Category: insurance

Legal changes for Victoria’s workers’ compensation laws

As workers’ compensation keeps bubbling away as a political issues in South Australia ahead of this weekend’s State election, other Australian States are not sitting still on workers’ compensation.

Amendments to Victoria’s workers’ compensation system have passed through Parliament on 11 March 2010 enacting most of the findings of the 2007 Hanks inquiry.  The laws will be gradually introduced but with most effective from 5 April 2010.

The best summary of the amended laws is on the Victorian WorkCover website. Continue reading “Legal changes for Victoria’s workers’ compensation laws”

Maybe Australia is looking in the wrong direction on harmonising workers’ compensation

South Australia has pledged to increase competition in its local workers’ compensation scheme in the hope of improving (some say fixing) it.  Most other Australian States have a competitive structure with private insurers.  In a couple of years, those insurers will be battling it out to achieve national coverage as the Federal Government moves to harmonise the State systems.

New data from Canada shows that perhaps Australia needs to take a deep breath and nationalise workers’ compensation for the good of the injured workers and business.

A February 2010 report from the Institute for Work & Health has concluded that

“The public administration of workers’ compensation in the Canadian systems provides a strong economic benefit to employers, arising from the lower administrative costs of a single public agency compared with the costs arising in a competitive insurance market. Continue reading “Maybe Australia is looking in the wrong direction on harmonising workers’ compensation”

Some families in South Australia blame WorkCover for their partners’ suicides

In January 2010, Today Tonight in South Australia aired a disturbing report about the workers compensation reforms in that State.  It talks to two widows who blame WorkCover SA as contributing to their husbands’ suicides.  One man left a suicide note explicitly blaming WorkCover SA, emphasising his point by jumping to his death from the sixth floor of the WorkCover office building.

The video report is available HERE under the title WorkCover Suicide.

One of those interviewed in the story is Kevin Purse who undertook a report into the SA workers’ compensation system on behalf of SA Unions.   Continue reading “Some families in South Australia blame WorkCover for their partners’ suicides”

Discussion paper on Queensland workers compensation released

The Queensland Government has released a public discussion paper into its workers’ compensation scheme.  Obviously this was part of the reason for the political argy-bargy in the State in late February 2010 over a report by Deloitte.

A major question posed in the discussion paper concerns the application of Whole Person Impairment (WPI) or Work-Related Impairment (WRI) as the assessment process.  Currently only Queensland applies WRI and so the submissions to this discussion process may be quite useful in anticipation of the any review into the national workers’ compensation arrangements.   Continue reading “Discussion paper on Queensland workers compensation released”

SA Liberal party policy on WorkCover

It is less than  a month to the state election in South Australia so policies are being released frequently.  This week the South Australia Liberal Party released a WorkCover policy – 18 pages  saying it will “fix Labor’s mess”.

The policy is linked to through this blog article for several reasons.  Many Australia States have elections in 2010 and in most States, the Liberal Party is in opposition.  The SA policy may indicate some of the measures to be promoted in other States elections.

Also, policy statements tend to be quietly dropped from party websites and agenda if they become embarrassing after a loss.   Continue reading “SA Liberal party policy on WorkCover”

Workers comp becomes political but not in a nice way

Workers’ compensation clearly has become a political issue in Australia recently due to cock-ups, and electioneering.

Embarrassment

The Australian Financial Review has embarrassed the Liberal Party’s shadow Minister for WorkCover in Victoria, Gordon Rich-Phillips.  Rich-Phillips issued a media release claiming the Victorian Government had been inactive on some deficiencies in the WorkCover system that had been highlighted by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.  Unfortunately, the Government had responded with legislative changes that had already been in Parliament.  The Government was provided a free political kick in this election year. Continue reading “Workers comp becomes political but not in a nice way”

Workers’ Compensation becomes an election issue in South Australia

On 12 February 2010, the Greens parliamentarian, Mark Parnell, accused WorkCover Corporation of failing injured workers in South Australia.  In response to the release of the Parliament’s Statutory Authorities Review Committee (SARC) inquiry into WorkCover, he said

“The Greens have been saying for a number of years now that the outsourcing of WorkCover’s claims management is a failed experiment, and must be reversed….. Until WorkCover fixes up the poor management of injured workers, it will never get out of its financial mess.” Continue reading “Workers’ Compensation becomes an election issue in South Australia”

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