Workplace Injuries

The Hon. C. BONAROS (15:14): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Industrial Relations a question about workplace injuries.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C. BONAROS: A report recently released by the McKell Institute reveals that workplace injuries are plaguing the state's economy to the tune of more than $100 million. The new report is heavily critical of South Australia's current compensation system for leaving South Australians 'mired in poverty'. It warns the sleeper issue is set to cost the state at least $106 million over the next seven years as more than 1,200 South Australians each year are injured so badly on the job that they cannot return to work.

The institute made a number of recommendations to address the problems that have been outlined, including the government consider establishing a 2030 return to work rate target that is pinned to the national average, and that it considers cost incentives for returning injured workers to work, amongst other things. The report forecasts that, if SA achieved that national average by 2030, 582 South Australians would remain in the workforce instead of being prematurely exited from the labour market due to injury. My questions to the minister are:

1. Is he aware of the findings of the McKell Institute?

2. Does he agree with some or all of the findings and recommendations and, if so, which?

3. What is the government doing to address the state's concerning return to work rate and the recommendations of that report?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:15): I thank the honourable member for her question and her very significant interest in relation to injured workers, which has been no more evident than when she has made ministers read out explanations of the clauses for bills that are introduced.

The government is very keen and happy to support policy discussion about the Return to Work scheme. In fact, work is ongoing right now to look to see how we can improve the Return to Work scheme to do exactly what it says it should do, that is, return to work.

Section 18, on which there was a lot of discussion in relation to other legislation last year, is being looked at to see what can be done to help injured workers return to work better and what further legislative incentives we might have to do that. I expect we will have legislation this year to reflect some of those discussions and consultations that have gone on.

We were also pleased to support the creation of a select committee of this council to inquire into operations of the scheme and how that works. That committee is ongoing and I understand has hearings over the next couple of weeks and the next few months to look at those exact things. Any policy discussion in this area is difficult and complex, as workers compensation schemes are, but we have to be sure that we are doing all that we can and that the measurements we are using are as comparable as possible. Return to work rates are difficult to compare across jurisdictions because of the very different ways workers compensation schemes are at work in each state and territory.

I know that when the report was released I had discussions with officers from the Return to Work scheme, and I think they will work with people from the McKell Institute just to drill down into some of the statistics that they feel might not accurately reflect the scheme here, but acknowledge there is work to do to further improve the Return to Work. A lot of the figures are based on surveys that are three to four years old for the McKell Institute in that Return to Work scheme.

In relation to the honourable member's question as to whether we accept all, some, or none of the recommendations, I think it is fair to say that absolutely we accept some of the recommendations. We haven't gone through and highlighted which recommendations we accept or which of the assertions or findings probably need a bit more work done to understand how they have come to the conclusions, but I know there is work ongoing at the moment to look at some of the assumptions used and to make sure that we can make sense of some of the figures that don't necessarily quite correlate with the figures that ReturnToWorkSA has themselves, but we are looking into that.