Wednesday, 7 February 2024

Economy and Infrastructure Committee

Inquiry into the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (WorkCover Scheme Modernisation) Bill 2023

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:14): I rise to speak on the report from the Economy and Infrastructure Committee inquiry into the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (WorkCover Scheme Modernisation) Bill 2023. I particularly want to talk to the dissenting report to which I was happily a signatory along with my colleagues Mr Davis and Mr Mulholland and participating members Dr Heath and Mrs Broad. In March 2023 an unnamed Labor government spokeswoman stated:

The WorkCover scheme is fundamentally broken …

This extraordinary admission followed a long period of poor performance by the WorkCover scheme, two critical Ombudsman inquiry reports and little action from the Victorian Labor government to address it. For nearly six years Victoria’s WorkCover scheme has seen a decline in performance. The quantity of claims has nearly doubled and mental injury claims have skyrocketed.

A 2020 report into the system performed by Finity Consulting found the cost of the scheme had spiralled out of control, yet despite the clear evidence that WorkCover required significant reform the Labor government failed to act. Ahead of the 2022 state election the Labor government chose not publish the Finity report or act on its findings and instead spent $1.3 billion of taxpayers funds to prop up the scheme. Labor only acted when WorkCover had reached crisis point, forcing employers to accept a 42 per cent increase in their premiums in July 2023 and in November 2023 admitting the WorkCover scheme was in need of urgent reform when it introduced the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (WorkCover Scheme Modernisation) Bill 2023. There is no defensible reason, however, why the Labor government attempted to introduce the bill into Parliament without adequately or fully consulting with the Victorian public or with stakeholders and without publishing any actuarial advice or modelling supporting the proposed changes.

Is the government a responsible employer? Clearly not, because while the Victorian public service makes up approximately 10 per cent of the state’s labour force, the 2021–22 WorkSafe annual report indicated that more than 38 per cent of all mental injury claims under the WorkCover scheme are made by public servants. No data on the scale of mental injury claims by the public sector was provided by WorkSafe in their 2022–23 annual report – that is absolutely shameful – although the report included the admission that mental injuries continue to be a challenge and a focus for WorkSafe, including in this sector. Evidence provided to the committee indicated that four public sector departments alone account for 25 per cent of all mental health injury claims in Victoria. Witnesses to the inquiry revealed teachers and police officers have the highest proportion of mental health injury claims. We heard from many people, but Ms Stracke from the Victorian Trades Hall Council commented:

I mean, we know most stress claims come – the worst offender is the public sector …

That is from one of your own union bosses. Ms Wyatt from Return to Work Matters said:

The mental health claims are predominately coming from the public sector, so obviously getting in and working with the public sector departments that are the biggest areas of mental health injuries would be the place to start …

The private sector is doing its job in providing a safe workplace for its employees, but the public sector, the government, is clearly not. Mental injury claims stemming from the public sector are likely to continue to present a challenge. One of the key recommendations that the dissenting report made was for the Labor government to commission an audit of the performance of the Victorian public sector’s workplace prevention and early intervention programs within the next 12 months. This report showed the government is a bad employer.