Wednesday, 6 March 2024
Bills
Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (WorkCover Scheme Modernisation) Bill 2023
Bills
Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (WorkCover Scheme Modernisation) Bill 2023
Council’s amendments
Message from Council relating to following amendments considered:
1. Clause 5, line 24, omit “of the Principal Act”.
2. Clause 12, lines 30 to 32, omit “the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013” and insert “this Act”.
3. Insert the following New Division after Division 2 of Part 2 –
‘Division 2A – Return to Work Advisory Subcommittee
21A WorkCover Advisory Committee
After section 512(5) of the Principal Act insert –
“(6) The WorkCover Advisory Committee must establish a Return to Work Advisory Subcommittee.
(7) The Return to Work Advisory Subcommittee must be chaired by the Chairperson of the Board.
(8) The function of the Return to Work Advisory Subcommittee is to advise the Board in relation to the following –
(a) ways to promote the occupational rehabilitation and early return to work of injured workers;
(b) the establishment, administration and operation of occupational rehabilitation services, vocational re-education facilities and return to work programs available to injured workers.
(9) In this section –
Chairperson of the Board means the Chairperson appointed under section 509.”.’.
That these amendments be agreed to.
I will make a few brief comments if I may. I think the house is owed a bit of an explanation in relation to the house amendments, but at the outset I do want to say a few things. The workers compensation scheme here in Victoria was created by the Cain government and it will be saved by the Allan Labor government. As I said yesterday, this is a victory for Victorian workers, because Victorian workers are entitled to have a financially sustainable, functional and viable workers compensation scheme now and into the future.
I want to acknowledge the work of the Legislative Council standing committee, in particular the deputy chair Mr McIntosh, Mr Berger, Mr Galea and Ms Terpstra, for their work in this endeavour. I want to acknowledge the important role that the labour movement has played in our dialogue and engagement. This has been incredibly difficult, and it has been a challenging environment to have been in in the last 15 months. But through talking with the labour movement and with Trades Hall and affiliates and through briefing the unions directly, the product that has been brought before this house is a much better product, and it will be a stronger, more robust bill. The dialogue and the engagement have been incredibly robust and valuable.
I know people across the sector are disappointed with this bill – I know – and I can appreciate those views. My response is: there is literally no other choice if we are to have a viable, sustainable workers compensation scheme in Victoria. The problem with the current scheme is that it is costing a fortune and it is making injured workers sicker. We can do better. We must do better – by providing the support and interventions that injured workers need when and where they need them.
I do want to acknowledge the member for Eildon for the constructive way in which she has engaged in this process, and I would like to draw the house’s attention to the house amendment inserting new clause 21A, the return-to-work advisory committee. The Legislative Council Economy and Infrastructure Committee inquiry into the bill recommended at recommendation 17:
That the Bill be amended to create a Return to Work advisory committee responsible to the Board of WorkSafe for the coordination of return-to-work initiatives at WorkSafe.
In response to this recommendation the house amendments insert into the bill a requirement that a subcommittee of the existing WorkCover advisory committee be established as a return-to-work advisory committee. The return-to-work advisory committee will draw from the wideranging experience of the WAC, including in accident compensation, provision of hospital services and medical services, as well as union and employer groups. While the WAC provides a forum for unions, employer groups and health and legal stakeholders to discuss WorkCover and how the scheme can be improved, to date we have not had a committee solely focused on improving return-to-work rates and developing new initiatives.
The return-to-work advisory committee will support the development of Return to Work Victoria and provide advice to the WorkSafe board on promoting occupational rehabilitation and return to work for injured workers and the establishment, administration and operation of occupational rehabilitation services, vocational re-education facilities and programs available to injured workers. The return-to-work advisory committee will be a great opportunity for experts in the field and stakeholders to share ideas so we can ensure we develop new and innovative ways to support workers to get back to work as quickly and safely as possible. The chair of the WorkSafe board will chair the return-to-work advisory committee, and this is consistent with existing practice where the chair is the chair of the WAC. Members of the WAC do not receive remuneration for their role. It is not proposed that members of the return-to-work advisory committee would be remunerated for their participation.
Clauses 5 and 12 are further amended by house amendments to correct some minor errors, and it is proposed we amend clause 5 to omit the words ‘principal act’ and we amend clause 12 to insert ‘this act’. As I have indicated, the government have indicated we will put a freeze on premiums for the next financial year. I think this is important in light of the 42 per cent increase that we saw last year for business. I also want to acknowledge the fact that we will be expanding the board of WorkSafe by an additional person, and the additional person to go on that board will have a medical background.
We will do an independent review that will commence within three months of the act coming into being. It will report in 2024. We have also agreed to a statutory review in 2027. These reviews will be important because they will allow us to try and refine and ensure that the initiatives and the reforms are meeting the standards that we expect in relation to providing protections to injured workers, providing them with the protections and support they need to return to work as well as improving the financial sustainability. If there are unintended consequences, there will be opportunities for those to be identified. From my perspective this is a five-year journey. The bill that is being adopted by both houses represents a five-year journey on transformational reform. It will not solve the problems in the scheme within five weeks or five months. This is a long journey before us, but this is a vitally important role that we have to take.
I will close with this. ‘Power reveals,’ Robert Caro wrote, and we hold these privileged positions for a very narrow period of time in our professional working lives. You have the opportunity when you are in these positions to do good, to act. The easiest thing I could have done as minister would have been to say, ‘Look, this is all too hard. I don’t know how to deal with this. We’ll just jack up premiums, and the problem will be fixed.’ All you would have seen is money haemorrhaging out of this scheme, and all you would have seen is injured workers getting sicker and sicker. That is not leadership. Injured workers deserve better, and they will do better as a consequence of these reforms. I know that this is hard and this is difficult, but I also equally know no-one will thank the Allan Labor government if this scheme goes broke in five years time or 10 years time and we had the chance to act and we squibbed it. These are important reforms. It has been difficult, it has been hard, and I know that not everyone is happy. I accept that. But I will not have this scheme fail, and it will not fail.
Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (10:44): The workers compensation system in Victoria is indeed complex, and we know that there need to be changes to fix things. The bill that was brought before the house previously had a number of issues, and we as the opposition had a lot of difficulty with the way the scheme was running and the concept of Return to Work Victoria. We were exceedingly concerned about the hit on employers last financial year with a 42 per cent increase. Opposition is very difficult, but through opposition occasionally you can get some wins. And I think here we have been able to force the government to have a closer look at the scheme and the bill and to come back to us with some answers about how things will work.
I have got a number of thankyous that I want to give, firstly, for having the inquiry in the other place, which was short and sharp. I know a lot of people were very concerned that it could drag on, but it did not – it was short and sharp. There was a lot of good information, and a lot of things that happened there should have happened earlier. The consultation that should have been undertaken had not been. I am pleased to see that there are going to be greater levels of concentration certainly from the Liberals on that inquiry. David Davis was exceptional in the load that he carried and the work that he did, and I thank him greatly for his role. Again, as this bill was in the wee hours of last night going through its paces, Evan Mulholland, Bev McArthur, Renee Heath and Gaelle Broad also ducked in from our side and were really terrific in that work. I do also want to thank the minister for his ongoing engagement and also Liz and Naomi from his office, who I got to see quite a lot of through some of our discussions, because we were unhappy with certainly the information we were given around Return to Work Victoria.
The government were not just financially failing the WorkCover scheme but failing workers at helping them get back to work or changing jobs – and this is something that is really important, because the longer people are off, the worse it is for them. They are caught on the merry-go-round, and there are worse outcomes for everybody, particularly for the workers. Having a system that does focus on return to work and having that clarity around the objectives and the functions of Return to Work Victoria indeed is part of the amendment, which is the return-to-work advisory subcommittee, and we certainly support the establishment of that subcommittee.
As I said, we were also very concerned not just about the failures around return to work and the lack of detail and the level of consultation and what checks and balances were going to be put in place, so I am very pleased that following the inquiry the government have now agreed to have an independent inquiry that will pick up in the next couple of months and report and be public through this place by the end of the year. We were quite pleased to see that and the consultation that is going to be undertaken shortly.
One of the things that I am most pleased about is the fact that we were able to give employers certainty for the next 12 months of knowing that their WorkCover premiums would be frozen. An average of 42 per cent – I heard so many people who had premium increases of 60, 70 per cent. Depending on how big your organisation is, if you go from $10,000 to $16,000 and you are a very small business, it can be very difficult. Equally, if you have to go from $50,000 to $110,000, it is a lot of money to find and very difficult. It is about being able to give employers that certainty for the next 12 months. Personally I would have loved to have seen a freeze for two years, but I am really hoping that through the inquiry that reports by the end of the year we have got it in a better place so that we can make that call and hopefully there should not need to be a very large increase. I am pleased that we were able to secure these. Having an extra position on the board with a particular expertise is also something that I am very pleased to see. The coalition will be supporting these amendments through the passage.
Sam HIBBINS (Prahran) (10:49): The headlines this morning said it all: ‘Unions irate, bosses happy’. This is all happening under a Labor government. These amendments have come back to this house after a deal was done between the Labor government and the Liberals to push through these harsh changes to WorkCover. It is going to kick workers off the scheme, it is going to deny people suffering stress and burnout access to it. And this is after an inquiry that had some 19 recommendations, which the government has not even responded to. Now we are coming back at the earliest opportunity, despite the number of issues that have been raised throughout the inquiry by unions and representatives, and we have got a subcommittee, as if that is supposed to somehow ameliorate the very harsh impacts of this bill.
And we have got, as part of the deal, a freeze on premiums. Well, that is part of the problem in the first place. The fact is that premiums in Victoria for years were significantly less than counterparts interstate. That undermined the financial stability of the scheme, and now we have got the government’s response: ‘Well, to deal with that we’re going to cut access to the scheme, and as part of the deal we’re going to freeze premiums.’ Again it is putting at risk the financial stability of the scheme.
Can I recognise my Greens upper house colleagues and other crossbenchers for their really sterling efforts in scrutinising this bill in the other place last night up until about 2 am, giving these harsh changes the scrutiny that they deserve. It went on for so long because even in that committee stage the government could not give clear answers about what the impact of this is going to be on injured workers, how it would work and who would be eligible for support and under what circumstances. There was a lot of weight put on this new business unit, Return to Work Victoria – not in this legislation, mind you – and despite these very heroic objectives of Return to Work, which is seemingly supposed to ameliorate any negative aspects of the bill, the problem was we could not even get a start date from the government. We could not get any idea about how many people it might assist, just this vague commitment that the government or the minister is working on it. This is after the government and the minister have known about the financial issues with WorkCover for years. How can any worker have confidence that this government is going to set up some sort of new approach to returning to work?
Can I also just state my concern about the tenor of the debate throughout this place, the other place and even with the amendments, which quite frankly stigmatised injured workers who are receiving compensation – as if people are on the scheme, sitting around, able to return to work but not returning, and the best way to deal with that is to kick them off the scheme or deny them coverage. This is really the worst stigmatising of injured workers who are receiving their entitlements to compensation, and this is certainly not the language that should be coming from anyone, let alone a Labor government.
Can I acknowledge the many injured workers who have reached out to me, who have shared their stories of not just their injuries at work but their dealings with the WorkCover system, which has compounded their injuries and mental distress, and the need not to deny people access but to improve the scheme to support workers to get back to work earlier. They know just how bad these changes will be for injured workers like them.
Can I acknowledge the advocacy of Trades Hall and a number of unions fighting against this bill: the CPSU and the Health and Community Services Union. The question now is: how can any worker trust this government again? These changes come on top of a deliberate policy to keep wages low, a harsh public sector wages cap, the axing of 4000 public service jobs at the last budget and the Minister for Industrial Relations running to Canberra trying to undermine federal industrial relations laws. The question now is: what is going to be next when it comes to the anti-worker policies of this so-called Labor government?
Motion agreed to.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: A message will now be sent to the Legislative Council informing them of the house’s decision.