PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE ON OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY, REHABILITATION AND COMPENSATION: ANNUAL REPORT 2010-11

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola:

That the 2010-11 annual report of the committee be noted.

(Continued from 19 October 2011.)

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (16:51): I rise to speak to the motion. In speaking briefly to this motion, I thank the other members of the committee and the staff members for the work that they have undertaken over the past 12 months. I join my very good friend, and now very well paid colleague the Hon. Mr John Gazzola, in the comments he made when he spoke to this earlier when he referred to a press article that referred to the work of the parliamentary committees.

It was a touch unfortunate that this particular committee, which is one of the few unpaid standing committees of the parliament, was dragged in together with those other well paid committees that are part of the parliamentary process. I think it is to the credit of the current committee—and I have only been a member of the committee for just over a year—under the chairpersonship of the member for Ashford that, after a number of years of having lapsed in essence and not doing much work at all, the committee has become activated with a particularly useful term of reference in relation to return to work.

Return to work is a good term of reference because this committee has returned to work in relation to the work that the committee has been undertaking. I think it was unfortunate that whoever provided that information to the journalist involved obviously had some intent in mind, and I think they missed the mark in the information that was provided to the journalist and misled the journalist in that way. Whilst there might be criticism of other committees—and I can certainly think of the Economic and Finance Committee and others which, in my view, are not well merited expenditures of public money given their lack of activity and output—given that this particular committee is unpaid, it certainly cannot be criticised for a lack of value and worth in terms of the work that it is undertaking.

In relation to the current inquiry, return to work is an important issue. It has been discussed on many previous occasions so I do not intend to use the occasion today to retrace all the work the committee has done, but it is raising some important issues. It is looking at the reason why our return-to-work rates in South Australia are evidently the worst in the nation, yet under our workers compensation scheme our levy rates for employers are the highest in the nation and our unfunded liability is heading back towards $1 billion again.

Something is not being done correctly when you have all of those indicators heading in the wrong direction at the same time. From our view, partisan as it might be from opposition, we think a lot of the blame must go to the current Labor administration, Mr President, and I suspect you would acknowledge and understand that as well.

The issue particularly in relation to workers compensation is the return-to-work aspect of it that we have looked at. I think one of the challenges for this committee is going to be to get to the bottom of exactly how return to work is being tackled in South Australia at the moment and in particular how return to work is measured; that is an issue for this committee. Also we need to look at which particular companies are getting most of the work in terms of rehabilitation here in South Australia.

Clearly a rational allocation of work would be that those companies which have been achieving the best return-to-work rates would get the most contracts. That would seem to be a logical process. If you want to improve return-to-work rates you would look at the effectiveness and efficiency of the companies and you identify those that are actually achieving things at a greater level than others, and you would reward them with a greater share of the contracts.

We will need to finalise our views on that, but certainly the early evidence being provided would seem to indicate that not only is that not the case but that some of the companies getting the most contracts are the ones with some of the poorer return-to-work records in the system. If that is the case, it is for the government, WorkCover and EML to explain why that is the case and why we would be continuing to do that over a long period of time.

This committee has some important work to conclude. We have taken almost all of the evidence. I think we have to get the big players back again for, in essence, their return bout, their opportunity to summarise their views on issues that have been raised over the last 12 months of the committee's evidence taking, and hopefully some time early next year the committee will be in a position to resolve its views on this particular issue and what, if any, further work needs to be conducted.

I think that the people of South Australia are getting good value out of the miniscule amount of money that goes into paying members of this committee and running the committee. I do not know that that can be said for a lot of the other House of Assembly committees of which I am aware, but certainly taxpayers should be encouraged by the value they get from the work, of both the members and the staff, of this particular committee.

Motion carried.