‘I will not be the patsy for this government’: MP flips on workers’ comp vote

3 weeks ago 10

NSW Labor has lost a dramatic late-hour vote to reform the state’s workers’ compensation scheme, after one of the key independents flipped their vote, declaring: “I will not be the patsy for this government.”

After taking carriage of introducing a series of government-sponsored amendments aimed at breaking state parliament’s month-long deadlock over workers’ compensation, independent MP Taylor Martin said in a speech at 8pm on Thursday he would not work on their behalf.

“If taking away workers’ protections and compensation matters so much to the Minns government’s budget, then one of its members in the lower house who signed the bloody pledge can move to rip off those workers and set the bar so high that they will no longer have any cover. I will not be the patsy for this government,” he said.

Independent upper house MP Taylor Martin.

“If the Labor government really needs to take away workers’ compensation to plug the holes in its budget, it should take that to an election and seek that mandate from the public. According to its pledge, the only mandate that the Minns government has on this issue is to support workers unable to return to work.”

Martin said he had “not heard a single convincing argument today or another time” about the need to severely curtail access to long-term medical payments for severely injured workers.

“I do not know how members supporting that can sleep at night,” Martin said.

The remarkable about-face in the Legislative Chamber left the government scrambling for another upper house MP to introduce the amendments in Martin’s stead. But, during the debate, Treasurer Daniel Mookhey acknowledged the eleventh-hour flip meant the razor-thin numbers were now against him.

Sydney MP Alex Greenwich and Martin had announced the compromise package after months of negotiation between the Coalition and government failed to break the impasse. The compromise would have seen the state’s chief psychiatrist tasked with devising an alternative system to “determine psychological impairment”.

Earlier on Thursday, Greenwich had stood at a press conference alongside independent MP Joe McGirr, business leaders and disability businesses, declaring he was confident his circuit-breaker had the numbers to pass through the upper house.

But after Martin walked away, Legislative Council deputy president Rod Roberts declared the compromise amendments could not be voted on, leaving only the government’s original proposal for a vote.

The government’s reforms focused on doubling the scheme’s minimum Whole of Person Impairment level, a measurement of how much an injury has permanently reduced a person’s function, to 31 per cent.

The outcome is a bitter blow for the government. Mookhey had spent months arguing the proposed reforms were necessary to ensure the scheme’s financial sustainability and limit proposed premium hikes for businesses.

Debate over the legislation strayed into the early hours of Friday morning, but saw a number of amendments proposed by the Coalition, independent MP Mark Latham and the Greens knocked back.

Greenwich said he was “deeply disappointed” that the compromise deal had fallen apart at the last minute.

“That is Mr Martin’s prerogative,” he said.

“The reality now is that unless the coalition changes their position, non-profits will have to decide what services to cut ahead of Christmas, and Business NSW tells us one in five small businesses will close.

“This is serious, and parliament shouldn’t rise for the year until we resolve this stalemate. If we don’t do our job, people across NSW will start losing their jobs”