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NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane has personally intervened to end the stalemate on workers’ compensation reforms, which will include freezing insurance premiums for 18 months, sparing businesses from big price rises.
In the first big policy win for the new leader, Sloane has stepped in and brokered a deal with Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, also managing to convince her shadow treasurer, Damien Tudehope, to shift his long-held opposition to one key element that has been part of the six-month stand-off.
NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane has landed her first major win.Credit: Steven Siewert
The NSW Labor government had been pushing to have reforms to the state’s troubled workers compensation scheme finalised by the end of the year but failed after the changes were blocked in the upper house.
A major sticking point was the proposal to curtail injured workers’ access to the scheme, which Tudehope would not consider until Sloane’s intervention.
Under Sloane’s deal, new legislation will see the state insurer icare freeze premiums at the current rate for 18 months while the Chief Psychiatrist finalises a report into how to better “determine psychological impairment” replacing the “whole of person impairment”, or WPI.
Sloane’s deal will see workers cut off from regular compensation payments after 3½ years (instead of 2½) unless they can prove a WPI of at least 25 per cent. The government had wanted that rate to be 31 per cent, which would have excluded a significant number of workers.
Mookhey has argued reforms are critical to address an increasingly unsustainable compensation scheme where a doubling of psychological injury claims has placed significant pressure on the system’s financial viability, resulting in rising premiums for businesses and charities.
Tudehope was subjected to a sustained attack by Business NSW over its opposition to the government’s reforms, later conceding the campaign had caused concern to his colleagues.
Business NSW chief executive Dan Hunter had pleaded with MPs to resolve the impasse to ensure businesses did not go into Christmas with the threat of increased premiums hanging over their heads.
Sloane, who is yet to announce her new frontbench after taking over the leadership last month, will announce the new deal on Thursday.
A senior Liberal MP, who was extensively briefed on the changes but not authorised to speak publicly before the announcement, said it was a new approach for the opposition.
“We have returned to core Liberal values – backing enterprise, small business and fiscal responsibility,” the MP said.
“Kellie managed to achieve even greater protections for workers than either the unions or independents could convince Mookhey to accept. It’s a win-win – great for business and good for workers.
“This is a new standard for how the opposition will engage. We won’t be another party of protest. There is a new-found seriousness about returning to government.”
After the government failed to reform the workers’ compensation scheme, Premier Chris Minns said efforts to limit workers’ compensation insurance premium rises were “over” and he attacked the Coalition as the “so-called party of small business”.
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