Page 1622 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 14 May 2019
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scale of damages payable, which is grossly inadequate and unfair for individuals. You will effectively need to be dead to get the maximum payout. It is just a free kick to the insurance companies, as I mentioned earlier.
There is this myth that the WPI is zero to 100 but in reality that continuum is much, much narrower. To say that there is this maximum payment based on a WPI of 100 really is quite misleading and I think it really is misleading to all the potential future victims of a motor vehicle accident. Therefore, we strongly support our amendment and oppose what the government is putting forward in amendment 46.
MR BARR (Kurrajong—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Social Inclusion and Equality, Minister for Tourism and Special Events and Minister for Trade, Industry and Investment) (6.07): Unsurprisingly the government prefers its own amendment to the opposition’s. Amendment 46 includes examples of chronic pain in relation to the additional quality of life damages awarded, up to 20 per cent of the amount calculated according to the scale. The common-law quality of life damages are updated to that effect.
Amendment 46, combined with the previous one, also specifies that an injured person’s whole person impairment assessment that is used for the purposes of calculating common-law quality of life damages is the whole person impairment report that they rely on to make their common-law claim. This amendment, combined with my earlier one, provides greater clarity and the government will be supporting amendment 46.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (6.09): The Greens will not be supporting the Liberal amendment. We will in fact support the government amendment, once moved. But I will talk about both of them, in the interests of clarity. The Liberal amendment removes the scale for determining WPI and lets the court determine it. The whole point of this scheme is that we are trying to make a scheme which will cover individuals more equitably, and that is why there is this WPI scale. That is really why.
The other thing I think we probably should point out—yes, Mr Coe is correct that the very high numbers are not going to be that relevant to many people; if you are 100 per cent impaired you presumably, I would have to agree with him, are dead—is that people with a lot, lot smaller numbers will be covered by the lifetime care and support scheme for catastrophic injuries. People who are really badly injured will be getting support from that as well, as I understand it.
The government’s amendment clarifies what will happen where a court can consider that a claimant’s WPI assessment did not take into account a particular injury or a particular effect on the claimant’s quality of life and the court can award up to an additional 20 per cent in damages. This would seem to be a more sensible amendment.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (6.10): Just to put this in perspective, I believe that Comcare has 64 per cent WPI as the level for somebody who cannot stand or cannot walk. Far from getting $500,000, which is the maximum under this quality of life payment, based on this scale I calculate that 64 per cent will get a payment of $269,000. I would have thought that somebody who cannot walk ever
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