Page 1409 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 April 2019
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negotiations with the government that changes needed to be made before the Greens could support this proposed new scheme.
The Greens’ goal is to put the injured people at the centre of the CTP scheme, not the insurers, not the lawyers and not even lower premiums. The scheme needs to look after injured people, provide the treatment and support they need and do it in a timely way. They should not have to spend years in a difficult and adversarial legal minefield which they may not win in. These principles should not be compromised just to reduce premiums.
Lower premiums are not bad of course, and I note that the proposed scheme is predicted to reduce them by somewhere between $14 and $99. But the Greens do not support reducing premiums at the expense of people’s health and welfare.
I will briefly explain some of the substantial improvements that have been made in this bill since it was released as an exposure draft. These improvements respond to the concerns the Greens have raised, and I thank Mr Barr and his office for engaging closely with the Greens and working through these issues together. This process demonstrates how well having a minority government can work.
I also thank the legal profession because they provided considerable input into what they saw as the issues with the scheme. Obviously the Greens do not totally agree with them, nonetheless it has been very valuable having their words.
The Greens were concerned to ensure that accident victims receive fair compensation and that the WPI model does not lead to harsh outcomes for victims. The amended bill addresses this in two ways: injured children still requiring treatment and injured adults still needing income benefits after five years will be able to access common law despite having less than 10 per cent WPI. This recognises that injuries to children can be different from those of adults and can evolve differently over time as their bodies are still growing and changing.
The scheme will also provide options for injured people still requiring medical treatment after five years. The modelling showed that after five years of defined benefits there could be a small number of people—we understand a single digit number—who still require medical treatment. These people will be eligible for a lump sum payment from their insurer which can also be arbitrated in ACAT. This should be a good way to mitigate potential bad outcomes.
Of course we cannot be sure what is going to happen; this is a new scheme. That is why it is important that we closely monitor the scheme and perform the review after three years as required by the legislation.
Another change is that WPI assessments can consider physical and psychological injuries together if the psychological injuries arise as a result of physical injuries. This ensures that victims do not have to be assessed on one or the other. Unfortunately, the WPI assessment methodology has a limitation in that discrete psychological and physical injuries cannot be combined for the purpose of a single WPI assessment.
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