Page 3437 - Week 09 - Thursday, 20 August 2009
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Importantly, though, this bill also acknowledges the roles of employers. The default insurance fund is required to take reasonable steps to contact the employer and take into consideration the views, if any, of the employer in the conduct of a claim or legal proceedings.
While the default insurance fund does not assume the rights of a traditional insurer, these amendments will allow the default insurance fund to conduct matters in an efficient, cost-effective and timely manner.
If the Assembly does not provide this authority to the default insurance fund, it will mean the continued expenditure of court time and the legal and administrative costs associated with procuring the rights of the default insurance fund to conduct the employee’s claim and settle it. This bill reduces court time. This bill reduces the legal and administrative costs associated with compensation claims from workers of uninsured employers. However, most importantly, this bill will expedite the time taken for injured workers of uninsured employers to receive their workers compensation entitlements. We on this side, the Labor government side, have every confidence that this approach will effectively work to the advantage of injured ACT workers.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for Disability and Housing, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Corrections) (10.55): I state from the outset that each ACT worker injured at work is one too many. The vast majority of ACT employers do the right thing and protect their workers in the event of an injury. These law-abiding employers do not realise that while they do the right thing they are subsidising the employers who do not—those employers who do not have a workers compensation policy to protect their workers, those employers who do not care to protect the interests of their workers and their families.
The default insurance fund provides workers compensation benefits to injured workers in the event that their employer is not insured. The fund is made up of a combination of levies on the ACT’s private sector insurers, and thereby all ACT employers; interest on the levies; and recoveries obtained from uninsured employers or other parties. The fund meets the costs of workers compensation claims where, first, a worker suffers a work-related injury but their employer does not have a workers compensation insurance policy or, second, their employer has a policy but the insurer has collapsed or is otherwise unable to pay the claim.
This fund was always intended to act as a support for workers who have been the victim of unscrupulous business practices—practices that have disadvantaged workers who have fronted up to their workplace each day believing that adequate and appropriate workers compensation coverage was in place.
In providing benefits to injured workers, the default insurance fund is, for all intents and purposes, an insurer. This bill will bring the default insurance fund manager’s powers into line with those exercised by all private sector workers compensation insurers in the ACT. Under the current provisions, the fund manager does not have the same powers as other insurers to settle claims and to act on behalf of the uninsured
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