Page 1418 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 April 2019
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unfairly high and will exclude injured people from accessing the benefits they need. The reality is that everyone who is injured in a motor vehicle accident will be entitled to the treatment, care and income replacement they need to recover from their accident through the defined benefits component of the scheme.
The whole person impairment threshold only applies when considering who can make an application for quality of life defined benefits or can proceed through to common law to claim for additional compensation. Access to common law will be limited to cases where someone else was at fault for the accident and a medical assessment indicates that a person has a whole person impairment of 10 per cent or more. This will help ensure that more of the scheme’s resources are directed to people who have serious ongoing injuries.
Whole person impairment assessments are conducted by specially trained medical experts, using a set of standard criteria in use around the country. These assessments are already used in the Comcare and private workers compensation schemes to determine access to benefits. Whole person impairment assessments are only done once a person’s injury has stabilised, meaning that it is not getting any better or any worse. The ACT’s threshold will be the lowest of any comparable scheme in Australia. In Victoria for example, a 30 per cent whole person impairment threshold is used to determine access to common law.
The ACT’s new scheme will include a number of exemptions for people who do not meet the impairment threshold but have another compelling reason for needing to make a further claim for benefits at common law. Children who are still accessing treatment and care benefits after 4½ years and workers who have been unable to retrain or return to work because of their injury will be able to make a common law claim even if they are not assessed as having a whole person impairment of 10 per cent or more.
It is also worth stepping through how the new scheme will interact with existing workers compensation arrangements because for the first time there will be defined benefits on offer under both types of insurance. People who get injured on the road whilst at work will have 13 weeks to decide whether to access defined benefits through their motor accident injuries insurance or their workers compensation insurance. This allows the injured person time to deal with their acute injury, get to know their insurer and service providers, take advice, and make an informed decision about which scheme is best for them. If necessary, they can seek advice from their union, an information support service or a lawyer.
If they are eligible to make a common law claim under both workers compensation and motor accident injuries insurance, they are not locked in by their choice of defined benefit scheme. Under the current scheme, there is no need to choose between workers compensation and CTP because there are simply no defined benefits in CTP. If someone else was at fault for their accident, a worker can access defined benefits through the workers compensation scheme until their CTP claim is dealt with at common law, and then switch to CTP damages if they are awarded these.
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