A new report from Safe Work Australia has found that over the past five years, the number of serious workers’ compensation claims had decreased across the country.
Safe Work Australia said its report, Comparative Performance Monitoring analysed the trends in the work health and safety scene (WHS) as well as workers’ compensation schemes available in Australia and New Zealand.
It said the Report contributed to the improvement of WHS and workers’ compensation arrangements by keeping an eye on the performance of the various options across jurisdictions and benchmarking them to uncover best practices that could be used for better policy making.
“Part One focuses on work health and safety performance, including comparing serious claim rates and work-related fatalities across States and Territories,” Safe Work Australia said.
“It shows that over the past five years, the incident rate of serious workers’ compensation claims has decreased (down nine per cent) across Australia, from 10.3 claims per 1,000 employees in 2013–2014 to 9.4 in 2017–2018,” it said.
The agency said that Part Two of its Report focused on WHS compliance and enforcement, revealing that in 2018–2019, WHS authorities across Australia intervened in workplaces 229,236 times; issued 55,568 notices for WHS breaches; and finalised 264 legal proceedings resulting in $18.6 million in fines.
It said that Part Three of the Report compared the jurisdictions across Australia for their workers’ compensation premium rates, entitlements and scheme performances.
“It shows that total expenditure for workers’ compensation schemes across Australia was $8.908 billion in 2018–2019, of which 77 per cent went to claimants through either direct payments or services,” the report says.
“Additionally, average workers’ compensation premium rates, funding ratios and disputation rates across Australia in 2018–2019 have decreased since 2014–2015.”
Safe Work Australia’s three-part Report can be accessed at this PS News link.
