Tas Draft Legislation Proposes Changes to Workers Compensation Laws
Monday 4 April 2022 @ 10.05 a.m. | Legal Research
Tasmania’s Department of Justice (“DoJ”) has released the Draft Workers Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill 2022 (Tas) ("the Draft Bill") for public comment and consultation.
Consultation on the draft Bill is currently open. Further details on submissions and the progress of the consultation can be found on the DoJ website.
Background
On 4 February 2019, the Council on the Ageing Tasmania met with the WorkCover Tasmania Board’s Rehabilitation and Compensation Committee (“the Board”) and presented their concerns.
The Board wrote to key stakeholders and called for submissions through regional newspapers, and published an Issues Paper with written submissions which were received from 14 stakeholders.
As indicated on the DoJ website, the:
The DoJ website summarises that the Draft Bill contains proposals for:
"The changes will implement recommendations from two separate reviews (coordinated by the WorkCover Tasmania Board at the request of the Minister for Workplace Safety and Consumer Affairs), which looked at section 27 and section 87 of the [Workers Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988]."
Overview of the Proposed Changes
The DoJ website summarises the Draft Bill's contents:
"The proposed amendments to section 27 will ensure that employees of the Bushfire Risk Unit of the Tasmanian Fire Service are entitled to the presumption that when a fire-fighter meeting relevant criteria is diagnosed with a specified cancer, it is presumed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that fire-fighting was a substantial contributing factor to the disease...
The proposed changes will also amend section 87 of the Act to increase the duration that weekly compensation payments will be made to older workers who are injured.
It is proposed that section 87 be amended to provide that, in cases where the injury occurs when the worker is aged two years from (i.e. younger than) the pension age, or older than that age, entitlements to weekly payments will cease after two years from the date of the injury.
The changes will also correct an error whereby the current provision fails to refer to workers who are injured when they are older than their pension age."
Comment on the Draft Legislation
Elise Archer (Attorney-General) announced in a March 2022 Media Release:
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Sources:
[Draft] Workers Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill 2022 (Tas) and additional explanatory materials available from TimeBase's LawOne Service
Proposed changes to Tasmania’s workers compensation laws (Department of Justice, 21 March 2022)
