Page 1406 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 April 2019
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benefits to a lump sum payment even when it would be of benefit to the claimant or speed up the resolution of a claim. However, legislation allows this to occur in some circumstances where it is administratively convenient for the insurance companies. If a person does not wish to have a WPI assessment for any reason, their quality of life benefits application is taken to be fully dealt with.
Common law claimants will not be able to recover their full loss of earnings for one year following their accident. This, again, is unfair. The difference between their income and defined benefits payment is not double dipping. The bill attempts to additionally regulate legal costs and charges which are already fully dealt with under the Legal Profession Act 2006 and the Court Procedure Rules of the same year. Lawyers and other service providers will be expected to provide information to the commission without the protections afforded to insurers such as commercial-in-confidence safeguards.
There are so many instances in this bill where insurers are given exclusive jurisdiction and power to determine how people fall into exception categories or are eligible for additional compensation. This is a massive power disparity. The insurance companies can effectively ensure that no-one qualifies for various benefits, compensation or common law avenues by simply not approving treatment and care.
The chair’s dissenting report of the inquiry into the exposure draft of the Motor Accident Injuries Bill 2018 identifies that out of the 75 submissions it received the only submissions that were supportive of the changes were from the jury stakeholders, the government itself and the insurance companies. Meanwhile those who were unsupportive included union groups, legal firms, professional legal associations, key interest groups and organisations, interested members of the public and jury members—95 per cent of submissions. This speaks volumes about who this legislation favours.
The Labor-Greens government is far more interested in protecting the insurance companies than they are in protecting Canberrans. They are putting the best interests of these corporations ahead of the best interests of motor accident individuals and their families.
While the public discussion surrounding changes to CTP has been occurring for some time it was not until the last sitting week that we saw the final legislation. Two weeks later here we are and the government is trying to ram this through today. It is wrong. It was suggested to my office that we should have had our amendments ready for debate today, two weeks after the bill was introduced. Given that there is a 14-day notice period, this would be impossible.
The bill itself is nearly 440 pages long. The explanatory statement is 90 pages long. The draft regulations are about 60 pages long and the draft guidelines are approaching 140 pages. It is outrageous to expect that we should have a vote on this today.
Mr Barr: I am not expecting that. I have never said that. We are just starting the debate.
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