Fears over Queensland Government Workers Compensation review

These claims account for about six per cent of workers' compensation statutory benefit claims. WorkCover however often obtains a refund of benefits paid in journey claims from CTP insurers in successful liability claims involving motor vehicle accidents going to and from work.

Claims made by injured workers do not affect the premium of employers but they do provide coverage, particularly to workers in rural Queensland and to workers in the mining industry, who have to travel significant distances at some risk to get to and from work. One would think that a LNP government would not want to take away benefits which benefit rural workers.

It is also believed that the government is looking at introducing a threshold which workers must cross before they can bring a claim for damages against negligent employers.

Before workers can bring a common law claim they need to have an assessment of their "work related impairment". The guides used by WorkCover to complete the assessment do not measure permanent pain or disability but impairment under an assessment code known as AMA 5. Workers with lifting related injuries, often in the building industry, who often suffer back injuries which drive them out of employment are routinely assessed at 0 per cent.

The June 2012 report entitled "Queensland Workers' Compensation Claims Monitoring", published by Q-Comp, provides case studies of injuries which have been assessed at zero per cent impairment by Medical Assessment Tribunals that form part of the WorkCover system. As well as the limited ability to sleep, the symptomology of these injured workers included:

• severe pain radiating into the neck and lower back;
• being unable to walk more than 1 km;
• the need for analgesia daily;
• restricted bending;
• difficulty putting on shoes and walking up and down stairs;
• needing to wear lumbosacral supports; and
• having to take Panadeine Forte and other pain killing medication.

In effect, workers with significant disability often register as a zero per cent impairment.

If the government was to impose a threshold of zero per cent impairment, many Queenslanders would lose rights to pursue employers for injuries caused by dangerous work practices. This will leave working families to suffer significant financial disadvantage and throw them onto a lifetime dependence on social security benefits.

As well, employers finding that they can expose their workers to the risk of injury without the risk of being sued will lead to complacency in workplace health and safety. This has occurred in New Zealand in which workers have no entitlement to bring common law claims.

Late last year, Professor Watson of the University of Auckland Business School Department of Commercial Law said, after completing a report into the "no fault" New Zealand system:

Individuals are careful because for most of us, hurting or killing someone is not something we want to carry around for the rest of our lives. However a corporate entity itself has no conscience, no matter what individuals within the corporation think.

Any watering down of the entitlement of Queensland workers to sue for injuries suffered because of unsafe work places will lead to an increased level of worker injury and workplace health and safety complacency in the State.