Page 5932 - Week 18 - Wednesday, 11 December 1991
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for the first 26 weeks to an amount of money equal to that which he earns in the normal course of his duties, and then subsequent to that period a statutory amount, Mr Stefaniak seeks to give to employers the right to cease payments at the 12-week mark. No appeal; just give that right to the employer.
Notwithstanding the fact that the employer, in the first place, has accepted the right of that employee to those payments, and in fact has endorsed them by paying them, and has paid them for a period of up to 12 weeks, Mr Stefaniak wants that employer to have the right to change his mind and say, "I thought you were entitled to them 12 weeks ago, but now I do not think you are", even if the employee has provided the employer with relevant medical evidence. So, the employee can be fully incapacitated and off work and at the 12-week mark the employer can say, "Okay, you can starve from here on in". That is what Mr Stefaniak sets out to do.
He said in the first place that this was all because Charlie McDonald changed his mind. That is not correct. Mr Stefaniak should know, if he had been paying attention to what was going on in the area of workers' compensation, that there is a Workers' Compensation Monitoring Committee which has been considering these matters and in fact has recommended all of those changes which have been proposed by the Government. The Workers' Compensation Monitoring Committee is made up of employees, employers, the Insurance Council of Australia, the Government Insurance Office and the Government Actuary.
All of those people, together, have decided that the legislation which Mr Stefaniak is proposing should not proceed and that the issue of termination should be considered along with changes to the legislation in relation to rehabilitation. That is quite appropriate because rehabilitation, in my view and in the Government's view, is inextricably linked to the issue of termination of payments. For Mr Stefaniak to step outside that linkage is absolutely crazy in terms of rightful benefits to workers. It is quite appropriate for the Workers' Compensation Monitoring Committee to look at this issue of termination in the context of rehabilitation, and they are doing that.
It is pre-emptive of the Liberals to move in this way when the matter is being considered by consultative means, as it is in this case, and, I suggest, by the same consultative means that were being undergone during the period of the Alliance Government. It is absolutely pre-emptive for the Liberals to move now in a way that would undermine the work of this committee. The Liberals seek to ram this legislation down the throats of the trade union movement and workers instead of coming to an arrangement which results in better workers' compensation conditions in the ACT by way of an appropriate consultative mechanism.
Debate interrupted.
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