Sky News host and NSW Treasurer exchange fiery barbs over changes to workers compensation as contentious bill causes standoff

Sky News AU

a day ago

Sky News host Laura Jayes has scolded NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey in a heated on-air exchange, as contentious reforms to workers' psychological compensation hits a major snag amid ballooning costs for small business.
The NSW government's sweeping reforms to workers compensation laws have suffered a setback, with the opposition and crossbench stifling Premier Chris Minns' plans to clamp down on the surging cost of psychological injury claims.
NSW Premier Chris Minns is seeking to overhaul the existing workers compensation system by considerably limiting the state's 4.5 million workers' ability to claim for psychological injury at work because of trauma and other factors.
The government wants to raise the whole-person impairment (WPI) threshold from 20 to 30 per cent, of which is a medical scale used to measure the severity of injury sustained at a workplace.
The proposed changes have incensed the Greens, crossbench, and opposition in addition to unions and the legal and medical professions, with experts outlining that an impairment as low as 15 per cent would mean an individual was unable to function independently in almost all domains of life.
NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey urged the upper house to pass the legislation on Thursday in the strictest possible terms and reiterated that if the laws were not enacted businesses would face a 36 per cent increase in workers compensation premiums due to the sizeable number of claims.
'The reason why these reforms are urgent is because the system is failing injured workers right now. It's failing the 340,000 small businesses that are paying in it,' Mr Mookhey said.
Yet he admitted that even if the changes to the WPI were made the move would not result in any immediate budget savings.
"These changes, whether they go through this week or they go through in the budget week, won't impact the budget result,' Mr Mookhey said, conceding that the system was 'broken' and needed to be made more 'sustainable'.
However, Jayes rebuffed the Treasurer's assertion that the changes would ensure the system would be made fairer for workers, stating 'you are trying to fix it by denying people with psychological injuries that they sustained at work from getting full and ongoing compensation'.
Mookhey confessed that 'this is a controversial change here in New South Wales', with Jayes once again pressing the Treasurer if he accepted the bill would 'lock people out of the compensation that they deserve?'
Mookhey responded with a blunt, 'no' and argued there are '88,000 people who use the workers' compensation system each year, of them 12,000 are psychological injury and within the 12,000, the number of workers that would be impacted came out to be roughly 900 if it was applied last year'.
'We've turned up with a reform package that's accepted that this is a broken system and in response to that we've seen both the Liberal Party choose to play politics with the Greens Party knowing full well that the consequence of that is to trap injured workers,' Mookhey said.
Jayes blasted the Treasurer for playing 'politics', reiterating 'the Parliament works in the way that the opposition and the Greens can move amendments, they are not talking about abolishing this completely, they are only moving amendments'.
The Coalition party room met on Tuesday and agreed to insist on a half-dozen amendments including removing the section raising the whole person impairment threshold, which is the underpinning element of the legislation.
Mr Mookhey lashed his opposition counterparts for advocating higher costs for small businesses and delaying the bill ahead of the fast-approaching state budget.
'It's failing the 340,000 small businesses that are paying in it, those 340 thousand small businesses should know that the party that purports to defend their interests, are right now playing political games with the Greens Party at their expense''.
The Coalition has indicated that if its amendments are not agreed to then it will send the bill to a further inquiry, whilst the Greens and crossbench have expressed serious reservations about the reforms.
The Icare nominal insurer's workers' compensation scheme recorded a net loss of $1.88bn last financial year.