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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4235 ..

Recovery action from the employer of the amount paid is not always successful due to administrative difficulties caused by their location interstate. As such, there is the likelihood that the ACT scheme may pay compensation for a non-ACT worker for which there is no recovery, and those compensation costs are subsequently passed on to ACT employers through increased premiums

Mr Speaker, these simple examples clearly show how our ACT employers and our ACT scheme with its unlimited access to common law may be financially disadvantaged compared to other jurisdictions.

In general, all employers are disadvantaged when they are required by law to maintain more than one worker's compensation policy if their employees work in more than one Territory or State. This imposes a significant duplication of costs on employers, in particular for the road transport industry in which case these costs have to be passed on to the consumer by way of higher freight charges.

The Heads of Workers' Compensation Authorities, acting under the auspices of Labour Ministers' Council, identified these inequities and have given " cross border" issues top priority in their objective of achieving national consistency in workers' compensation. The Territories and States have agreed to introduce uniform complementary legislation to commence on a common starting date, so that any Australian employer will only be required to have one workers' compensation policy and an injured worker will be required to seek compensation in his or her "home" Territory or State.

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