CODE 2, VOL 38, NO 13 : 23 may 2024

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION CHANGES - PRESUMPTIVE LEGISLATION COVER INCREASE - UPDATE

You will recall I provided Code 2 updates to you (most recently on 17 and 29 April 2024) regarding the changes to workers’ compensation laws currently making their way through the parliamentary process. 

I am pleased to say your union provided our written submission in support of the law changes to the parliament on Monday 13 May 2024. You can find a copy of our submission here.

I also appeared at the public hearing on the Bill, and you can find a transcript of that appearance here. Our submissions start on page 12.

At the public hearing, I made sure that members of parliament understood that these laws are only good news for people who’ve recently received bad news and that the access to these laws is incredibly important in their easing of the burden of the administrative process of accessing compensation for the fact you have been injured at work.

The parliamentary committee will now consider our submissions and their report is due to be published on 7 June 2024. Your union and the Queensland Council of Unions provided the only submissions on the extension of the deemed diseases list.

The laws will again be debated in parliament before hopefully passing with our inclusions becoming law soon after. It is difficult to say when these new laws will commence and it may be as late as September 2024.

ELIGIBILITY FOR NEW DEEMED DISEASE COVERAGE?
It is only after commencement that any access to the laws can occur.

Since I have been providing updates, your state union office has been contacted by multiple members who have been diagnosed with diseases included in the expanded list, wanting to know how they can access the new coverage. Unfortunately, the way all workers’ compensation laws in Queensland operate is that the diagnosis of any injury (including deemed diseases) MUST occur after the laws have commenced. There can be no retroactive application of the access to presumption of injury.

John Oliver - General Secretary 

 

 

Authorised by John Oliver General Secretary 
United Firefighters' Union of Australia, Union of Employees QLD