Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to speak against the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Improving the Comcare Scheme) Bill 2015. Work is central to our economy. Work is central to our society. And there is something of an expectation that all of us have when we begin our day at work each day that we will come home at the end of it in the same shape as when we left. It can be devastating when that does not occur and when, because of one's work, because of one's contribution not only to their own life but to our society and our economy, they find themselves in a position where they have been injured. For that reason, workers compensation, providing fairness in those circumstances, has been a tenet of our legislative scheme for decades, going back to the earliest times of our Federation. It is a very important theme of our law and federally it comes into play through the Comcare scheme, which historically has provided workers compensation to people covered by the federal public service and its related agencies.

But I am opposing this bill today for the very same reasons that have just been eloquently put by the member for Kingsford Smith. If you look over the period of our Federation and the development of law around the question of workers compensation, it has been characterised by a progression of improving what can be done for those people who are unfortunate enough to suffer an injury while they are at work. This bill stands in contrast to that theme, that tradition, of legislation in this place and in other parliaments around the country. Rather than improving the circumstances of people who have been injured at work, this bill, almost in its entirety, cuts the conditions that are available to those who have suffered an injury at work.

This bill needs to be seen in the context of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 which made it easier for larger companies operating in more than one state in Australia to leave the state based schemes of which they have been a part and enter the Comcare scheme. This is an idea that has been around for some time. This is legislation which Labor have been concerned about for a couple of reasons. Firstly, by allowing those larger employers who have the capacity to self-insure and who have operations in one state to leave their state systems you remove important companies who are operating in those state systems and providing critical financial viability for those systems—if what we are about to see is all of them potentially leave those systems and come to a federal system under Comcare. Secondly, Comcare, as I stated earlier, has its origins as a workers compensation scheme for the federal public service and its related agencies. If you look at the various workers compensation schemes around Australia, what you find with them is that they very finely refine themselves to the injury profiles of the jurisdictions which they cover, the cohort of people who work under them. Comcare is no different in that regard. But if you were to look at a representative cohort in terms of the kinds of injuries that they have, Comcare would be the least representative if you look at the injuries of people who have traditionally been covered in the federal public service and its related agencies. That is not to say that there is not a broad range of employment categories within those; but, compared to the injury profile of everyone who works in New South Wales or everyone who works in Victoria, it is a narrower band. So to have companies move from a scheme in Victoria or New South Wales to Comcare is ultimately going to see a significant change in the injury profile of the Comcare scheme, but we will not see a commensurate change in the way those injuries are compensated within the Comcare scheme. We should hasten slowly with reforms of this kind because, over many years, these schemes have grown up around the injury profiles of those states and those jurisdictions. That is why we have been concerned about the process that has been underway.

The significance of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 in the context of bill that we are talking about now is that, if that bill is to have its way, what we will see is a growing workers compensation jurisdiction in the form of Comcare and, therefore, whatever changes we make to that jurisdiction and the payments and benefits that are payable as part of Comcare will be critically important because it is in the context of a scheme which this government wants to see grow and cover more and more Australian workers. That is why we are very concerned that the bill s before us to date is, almost in its entirety, about cutting those standards of compensation.

I want to go through a couple of those provisions now. Schedule 1 of the bill will make it harder to establish a work related injury in relation to spinal injuries, cardiac injuries and strokes. The work relatedness of each of those is made more difficult by virtue of this legislation. This legislation limits the eligibility associated with injuries which occur as a result of a reasonable management decision. This legislation also reduces the capacity of people who may already have been seen as being particularly susceptible to having an injury to have the injury recognised under the scheme and for compensation to occur as a result. Schedule 2 of the bill puts in place a tougher regime of sanctions for people who are noncompliant with a rehabilitation plan under the scheme. Ultimately, noncompliance with such a scheme can lead to somebody's compensation rights being removed in their entirety. What we see with schedule 2 is that the treating doctors of somebody who has been injured at work and who is maintaining a claim in the system may only be consulted and their opinions are given less weight.

Employers are, under schedule 2, provided with the capacity to put in place work capacity tests for people who are returning to work as to the kinds of duties that they can undertake. Where those duties are unable to be offered by an employer, schedule 2 will see this bill requiring, potentially, injured workers or people coming back to work to search for other work, or even, potentially, to try and become self-employed—again, if there is no suitable work that an employer can offer.

Schedule 3 provides that people who are being compensated under the scheme have less control over their personal information—medical reports and the like—and that is irrespective of the relevance of that personal information to their claim. It opens up a much greater ability for that personal information to be required to be handed over.

Schedule 5 limits the choice that people being covered by the scheme have over their doctors. Indeed, it reduces the amount of reimbursable treatment that they are able to ultimately claim.

Schedule 6 goes to the question of household services and attendant care services. Again, the bill provides an ability for the act to restrict the amount of services that people can obtain under the act, and it also imposes a greater time limitation on being able to access those services.

Schedules 7 and 8 limit the right of a person receiving payments under the Comcare legislation to travel overseas—to be away for more than six weeks. So this goes to the way in which people are, or are not, able to live their lives while they are recovering from an injury while they are the subject of a workers compensation claim. It also limits the capacity for people who are under a workers compensation claim to accrue leave while they are on Comcare.

Incapacity payments, at the heart of any workers compensation scheme, are being reduced for all workers in different ways, but most harshly in this bill for those workers who have experienced long-term injuries. Again, I would make the point I made before about the nature of the injury profile of workers coming into the scheme. The more blue-collar workers that you see being covered by Comcare, the more likely we are to see the kinds of long-term injuries which would be most harshly dealt with by these potential changes.

Schedule 11 deals with a limiting of the legal costs that can be reimbursed under the scheme.

Schedule 12 goes to the question of permanent injury payments. For almost 90 per cent of permanently injured workers making a claim under this scheme, this bill will have the effect of lessening the kinds of payments that they can receive.

Schedule 14 changes the rules in respect of gradual onset injuries with the effect of reducing the costs for employers within the scheme.

Schedule 15 deals with the sanctions regime and the obligations of mutuality and creates a sanctions regime under this scheme which would be more punitive than any other workers compensation scheme in Australia—and, indeed, really more punitive than the framework that you see for job seekers in Australia.

Schedule 17 reduces the capacity for people to claim for secondary injuries.

I could go on, but, if you go through this, in almost its entirety this is a bill which is about limiting the ability for people who have suffered an injury at work to receive, under the Comcare scheme, the kind of compensation that would help them through an incredibly difficult moment in their lives. Work should, for all of us, be something which is good in our lives and which is empowering—empowering in terms of our social engagement, empowering in terms of our financial choices and empowering in terms of the kind of destiny that we create for our own lives. Work should not be a place which harms people. Work should not be a place which sees people come home at the end of the day in a worse state than when they left.

Occasionally, it is going to happen—and, when it does, it is a moment which is profoundly unfair. It is a moment which—as I have seen, in my experience in this area, in a past life—utterly changes the way in which people are able to live their lives. It changes their capacity for enjoyment in their lives, and their capacity to feel a sense of self-worth in their lives and a sense of contributing to the society of which they are a part. It is, by definition, a tragic moment in that person's life, which is why workers compensation, as an idea, is so profoundly important, because, in a moment of enormous unfairness for the person involved, workers compensation is designed to restore fairness for that person. It is designed to help them through an incredibly difficult moment in their life, help them to a situation where they can be put back to work, help them recover from their injury and help them restore their life as they knew it before that injury occurred.

The reason we are opposing this legislation—the reason that Labor is opposed to this and I am opposed to this—is that, when one looks at the basic standard of fairness that workers compensation seeks to address, this is a bill which, at its heart, in cutting the benefits that are available to people, is profoundly unfair. It does not deserve the support of this House.

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