South Australia Review of the RTW Scheme June 2018 – some comments

South Australia Review of the RTW Scheme June 2018 – some comments

August 13, 2018

This review by Mr Mansfield is explicitly not to comment on government policy so his statement that ‘There would appear to be no rational reason for distinguishing psychiatric injuries from other types of injuries in terms of compensability or causation under the RTW Act.204 This is a policy position that merits review once the RTW Scheme has matured.” Mr Mansfield also commented on the government’s introduction  in awards for government employees that boost their benefits in certain situations, eg danger, He wrote that ‘the ‘modification’ of the RTW Act by those instruments, therefore, may in the future make the management of claims under the RTW Act in the case of Public Sector employees more difficult.”

Other issues regarding the Act were raised in submission

• There is no combining of psychiatric and physical injury.
• Work has to be the contributing cause rather than a contributing cause so any pre-existing psychiatric condition may make a claim void.
• As compared with physical injury, there is no lump sum payment for psychiatric injury even if the PIA meets the 30% threshold for serious injury.
• SA amendment July 2015 allows workers to choose their preferred assessor regarding Permanent Impairment Assessment (PIA) leading to only 6 assessors doing the bulk of the work.

The discrimination against workers with psychological injuries is blatant.  it was commented on in submissions from the SA branch of the RANZCP and AMA SA.

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