Chris Minns warns of $2bn budget hole if bill curtailing psychological injury claims fails

The Guardian

3 days ago

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has warned a failure to pass his controversial workers compensation legislation would blow a $2bn hole in the state budget as Labor seeks to woo a coalition of conservative crossbenchers to pass the bill.
In parliament, the premier said if the changes to curtail psychological injury claims did not go through, an additional $2bn would be required from NSW taxpayers to fund the public service portion of the scheme.
He also warned that businesses would see premiums rise by 36% over three years to fund the scheme for the private sector.
Sources have told Guardian Australia that there was intensive lobbying of upper house MPs from the Shooters and Fishers party and other right-leaning MPs, including former One Nation MPs Mark Latham and Rod Roberts, Legalise Cannabis MP Jeremy Buckingham and Libertarian MP John Ruddick.
The opposition will move on Thursday to send the complex bill to an inquiry. Opposition leader Mark Speakman described it as 'unconscionable' and 'cruel'.
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The opposition wants the status quo of 15% impairment to qualify for compensation, instead of the 30% that the government is proposing.
He said the opposition had offered amendments that would yield some savings, such as tightening definitions of psychological injury due to bullying, or 'unworkable' claims due to 'excessive work demands', but the Coalition would not budge on the impairment threshold.
A 15% impairment means a person struggles with daily tasks and requires reminders about their hygiene needs. Experts have said that a 30% impairment was so high that it would make it virtually impossible for people to ever claim for psychological injury.
The high-stakes game will play out on Thursday.
The shadow treasurer, Damien Tudehope, warned that the government was seeking to cajole the crossbench with offerings in other policy areas that were important to them.
The public had strong views about the ethics of this approach, he said.
Two days before the government released its workers compensation legislation, Minns surprised many by indicating support for a bounty scheme proposed by the Shooters party in its conservation hunting bill to control feral animals.
The bill would create a new conservation hunting authority and proposes a raft of changes, including enshrining a 'right to hunt' and recognition of hunting as a conservation management tool.
Minns has previously denied there was any deal with the Shooters for support of other legislation.
Conservation groups and scientists have condemned the hunting proposal as ineffective and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
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As debate on the bill began in the upper house on Wednesday, the scientist-led Biodiversity Council wrote to MPs warning that the legislation, if passed in its current form, would 'undermine invasive species management across the state, leading to poorer outcomes for the environment and agriculture'.
Conservationists are concerned the bill will become a vehicle for promoting the interests of recreational hunting and management of invasive species as game rather than driving down feral animal numbers with control programs.
The Invasive Species Council and other groups have also expressed concern that the proposed authority bears similarities to the defunct Game Council, which was abolished in 2013, and that hunting interests would dominate the authority's proposed voting structure.
'Recreational hunting is not conservation. It rarely delivers environmental benefits, and in many cases actively obstructs professional control programs,' the council's chief executive, Jack Gough, said.
There also appear to be moves afoot to provide an exception for motorists who test positive when using medical marijuana, a policy that both Buckingham and the Greens have pushed.
Unions, legal and medical experts have strongly criticised the government's attempts to curtail claims for psychological injury, warning that a 30% threshold would make it virtually impossible for people to make claims.
They have urged the government to first focus on prevention and educating employers about handling psychosocial injuries, rather than cutting off compensation.
The Unions NSW secretary, Mark Morey, said the result would be simply to cost shift on to the welfare and health systems.
Compensation for injured public servants comes out of the Treasury Managed Fund (TMF), which is already under enormous pressure due to natural disaster funding in the last year.
The full extent of the fund's deterioration will be revealed in the budget on 24 June.