Page 538 - Week 02 - Thursday, 9 March 2006
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As community organisations get bigger, there is often a greater level of efficiencies and professionalism. However, that more businesslike approach has other side effects. It is disappointing that putting the onus back on the workers to look after themselves was, it appears, the first resort of a large community organisation.
I have similar concerns emerging from Koomarri’s approach to the Narrabundah long-stay caravan park and its long-term residents. I wonder whether we all need to look more closely at social cooperatives as a model for service delivery rather than incorporated associations who, by their very structure, are inclined to focus more on their viability as an organisation than on the quality of the purpose of their activities. In any event, that sequence of events certainly makes it clear why I will be supporting this bill.
The other amendments I see as uncontroversial, at least in the context of the act. Clearly it has been argued in court that an insurance company might not have had a liability to pay rehabilitation expenses, despite the strong focus on rehabilitation in the act. The underlying premise of this scheme, based on medical evidence and information from the insurance industry, is that an active approach to rehabilitation delivers a much better result to the industry, to the injured worker and to society overall. Amending the act will absolutely ensure that rehabilitation costs are covered by workers compensation and, therefore, it should be a cut-and-dried matter.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Children, Youth and Family Support, Minister for Women and Minister for Industrial Relations) (12.10), in reply: I begin by saying that this is hopefully the last workers comp amendment bill to come before the Assembly for some time so that we are saved from Mr Mulcahy’s musing on workers compensation and his views on the evils of employees fraudulently ripping off their bosses by getting injured at work. This is the second time we have heard that speech. I thought he would manage to get through the debate without reverting to it, but it was not to be.
The Workers Compensation Act 1951 creates a workers compensation scheme for workers in the ACT private sector. The act provides workers with compensation for injuries arising out of or in the course of their employment. The bill we are considering today, the Workers Compensation Amendment Bill 2006, makes a number of small but important changes to the act to improve consistency throughout the act and makes it fairer and more effective.
A number of amendments in the bill have been suggested by the Workers Compensation Advisory Committee. I appreciate the work and commitment of that committee in working with us to improve the ACT workers compensation scheme. A further amendment is a result of correspondence between a commonwealth-approved family day care and in-home care service and me.
This bill will ensure that women and men have the same access to workers compensation benefits under the act. Under the act, workers compensation payments generally cease once the worker reaches his or her pension age. The pension age is currently defined by reference to the commonwealth’s Social Security Act. Under that act, men reach the pension age at 65, while women born before 1948 reach pension age between the ages of
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