WorkCover Changes 2010

If you have been injured at work whether you have a workers’ compensation claim on foot or not there are some changes that will be made and they are likely to affect your entitlements.

If you

• have a Notice of Assessment but have not yet served the Notice of Claim for damages;
• you are still receiving statutory benefits; or
• have not yet been issued with a Notice of Assessment.

We advise that there are new legislative changes which are likely to come in effect in July of this year which may affect your entitlement to seek common law for damages. 

These changes have been in place in many other Australia states for some time due to budgetary concerns with their workers’ compensation schemes and, as you may be aware from recent news items, WorkCover Queensland is currently in very poor financial shape.  . 

What may happen

Should the current proposals become law, from July 2010 onwards if you are issued with a Notice of Assessment by WorkCover Qld or a self insurer which assigns you a WRI (or Work Related Impairment) of less then 15% then you will be denied access to sue your employer in common law for damages.  The legislation may refer to a number of possible threshold tests. We will not know what of these is likely to be introduced.

This means that the only compensation you would receive for your injury would be the statutory benefits, that is the rehabilitation and weekly payments that you receive after you lodge an accepted Application for Compensation.   You may also be offered a small lump sum amount as part of your Notice of Assessment however this does not usually exceed $15,000.

What we recommend

As any changes to the system will not come into force until after July 2010, and will not be retrospective, we would recommend serving your Notice of Claim as soon possible and would be pleased to receive your instructions to do so.  

Due to these possible changes we believe that there will be a large number of claims lodged in the next few months and so it may take some time to have the Notices ‘deemed compliant’.  Therefore we would recommend you serve your Notice urgently.

Please contact our office to discuss what further information we have and how it may affect your entitlements and what we need from you to be able to serve a complying Notice of Claim if this is needed.  

We note that WorkCover require a complete copy of taxation documents before they will accept that a Notice is complying.  The quickest way to do this if for you to contact the Australian Taxation Office yourself and request a complete copy of your taxation documents including your individual and/or business income tax returns and Notices of Assessment for the three years prior to your accident and the period since.

We look forward to hearing from you urgently to help protect your interests. 

Please note our usual terms of a free initial consultation continue to apply if you do not progress your claim.  We also offer speculative terms of no win no fee for appropriate matters.

The Government has confirmed the changes will not include a threshold to access Common Law Damages. However they look like they will link these claims to the Civil Liability Act. This will have cost and other consequences for those matters that go to trial. The final legislation is likely to be introduced in July this year.

Access to the Government announcement is at: http://statements.cabinet.qld.gov.au/MMS/StatementDisplaySingle.aspx?id=69502

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