"The conference inside is a bit of a sham" claimed Brian Boyd, Victorian Trades Hall Secretary, at a union protest outside the first meeting into the harmonisation of Australia's workers compensation laws in Melbourne’s Windsor Hotel on 30 March 2010.  "It's really another hidden agenda about trying to harmonise workers comp after we fully know already, they've messed up harmonisation of OHS."

Boyd (right) and Geoff Fary (left), Assistant Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, are both convinced that the OHS harmonisation process has not worked and therefore argue that the Government should not proceed with workers' compensation--unless certain criteria are met. 

Fary outlined two conditions for continuing union participation in the negotiations:

"For us to be in discussions.... two things are pivotal and critical. The first is that we want from all governments...an absolute, cast-iron guarantee that no worker... would be worse off as a consequence of moving [forward on workers' compensation harmonisation].

"Number two is that there needs to be a full, frank and open process of consultation with the people most concerned... workers...and unions."

Demanding a "cast-iron guarantee" that no worker be worse off because of harmonisation is a big ask, even though the aim is understandable and worthy.

There are as many jurisdictions for workers' compensation as there are for OHS.  Each jurisdiction provides differing levels of cover, care, support, rehabilitation services and premium.  Which one do you choose for the benchmark?

Even if unions are able to nominate one jurisdiction to act as a benchmark for workers' conditions pre-harmonisation, getting accurate data about the current situation will be very difficult, perhaps impossible.

One consistent message from the conference was the lack of transparency around state and national data regarding workers’ compensation and return to work.  For a problem that costs Australia over $55 billion dollars a year, this omission is amazing and appalling.  The lack of transparent and comparable data presents a major challenge to stakeholders and government on harmonisation. 

With OHS we've seen increasingly accurate fatality statistics (although work-related illness data is still under dispute) and data on the regulators’ enforcement activities. This means that during discussions about OHS harmonisation a starting point could be identified, and more importantly, there was a point from which progress could be assessed.  For OHS harmonisation, we had a benchmark.

In workers’ compensation and return to work, this level of data is largely absent. Without a benchmark, how can performance be measured? Just as importantly, how can failure be identified and what punishment should be applied? And--to return to the conditions demanded by unions--how will we know whether workers are better or worse off?

The second condition set out by Fary above is much easier to support--open consultation on the harmonisation of workers' compensation.  Unions criticised the closed and secretive nature of the conference, particularly on the second day. Names of those attending the second day of the conference were not released.  No schedule for further conferences has been made public.

No justification for this secrecy has been provided by SafeWork Australia. 

The Federal Government is well aware that workers' compensation is a politically charged issue.  Recent experience in the South Australian election has shown that.  Perhaps this is why they are exercising such tight control on information to the public, stakeholders and media.  Or it may be that they are still so early in the process that the government is using the conference as a “focus group” to assist them in identifying a path forward.

The risk with a restricted consultation strategy is that for harmonisation to work the government needs a broad "buy-in" to the consultation process and support for the aims (whatever they may be).  Workers’ compensation harmonisation is likely to have much more contentious business and social impacts than that of the OHS reform process.  Although OHS harmonisation was rushed to a tight timeframe, broad consultation did occur.  The workers’ compensation reform process has begun in a fog of the unknown.

What happened on the first day of the conference?

Safe Work Australia has provided a list of the eight experts who were invited to speak but on the first day of the conference, but has not released details of what was said.  One of particular note is RTWMatters’ own Dr Mary Wyatt, who outlines her presentation here.

The speakers were:

• Ms Anne Bellamy - Director Health Safety and Workers Compensation Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia
• Mr Robin Shaw  - Chair, National Council of Self Insurers
• Mr Geoff Fary - ACTU
• Dr Helen Sutcliffe – Workers OHS Centre at Victorian Trades Hall
• Mr Alan Clayton – Bracton Consulting Services
• Prof Rob Guthrie - Professor of Workers' Compensation and Workplace Laws at Curtin University
• Dr Mary Wyatt – Chair ResWorks 
• Mr John Walsh – Partner at PwC Consulting

Alan Clayton has undertaken several reviews of workers' compensation for Australian governments and, it is understood that he spoke on jurisdictional approaches and some of the history of comp systems.

Professor Rob Guthrie discussed the process of harmonisation and drew on some of the work of the Productivity Commission.  He pointed out most of the reviews have not resulted in change, other than the Productivity Commission review which was followed by opening up Comcare to some national employers.

John Walsh is an actuary with a particular interested in the social impacts of workers’ compensation.  He spoke of the importance of collecting better data about the health and social outcomes of people in the system, and the need to have a different approach to deal with long term claimants.

Mary Wyatt spoke about the importance of good injury management, and noted that compensation outcomes are worsening.  She suggested the harmonisation project start with the development of a national set of tools and techniques to support better outcomes is too good an opportunity to be missed. Read about Mary's contribution here.

Kevin Jones
Freelance writer and OHS consultant
safetyatworkblog.wordpress.com/