Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

With your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker, I begin by commending the member for Riverina on the comments she has just made. It is an issue, I think, that is extremely important. I have a motion on the Notice Paper with exactly the same intent, and I appreciate her contribution on the issue. I hope, like her, that the COAG meeting will lead to some serious progress. It is a national scandal that we have large numbers of young people, who are severely disabled or have acquired brain injuries and things of that kind, in nursing homes. I commend the member for Riverina for her efforts in that regard.

The Financial Framework Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2005 is supported by the opposition. It is largely routine legislation, covering a number of unrelated matters which I do not intend to deal with in any great length, but there are a couple of things that I do wish to address.

There are a variety of provisions, including a bit of tidying up with respect to special accounts for particular agencies, and a number of other essentially routine matters, but there are two areas that I want to make some observation on. One relates to the extension of certain exemptions that currently apply with respect to Financial Management Act provisions, regarding intelligence or security agencies to policing agencies, and the other relates to reforms to Comcare.

Schedule 3 of the bill includes an amendment to section 58 of the Financial Management Act, which provides that intelligence or security agencies may avoid some of the requirements of the Financial Management Act via the regulations. These exempt agencies from approval of spending proposals affecting operational money allow the banking of public money—that is, operational money in an account that is not an official account—and provide for the preparation of financial statements other than in accordance with the finance minister’s orders.

The amendments sought would allow Financial Management Act agencies that are law enforcement agencies, as defined in section 85ZL of the Crimes Act, and including the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Crime Commission, CrimTrac, the Australian Customs Service and so forth, the potential to avoid some of the requirements of the Financial Management Act via the regulations.

There are several good reasons for the extension of these exemptions concerning officers working undercover with an assumed identity, witnesses who are under protection, and controlled operations. However, Labor would like to raise the concern that these changes will take place without the benefit of the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, promised prior to the last election but which has still not been delivered. Labor will deal with these matters further in the Senate.

Finally, I would like to deal with the changes to Comcare and the administration of Comcare as proposed in the bill. In effect, the bill deals with a longstanding problem with respect to Comcare, where weekly payments for workers who are off work as a result of injuries cannot be made by their employer, the agency involved, until such time as there is actually a finding of liability on the part of Comcare. That of course creates the strange circular arrangement where either the individual concerned goes unpaid for a period of time or they use existing leave entitlements which are then subsequently reimbursed.

It is part of a broader problem in Comcare where there is a triangular situation: the individual claimant is at one point of the triangle; their direct employer, the agency, is at another point; and Comcare is at another point. One of the things that happens in practice all too often is that individual claimants end up in situations where they have Comcare and their individual agency both pointing at each other as the organisation that should sort out the problem. There is a structural weakness in Comcare that needs to be corrected and this legislation at least takes a significant step in that direction, so I commend the government for acting on this.

This raises the broader question of something that is very dear to my heart and has been for a very long time, and that is how we deal with problems of injured workers and people with serious injuries and disabilities in this country generally. We are still in the Dark Ages in spite of the efforts of the Whitlam government in 1975 to introduce a uniform national compensation scheme, which unfortunately was defeated in the Senate. We are still in the Dark Ages, with a hodgepodge of bits and pieces schemes and arrangements all around Australia providing a wide variety of different degrees of compensation and assistance for people suffering serious injuries and illnesses which prevent them from working, impose a whole range of economic burdens on them and, of course, impose major burdens on their ability to live normal lives. That imposes a great difficulty on many Australians, who are essentially invisible, because we do not hear about these people in the community.

So, although there are some who are reasonably well compensated out of existing injury compensation schemes, particularly if they are in a jurisdiction where common law still exists and they have the ability to sue because they can demonstrate negligence against another party, typically an employer, there are many others who miss out and suffer essentially the destruction of their lives or their wellbeing as a result of a serious illness or injury because they are unable to connect their situation with some particular party that has a liability to compensate them.

I came across an example of this only recently. A woman in my electorate who contracted hepatitis C as a result of a blood transfusion at a major hospital in Melbourne has received legal advice that she is unable to sue the hospital and that the prospects of success in any case would be very slim. She has now got to the point where she is largely unable to work and has gone on to the disability support pension. Her long-term prospects look decidedly grim. She will hopefully be able to manage the illness, but her ability to remain a productive member of the workforce into the future looks very clouded. As a result of this, she goes on to the very basic, very limited, income of the disability support pension; whereas, had she been able to demonstrate negligence on the part of the hospital, she would have been in a position to achieve a very substantial common law payout. It has nothing to do with her need but everything to do with a highly arbitrary and ultimately very artificial equation about demonstrating negligence on the part of, in this case, a service provider.

This is an irrational way of providing compensation for people suffering serious illnesses and injuries. It is based not on their need but on the circumstances in which they acquired those illnesses and injuries. Because of almost universal insurance arrangements, the notion that somehow negligence law and common law provide some kind of deterrent to people negligently injuring others I think is highly dubious. There are some instances where you can probably make some argument to that effect, but in overall terms the notion that the operation of common law actually does that is basically pretty hard to demonstrate. There is a bigger picture question that we as a society have to look at, and that is how we provide income support for people with serious injuries and illnesses and how we provide maximum opportunity for them to recover, rehabilitate and return to the workforce, if not in their previous occupation then at least in some form.

We are long overdue in this country for a major reform agenda for the way we deal with workplace and other injuries, the way we assist injured workers and other injured people to deal with their problems and the way we provide for compensation. I commend the government on this small step in this legislation of a small reform of the Comcare arrangements. I hope this will improve the efficiency of the way Comcare is administered, provide some relief for injured workers who operate under the Comcare scheme and provide some reduction in the extent to which bureaucracy creates barriers to them achieving their entitlements and being able to get some relief and some justice.

In conclusion, this nation as a whole—that is, all the states and territories and the Commonwealth—is long overdue for a major reform agenda. It probably need not be the same as what Labor proposed 30 years ago. The world has moved on. There are many different issues that we need to deal with. Some of the things in that proposal are probably not appropriate now. We in this country are long overdue for a very serious examination of how we can build a world-class, 21st century system of compensation, support and rehabilitation for people with serious injuries and illnesses. The ramshackle, bits and pieces, often highly unjust and highly inefficient regime that operates currently in this country simply is not good enough. Although a wide array of interests—some associated with the conservative side of politics and some associated with my side of politics—resist reform, ultimately the people we have to be concerned about are the very large number of Australians who suffer serious illnesses and injuries, which in many cases cripple their lives, and who we are not adequately assisting as yet. I see this legislation as one small but significant step towards improving the existing system in a particular jurisdiction. That is helpful, but we have a big task in front of us and we as a nation are long overdue to do something serious about it.

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