Page 2669 - Week 09 - Thursday, 25 August 1994
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their customers. Bookmakers at the betting auditorium will also continue to field on thoroughbred, harness and greyhound events as well as sporting events and contingencies. Madam Speaker, the package of Bills will provide a flexible, yet regulated, framework for the sports betting service and will allow for the establishment of a first-class sports betting service and facility in the Territory. I present the explanatory memorandum to the Bill.
Debate (on motion by Mr De Domenico) adjourned.
WORKERS' COMPENSATION (AMENDMENT) BILL 1994
MR LAMONT (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Housing and Community Services, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (10.47): Madam Speaker, I present the Workers' Compensation (Amendment) Bill 1994.
Title read by Clerk.
MR LAMONT: I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to present to the Assembly a Bill to provide injured workers in the private sector with access to occupational rehabilitation. The Bill also contains provisions aimed at ensuring that employers more quickly commence weekly compensation payments to injured workers, and it facilitates the termination of those payments to workers who are no longer entitled to receive them. The Government is concerned about the cost to the community and to individuals of workplace injuries. It has already taken steps to improve the effectiveness of the occupational health and safety legislation, aimed at preventing workplace injuries, and now seeks, with this Bill, to improve the position of individual workers who are unfortunate enough to suffer workplace injury.
Madam Speaker, many studies have concluded that the early provision of occupational rehabilitation plays a major part in both assisting the injured worker to recover from the trauma of injury and reducing the compensation costs of an injury. Indeed, prudent ACT workers compensation insurers are already providing some occupational rehabilitation to injured workers; but this is not happening on a wide enough scale. In 1991, the Workers Compensation Monitoring Committee - a non-statutory committee comprising representatives of the workers compensation insurers, unions, employer associations and the Government - began developing proposals for an occupational rehabilitation scheme. The Government encouraged the parties because it saw merit in developing a scheme that had the support of all the key players.
In early 1992, the committee presented its suggested scheme to the then Minister for Industrial Relations, but with some elements of the proposed scheme not supported by all parties. The scheme was released for public comment in mid-1993. Thirteen industry submissions were received, and all of them were critical of the suggested scheme.
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