The Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act established Q-Comp as the regulatory agency for Queensland’s workers’ compensation scheme. It provides income replacement payments to injured workers in exchange for waiving their right to sue their employer. The act evolved from the 1905 Workers’ Compensation Act, which established the principle of no-fault. The 1916 Workers Compensation Act established compulsory insurance and a government monopoly. The system underwent changes until the establishment of Q-Comp in 2003.
The Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act is legislation enacted in the Australian state of Queensland in 2003 which established an independent statutory body, Q-Comp, as the regulatory agency responsible for enforcing Queensland’s workers’ compensation scheme. Workers’ compensation, called ‘compo’ in Australia, provides regular income replacement payments to workers who are injured at work for the time they are unable to work as a result of the injury. In exchange for those payments, they waive their right to sue their employer for negligence. The Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act is one of the major final pieces of legislation in organizing the regulatory and administrative framework of Queensland’s partnership scheme.
The concept of workers’ compensation was first established in Queensland in 1886, but by then it was little more than a common law doctrine that allowed workers injured on the job to sue their employers for damages . The Workers’ Compensation Act of 1905, the first in a long line that led to the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act of 2003, established the principle of no-fault in the state. While the law does not require employers to carry personal injury insurance on their employees, many have chosen to do so because it has isolated them from workers’ malpractice lawsuits.
The Workers Compensation Act of 1916 repealed the 1905 legislation and established two guiding principles for workers’ compensation. The first principle was that all workers were covered by compulsory insurance purchased from their employers; the second principle was the establishment of workers’ compensation insurance as a government monopoly. This monopoly, the State Government Insurance Office (SGIO), was justified by the argument that it was more of a social service than a truly competitive insurance product. These principles stemmed from the evolution of workers’ compensation in Europe, although they would not have been adopted as written when North American nations addressed the issue of workers’ compensation later in the century.
The system established in 1916 continued until the mid-1970s when the compo administration was removed from the SGIO and established as the Workers’ Compensation Board within the Department of Labour. The system underwent further scrutiny and was modified in 1986, 1988, 1990, 1996 and 1999, making various changes to the way the compo was administered and regulated, but not significantly changing either of the two core principles established in 1916. One of the major changes instituted by the 1996 Act was to remove the Workers’ Compensation Board from the Department of Labor and set up an independent statutory body, WorkCover Queensland, to administer the settlement scheme. WorkCover Queensland had two main functions: the administration of commercial casualty insurance in the state, which included all claims, and the regulation of the insurance scheme.
Combining both the administration of the compo and its regulation as two separate branches of the same entity has posed conflict of interest issues. As a step towards separating the administrative arm from the regulatory arm of WorkCover, the two were physically separated in 2000 when the regulatory arm was relocated and renamed Q-Comp. The Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 completed the separation and established Q-Comp as a separate independent statutory body with full responsibility for regulating the workers’ compensation scheme in Queensland.
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