The Treasurer, the Liberal apparatchik and the Premier
On 9 May we emailed all members under the heading “Workers Comp is changing - Speak out before it’s too late”. Everyone needed to know of the dramatic changes being proposed to Workers’ Comp by the Minns Government – and in particular their attempts to effectively abandon the Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale introduced by the Carr Government in the late 1980s. This would see Whole Person Impairment (WPI), currently requiring 15% impairment measured by the psychiatric impairments scale, leaping to an impossible level of 30%.
Dr Julian Parmegiani, the designer of the rating scale, described the proposal as “tantamount to ending the scheme.”
The moves are driven by the Treasurer Daniel Mookhey – to cut costs of workers comp by reducing benefits – instead of strengthening obligations on employers to provide safe work and encouraging a speedy return to work.
In 2018, Mookhey spoke against the “arbitrary cut-off” of 15% and attacked the Coalition Government for resisting Labor’s attempts to repeal the 15% test despite evidence this was contributing to self-harm and suicide.
He said, “what other policy have we ever implemented that we know leads to the risk of self-harm and we in this parliament have refused to do anything about it?”
A good question, and a timely reminder that Mookhey once did good work – something that seems a long time ago.
Prior to the 2023 election, 19 out of 22 current ministers signed a pledge circulated by Unions NSW to cut the section of the Workers’ Comp Act containing the 15% and support a system that “provides ongoing medical and financial support for workers”.
Labor sceptics will say nothing disappoints like a Labor Government, but this is a government with a history of supporting proper Workers’ Compensation, which is now turning its back on those commitments as if they had never been made. It’s shameful. In addition to making it more difficult to satisfy the WPI test, people with psychological injuries would be cut off benefits after two and a half years, and medical treatment after three and a half years.
The Government’s proposals have been described as “extreme and harsh” by lawyers, warning they could lead to “seriously injured workers being left without longer-term support”. The consensus of legal opinion is “if all of these proposals were adopted, the overwhelming majority of people with psychological injuries arising from the workplace would not be entitled to make a claim”.
A related proposal for changes to the Industrial Relations Act 1996 establishing a harassment and bullying jurisdiction in the Industrial Relations Commission is imminent. It would require already injured workers to make claims in the IRC that they had been bullied or harassed at work, before proceeding with a Workers Comp claim. Unions NSW Secretary Mark Morey said, “it is totally inappropriate, making people who have suffered any level of harassment, sexual or otherwise, having to litigate that, I think anyone would tell you that is not a trauma-informed response.”
More than a dozen ALP backbenchers prepared a signed letter to the Premier urging him to delay the cuts to Workers’ Comp entitlements, until the Premier’s office warned them against signing it. The SMH reported “a senior adviser in the Premier’s office called most of the government’s backbench MPs, dissuading them from adding their signature to the correspondence. ‘She monstered people’ one MP said of the calls.” The Premier’s office responded, “there was nothing untoward”! Charming.
Opposition Shadow Treasurer Damien Tudehope criticised the Government for not providing modelling to support Mookhey’s claim the Coalition’s planned amendments would “add $1.9 billion additional financial pressure to the scheme.”
As the dissent fermented through Parliament House and, the Herald again, quoted a crossbencher as characterising the senior government members as “panicked” and “rattled”. And so they should be.
The legislative changes are now delayed indefinitely after the Treasurer failed to convince the Coalition and crossbenchers to back his reform. There had been intense and broad lobbying of all politicians by Unions NSW and unions, forcing the government, trying to avoid an embarrassing loss in the Legislative Council, to not oppose a second enquiry into the bill.
With the changes opposed by the Coalition, Greens, crossbenchers and the unions, it has now been referred to the Public Accountability and Works Committee and in doing so, an amendment has provided the committee with the scope to interrogate details and modelling underpinning the proposed reforms.
Despite the Treasurer having to justify statements about costs, at the Business NSW’s prebudget breakfast on 11 June, the Premier stepped back from allegations he had made that the scheme would collapse within two years. He said, “in the next 5 to 10 years”. The Herald reports the Minister was “asked to reconcile the two timelines he put forward, means did not answer directly.” What a shambles. Hard to imagine how these ill-prepared pretenders will withstand forensic examination in the Upper House Committee.
The Opposition Shadow Treasurer, Tudehope claimed that he and Mookhey had “swapped friends” but with such widespread opposition, including 13 dissidents within the Government, the Premier, and particularly the Treasurer, are on the back foot.
Panicked and rattled, or not, the Premier and Treasurer were feted at the Business NSW breakfast.
Making sense of our first image, Business Sydney Executive Director Paul Nicolaou (look him up, an interesting history as a fundraiser for the Liberals) wallowed in the love-in, and urged the room: “turn to the person on your left, and say: ‘I love Chris Minns,’ now turn to the person on your right and say: ‘I love Daniel Mookhey’”. *
Described as an “effusive” welcome from the Business Council and by others as an emetic, they should enjoy the experience.
It’s hard to imagine a similar welcome for the Premier and Treasurer at the next ALP Conference in Sydney Town Hall in July.
(*Business leaders invariably think they’re very smart, but if you ask everyone to turn to the person on their left, all they will see is the back of the head of the person on their left…)
What about us?
Arguments about Workers Comp are more than relevant to us. We have members regularly at risk of psychosocial injuries in the work they do. It can and does happen everywhere. In some places they don’t learn from bad experiences.
Lake Macquarie, for example, has significant form here. In 2014 an employee made a claim in the Federal Court alleging their heart attack was caused by stress and bullying by a manager. Well into the second week of hearings, the Council settled the case in an undisclosed settlement that would have cost the Council (and/or their insurers) squillions.
They pursued a member of ours in 2016 with flimsy allegations and a lack of procedural fairness and drove him, through our workers comp lawyers, to pursue them through the Personal Injury Commission. The Council, having steadfastly defended their behaviour, then chose to withdraw their evidence, not call any witnesses, nor in any other way contest the claim. They were forced to reimburse our member 18 months of sick/long service leave, they withdrew their defence that his injury was “wholly or predominantly caused by reasonable action from the employer,” (thereby conceding that management was unreasonable) and the Commission awarded the statutory maximum in weekly compensation for up to 5 years, or as long as the injury continued.
The case continued, the member established he was impaired sufficiently to trigger the 15% WPI, and again, the Council (and/or its insurers) paid squillions. And all the while employees who bullied and harassed remained employed, some were promoted …
This can happen to anyone.
