The troubled NSW workers’ compensation system is being changed again, leading to the usual round of statewide strikes.

Dallas Booth, the Insurance Council’s General Manager Statutory Classes, says the industry “by and large“ supports the thrust of the legislative reforms to the WorkCover system introduced by Industrial Relations Minister John Della Bosca.

These latest reforms are yet another attempt to reform what Mr Booth describes as a “diabolical mess”. A fair description when it’s considered that the system has been bleeding red ink for most of the past five years and is now $2.18 billion in deficit.

NSW WorkCover lost $500 million in the last six months of 2000, but the Government has still been unable to meet the call by the 1997 Grellman Inquiry for “very urgent change”.

The changes are intended to curb the costs of workers’ compensation by lifting the common law claims threshold and transferring most claims out of the court system into a public service tribunal.

Workers would have to suffer a 25% “total body impairment” before they can access common law. Under the present system, claimants are eligible for common law action if more than 25% of a body part has been impaired.

Not that some of the changes are popular with the insurers. Mr Booth said the legislation contain aspects that raise concerns about “the desire by the Government to control insurers’ behaviour through penalties. Changes in behaviour are better dealt with by incentives.”

Besides that, Mr Booth said the infrastructure through which insurers work is “as important as anything else”.

Opposition to the changes from the legal profession and some medical service groups wasn’t unexpected, although Mr Della Bosca – the major powerbroker in the Right faction of the NSW ALP – has been surprised by the level of vehement opposition mounted by major union organisations.

In the other corner, demanding action, is a coalition of 17 leading employer groups. One of its members, Bill Healy of the Australian Retailers Association, said it is “regrettable” that the scheme’s progress is being eroded “through the excessively litigious culture that still exists” in the NSW system.

Mr Healy’s group accused lawyers of running a self-serving campaign of misinformation on the workers’ comp issue and condemned unions for putting industrial pressure on the Government.

In a veiled threat to ALP backbenchers threatening to cross the floor to vote against the amending legislation, Mr Healy said rejection by the NSW Government will force employers to review their commitment to the current reform process.

But actions speak louder, and Mr Della Bosca has been sufficiently swayed by a series of statewide industrial stoppages to order a review into the injury assessment guidelines and the threshold for common law damages.

It’s a tough job for new WorkCover Authority GM Kate McKenzie. She is the fourth GM to run WorkCover in the past five years. Ms McKenzie is also Director-General of Mr Della Bosca’s industrial relations department.