Today in Parliament, Abigail spoke in support of a call for papers requesting government documents relating to the new tool being developed by the Chief Psychiatrist to measure permanent impairment for psychological workplace injuries and the review undertaken by the State Insurance Regulatory Authority of the use of the Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale within the workers compensation scheme.
Abigail said:
On behalf of The Greens, I indicate that we support the motion and thank the Hon. Taylor Martin for moving it. One of the big sources of frustration for many of us who have been following workers compensation for some time is the number of recommendations that have been left on the table after very thorough reviews by previous committees of this place and independent reviewers. They have pointed out the significant flaws in the scheme and what needs to happen for the scheme to be a fairer and more sustainable system. The whole person impairment [WPI] scale is one of those issues. I remind members of what McDougall said in 2021 in relation to this scale:
The use of the concept of WPI as the test for entitlement to weekly and medical benefits does not reflect the policy objective of ensuring that the most injured workers should receive appropriate support. That policy would be better served by a test that assessed the severity of an injury by reference to the treatment and support necessary to manage its consequences, as well as its impact on the worker's capacity for work.
WPI assessments may well be suitable for their original purpose – assessing lump sum compensation for the non-economic loss caused by the injury … But those assessments measure neither the capacity to work nor the necessity of medical treatment. The use of a WPI assessment for those purposes creates a significant risk that workers may be left uncompensated for a real and severe loss of capacity to work, or substantial medical expense, arising from a workplace injury.
That is the nub of the issue that we have been discussing. WPI, at whatever threshold, is not an accurate reflection of capacity to work. When the amendments raised the WPI to 20 per cent under previous changes that the Labor Opposition at the time fiercely opposed, we saw people basically being up lined up in a row to assess what level of WPI they were. Then an arbitrary number was inserted in the row and if a person fell on one side of it, regardless of their actual capacity to work, that person found themselves having their entitlements cut off.
Unfortunately, the people we spoke to in this process who were at 22 or 23 per cent told us very clearly that if they are cut off and they have no capacity to work, they do not want to be a burden on their families. Many of them told us they will take their lives. That is the reality of what we are dealing with. That is what happened when the assessment changed last time. We had at least 59 instances of injured workers dying by suicide. It really matters that we get this right. We need to completely reform that by paying attention to these recommendations and implementing them before we make any changes to WPI thresholds.
Read the debate in Hansard here.
12 November 2025