Give that man a knighthood

Anna Wallis PHOTO/FILE

When they are handing out gongs at Queen's Birthday in a few weeks' time, Kiwi battler Peter de Waal should be first on the list.

Mr de Waal has just won a prolonged fight with ACC over cuts to his payment because he didn't want it to have wholesale rights to information about him.

The sticking point was whether ACC could have blanket approval to release Mr de Waal's information at any time, or - as with a previous agreement with him - on a case-by-case basis with his consent. Signing the waiver would see personal information going out to an "undefined list of external agencies and service providers", according to a Radio New Zealand report. He refused. ACC cut off his money.

Mr De Waal is one of those people who keeps on at an issue when most of us would have given up. But it is such tenacity that keeps an organisation like ACC honest for the rest of us.

And it's a benefit that's worth fighting for. ACC has been a good system. But moves by successive governments to save money have turned it into a denier of rights.

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In the face of pecuniary petulance from ACC, Mr De Waal displayed a backbone. He is now receiving payments again, as is his right. But according to a news report, it was only after ACC was contacted by the media asking why he wasn't getting his payments again. And this was after District Court Judge Grant Powell called ACC's actions illegal or, as ACC Minister Judith Collins (before her hiatus) interprets it, not illegal but going "beyond statutory requirements".

Either way they were wrong and had done an injury to Mr De Waal.

Mrs Collins has told ACC to change the form so claimants are not left believing they can't have a say in what information is provided to third parties.

Mr De Waal sounds like an honourable man. Let's show some respect for his sheer cussedness in taking on the system.