Parliamentary Committees

Select Committee on the Return to Work SA Scheme

The Hon. C. BONAROS (15:59): I move:

That the report of the select committee be noted.

I speak today to reflect on the work of the Select Committee on the Return to Work SA Scheme, which was first proposed in this place on 6 July 2022. At the outset, and before I forget, can I extend my thanks to the members of that committee—the Hon. Ms Bourke, the Hon. Ms Centofanti, the Hon. Ms Girolamo, the Hon. Ms El Dannawi and, previously, the Hon. Ms Pnevmatikos and the Hon. Mr Ben Hood—and also to the secretariat and staff who assisted us along the way. It has been quite a process, so I extend my thanks also to Ms Guy and Dr Robinson.

The establishment of that committee, as we know, followed years of debate and mounting evidence of the scheme's inadequacies, compounded by a history of unimplemented recommendations from a 2018 legislative review. Of course, it was also the result of some quite worrying pieces of legislation and the nature in which they were introduced into this place by the government.

I do not need to remind honourable members about that first piece of legislation that was sprung upon all of us and the impacts that that had. I am grateful that we were able to claw back some of the initial measures after what was immense political pressure, and indeed public pressure and union pressure, on the government to claw back some of those provisions. Of course, since then, we have seen another I think two pieces of legislation come in, all of which were aimed at softening the blow of that first piece of legislation and were based on undertakings, particularly undertakings given by the Attorney in this place.

The current Return to Work scheme, stemming from the 2014 Rau reforms, was touted as a solution to longstanding issues within WorkCover. We know, despite the overhaul, that the promise of a functional and fair system remains far from fulfilled. Instead, we have been left with a scheme plagued by cracks that have widened over time. The failures have a direct and devastating impact on the lives of injured workers, who are ordinary people who sought only to do their jobs and now find themselves navigating a complex system through no fault of their own.

Of course, this is not just a technical issue. It is a human issue because behind every case is a person—a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend—whose life has been irreparably altered by injury and compounded by a scheme that too often appears indifferent to their plight. It is particularly unacceptable that we have ignored repeated warnings from legal professionals and other stakeholders about the real-world consequences of decisions made in this place.

I will speak to the recommendations in a moment, but, as I said, I will also acknowledge all the individuals in those sectors, in the legal profession and also the stakeholders, who put a lot of work not only into assisting us make what was a terrible piece of legislation slightly more palatable but also, in terms of the evidence they provided to this committee, had the hope that when the government does actually get to the next review it will be a genuine one and there will be no more kneejerk reactions—as there were in 2021 when we debated the issue of the Summerfield case—and that there will be some genuine reform to address this issue.

I do not know how hard it would have been for members on this side of the bench, on the Labor benches, to swallow the bill that was introduced at that time. It was certainly a bitter pill for the Labor Party movement, for its rank and file and for the union movement. I think the crossbench in this place did what they always do in terms of trying to stand up and, as far as we can, remedy what was a terrible set of reforms that were nothing short of a kneejerk reaction to a precedent that had been set and had absolutely zero regard for the lives impacted as a result.

The committee received 29 submissions and convened on 14 occasions to hear evidence from a wide range of stakeholders, as I said, including legal experts practising in the field—the Law Society of South Australia, all of the unions, from memory, the AMA, business groups, the LGA, the HIA, the AHA, the list goes on—and of course individuals who have experienced the scheme firsthand.

We heard from ReturnToWorkSA several times, the Crown and self-insurers, providing a comprehensive view of the scheme's operations and impacts. As the scheme has matured, its flaws have become increasingly evident, leaving some of our most vulnerable injured workers caught in its web. I think the most important message we received during that committee process was that, if we keep responding to those 2014 changes the way we have been responding since then, the system will continue to be broken and it will never, ever be able to meet its objective of returning injured workers to work, let alone ensure they are looked after where they are injured to the extent that they cannot return to work as a result of a work place injury. It is not a big ask.

You cannot convince me that there are not things we can do that strike a balance between business on one hand and the rights of injured workers on the other. I may have surprised my colleagues on this committee a little in terms of how we went about reporting on this issue but also with the recommendations themselves. After the Summerfield legislation, and the consequent legislation, the worst thing we could have done as a committee, knowing that there are plans for a root-and-branch review post election, was to come back with other recommendations that we urge the government to implement in the meantime when the scheme has not really had the opportunity to adjust to those changes that have happened since. They need to settle down, effectively.

All the advice I had was in line with that, that we need to acknowledge that there are things that, if we do now, will probably make a complicated and broken system a bit more complicated and broken, and we really cannot run the risk of implementing such significant changes as we did in 2021 and 2022 without understanding the full impacts they will have. We still do not know what the impacts of the changes made in 2021 and 2022 and this year will be.

I agree that the appropriate thing is to allow them to settle so that everybody knows the lay of the land and proceed to a root-and-branch review of the system. That is what the former Attorney-General John Rau thought he did in 2014. Clearly, that has been an abysmal failure for injured workers. It has not worked well for employers either, so depending on who is in the hot seat after the election—and I will take a guess and say that this government is already committed in terms of this review—it is important that we hold them to what they have committed.

The way the recommendations in this report—and I will not address them all, members are welcome to read through this report and make sense of it for themselves—have been drafted is such that there are a bunch of things we can do now, all of which were examined in evidence, and came via witnesses and ReturnToWorkSA itself, and are effectively administrative. They do not need legislation, but they could go a long way towards addressing small imperfections in the scheme that currently exist.

The recommendations in relation to those things are things that the committee would like to see actioned now. The remainder of the recommendations that do form part of the root-and-branch review, if you like, are more than food for thought for the Attorney, the government and ReturnToWork in terms of the aspects of the legislation that simply are not working or are not working well enough.

The approach of the committee has been to deal with those administrative issues or those issues that can be dealt with straightaway, and its hope is—and I will certainly be keeping tabs on this—that ReturnToWork will go away and do that, and that thought will be given to the role and the interplay between ReturnToWork and SafeWork SA, because that is also a critical factor in all this.

But we do not have to wait to get to the 2026 election and then think about what we are going to be doing for that root-and-branch review. It has all been set out for you very neatly, based on the most experienced minds in this jurisdiction—that is not us, by the way; that is the people who gave evidence—in terms of what the reforms ought look like.

My request and urgent plea on behalf of the committee to the government, ReturnToWork and indeed to SafeWork is: take those recommendations and start your investigations now—knowing what you know about the history of the scheme up until this point, knowing what you know about the reforms that we have had up until this point, and knowing what you know about what needs to be addressed going forward—so that when we get to that point in 2026 the groundwork can already be done. I think it is fair to say that that is the approach that the committee is hoping the government and ReturnToWork will take.

They are not radical recommendations; they are reasonable, sensible, middle-of-the-ground recommendations that we had unanimous support on in the committee process. Both major parties and I signed off on these recommendations because they are more than reasonable and rational and sensible in terms of addressing the issues that have been raised by all of the witnesses and the agencies and so forth who appeared before the committee.

I do not intend to speak to the report any longer than that. The only other person who I would like to thank on the public record, as I did when we moved some of those pieces of legislation earlier, is a barrister in South Australia, Ms Theodore. She does not need to do what she does in terms of the advocacy that she provides—on both sides of the fence, I might add—but she does it because she believes in a fairer and just return to work system, is extraordinarily knowledgeable in this area and has served all of us well in terms of assisting all of us in our work, both during the debates we have had in this place as a parliament and subsequent deliberations that we have had. I think at one point or another we have all relied on experience like that, and I am very grateful to her in particular for the level of expertise she has been able to offer this place since the commencement of this review back in 2022.

With those words, I commend the report to the chamber and look forward to ReturnToWork and the government getting cracking on fulfilling some of the things that I have outlined today, and getting their skates on in terms of that review which is due to take place post 2026.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.