South Australians who are seriously injured at work are to be able to choose between a single lump-sum payment or weekly payments until retirement age following reforms that have been made to the Return to Work scheme.
Introducing the Return to Work (Scheme Sustainability) Bill 2022, Premier, Peter Malinauskas said the Bill followed an agreement struck between the State, business and worker representatives.
Mr Malinauskas said the Bill would seek to ensure injured workers received the protection they needed while also protecting businesses from significant hikes in premiums.
“The Bill will ensure injured workers with the same level of impairment are treated the same, rather than receiving different support based on whether they suffered their injuries from one event or a series of related events,” he said.
“Importantly, to ensure the scheme is sustainable and premiums are kept below the legislated maximum target of two per cent, the Bill identifies cost savings in other areas of the scheme.”
Mr Malinauskas said the three key elements were:
* Increasing the ‘seriously injured’ threshold for physical injuries to 35 per cent whole person impairment (WPI), which recognised it was comparatively easier to reach the seriously injured threshold by combining injuries;
* Giving ‘seriously injured’ workers the choice to receive a single lump-sum payment instead of weekly payments until retirement age; and
* Redemptions to be offered to ‘seriously injured’ workers.
The Premier said Return to Work SA would offer redemptions of weekly payments to current seriously injured workers to reduce the past claims liability and these redemption offers would be on a ‘one-time only’ basis because all new ‘seriously injured’ workers would be able to elect to receive a lump-sum payment instead.
