Today in Parliament, Abigail condemned the Workers Compensation Legislation Amendment (Reform and Modernisation) Bill 2025 as a politically driven, opaque and punitive overhaul that strips vital support from psychologically injured workers while ignoring expert evidence, lived experience and safer pathways for reform.

Abigail said:

On behalf of the Greens, I contribute to debate to oppose the Workers Compensation Legislation Amendment (Reform and Modernisation) Bill 2025. I note that nobody but the Government and the Opposition have seen the supposed amendments that we will be asked to pass this bill with. The bill signifies the bloody single-mindedness, callousness and arrogance of the New South Wales Labor Government's approach to the debate over what protections and entitlements should be afforded to workers who suffer a workplace injury, in particular a psychological injury, in this State. It is a distinctly unedifying, shoddy and heartless conclusion of a campaign to strip seriously injured workers of their much-needed supports motivated more by politics and ego than rationality, evidence or compassion.

This issue had been dealt with last year. It should have been put to bed. Workers had already been screwed over by the Treasurer in his quest to bolster his own budget, with his eyes focused on the next election and the vacuous headlines of budget repair he so clearly craves. Workers had already had their access to supports slashed, and whole vast swathes of legitimate injuries had already been deleted from entitlement for compensation with the stroke of a pen. Harm, stress and grief had already been inflicted, and the money collected from the denial of care to seriously injured workers would have started to flow. But this Treasurer and this Government could not accept not getting the lot.

They continued to insist on extracting their pound of flesh from the most seriously injured workers, some of the most vulnerable people in our community. They enlisted the help of a compliant crossbench in the other place, weaponised their own chronic underfunding of social sector services and charities against the workforce and pressed ahead to drive the knife in deeper. And eventually, the Treasurer succeeded in his bloody-minded mission. The new Liberal leader Kellie Sloane inaugurates her leadership with a stunning capitulation to the Labor Party, teaming up with Labor and Alex Greenwich to callously cut away medical and financial support for workers who have been so seriously psychologically injured at work that they are unable to return to work.

They have teamed up to take a sledgehammer to the rights of some of the most vulnerable people in our State—people whom they claim to represent and care for. This is a stunning failure of moral leadership and integrity. It is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The failure of the Liberal Party to stand against this Government's morally vacuous plan to strip away the rights of the most seriously injured workers marks an end to a shameful chapter of this Parliament's recent legislative history. This backdown by the Liberal Party and complicity by Independents sends a clear signal to Labor members that they can just bulldoze any morally unconscionable legislation through this Parliament. They have proven themselves to be irrelevant and inept leaders.

Equal ire and blame, however, has to be apportioned to the Labor Party backbenchers—those who swear to comrades and colleagues that they have been putting up a fight in the caucus and behind closed doors. Where have they been? What have they done to protect the rights of injured workers during this debate? They talk about solidarity, but when push comes to shove we will see its exact extent. We are about to pass a stitch-up deal between the two major parties to boost the profits of businesses and screw over injured workers—back to business as usual in New South Wales under the neoliberal institutional parties.

Despite this debate being one laden with misinformation and political spin by a Labor government that has turned its back on one of its central tenets, as a party born out of the organised labour movement, nobody can plead ignorance of what is going on. We have been through the legislation in exhaustive detail—all three or four versions of it—as the Government has fumbled and bumbled and forced it through the Parliament over the past year. In fact, we have been discussing this issue quite extensively, and the Government has never had a good justification for its plans. I asked the Treasurer about his plans for workers compensation on 11 February last year, and he thought he was very slick with his noncommittal answer. He said that Treasury does modelling and Treasury always models different implications. He said that I might ask him if he would table that advice and said he would not. He also said:

… fixing icare and fixing the workers compensation scheme is going to take years. It can be run into the ground in one year; it can take a decade to rebuild it.

But two weeks later on 24 February, the Premier was reported in the news as signalling changes to workers compensation for psychological injuries at a meeting of the Sutherland Shire Business Chamber. He blamed young people and cast doubt on the legitimacy of psychological injuries, and seemingly foreshadowed an imminent legislative response to reduce entitlements for psychologically injured workers. The Premier said:

The NSW Parliament will be looking to make changes in the months ahead and we are looking for the business community for support …

That is a weird thing to say, isn't it? The Premier was trying to recruit businesses to support the Government's plans, when the Government has been claiming that businesses had pushed it to do this. In budget estimates a few days later, I had the chance to ask the Premier what he meant by those comments. He told me that my concern that traumatised and injured workers were being scapegoated to cut business costs and pad the budget was "cynical Greens talking points". Well, I think my cynicism was justified. On 3 March I said to the Minister for Industrial Relations:

Obviously, we don't want to have a workers compensation system that doesn't compensate our frontline workers.

Should we not be more focused on prevention rather than trying to take away entitlements? The Minister replied:

You're absolutely right … You're talking my language now. There has to be an end-to-end with respect to workers compensation with respect to psychological claims. We absolutely need to do more work when it comes to prevention. I'm 100 per cent—we need to invest more in having safe workplaces and for employers to understand their obligation when it comes to bullying and harassment, intimidation and sexual harassment. You're 100 per cent right. It's something that I've been advocating for very strongly to the Treasurer, with respect to additional resourcing. Let me tell you: It's very tough when you come up to the Treasurer seeking funding. He's a very tough Treasurer.

I asked the Treasurer two days later on 5 March. I said that we were getting a bad feeling about what was coming. The Treasurer's response to me was:

What one person considers to be a nasty change, another person considers to be a necessary one.

I asked him if he would at least be implementing the election commitments that he committed to, in particular the injured workers pledge. The Treasurer replied:

Yes, we're looking to see what we can do over what period of time. There's a whole series of changes that we want to do that will reflect some of the work we've done since government. But, no, we haven't made decisions about the two particular areas that you've identified.

I replied, "About whether or not you're going to go back on that commitment?" The Treasurer confirmed he had not made decisions on that yet. That was, once again, a lie. Documents produced through the inquiry process make it abundantly clear that this plan was already well developed by mid to late 2024. The fix was in. In fact, the preferred approach went even further. I managed to extract a commitment from the Treasurer that we would get an exposure draft. It is unclear if that was always a feint or if it has been so shambolic the whole time, but after the Standing Committee on Law and Justice inquired into the exposure draft, it changed dramatically. We then took the changed bill to the Public Accountability and Works Committee and thoroughly interrogated it. Every single stakeholder, other than big business, condemned the Government's plan. They proceeded anyway. In fact, Government members got so spooked by how clearly their bill was getting panned in the inquiry that they conjured up a second one to run concurrently. That is the bill we are looking at today: the "Hail Mary" desperation play of a Government out of ideas.

When passed, this legislation would make New South Wales the harshest jurisdiction in Australia for people who are inflicted with a psychological injury at work. I think we should let that sink in, because a person suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after a traumatic event at work—someone who cannot work, struggles to function and may be at risk of suicide—could be denied basic support unless they cross a threshold so high that even expert psychiatrists say virtually no-one can meet it. Earlier this year, Dr Anthony Dinnen told Parliament:

… an increase in threshold from 15 per cent to 31 per cent would eliminate virtually every patient I've ever seen, except for maybe one or two, from being eligible for the scheme.

We are essentially talking about a workers compensation system that would barely acknowledge psychological injuries at work, effectively undoing years of progress. Right now, workers with psychological injuries are already required to meet a tougher standard than those with physical injuries—a 15 per cent impairment versus 10 per cent. That 15 per cent threshold already excludes over 90 per cent of psychological injury claims. Raising it to the level proposed would effectively shut the door on nearly everyone in our community. In fairness, the Government says these changes are necessary to rein in costs. But at what price, and for whose costs? Despite the Minns Government's claims, even the head of the workers compensation organisation, icare, has confirmed the scheme is in no danger of collapsing any time soon.

Let's not forget at least 59 workers have died by suicide in the past five years while trapped in the cracks of this system. Many were cut off from support. Many were fighting insurers who seemed more interested in delay and denial than in recovery. These reforms risk creating even more tragedies of this kind, not fewer. It is especially galling that the Government's proposal flies in the face of expert advice, repeated reviews and even the promises made by many of its own members. Eighty members of the New South Wales Parliament, including the Treasurer himself, once pledged to entirely remove time limits on psychological injury support. Now, that same Treasurer is leading the charge to make those limits harsher. But that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Government's excuses and contradictions. They claim this reform is about cracking down on fraud and young people's gaming of the system. But really, this is about people with legitimate injuries who have had their lives turned upside down by experiences in the workplace.

No-one should be injured at work but, if they are, they deserve support to get back on their feet. There is no denying that our workers compensation system needs reform, but rushing through dangerous, punitive measures without full transparency or debate is not reform. The path forward is clear. Multiple parliamentary inquiries, including by committees the Treasurer was a member of when he was in opposition, have already laid out the real problems: poor claims handling, under-trained staff, delayed treatment and a culture within insurers that too often puts cost cutting above care. These are the areas we should be fixing. The Parliament was right to say no to this bill last time. It is a tragedy that it has lost its vision and conscience now. If the Minns Government wants to fix the system, it should start by listening to the workers who have lived it, the experts who have studied it and the people in Parliament concerned about sensible, humane reform, because no budget line is worth a human life and no Government should forget that.

I conclude by again thanking the injured workers who have inundated my office with their lived experience, their advice and their support. This is not their failure. Their campaign was strong. It was right. With their campaign, we were able to convince, bit by bit, the Parliament in this place to reject the initial form of the bill. Every single person who came face to face with injured workers in our inquiry was moved and had their opinions changed by those injured workers. Members who were originally opposed to the bill on a political basis came to see just how unnecessary these cuts are and how cruel and unnecessary the impact will be on injured workers in the State. It is a real shame that we could not have the new Leader of the Opposition in our inquiries to see that for herself. I believe that had she had that insight, she would not have led this capitulation at this point. My time is up, so I finish there. The Greens oppose the bill.

Later in the debate, Abigail spoke at length, opposing the amendments agreed by the Minns Labor Government and the Opposition in secrecy before Christmas:

The Greens will not support these amendments that have been agreed to between the Government and the Opposition. I put on record our profound disappointment with the way in which they have come about. We accept that the Opposition capitulated and ended up making a deal with the Labor Government in relation to this legislation. We knew that this would happen when it was announced in December. At that time, we received a lot of emails from people who are currently injured and who are in quite a lot of mental and psychological distress, asking what that would mean for them. Those emails have continued over the past six, seven or eight weeks and we have had to say, "We just don't know. No-one has told us. We only have what is in the media release. We don't have the details. We don't know if it'll be retrospective. We don't know if it will apply to your particular situation."

These people have very honestly told me, my team and my office their stories. These people, who have talked about the psychological impact on them of losing those entitlements, have no capacity to work. The idea of losing those entitlements means they then feel that they may be a burden on their family. In lots of cases those families are holding them, supporting them and making sure that they do not self-harm or suicide. But think about the very real impact on somebody who feels that they cannot work after they have been very seriously injured by traumatic events that have occurred. They are propping up their family and their own recovery through these compensation payments. A lot of them feel that the death benefit would be a better deal for their families. That is the mental state these people are in. It is incredibly heartbreaking to hear.

I ask those people, for heaven's sake, to please seek help. Taking your life is never the answer. However, in that circumstance, people have contacted us to ask what this means, what they might lose and how many years they have to make other arrangements. But we do not know because the Government and Opposition have not provided us with details about these amendments. They were lodged at 4.45 p.m. That is the very first time we received the amendments we are debating and the details of the deal between the major parties. That is incredibly bad lawmaking. We have scurried to try to get barristers to look at these amendments. Those barristers helped us with the last round of amendments. Mistakes were made previously by the parties who negotiated the Greenwich amendments from last year. Barristers wrote to us with corrections, and the Parliamentary Counsel's Office was very happy that we sent through that information for correction.

When massive changes are made to very technical areas of law, with no opportunity for scrutiny, errors occur. Some 12 pages of Government amendments came through a few hours ago. That is not just terrible lawmaking in which mistakes are made, but it has also kept people waiting, which I just do not understand. If members honestly felt that this was the best thing they could do, and if they had any compassion for the people they were doing this to, they would have made it much clearer and they would have done it much quicker. Instead, those people have been left waiting all this time. Last year a lot of misleading information was put out about charities closing before Christmas. Those were the words that were used. The spin was gobsmacking. People contacted me about that deal, which had gone through to supposedly stop charities closing before Christmas, even though nothing was happening to their premiums before Christmas. It was complete misinformation.

We must put that to one side, as well as the fact that this will not do anything to those premiums anyway. People contacted my office saying, "Just before Christmas, we thought we had got a small reprieve, but you're now telling us that we're losing our compensation. We don't even know what that looks like. We just know that we're losing it at some time." To do that to people is incredibly cruel and callous. I cannot convey to members the distress that these people have felt. The Government has chosen to do this to those people, and it has chosen to do it in this way when it was completely unnecessary to do so. I hope that members reflect on the additional damage this has done to those people, because it is not okay to act like that as human beings.

This proposal is marginally better than the non-compromise that was agreed to with the Independent party in the Legislative Assembly, but that was not even a compromise. The ratcheting agreement that was supposedly brokered with the member for Sydney was so marginally better than the 31 per cent that was proposed that it was really no compromise at all. This is ever so slightly better than that compromise, but it is a lot worse than what was passed, which did not have the 31 per cent threshold. After the degree of the cuts in the version of the legislation that was passed last year, it is beyond cruel that we have come back for an extra cut and have stuck the knife in even further. This legislation is marginally better, but it is not better than the compromise proposal that was passed last year.

The return to work intensive program could always have been added. In a less generous interpretation, that inclusion is based on an assumption that those people do not want to work or are not incentivised enough to return to work. We know from the evidence that most people at the really high level of psychological injury do not have work capacity. A lot of the evidence in the inquiry related to that. We heard a lot of evidence that work capacity is very different from whole person impairment levels. We also know that because of human nature and from speaking with people. The vast majority of people want to work. They want to recover, and they want to get back to work. The inquiry looked in great detail at all the things in the system that stop people from getting back to work.

If we look at it in the most generous way, the amendment suggests that the Government was not doing enough and the system was not doing enough to support those people to get back to work, and we are now going to try a bit harder. Again, that does not need to be in the legislation. It is something that could have been done and should have been done a long time ago—before making cuts and throwing up our hands and saying, "We have no other way of doing this except by cutting off the most injured workers from the system."

The premium freeze is particularly perplexing. The Government has gone to great lengths to convince everyone that the legislation was intended to reduce business premiums, despite there being no evidence to suggest that and despite all the evidence pointing towards other issues impinging on the scheme. As we know, the idea that the icare scheme was going to fall apart was complete nonsense. That has all been shown. There was a misleading narrative that charities would have to close their doors before Christmas if we did not pass those particularly cruel cuts, which actually would have led to most of those organisations and charities having their own people cut off.

We have since had time to unpick a lot of the misinformation that was put out. We have spoken to many of those organisations. Some organisations I have spoken with said that their workers deal with people with disabilities who have violent outbursts. The nature of the job is very hard, and there is a huge psychological impact on workers. Because they are so under-resourced by this Government—they are not given enough funding—they do not have the luxury to take time off. They do not have time to look after themselves after an event. Those are the people who get psychologically injured in great numbers and at great loss to the organisations they work for. Everyone is very keen to get those people back to work but cutting them off from support is not the way to do that.

Most organisations have unpicked what they have been told and they now understand that it cannot be both ways. Either we have support for severely injured workers or we have premiums that are potentially far reduced, according to the Government. We cannot have both. It will get us one way or the other. The fact is that the work is psychologically hazardous. It is unlike a law firm or other situations where an employer might have control over reducing the level of psychological harm for employees. Domestic violence shelters and out of home care facilities can be inherently psychologically dangerous workplaces. People will get injured in many different situations—particularly when they are under-resourced—and they will need workers compensation and support to get back on their feet. But, in any event, what we have now is this idea that not only are we cutting off and harming these people who are severely injured and cannot work, in order to reduce premiums, but—lo and behold—we will freeze premiums anyway. I do not know how Government members can talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time and think that anybody will believe a word they say.

We have said a lot about the psychiatric impairment rating scale: that it is not fit for these purposes and has little to do with capacity to work. We have been saying the whole time that the scale should be addressed first. At the moment the whole person impairment thresholds do not refer to a particular scale. The Government could change the scale at any time, and then those percentages would have completely different meanings. Under these amendments, the proposal is to look at and maybe change the scale. That is great. But then it would suddenly apply to the percentages that have been put in, which, we already know, will put us at effectively double the severity of the South Australian scale, which uses 30 per cent based on a completely different thing. So it is nonsensical. All of this is nonsensical.

The entire year of debate has been marred by a lack of honesty and by facts not adding up. The narrative put forward simply does not make sense on the basis of the facts but also on the basis of other bits of narrative coming out from the Government, often from the same Ministers. But The Greens accept that this is where we are. Injured workers accept that this is where we are and that this is the agreement reached between the major parties for how the workers compensation legislation will go forward. We cannot stop it now. But we could have done it, and we should now do it, in a way that inflicts the least possible harm on injured workers. Giving these amendments to us only a few hours ago and leaving all of those injured workers in limbo for the last seven or eight weeks is unforgivable, unconscionable and a real stain on this Government's legacy.

Read the debate in Hansard here and here.

3 February 2026