A new analysis shows Accident Compensation Corporation or ACC in New Zealand is biased against women, Māori and Pasifika.
Women are less likely to make claims, more likely to be declined when they do, and receive far less compensation than men.
And over the past five years, it's become harder for women - especially Māori and Pasifika women - to get ACC claims accepted.
The inequities are laid out in a series of briefings from ACC to its Minister, Carmel Sepuloni, after the corporation analysed five years' worth of claims data.
For Pasifika, they've lodged the fewest claims, and had the hardest time getting one accepted.
University of Auckland co-head of Māori and Pacific Studies Jemaima Tiatia-Seath wasn't surprised by the findings.
"What this speaks to is equity issues and lack of access and the type of messaging that has been kind of determined amongst Pacific communities."
ACC's briefing papers said low claim and acceptance rates for Pasifika were likely to be "shaped by racism".
Despite making up eight percent of the population, Pasifika accounted for only six percent of claims lodged and five percent of costs.
Pasifika females accounted for only 39 percent of Pasifika claims lodged, and 28 percent of Pasifika costs.
Ms Tiatia-Seath says these statistics show the need for ACC to provide culturally safe services.
"Everything that is there to help support and grow positive wellbeing amongst the population and contributed such as institutional racism, language barriers, the socio-economic position that populations find themselves in and now post-Covid, well during the Covid era, you can only see that those things have been exacerbated, so I think there needs to be a real re-shuffling or reconfiguration of change in that Pacific people are at the decision-making table and in the design of any initiative to come out from the organisation to ensure that the finger is on the pulse of the population that it's meant to be serving and that no under-served population will be missed."
Injured Pasifika returned to work faster than any other group.
However, that could be because they had no choice, as lower income households might not be able to afford to live on ACC's 80 percent weekly wage compensation rate.
The only time claim acceptance rates rose was between 2013 and 2017 when ACC employed Pasifika kaimahi within its cultural services team.
Carmel Sepuloni says the data clearly shows there's a problem, and she's looking into possible fixes, but she's ruling out radical change.
"Well at this stage it's not an overhaul of the ACC scheme that we're looking at. We're looking at particular demographic groups where they are not accessing ACC support to the same extent as some others and where we maybe able to make policy changes incrementally to be able to serve all New Zealanders."
Minister Sepuloni has asked ACC to take a deeper look into why these inequities are occurring.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
