Page 5925 - Week 18 - Wednesday, 11 December 1991
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improvements that can still be made, and work is still being done on this legislation, including rehabilitation clauses, this Bill will put the ACT on a far better footing than it has been in the past.
A few things probably do need to be said on a general note. Our costs and benefits are higher than those in New South Wales.
Mr Berry: Not so.
MR STEFANIAK: Not from the information I have. This Bill, of course, has no limit. It is interesting to note that Comcare does have a limit of $110,000. There are some good features about this Bill. It provides the best benefits available for private enterprise, but it does cost. Accordingly, it is a piece of legislation that will need looking at from time to time, particularly with reference to what schemes operate in the other States - especially New South Wales, the State that surrounds us and has such a big effect on us.
Despite that, this legislation, which is quite substantial, has the support of the Liberal Party and we will move only one amendment to it. That amendment is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is fair, in that it relates to one of the points originally agreed to and now not agreed to by the parties and taken out by this Government. I fear that it has been taken out on some ideological grounds rather than on grounds of practicality and commonsense.
The amendment deals with termination. There is no realistic provision for termination in the current Act. Termination and rehabilitation have not yet been linked in any other jurisdiction. I understand that the reason this was taken out was that the TLC went back on its previous position on what it linked with rehabilitation. All other States have similar termination provisions to those we are proposing. The ACT will have a rehabilitation scheme put in place, but in no other State are the two actually linked, which I understand was the position of the TLC.
If the amendment proposed by the Liberal Party does not go in, there will not be any streamlining effect in terms of when anything dodgy is happening or when there is some area of conflict and there is a need for benefits to be terminated. I stress that this amendment affects only non-arbitrated payments. If they are arbitrated payments, there is no problem. We do not have a problem with that; no-one else does.
If there is a problem, the employer would have to go to court. As people know, there are lengthy delays in courts and, in these matters, to go to court and get a decision takes somewhere in the vicinity of nine months. This provision would ensure that certain situations, such as
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