Page 1412 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 April 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Following negotiations a variety of problematic restrictions on benefits have been removed, and I thank the government for agreeing to them. As I said, the Greens’ position on this suite of significant amendments which have been negotiated into this new version of the bill is that they are a great improvement. It is a much fairer scheme than the one originally proposed by the government and one more suitably orientated around the needs of injured people. Unfortunately, we still have a traffic system which every day results in injuries to people and every year in death and serious injuries, so we need a CTP scheme to support victims of our traffic system.
I want to emphasise that today we are offering agreement in principle to the bill but we are not passing it. Some issues and details still need to be resolved, including the final form of the guidelines. I look forward to discussing these further with the government and other stakeholders in the coming weeks.
MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Disability, Minister for Children, Youth and Families, Minister for Employment and Workplace Safety, Minister for Government Services and Procurement, Minister for Urban Renewal) (5.05): The genesis of this bill is the government’s belief that our current compulsory third party, or CTP, insurance scheme can be improved in the interests of Canberrans to better protect Canberrans.
I completely reject Mr Coe’s claims as to the government’s motivation in relation to this matter. Indeed it is hard to genuinely argue that this could possibly be the case when the design of this scheme we are debating today is based on an independently run citizens jury process, a process informed by a reference group representing vested interests but where participants themselves were demographically representative community members who did not and could not know whether they or a loved one would ever need to make a claim, but did know that they or a loved one might need to make a claim under a future scheme, because a motor vehicle accident can happen to anyone.
Under the existing system, many Canberrans who are in a motor vehicle accident are not covered. Even if they are covered, it can take two years or more to get a payout. In spite of this, Canberrans pay some of the highest CTP premiums in the country. The review of the CTP system tabled by the Chief Minister on Tuesday noted that our premiums are the second highest after South Australia’s. The same report also highlighted that about 24 per cent of payouts in the ACT went to legal costs and, by comparison, 22 per cent went to treatment and care.
The fact that under the current scheme more money goes to legal costs than care shows that the system is not working in the interests of Canberrans injured in motor vehicle accidents. The no-fault model proposed in this bill will benefit those injured in a motor vehicle accident by providing faster and fairer access to benefits without the need to go to court to prove fault, meaning that people can start recovering from their accident sooner.
The new motor accident injury scheme set out in this bill will see about 600 more Canberrans each year entitled to treatment, care and lost wages when they are hurt in
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video