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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 3437 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

To deny this would be an abrogation of our responsibility to the community, to workers, to business and to the insurance industry, who are screaming for information about our workers compensation provisions all the time.

It is also important to the community that their legislators, as far as possible, make decisions on the basis of the facts of the matter. I draw attention to the fact that there is no actuarial assessment of the possible costs of the benefits and provisions in this legislation. The government has made no effort to bring forward any information in relation to the legislation which it has put before this place.

Without that sort of information, it would be irresponsible of us to ignore our obligations to know and understand fully where we are headed with this sort of legislation before it comes into effect. This legal obligation on the government requires that the Assembly know about this on or before the first sitting day after 1 February 2002. This particular provision expires on 1 July 2002, so the government has from February to July 2002 to make decisions in relation to it.

I hear that the government is going to talk about one, two or three years on from then. I do not particularly care about that, but not as a replacement for this particular provision. This provision should happen at the earliest moment to give legislators in this place some idea of where the workers compensation provisions are headed. I have no objection at all to later actuarial reviews. Better quality information will become available in time, and you will be able to make more refined assumptions. But that is not a good enough reason to give up on doing this sort of assessment in the first place. Many people, because they do not understand the possible costs of the provisions of this legislation, are concerned at the level of costs which might flow from the legislation.

Members will recall that in earlier versions of this legislation I included psychological impairment in the provisions, because there is a level of illness and injury resulting from psychological impairment. It was at first considered that we might be able to apply lump sum payments to those sorts of provisions, but because we did not know what the possible costs would be, for the time being that has matter been put aside. That is not to say that it is not an issue for consideration in the future, but it has been put aside for the moment.

For those matters which the government has brought forward, I think we deserve to know and fully understand what the costs are. That is what this actuarial report will tell us. I urge members to support the amendment. I should say in closing that if this is supported we may have to revisit an earlier decision of the Assembly in relation to recognition of this particular provision in the commencement date of the legislation.

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Business, Tourism and the Arts and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (9.39): Mr Speaker, the government agrees with the intent of this amendment, but we do not agree with the timing. The reason we do not have much data on this is that the majority of these cases currently go straight to litigation. In fact, the only people who would benefit from Mr Berry's amendment may well be the lawyers, because it forces insurers to defend cases.

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