Page 23 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
altogether where negligence or fault cannot be proved but may in fact be the case. It is a question of individual responsibility and the notion of justice on the one hand and a comprehensive approach to caring for injured people on the other.
New Zealand has a no-fault compensation scheme that covers all accidents—at work, on the road, at home, at public events. In 1975, Australia came close to going the same way. On the one hand, such a scheme would leave nobody behind; on the other, the disadvantage of the New Zealand scheme is that at different times it has trapped people, particularly those with permanent incapacity of some kind, on too low an income.
The system is dependent on a bureaucratic system which will inevitably be tempted at various times to restrict payments rather than increase payments. The court, with a brief to compensate the injured party fairly, finding negligence, has no such limitation on the level of payments. That is why payouts sometimes appear extraordinary when the real costs of dealing with the consequences of permanent injury are factored in.
On the other hand, there is a particular issue about how we care for people who have been catastrophically injured in Australia when they cannot successfully sue for negligence. I know that some work has been done between the territories, the states and the commonwealth to explore a national scheme to care for people in such situations. I understand that the Australian government lost interest when the minister changed a couple of years ago. I urge the ACT government to try and kick-start that project with its collegiate governments.
Furthermore, no-fault schemes are dependent on bureaucratic enforcement when it comes to averting accidents in the first place. There is a good case for saying that the risk of penalty, the burden of responsibility and the public visibility of the tort-based system does put pressure, on businesses at least, to manage risk effectively.
The ACT’s private sector workers compensation scheme is something of a hybrid scheme in that an injured worker still has rights in common law, in addition to a systematised table of compensation payments as they relate to degree of injury. I support further development of a hybrid approach as it both promises a reasonable level of care for everyone in our community where they need it and is a scheme that rewards good practice.
The reality for the ACT is that, as a small jurisdiction, the introduction of a stand-alone, no-fault third-party insurance scheme would be unaffordable in any event. So it is pragmatic to introduce this scheme, which echoes so much of the regimes in place in Queensland and New South Wales and should therefore prove attractive to the insurance businesses that operate in those jurisdictions.
I understand that officers of both the New South Wales and Queensland governments have been very helpful in the construction of this scheme. That is a great thing. As Canberra residents, we are too familiar with the ongoing denigration of public servants that passes for political humour in this country. As a politician representing constituents, I sometimes find myself criticising the work of our public servants, too. It is, then, worth celebrating when officers of three bureaucracies work together in a generous way for the common good.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .