The Workers' Compensation and Rehabilitation and Other Acts Amendment Act 2005 was given assent on 2 November 2005.

The primary objectives of the amending Act are to:

• Give effect to the outcomes of a Review of Certain Aspects of the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003;
• Enhance workers’ compensation benefits for injured workers and their families;
• Protect the WorkCover Queensland scheme from the impacts of employers exiting to the Commonwealth self-insurance scheme; and
• Give effect to aspects of the National Standard for Construction Work and the National Standard for Plant as declared by the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission (NOHSC).

The Act achieves its objectives for the workers’ compensation scheme primarily by:

• Changing the self-insurance licensing criteria to allow flexibility in relation to prudential matt ers and occupational health and safety performance as recommended by the Review of Certain Aspects of the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003;
• Enhancing the focus on return to work by clarifying rehabilitation terminology and definitions;
• Extending the provisions for security of employment after injury in the Industrial Relations Act 1999 from 6 months to 12 months;
• Improving workers’ benefits through increasing statutory lump sum payments, increasing the benefits for injured workers who are off work for more than 39 weeks but less than 52 weeks, increasing compensation payable to dependent family members on death of a worker and introducing new benefits for totally dependent spouses and non-dependent family members;
• Providing greater certainty on the payment of workers’ compensation for latent onset injuries and aligning the calculation of these benefits with the method used by the Courts;
• Addressing the impact of employers exiting to the Commonwealth scheme by providing for a contribution towards funding ongoing workplace health and safety services, requiring access to data from exiting employers, and providing for the payment of outstanding liabilities for pre-exit claims of exiting employers;
• Ensuring fair and effective review and appeal processes by clarifying timeframes for applying for a review of a decision and arrangements for appeals to be heard before the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission; and
• Facilitating flexibility in the composition of medical assessment tribunals.

The amending Act achieves its' objectives for workplace health and safety primarily by:

• Aligning the regulatory requirements for construction work with the National Standard for Construction Work in extending workplace health and safety obligations to persons with responsibility for construction work such as the client and the project manager in addition to existing obligations on designers and principal contractors, and by amending the definition of “construction work”;
• Aligning certain plant-related regulatory requirements with the National Standard for Plant;
• Consolidating obligation provisions for employers and self-employed persons to remove unnecessary complexity and duplication;
• Promoting the use of the hierarchy of control by obligation holders; and
• Transferring the ‘prescribed activity’ provisions from the Workplace Health and Safety Regulation 1997 to the Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995.

A majority of the construction related amendments will take effect on proclamation. Amendments relating to asbestos will have staggered commencements.

Summary of implications for:

• workplace health and safety
• workers' compensation