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Comprehensive Review of the Safety,
Rehabilitation and Compensation
Act 1988 (Cth)
Submission to the Independent Panel: Ms Justine Ross,
Professor Robin Creyke AO and Mr Gregory Isolani
19 December 2024
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Contents
Who we are ................................................................................................................................. 4
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 5
Best practice in workers’ compensation ............................................................................................... 6
Identifying the principles of best practice ...................................................................................... 6
Ensuring the scheme is responsive to changing workforce conditions .......................................... 7
Employees’ experiences of the scheme ......................................................................................... 8
Improving health outcomes for injured workers ............................................................................ 9
Experiences and outcomes of specific groups .............................................................................. 10
Scheme coverage ....................................................................................................................... 10
National coverage of private sector employees ........................................................................... 10
The ALA’s opposition to a broader national workers’ compensation scheme ............................. 11
Scheme entitlements ................................................................................................................. 12
Eligibility for compensation .......................................................................................................... 12
Scheme entitlements .................................................................................................................... 13
Interactions with other schemes and sources of income ............................................................. 13
Interaction with superannuation .................................................................................................. 14
Resolving disputes in the scheme ............................................................................................... 16
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 17
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Who we are
The Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) is a national association of lawyers, academics and other professionals dedicated to protecting and promoting justice, freedom and the rights of the individual.
We estimate that our 1,500 members represent up to 200,000 people each year in Australia. We promote access to justice and equality before the law for all individuals regardless of their wealth, position, gender, age, race or religious belief.
The ALA is represented in every state and territory in Australia. More information about us is available on our website.1
The ALA office is located on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.
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www.lawyersalliance.com.au.
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Introduction
1. The Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) welcomes the opportunity to have input to the
Independent Panel reviewing the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth)
(‘SRC Act’).
2. Our members represent injured workers and assist those workers in navigating the Comcare
scheme (‘scheme’). ALA members also have deep experience in the design characteristics and
the efficacy of state and territory schemes.
3. We support the objective of this review, as outlined in the public consultation issues paper
(‘Issues Paper’) released by the Independent Panel, “to make recommendations that can be
used to reform the Comcare scheme to ensure that it produces fair, sustainable and optimal
outcomes for injured workers and at the same time is predictable, affordable and financially
sound”.2
4. The ALA’s submission responds to the matters raised in the Independent Panel’s Issues Paper,
as well as to the matters raised at the roundtable between the Independent Panel and the
ALA on Monday, 25 November 2024.
5. The ALA urges the Independent Panel to closely and centrally consider the experiences of
injured workers and their representatives as part of this review, in order to improve the
scheme. The scheme must be focused on helping injured workers navigate their healing and
their workers’ compensation claims, and certainly must not traumatise or re-traumatise those
workers in the process of seeking compensation.
6. We will note at this point that ALA members have not determined that a complete redrafting
of the SRC Act is necessary, as long as the sections identified in our submission are properly
amended. There is, the ALA notes, existing jurisprudence dealing with many sections of the
SRC Act that is still of value.
7. Our submission addresses the following matters:
• best practice in workers’ compensation;
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Independent Panel, Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, Australian Government, Getting the Best Outcomes for Injured Workers: Public Consultation Issues Paper (21 October 2024) 14
.
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68. We would be particularly interested in contributing to a process where scheme design
fundamentals were revisited and analysed. We believe that scheme design changes can occur
which significantly ameliorate many of the problems to which this submission refers, and
which do not add premium costs to the vast majority of employers.
Michelle James
National President,
Australian Lawyers Alliance
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