The Joint Select Committee into the NSW Workers Compensation Scheme has recently released a series of brutal recommendations designed to address the $4 billion black hole in the NSW workers’ compensation scheme.
The recommendations, if they become law, will have a devastating impact on already injured workers, reducing entitlements without any consideration to the human cost.
Most devastatingly, the rights of future injured workers will be significantly affected, and that could be anyone reading this letter.
By any measure the recommendations are draconian, unfair and unlikely to go close to fixing the problems in the NSW Workers’ Compensation scheme. They punish injured workers without doing anything about the huge blow-out in red tape and fees paid to insurance companies.
The facts are that payments to injured workers have fallen by 20 per cent since 2002. This is despite the fact that WorkCover’s costs have grown from $70 million to $600 million over the past 12 years and the payments to insurance companies have grown from $134 million in to $476 million over the same period.
If the Government accepts the Committee’s recommendations then it will sacrifice worker’s rights without addressing the scheme’s real problems of rising operational costs and insurers’ poor claims handling performance.
Roshana May
State Practice Group Leader, Workers Compensation
Slater & Gordon
