Page 4675 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 31 October 2017
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That this bill be agreed to in principle.
Today I present the Workers Compensation Amendment Bill 2017 to the Assembly. The bill includes several important amendments to the Workers Compensation Act 1951 and the Workers Compensation Regulation 2002.
The territory’s workers compensation scheme provides insurance cover to approximately 16½ thousand employers. It also provides medical, rehabilitation and compensation services for around 140,000 workers in the event that they sustain an injury or disease as a result of their employment. This bill gives effect to four reforms which will not only improve access to statutory entitlements for territory workers but also increase the amount of statutory compensation payable in certain circumstances.
Specifically, the bill increases the amount of compensation available to the dependants of a worker who dies as a result of their work. It modernises the schedule of employment-related diseases and clarifies the liability test for employment-related disease. It aligns age limits for workers compensation with the commonwealth pension age to make sure that injured territory workers are not disadvantaged by the commonwealth’s increases to the pension qualifying age, and it introduces fines for employers who fail to pay workers compensation where they are required to do so.
Most Australian workers compensation schemes, including in the ACT, explicitly identify certain diseases that are highly likely to be caused by employment. In the ACT scheme these are categorised as employment-related diseases. The process for claiming workers compensation for an employment-related disease is streamlined by a reversal of the onus of proof in relation to employment contribution. This means that if a worker or former worker has an employment-related disease and they can demonstrate that they performed a type of work that is associated with that disease, their claim will be accepted unless the insurer demonstrates that work was not a substantial contributing factor.
The proposed amendment adopts an expanded list of employment-related diseases developed by Safe Work Australia in 2015. The list is based on expert, peer-reviewed research and agreed by a tripartite national committee representing the commonwealth, all states and territories, unions and employer groups. Its introduction in the ACT is supported by the tripartite Work Safety Council. Adopting the Safe Work Australia employment-related disease list will increase the number of employment-related diseases from 28 to 48. The bill amalgamates a number of existing diseases and adds diseases such as hepatitis A, B and C, HIV/AIDS, noise-induced hearing loss, lung cancer as a result of exposure to diesel engine exhaust, and skin cancer from solar radiation.
It should be noted for clarity that two diseases have been removed in this updated list—ankylostomiasis and tenosynovitis. This does not mean workers will be unable to claim compensation for these diseases but reflects the expert advice that an onus of proof on the claimant is more appropriate.
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