Page 1604 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 14 May 2019
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request two separate whole person impairment assessments so long as the injured person meets the requirements for a primary psychological assessment. The requirements for a primary psychological injury assessment are that the injured person has been receiving mental health treatment for the injury and that a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist certifies a reasonable belief the person has a permanent psychological injury from the accident.
Where an assessment of physical injuries is taking place, the independent medical examiner may consider secondary psychological injuries arising from the physical injury as part of their assessment of that physical injury. For example, if someone experiences depression as a result of having serious physical injuries, this will be included in the assessment of their whole person impairment arising from the physical injuries.
In relation to the opposition’s amendment, there is an issue where an injured person has both a primary physical injury and a primary psychological injury. These cannot be combined in assessing a whole person impairment because the nature of the impairment created by each injury would indeed be different.
It is worth noting that this is the case in all schemes across the nation which use the national Safe Work Australia template for assessing impairment. Everyone gets five years: five years of support for both physical and psychological injuries. That is the important point to stress under the government’s scheme. That perhaps has not been acknowledged by the Leader of the Opposition, which is an important reform.
Secondly, the path that I have outlined in terms of the government amendments does, I believe, address the issues that Mr Coe has raised. To go down the alternative path that he proposes would be inconsistent with all other schemes using the national Safe Work Australia template for assessing impairment. For that combination of factors, I believe the government amendments that I will be moving are the preferred path to address the issues contained within the broader package of amendments moved by the opposition.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (4.55): Like the other two speakers, I will talk about both the government’s amendments and the Liberal Party’s amendments on this topic together, in the interests of saving some time and reducing confusion. The amendments relate entirely to how physical and psychological injuries are combined and whether or not this can be done for the purpose of obtaining basically a higher WPI percentage, which then potentially allows access to common law or to better quality of life payments.
This is a very complicated area. We have had many discussions about it. In the exposure draft of the legislation, we argued amongst ourselves about which was in and which was not. We had a lot of conversations on this, and I am sure that we are all confused. Certainly I am confused. I should not verbal other people.
This is an area that I find incredibly confusing. It is easy to find some hypothetical examples but it is not easy to know whether these are real things and how they would actually pan out in real life. I am very heartened by Mr Coe’s comments that the
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