Page 1415 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 April 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
preferred model for the scheme. It was a good opportunity to gain a better understanding of the citizens jury process and also provided me and other observers with a chance to watch and listen as the jury worked through the community benefits and trade-offs involved in a new, improved CTP or motor accident insurance scheme. I thank the members of the citizens jury for their time, commitment and dedication to the process. Anyone who claims that the jury did not understand the decisions and trade-offs they were making cannot have been in the room during these deliberations.
The bill before us today is the realisation of the model selected by the jury. A draft bill, as we know, was also considered by the justice and community safety committee to allow further community consultation and scrutiny. This allowed for further refinement to ensure that the model met community expectations and that appropriate consideration was given to all potential impacts of the scheme. The government agreed to all the recommendations of the majority report. The scheme set out in the bill before us today reflects that.
I will highlight two amendments to the scheme which improved the protection provided by the scheme for some workers and other people. Specifically, the bill now allows 13 weeks for a worker injured in a motor vehicle accident to choose whether to switch a defined benefits claim under a workers compensation scheme to defined benefits under the motor accident injury scheme, or vice versa. This has increased from a one-month period in the draft bill. It is also important to note that, whichever defined benefit scheme is chosen, if a person is eligible to make a common-law claim under both workers compensation and the motor accident injury scheme they are not locked in by their choice of defined benefit scheme as to which avenue of common law they pursue.
The bill also includes a number of exceptions for people who do not meet the impairment threshold but have another compelling reason for needing to make a further claim for benefits at common law. Specifically, children who are still accessing treatment and care benefits after 4½ years and workers who have been unable to retrain or return to work because of their injury will be able to make a common-law claim even if they are not assessed as having a whole-person impairment of 10 per cent or more.
The process of reaching the point we are at, with a bill for consideration before the Assembly, has been a significant journey. It has been underpinned by a commitment to transparency and community participation and driven by the government’s belief that the CTP scheme could better protect Canberrans. I thank Ms Le Couteur for her detailed engagement in this process and the constructive way I understand she has engaged with the Chief Minister’s office in relation to the changes that the Greens were proposing. I think those have improved the bill. I think the bill before us today and the related regulations outline a scheme that serves Canberrans well and is in the interests of all Canberrans. I commend the bill to this place.
MR BARR (Kurrajong—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Social Inclusion and Equality, Minister for Tourism and Special Events and Minister for Trade, Industry and Investment) (5.17), in reply: I thank members for their contribution to the debate. A little under two years ago when we announced CTP as the topic of Canberra’s first
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video