by Mike OConnor
From: The Courier-Mail
March 01, 2010
LAWYERS love to chat, and for some months now the talk among those who handle clients with personal injury claims has been of the incredible largesse of the State Government's WorkCover body.
Why, they have been asking, is WorkCover suddenly throwing money around as if the world was about to end?
Claims that would normally take nine months to settle are suddenly being resolved in weeks, if not days. Not only are they being settled with unheard-of alacrity, but the usual checks are not being carried out and the hard-headed negotiating has suddenly vanished. As one lawyer told me last week: "It's become a case of 'How much do you want?' "
Claims that lawyers confidently felt would be settled for $150,000 are having $300,000 thrown at them with no questions asked.
What makes this all the more curious is that it comes at a time when WorkCover is in deep financial trouble and steaming steadily towards insolvency.
How could this be so? How about the State Government's policy of keeping premiums artificially low as a sop to business and generally failing to operate a billion-dollar business prudently?
Good Lord no! There are three culprits and by now, anyone who has ever heard a politician exclaim "it wasn't my fault" will have guessed that one of them is the dreadful global financial crisis, that convenient scapegoat which is hauled out and paraded before the electorate whenever another steaming example of government ineptitude is unearthed.
The other culprits are the workers so beloved of governments – but only at election time – who are injured on the job.
If only they'd stop falling off ladders and roofs, being crushed by heavy machinery and mutilated by power tools then everything would be fine.
But of course they won't.
The other culprit is the Government's own legislation, designed to protect the lifestyle of injured workers and their families and which allows them to seek damages using common law, something which is also allowed in the Australian Capital Territory but nowhere else in the country. WorkCover has managed to lose $800 million on investments in the past two years, all of which is the fault of . . . the GFC. There was also a $500 million underwriting shortfall which adds up to a tidy loss of $1.3 billion for the past two years. Mismanagement? No. The GFC.
Two million Queensland workers are covered by this scheme, so its operation is close to the hearts of more than a few wage-earners and their families, particularly those who work in high-risk environments.
What the Government is not saying is that its policy of keeping the lid on premiums for years as a favour to its mates in business might have been a winner politically and helped scoop in some handy donations to the Labor Party at election time, but was a fiscal timebomb which, primed by investment losses, has exploded in its face. Add "can't run workers compo fund" to the Bligh Government's ever-lengthening can't-do list.
Obviously, Premier Anna Bligh can't let the scheme disappear down the toilet and leave several million workers exposed, but what to do? It's a tricky political exercise, for anything that makes it harder for injured workers to be awarded adequate compensation is not going to be applauded by the unions, some of which are already intent on nailing the Premier for what they regard as her duplicity and betrayal in pushing ahead with the great state asset sell-off.
What the Government desperately wants to do is slam the door on workers' access to common law which would mean those injured would get significantly less compensation. One lawyer tells me the average loss to an injured worker would be $120,000. To do this, they want to impose a limit of somewhere between 10 and 15 per cent total impairment. Without getting involved in the technicalities, this would effectively block most injured workers from seeking a claim by using their existing rights under common law.
A discussion paper prepared for the Government estimates that doing this will knock out 66 per cent of the claims thus made but, privately, lawyers are saying this figure will be much higher.
So here we have the Government's solution – send the injured workers hobbling home with their statutory payment, a mere fraction of what they could expect to receive under common law, and the scheme will be saved.
But how to sell this particular piece of bastardry to the electorate?
Why not make the extravagant awards which now have the lawyers chattering over their lattes? Got an injury claim? How about $300,000? Not enough? How about $350k? Tell you what – let's make it $400k. Done deal? Fantastic!
Then, when you've tossed around millions of dollars needlessly, you can throw your arms in the air in feigned despair and cry: "Look at how much access to common law is costing. It can't go on. We'll all be ruined. We have to change the scheme."
The losers will be the workers who are deprived of their livelihoods because of injury yet whose disabilities fall below the limit which the Bligh Government is itching to set.
Someone has to pay for the Government's failure to manage the scheme and – surprise, surprise – it's not going to be the big end of town in the form of sharply increased premiums.
So it will be the workers who will pay, and as is the way with these things, it will be those who can afford it the least who will suffer the most.
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