Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I oppose the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Improving the Comcare Scheme) Bill 2015. My grandparents never owned their own home. Despite the fact that they both worked for many, many years in tough occupations, they could never raise the capital which was required at the time, and often bank loans for mortgages were much harder to get in those days. But the principal reason why my grandparents never owned their own home and rented—and, in the end, relied on public housing for a roof over their head—was that my grandfather had been injured in the 1970s in a workplace accident. He was seriously injured and was never able to return to the occupation for which he had trained, and subsequently spent the remainder of his life working as a cleaner. It is because of issues such as that and because, at the time when he was injured, we did not have the occupational health and safety and workplace compensation laws that we have today. Since the 1970s, we have gradually built upon the protections that we put in place for workers to ensure, principally, that we prevent injuries in the workplace, but also that, when injuries do occur, we appropriately and adequately compensate people so that they can continue to live their lives and can continue to raise a family.

Since that time governments have gradually made progress, have strengthened these sorts of schemes which provide protection for workers and protection for their incomes. This bill does exactly the opposite. It begins the process of the Australian government cutting back the protections that are provided to workers and the compensation that is available to them through the Comcare scheme in cases of injury, including serious injury. Before I entered parliament I worked as a lawyer and I had the opportunity to represent many workers who had been involved in workplace injuries—some of them minor injuries, some of them horrific injuries. The one thing I can say about a workplace injury is that it affects the worker and their family. Workplace injuries, if they are physical in nature, do not just have a physical incapacity; there is a mental effect of a workplace injury. It affects the worker's psychology. It can affect the worker's self-esteem and their ability to participate within society. Most importantly, it can have a dramatic effect on the worker's relationship with their family and their friends. It can be one of the most vulnerable times in a worker's lifetime.

This piece of legislation will make life harder for those who are covered by the Comcare scheme, and it will definitely exclude some who are already covered by the Comcare scheme. It is the third piece of legislation that attacks fair and reasonable compensation in the case of workplace related injury. This bill excludes certain people from the Comcare scheme and it reduces the compensation available to those who remain eligible and are injured at work. The reality is that this bill is further evidence of the government's ideological bent when it comes to industrial relations and workers' rights. And, while they claim it promotes fairness and equity, the reality could not be further from the truth. Here we have another example of Orwellian use of language in the title of a bill—the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Improving the Comcare Scheme) Bill—when it actually makes the scheme less accessible for many workers and reduces the amount of compensation that is available to workers under the scheme in the case of injury. So the bill title does not do what it proclaims to do.

In summary, the proposed changes in the bill would immediately and significantly reduce the rights and protection of workers covered by the scheme. The bill contains a long list of cuts to benefits and exclusions that would remove injured workers from the scheme entirely, likely forcing them onto welfare. The Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill made it easier for multi-state companies to leave state schemes—decimating them—and to join Comcare. This bill needs to be read with the previous bill in mind. With this bill, the proposed changes include: cuts to lump-sum compensation payable for permanent impairment for the vast majority of injured workers and removing the already modest pain and suffering payment; changes to the eligibility requirements that will mean injured workers are locked out of the scheme altogether; reducing incapacity payments; expansion of sanctions against workers, including removal of medical support if a worker fails to attend a medical appointment; harsh job search requirements for injured workers—if the employer says that they have no suitable employment, injured workers will need to find a job with a new employer or take up self-employment; a new, punishing approach to workers with psychiatric injuries; and employers will have the right to impose health related and work capacity decisions, and workers will have no independent right to review when an employer orders them back to work.

The bill contains alarming changes that will affect workers, leaving many of them without an avenue to just compensation. Changes to the eligibility rules mean that this new term of 'designated injuries and illnesses' will be included. They include aggravations—for example, to the heart and blood vessels, brain and blood vessels associated with the brain and spinal injuries. Those particular designated injuries will face higher tests of proof for workers to access the Comcare scheme. I can recall as a member of the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee being involved in an inquiry which looked at issues associated with the development of cancers amongst firefighters in Australia. A wealth of evidence had been produced to that inquiry about the connection between the development of cancer amongst firefighters and the work that they undertake. Naturally, given the number of plastics, the number of synthetics, that are used in building materials these days, there is a greater risk to firefighters when they are fighting fires of exposure to carcinogens. That is bearing out in the statistics for that particular occupation with, in some respects, a higher incidence of cancers.

I must say, some of the evidence that was presented to that inquiry was damning. That inquiry was not looking at workers compensation. But the question that came to my mind when I was reading this bill—and this notion of designated injuries relating to blood related injuries—was that if a firefighter were to develop leukaemia and it was their belief and their doctor's belief and there was medical evidence that there was a relationship between the role they had been undertaking for many, many years and the injury, then where would that put them in respect of this particular scheme? Is that a designated injury through which they would be required to present a greater test of proof to access the Comcare scheme?

That is why many of these provisions are, I think, unfair. They introduced two levels of tests for workers, despite the fact that being exposed to or picking up a particular type of injury is not the worker's fault. It is not the worker's fault that they may have developed a heart related or blood related injury associated with the work they do. But they will be punished for that under the provisions and changes contained in this proposed scheme by a different level of proof applying to them. And if it is a greater test of proof, the associated anxiety and mental health effects that that can have on workers can in some respects be quite devastating. So, that is a big issue that I think the government needs to deal with in presenting this bill. The current exclusionary provisions for workers caused by reasonable administrative action will also be broadened by the term 'reasonable management action'. This will exclude any physical or psychiatric injury or illness resulting from a directive of management unless an injured worker can prove unreasonableness. Therefore, injuries at work in a wide variety of everyday work settings will be excluded.

The bill also affects the right of an injured worker to privacy. Under the changes Comcare could compel third parties and the worker to provide documents about the worker, irrespective of the relevance to a claim. Workers can be sanctioned by loss of compensation rights if they fail to comply with a document request. Comcare would be allowed by the bill to provide these documents to third parties for purposes of disciplining the worker. Also, injured workers would no longer have the choice of doctor under Comcare. Comcare will only pay the treatment costs for doctors and clinics that it approves. I must say, one of the things that used to blow me away when I was a lawyer representing workers in workers compensation cases was the different views you could get between doctors. I understand that they have studied the same conventional medicine, and I understand practice within and a licence to practice within a medical system. But, depending on whether you went to the workers doctor or went to the company doctor, the difference in diagnosis could be quite remarkable. The differences used to blow me away. It is unfortunately one of the reasons that experts providing evidence in such cases can quite often delay these cases. So, that is another concern that I have—the fact that a worker can be sent off to a company doctor without getting a second opinion and without the employer taking notice of that opinion. Incapacity payments will also be reduced for all workers. The harshest financial impacts would be felt by those with injuries that take longer to resolve, especially those who are permanently and significantly disabled.

This is the third bill that this government is proposing that attacks the rights of Australian workers to fair and reasonable compensation when they suffer work related illnesses or injuries. The bill also contains changes to the level of payments that are made to workers whilst they are on compensation. The bill in certain circumstances excludes overtime and allowances from the calculation of ordinary earnings for the purposes of workers compensation payments. I do not think the government has thought that through, because for certain groups of workers, who are working regularly on shifts that include overtime payments—and I am thinking here of nurses and the like—what will be the effects on them? Many of them rely on those important payments to ensure that they have a liveable wage if they are working a regular nightshift. Wondering whether or not those allowances will be included in the future is again an anxiety that workers should not have to face when they are injured.

The bill will exclude workers from the Comcare scheme and significantly reduce the compensation available for those who remain eligible. The bill attempts to reduce the liabilities of the Comcare scheme at the expense of injured workers, and that is why it is wrong. I highlight my earlier points: successive governments since the 1970s, when my grandfather was injured at work, have been improving the support we provide for workers when they are injured at work; this bill does exactly the opposite. This bill reduces the support and the financial support we provide for workers in those horrible situations in which they are injured at work. That is why this government must be condemned for this legislation, and that is why I and my Labor colleagues will fight this legislation in the parliament.

See this speech in context