Smith/Pullar letter did not affect case, says ACC

ACC's handling of the Bronwyn Pullar case was not influenced by a letter by former ACC Minister Nick Smith, the corporation says.

Ms Pullar, one-time publicity director for National's Auckland division and a close friend of Dr Smith, hit the headlines last week when it was revealed she had accidentally received a spreadsheet containing the names of more than 6700 accident compensation claimants.

That file was received in August last year but Ms Pullar did not reveal this to the corporation until a meeting with ACC officials in December.

That meeting is crucial to the growing political row around Ms Pullar and Dr Smith.

According to ACC officials, at that meeting Ms Pullar threatened the corporation with making the file public unless she received cover for another two years. Ms Pullar denies this.

Ms Pullar has been a client of ACC since a head injury from a cycling accident nearly 10 years ago.

The letter from Dr Smith was received by corporation officials before that meeting, ACC chief executive Ralph Mr Stewart confirmed today.

However, it "absolutely did not" affect how the corporation handled her case, he says.

"It was placed on her file, that is all, " Mr Stewart says.

The letter was a personal reference by Dr Smith and although it carried a caveat that the letter did not relate to his role as minister and was a personal note, it was sent under a ministerial letterhead.

Mr Stewart concedes the corporation has not handled the matter well.

The corporation was not aware Ms Pullar had a confidential file owned by the corporation until that December meeting, he says.

But when that became clear to officials, "it should have been referred further upwards [to senior ACC management]", he says.

As to the issue of whether the ACC, if it believed Ms Pullar was trying to use the file as leverage against the corporaton, did not go to the police, Mr Stewart says this is something that would have been considered if the matter had been "referred upwards".

There have not been any other cases of anyone using accidentally released private information for leverage against ACC, "so far as I know".

However a larger internal review of issues thrown up by the row is under way, he says.

Dr Smith has admitted the letter was "unwise" - a view echoed by Prime Minister John Key - but the government has rejected calls for him to resign.

The Privacy Commissioner is investigating the privacy aspects of the case and Mr Key told parliament yesterday it was a sufficiently independent inquiry to deal with the matter.

However Labour MPs have criticised this as being too narrowly focused on the privacy issues and the party's ACC spokesman Andrew Little has called for a wider inquiry into Dr Smith's actions .

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has also called for Dr Smith's resignation, telling the House it was "a shabby case involving blackmail, sex, and a minister with a conflict of interest."