between MoH, councils, ESR and suppliers, making it difficult for any single request to obtain a complete picture. Sovereign Sharna’s OIA shows this clearly through partial transfers to councils under LGOIMA and to other agencies under the OIA.
• Narrow interpretation of questions – requests framed around “safety” and “evidence” are often answered only with high-level policy documents, while specific data (batch testing, contaminants, adverse-event monitoring) are treated as out-of-scope or “not held”. 
• Commercial sensitivity and redaction – where supplier information is involved, details are frequently redacted, preventing independent verification of what is being added to drinking water.

From a public-interest perspective, people reading this OIA are not unreasonable to see these moves as obfuscating rather than clarifying. Individually, each response may be technically compliant with the Acts; collectively, they frustrate the basic goal of transparency around a mandatory public-health intervention.

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5. Why this particular OIA matters
Sovereign Sharna’s request cuts right to the practical question many New Zealanders are now asking:

What exactly is being added to our drinking water, who buys it, who checks it, and who is accountable if something goes wrong?

Given the wider pattern across fluoride-related OIAs, the way this request is handled will be an important test of:
• whether the Ministry and councils are prepared to provide end-to-end visibility of the fluoride supply chain; and
• whether they are willing to move beyond generic assurances to concrete, verifiable data that the public, journalists, scientists and local communities can scrutinise for themselves.

For anyone following this thread, it may be useful to:
• read the related fluoride OIAs on FYI (including those about non-oral exposure, PMCSA advice, and Bill-of-Rights implications); 
• note where similar patterns of transfers, “not held” responses, and redacted supplier information occur; and
• consider whether a coordinated follow-up (or an Ombudsman complaint) is warranted to address the system-wide transparency issues, not just the gaps in this single reply.