Injured workers could be pushed on to NDIS by Minns Labor reforms to compensation, warn NSW MPs
The Coalition opposition in NSW is warning that hundreds of injured workers could be pushed on to the struggling NDIS under proposed compensation reforms aimed at cutting costs.
A bid by the NSW Labor Government to reform workers’ compensation could shove hundreds of current users on to the already bloated NDIS each year, amid inflamed tensions between the state and the commonwealth over health funding.
The NSW Coalition opposition, which is growing more confident it will be able to strike down key aspects of the government’s proposed revamp, says if the reforms are adopted it’ll push hundreds of patients a year currently using the scheme into Commonwealth safety nets.
NSW opposition Treasury spokesman Damien Tudehope said key tranches of the reform – such as doubling the Whole Person Impairment (WPI) level from 15 to 31 per cent – “would have the impact of transferring very seriously injured workers from the workers’ comp scheme to either the NDIS or other forms of commonwealth social security”.
“Effectively it’s the NSW government no longer wanting to accept responsibility because it’s expensive to look after seriously injured people – they should be looking at other forms of cost saving rather than attacking seriously injured people,” Mr Tudehope told The Australian.
NSW Treasury secretary Michael Coutts-Trotter, questioned earlier this year at a state inquiry into the compensation reforms what would happen to people no longer eligible for workers’ compensation but unable to work, said the “big development” since the last major reforms to the scheme in “is the creation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme”.
Mr Tudehope accused the government of using the reforms as a “cost-shifting” exercise, something Mr Coutts-Trotter rejected.
On Friday the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia (COSBOA) also attacked the reforms for including caveats allowing unions to enter workplaces to check if internal artificial intelligence systems were creating “unreasonable” workloads for employees.
COSBOA chair Matthew Addison said the move would sweep up rostering tools, spreadsheets and scheduling apps and would enable union “overreach” into small businesses.
“It gives unions open-ended rights to access small business systems and data; including customer details, commercial information and staff rosters, on the vague basis that a digital tool might be causing stress,” Mr Addison claimed. The proposals had previously been criticised by the Business Council of Australia.
Hundreds of new patients a year being diverted from the state compensation system onto the NDIS would deal a blow to the federal government’s bid to wrangle the $48bn scheme.
A NSW government spokesman rejected that workers with a WPI greater than 15 per cent “would automatically transfer onto or be eligible for the NDIS … the NDIS is one part of a broader social welfare system, along with the public health system, that is available to support individuals in line with their needs”.
“The workers compensation system is financially unsustainable, in urgent need of reform, and not a single injured worker will receive assistance from it if it collapses,” he said.
The spokesman also rejected COSBOA’s concerns the reforms would be bad for small businesses, saying “nearly half … will become insolvent, according to Business NSW surveys, if the Government’s reforms don’t pass”.
It comes amid continuing tension with the commonwealth over health funding, headlined by state and territory leaders last month accusing the federal government of falling billions of dollars short on previous pledges to fund public hospitals.
The clock continues to tick on a five-year funding deal between the states, territories and commonwealth, after federal Health Minister Mark Butler announced a one-year stopgap funding agreement shortly before this year’s federal election.
NSW Health Minister Ryan Park on Thursday alluded to ongoing frustration with the federal government over the NDIS and aged care systems, saying in Question Time that 1100 NSW hospital beds – roughly one out of 20 – are currently filled by patients who should be on either of those two streams of Commonwealth care.
NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey and the government have pushed for the workers’ compensation changes amid warning premiums could rise by up to 36 per cent to continue funding the scheme, which has also required $6bn in top-ups from successive state governments.
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