Page 540 - Week 02 - Thursday, 9 March 2006
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ACT family day care and in-home carers registered with or employed by Australian government-approved services to have the same entitlements to workers compensation across the ACT. This will not affect the employment status of registered family day care and in-home carers for any other purpose.
There may be some increase in costs that flow on to the parents but this is creating a level playing field across the territory because currently every other family day care service is providing that level of insurance for their carers. So the costs across the ACT should be the same; everybody gets treated equally; and, importantly, a very low-paid workforce, predominantly women and predominantly women from non-English speaking backgrounds, are getting the level of protection that they deserve by being covered for workers compensation in their home. This bill will support the policy objective of the scheme by reducing the length and duration of injuries, ensuring that all workers have equal and consistent access to workers compensation and quality rehabilitation services.
There is a difference between our workers compensation scheme and others around the country, which means that our premiums are often higher than those in other jurisdictions. One of them is the fact that we have a fully funded, privately underwritten scheme which New South Wales does not have. New South Wales’s unfunded liability at the moment is extraordinary. It is around $2 billion, I think, of unfunded liability. There is a big difference there. We have got a small pool. Under the act, I have the capacity to write to insurers and ask them, inquire, as to how they set their premiums, particularly where they—
Mr Mulcahy: Good luck.
MS GALLAGHER: As Mr Mulcahy says, good luck. I wrote to them.
Mr Mulcahy: Good luck to you.
MS GALLAGHER: It was good luck to me. The level of response I got was from a one-page “thank you for your interest, minister” to about 300 pages, from one insurer, of mathematical equations that you would have trouble deciphering if you asked a professor of mathematics to untangle it for you. So I would have to say the level of response is probably not very satisfying or certainly not enlightening about how they set their premiums, but all the insurers assure me that the setting of their premiums is not unreasonable. I do not necessarily agree with that but, in terms of any other power to regulate premiums, I do not have those options open to me.
Mr Mulcahy talked about the possible level of fraud by employees. I imagine it would be on par with every other level of insurance fraud. There is going to be some fraud, but I do not think we can sit here and say that it is a regular occurrence, that employees are doing this all the time or that, by being injured, it is of benefit to them. The benefit, of course, to the employer in having workers compensation, while they are paying for something that might not necessarily directly benefit them, as with home insurance or contents insurance, is that their worker is looked after, that they return to work, that their injury is taken care of and that that does not come at an additional cost to the employer. I guess there are some differences of opinion there.
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