CODE 2, VOL 38, NO 18 : 23 august 2024

WORKERS' COMPENSATION LAWS AMENDED

PRESUMPTIVE INJURY LIST INCREASES FROM 12 TO 23

I am pleased to report that a process that commenced over 18 months ago with your union’s submissions to the Independent Review of the Queensland workers’ compensation system concluded on Thursday 22 August 2024 with the Queensland Parliament passing many amendments to the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld).

I have previously reported our efforts and the progress of these matters in Code 2’s, see for example Volume 37 Number 2 on 25 January 2023, Volume 37 Number 17 on 5 October 2023, Volume 38 Number 9 on 17 April 2024 and Volume 38 Number 13 on 23 May 2024.

I am now pleased to provide a brief update on (only some) of the new laws, that include –

1. The list of deemed diseases where it is automatically presumed that your work has caused that illness moves from 12 to 23, with the new illnesses being –
• Asbestos related diseases
• Primary site liver cancer
• Primary site lung cancer
• Primary site skin cancer
• Primary site cervical cancer
• Primary site ovarian cancer
• Primary site pancreatic cancer
• Primary site penile cancer
• Primary site thyroid cancer
• Primary site uterine cancer (added via work by your union to expand the list after the legislation was drafted)
• Malignant mesothelioma

2. Changes to requirements for QFD to demonstrate there are no suitable duties for someone on work cover (historically, your employer all too often lazily refused to try to accommodate injured employees in the workplace), and also requirements for WorkCover Queensland to check and determine that QFD is telling the truth. Your union will certainly be testing these laws as soon as we are able, to make sure you’re getting the best rehabilitation you can get.

3. Day work is now explicitly included in the determination of qualifying periods (as long as you’ve been a firefighter responding to and fighting fires at some point in your career).

There are many other positive changes that benefit you directly, and also many changes that benefit other Queensland workers. I want to take this opportunity to thank the Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) for their work with your union throughout this process and I also want to thank Minister Grace Grace for her personal interest in ensuring you and your colleagues were well looked after.

Minister Grace and her team were very receptive to the advocacy from your union for the increase in deemed diseases, including the UFUQ working to move the list of new diseases from 10 to 11 as new evidence emerged after the legislation was drafted. Uterine cancer was in our early list (as were some other diseases), but the scientific evidence for uterine cancer and some other diseases was not quite at the threshold of the other diseases we decided to put forward. However, during the long process to bring these laws into being, new scientific evidence emerged, and other Australian jurisdictions announced they’d cover uterine cancer. This meant we went back to the Minister to ask for that cancer to be added.  The positive relationship your union has with the Miles government ensured your union was able to revisit inclusion of this additional cancer with the state government. 

And finally, I also want to thank those members of parliament who spoke positively about the risks you and your colleagues face and how these laws are important as they make the workers’ compensation process as easy as it can be when you’re going through some of the hardest times you’ll face. Members who spoke positively about the laws specifically relating to you and your colleagues were –
1. Minister Grace Grace (ALP)
2. Minister Nikki Boyd (ALP)
3. The Member for Miller, Mark Bailey (ALP)
4. The Member for Rockhampton, Barry O’Rourke (ALP)
5. The Member for Inala, Margie Nightingale (ALP)
6. The Member for Greenslopes, Joe Kelly (ALP
7. The Member for Bundaberg, Tom Smith (ALP)
8. The Member for Hinchinbrook, Nick Dametto (KAP)
9. The Member for Richlands, Kim Richards (ALP)
10. The Member for Mackay, Julieanne Gilbert (ALP)
11. The Member for Kawana, Jarrod Bleijie (LNP)

Many members spoke about the power of unions, and particularly called out your union, the UFUQ for our advocacy in progressing these laws from ideas to reality. We note the support and positive comments in support from non-ALP members, in particular the Member for Kawana, who rose to give support for these laws from the LNP, ensuring there’d be no issue with them passing when the vote was taken. To read a record of the discussion in parliament, please click here and here.

These laws are an important example of why your union pushes every day to obtain, maintain and improve your conditions of employment, taking any opportunity we can, in any forum, to do so. Your union, the UFUQ and the QCU were the only organisations to make submissions and attend committee hearings to the Workcover Review regarding firefighter cancers,  to bring these laws to reality. No other organisation, no other union, no employer, no one else suggested these improvements. There is no doubt that your employer would never have suggested these sorts of laws, and that’s why you belong to the UFUQ, because it’s only your union who is always forcing positive changes to your terms and conditions of employment.

Once the laws commence on assent by the Queensland Governor, members who are diagnosed with any of the 11 new diseases from that date forward will have access to the presumption of injury if they meet the qualifying periods as a firefighter (even if they’re retired firefighters, who can have all medical expenses paid even though they no longer work).

I will update members when the laws have commenced.

John Oliver - General Secretary