Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan warns WorkCover premiums will rise if new law doesn’t pass

Opposition Leader John Pesutto says the Liberals will vote against the Allan government’s legislation to fix WorkCover because it is a “half-baked” Bill.

The Liberal Party will seek to delay the government’s WorkCover reforms through an upper house inquiry, revealing they will not support the “half-baked” Bill in its current form.

It comes after Premier Jacinta Allan threatened to increase WorkCover premiums if the Victorian government failed to get support to pass the new legislation.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto, speaking after the partyroom meeting on Tuesday, said the Liberals would vote against the government’s WorkCover Bill in the lower house this week.

“The Bill is a dud as it’s presently drafted,” Mr Pesutto said.

“It’s not a serious effort to make WorkCover sustainable in the long term.”

Batting away concerns that a delay in passing the Bill would cause WorkCover premiums to increase, Mr Pesutto said the delay was not an issue.

“It’s not the delay of this Bill that’s going to increase premiums, it’s the passage of this Bill that’s going to lead to higher premiums,” he said.

“Why? Because the Bill is a dud in its present draft.

Mr Pesutto said many Victorian businesses were facing premium hikes of close to 100 per cent.

“If this Bill passes in its present form, premiums will continue to increase,” he said.

Mr Pesutto said the opposition would seek to question Mr Pearson this week in the lower house, before referring the Bill to an upper house inquiry.

While Mr Pesutto acknowledged that the Premier was unlikely to support the proposed inquiry, he said the probe would offer the Greens a platform to express their concerns regarding mental health.

“We have spoken to a number of stakeholder groups. There is concern about some of the language around mental health and how they operate in practice,” he said.

“So we would be very open to the idea of the upper house inquiry looking at those matters.”

Premier Jacinta Allan. Picture: Valeriu Campan

The legislation has faced fierce backlash over concerns it will too severely limit legitimate mental health claims.

The reforms would limit WorkCover payments for those suffering from stress or burnout to 13 weeks of provisional payments only. Frontline workers won’t be affected.

It comes after the Victorian WorkCover Authority posted an insurance operations deficit of $1.76bn.

Ms Allan on Tuesday morning said the government is keeping “all of our options open” in a bid to pass the legislation and fix the “fundamentally broken” system.

“We will continue to have discussions with all members of the upper house,” she said.

“The Greens political party have already, disappointingly, ruled themselves out of a conversation about how you can have a system that’s about providing better support for Victorian workers.”

Ms Allan said the government would need to go back to the drawing board if it failed to pass its legislation.

“We will need to look at what other changes will need to be made — and that includes looking at premiums should the reforms not pass through the Victorian parliament,” she said.

“But the best way to ensure that we don’t have a debate in the future about premiums going up as a consequence of not reforming the system is to pass the Bill now, and that’s my message to my colleagues in the parliament is to consider on the balance what this Bill is about.

“Let’s not have a consequence where businesses might be faced with some additional inputs should this Bill not go through.”