South Australian Employment Tribunal

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (15:47): My question is to the Attorney-General. What does the Attorney-General consider to be an appropriate or acceptable time frame for the Employment Tribunal to consider a matter regarding compensation for industrial hearing loss, the details of which were described by a constituent of mine in writing to the Attorney-General in September and which were first brought to the tribunal in June 2014?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order: this is seeking an opinion.

The SPEAKER: The assumption underlying the question is that the Attorney is responsible for the timely provision of adjudications by the judicial branch. Does the Attorney wish to answer the question?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (15:48): I am happy to make some general comments, although obviously I don't have the particulars and, if I did, nor would I comment on a matter before the courts. But I am happy to speak in general terms if that would assist the parliament, as I am always keen to do.

The SPEAKER: As always, yes.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: There are a couple of things that probably are relevant to be considered here. The first thing is that, as you of course would recall, in the 2014 calendar year this parliament considered very significant amendments to what was then the old workers rehabilitation and compensation act, and in the course of so doing we ultimately repealed that act and replaced it with the Return to Work Act, which became functional as of 1 July 2015.

In the course of that occurring, of course, there are some transitional arrangements relating to injuries that may have occurred either side of that transition date. They are by their very nature complicated events because we have an injury occurring in the time when one act is operational and then that injury is not totally resolved by the time the new act has come in, and of course that's inherently a complicated matter. Some matters have been caught in that transitional arrangement.

The second thing I wanted to say was that we have since that time and in the course of those changes restructured what was the old industrial court and the workers' compensation jurisdiction. We now have a new Employment Tribunal, which is, I believe, however, a court for the purposes of Chapter III of the Commonwealth Constitution and therefore exercises judicial power on behalf of the state.

That body has as its fundamental underpinning the notion of a simple, efficient, quick resolution of matters of this type. It is very important if you have people who have injuries that they are able to deal with those things, ideally without lawyers, in a non-adversarial, or at least as hospitable as possible, sort of environment. That's indeed what the Employment Tribunal seeks to achieve. The rules established by the Employment Tribunal are directed very much towards conciliation, towards getting rid of as much formality as it's possible to do consistent with exercising judicial functions and appropriate disposition of matters. Generally, the objectives are pretty clear, both from the perspective of the Employment Tribunal and from the perspective of the Return to Work Act.

In general terms, the thrust of both of those pieces of legislation, which this parliament has actually dealt with in this term of government, has been to try to expedite the hearing of matters in such a way as to minimise formality and to maximise the opportunity for people to have a speedy resolution of claims. Individual claims may or may not be more difficult to process than others for reasons quite particular to those claims.

There might be very contentious matters of medical evidence, for example, where we have contending medical opinions and it's not possible for there to be a consensus about what the medical position is. There may be other jurisdictional issues which are not amenable to easy resolution. There may be a number of reasons why things take a longer time than is desirable, but the general proposition is that they should be done as quickly and expeditiously as possible.

The SPEAKER: Has the member for Morialta taken it up with the head of the jurisdiction?