Revised workers compensation Bill to be tabled in NSW after push back from unions
A revised plan to up-end the NSW state workers compensation scheme will be tabled in parliament on Tuesday following widespread opposition from the state's unions.
Multiple unions representing teachers, nurses and a range of other fields rallied outside parliament on Monday morning in opposition to a draft proposal.
Following that backlash and a hearing into the proposal, the Labor government will introduce an updated Bill on Tuesday to reform the scheme.
Treasurer Daniel Mookhey told the inquiry he would not authorise any further cash injections to the Treasury Managed Fund, the state self-insurer.
On Tuesday, Mr Mookhey said the Minns government wanted to create 'a modern system that will better protect workers from psychological injury and provide better help when they need it'.
'I want to ensure that future generations of workers across NSW have a workers compensation system they can rely on,' he said.
'As the workplace evolves, our capacity to support people in it must adapt accordingly.'
Industrial Relations Minister Sophie Cotsis said the reforms would help strengthen a 'culture of prevention', as well as early intervention and recovery.
'These include major reforms to SafeWork NSW, including investing in more inspectors to focus on psychosocial harm prevention and industrial relations reforms that establish a 'stop bullying' jurisdiction,' she said.
'Additionally, we have amended the iCare Act to include a principal objective focused on promoting early and appropriate treatment and care for injury and illness.
'This aims to optimise recovery, support return to work and daily activities, and ensure a sustainable compensation system.'
She thanked all who contributed submissions to the consultative process 'for their practical and considered responses'.
Unions NSW and a number of other powerful unions in the state had spoken out against the reform and some of its provisions, namely a 31 per cent threshold for damages for permanent impairment due to psychological injury.
They had also opposed plans to require anyone psychologically injured because of racial or sexual harassment, or bullying to receive a determination by a court or the Industrial Relations Commission Tribunal.
Among the changes since the bill was first made public was a plan to scrap that requirement that workers obtain a finding from the IRC, as well as an expedited system for those types of claims – just eight weeks.
The definition of vicarious trauma will also be clarified to include psychological injury arising from 'repeated exposure to the traumatic experiences of others'.
Other proposed changes, many of which were raised during the hearing, include reducing legal costs, greater powers to IRC to hear workplace health and safety complaints, and adding 'excessive work demands' as a new compensable cause of psychological injury.
Commutations to allow psychologically injured workers with a Whole Person Impairment (WPI) of 30 per cent or below to access a lump sum before their weekly payments
cease, will also be introduced, as will a gradual increase to the WPI measure to determine weekly payments for life, rising to 25 per cent from October 2025 and greater than 30 per cent from 1 July 2026.
The state government is also rolling out a $44m Workplace Mental Health package, including to SafeWork NSW for injury prevention – with 50 new inspectors specialising in psychological injury – and wraparound psychological support services for people navigating the claims process.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
23 minutes ago
- ABC News
Look back on memorable moments from Q+A's 18 years
Q+A was a rarity in Australian television news history — a show led in part by its audience where anything could happen, live on air. The panel show, which the ABC has announced is being discontinued, regularly set the agenda and made headlines. Here are just some of the memorable moments from its 18 years on the ABC. When John Howard was on the panel in October 2010, an audience member hurled a pair of shoes in his direction in protest against the former PM's stance on the Iraq War. "I remember jumping up and I tried to catch the shoes," host Tony Jones said in an interview on Conversations with Richard Fidler in 2019. "And John Howard in the most brilliant way, so calm, grabbed my elbow and said, 'Just calm down, Tony. It's alright,' and pulled me back down and we went on with the show. "Later we learnt that [the man who threw the shoes], Peter Gray, had terminal cancer and was in hospital close to death. "We heard he'd like to auction them off and give the money to charity and we did that with John Howard's agreement. "He actually signed a document certifying that these were the shoes that were thrown at him by Peter Gray from Newcastle and many thousands of dollars ended up going to the Red Crescent, which is the Islamic version of the Red Cross." In May last year, Vincent Hurley was listening to politicians debate family violence after a series of deaths that shocked him and the nation. And he couldn't stay silent. "How dare you go into politics, in an environment like this, when one woman is murdered every four days, and all you … can do is immediately talk about politics? That is just disgraceful," he said, in a plea that went viral. In 2016 Victorian man Duncan Storrar found himself on the receiving end of a media barrage when he appeared on Q&A to ask politicians why he wasn't getting a tax cut. The Geelong man asked the election panel why Australians earning more than $80,000 got a tax cut while low-income workers received nothing. "If you lift my tax-free threshold, that changes my life," he said to applause. "That means I get to say to my little girls, 'Daddy's not broke this weekend. We can go to the pictures.' "Rich people don't even notice their tax-free threshold lift. Why don't I get it? Why do they get it?" In her reply, then-Liberal minister Kelly O'Dwyer said company tax cuts would help businesses, like a cafe whose owner she spoke to who needed to buy a $6,000 toaster to boost business. Storrar later received $60,000 in donations via a GoFundMe campaign. But within days of appearing on the show he was attacked by various media outlets, who commented on his criminal history and revealed he paid no net tax. The media's treatment of him was questioned given he had raised his mental health concerns. Q+A courted controversy by inviting former terror suspect Zaky Mallah on to ask a question in 2015. Mallah was the first man charged with terrorism under laws introduced by the Howard government. He was found not guilty of preparing a 2003 suicide attack on a Sydney Commonwealth building after being held for two years in Goulburn jail, but was acquitted two years later. He asked then-parliamentary secretary to the minister for foreign affairs, Steve Ciobo, a pre-approved question regarding his detention. "I had done and said some stupid things, including threatening to kidnap and kill, but in 2005 I was acquitted of those terrorism charges," Mallah said from the live audience. "What would have happened if my case had been decided by the minister himself and not the courts?" Ciobo said he thought Mallah was acquitted on a technicality and would be happy if he was removed from the country. Mallah later responded: "The Liberals now have just justified to many Australian Muslims in the community tonight to leave and go to Syria and join ISIS because of ministers like him". Host Tony Jones said the comments were completely out of order. Prime minister Tony Abbott banned his frontbench from appearing on the show over the incident. ABC management later made a statement that it was wrong to allow Mallah onto the program. The Q&A executive producer was given a formal warning and the program was moved into the News division. When Simon Sheikh, then national director of the lobbyist group GetUp!, collapsed at the desk mid-show in July 2012, his fellow panellists rushed to help him — except one. Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella was sitting next to Sheikh on the show but looked on in surprise as panellist climate change minister Greg Combet rushed over to help. Mirabella was criticised on social media for her reaction to her co-panellist's collapse. She later said she was taken by complete surprise. "I didn't know what it was," she said. "I thought initially he was just bent over laughing because that's what you see, and [I] turned around to try and get a better look and I — like everyone else on the panel — was just stunned." GetUp! took to Twitter to defend Mirabella, urging people to go easy on the Liberal MP. "Folks, please don't criticise @SMirabellaMP — it was an extraordinary circumstance and everyone was shocked," it tweeted. Sheikh was taken to hospital and fully recovered. In an emotional final appearance in May 2023, Q+A host Stan Grant spoke directly to the people who sent him hateful messages during his time in the chair. "To those who have abused me and my family, I would just say — if your aim was to hurt me, well, you've succeeded," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I must have given you so much cause to hate me," he said. Grant had announced the week before that he was stepping away from Q+A, and he accused the ABC of "institutional failure", saying the organisation did not publicly defend him amid a storm of racist abuse. Grant said he feared the media did not have the love or the language "to speak to the gentle spirits of our land". Yassmin Abdel-Magied appeared on Q&A in 2017 and was involved in a heated exchange with senator Jacqui Lambie over sharia law. The pair was asked by an audience member if it was time to define new rules surrounding migration to avoid community conflict, to which Lambie replied: "Anyone that supports sharia law should be deported." Abdel-Magied questioned if she even knew what that meant before getting into a heated defence of feminism and Islam. "My frustration is that people talk about Islam without knowing anything about it and they're willing to completely negate any of my rights as a human being," Abdel-Magied said. "Islam to me is the most feminist religion. We got equal rights well before the Europeans. We don't take our husbands' last names because we ain't their property." One of Q+A's real strengths every week was everyday Australians showing the human side of government policies. In March last year, Charlotte Kaye told her personal story of trying to survive on Jobseeker and pension payments and facing ageism in the workforce, which touched a nerve with the panel and Australians alike. Conservative independent Bob Katter and comedian Josh Thomas must have been one of the show's most unlikely double acts. But when they were sitting together on an October 2014 episode about mental health, sparks flew. When Katter was asked by an audience member about how his public statements on homosexuality impacted mental health, he tried to change the topic to mental health in his electorate, and Thomas couldn't take his comments sitting down. He said it was clear Katter cared about his community. "But then you go out and you deny the existence of homosexuals in north Queensland. They exist. There's an app called Grindr. I'll put it on your phone." Dylan Storer was just 15 when he appeared on the program in 2018, and blew Australia away with his take on the Voice to Parliament. The West Australian appeared on the panel alongside other high schoolers who were invited to speak about issues affecting their communities. He revealed how he came from a school with a majority Indigenous population and questioned the lack of focus on Australia's black history. "We had eight weeks of term focused on the American civil rights movement, and in the last two weeks, we crammed in Australian Aboriginal history," he told the panel. "We have the opportunity to be a part — and be a good part — and acknowledge cultures that have been in this country, on this land, for 65,000 years. "It could be such a large part of our country and such a large part of our identity." Storer, who is now a journalist, went on to say he believed more education about our First Nations people could not only help address racism but also misunderstanding, which came from a lack of education. Only comedian Barry Humphries would answer a call on air and tell host Tony Jones to "shoosh".
ABC News
38 minutes ago
- ABC News
Could Ozempic help with schizophrenia?
Australians living with schizophrenia die about twenty years earlier than the general population, and that's not driven by suicide but cardio metabolic disease. Anti-psychotics can add to an already increased risk of weight gain, which specialists say causes some patients to avoid their medication altogether. But a new study from the University of Queensland, published in the world leading Lancet medical journal, shows semaglutide or ozempic could help patients with schizophrenia stay medicated and out of hospital for longer.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Sunshine Coast Council's $30 million depreciation error causes $20m budget deficit
A Queensland council has revealed five years of financial errors that could leave a $20 million hole in its next budget. The Sunshine Coast Council said it uncovered the financial errors in its own internal reporting. The errors, calculating the depreciation of council assets, amounted to about $30 million and could increase rates. Consequently, the council's 2025-'26 budget announcement has been pushed back by two weeks. The revised meeting date is now July 7. Sunshine Coast Council chief executive officer John Baker said that while external audits by the Queensland Audit Office found no issues, internal reports presented to the council did not fully reflect the long-term cost of asset ownership and renewal. "The new chief financial officer and I are leading the review with a focus on ensuring the 2025-'26 budget is built on clear, accurate and reliable financial data," he said. He said the council was putting "robust financial controls" and "reporting mechanisms in place" to prevent this from happening again. Mayor Rosanna Natoli said independent and internal reviews were being conducted. "Together we agreed that the right course of action was to bring in external consultants to conduct a thorough and independent review. "We also agreed that to ensure the accuracy of our financial data we needed to delay the budget and be transparent with our community and the media." Ms Natoli declined to say who was responsible for the mistake. "This review is not about blame. It's about strengthening our systems and making sure this doesn't happen again," she said. "We are committed to transparency. Once the review is complete we will share the outcomes with our community. "As we finalise the 2025-'26 budget we are focused on financial stability and delivering the services that matter most to our residents. "We, as a council, are working hard to minimise any impact on rates." Stan Gallo, a forensic investigator for business and councils at BDO Australia, has extensive experience working with councils but could not talk directly to the Sunshine Coast Council matter. He said generally councils managed a wide range of assets such as roads, parks, buildings, drainage, and community facilities, each with different life-spans, maintenance needs, and valuation methods. Mr Gallo said this makes calculating depreciation and accurately forecasting future asset-related expenses more complex than for a business. "Depreciation is a book entry, so an initial human error may go unnoticed over a period of time if the underlying internal financials are not properly scrutinised and the underlying figures are simply accepted and thereby included in generated reports," he said. Mr Gallo said it was a positive step to identify and publicly report it. "They now need to follow through in appropriately responding to it which should include understanding exactly what happened, how it happened, identifying any underlying issues, and determining what — if any — control failures allowed it to happen," Mr Gallo said. He said for a council to maintain credibility, and its reputation, a detailed external and independent forensic financial review should be undertaken by professionals prepared to ask difficult questions to drive "good governance". Logan City Council Mayor Jon Raven said depreciation was crippling for councils. "At this rate we could be in deficit by the end of the financial year," Cr Raven said. "$1 million [deficit] might sound like a lot of money, but for a council with a billion-dollar budget it's like a family on a combined $100,000 income only having $100 in the bank at the end of the week. "We didn't end up here because of budget blowouts or project overruns. It's because the cost of things that council buys the most — power, insurance, construction materials and services — has been soaring. "[It has been] going up by as much as 25 per cent." The Logan City Council 2025-'26 budget will be adopted on June 25. "The biggest hit to our bottom line has been depreciation which was $14 million over the forecast budget of $137.5 million for 2024-'25," Mr Raven said. "Depreciation is crippling local governments. "We don't benefit from it like businesses do. Councils must adhere to an accounting standard that's not fit for purpose. "ABS figures show that local government spends significantly more on maintaining depreciating assets than other levels of government. "We're doing everything we can to find savings and reduce waste, but ultimately rates will need to go up to pay for depreciation."
