Today in Parliament, Abigail delivered a powerful speech that secured the referral of Labor’s cruel Workers Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill to an Upper House inquiry, which she will chair through the Public Accountability and Works Committee, marking a critical step toward defeating this dangerous legislation once and for all.

Abigail said:

These sorts of bills do not come along every day. The Workers Compensation Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 is the kind of bill that, if passed, could cause so much distress to people who are already at their most vulnerable that they may choose to end their lives. It is a bill that is literally about life and death. That is why we should never seek to pass a bill like this in these circumstances—with the secrecy, deception and blatant mistruths that we have been told over the last three months and with the Government having failed to make out the case for what it has decided to do. Let us face it, we just heard that these reforms are apparently urgent. We all know that. For a long time I sat on the Opposition side with the Hon. Daniel Mookhey, looking into the reforms that were required. We sat together on inquiries where we had evidence presented to us about all the things that were wrong with the workers compensation system. But not one of them recommended anything like what is in this bill. And I know that the Treasurer knows that.

We heard this was in the works, although it was apparently urgent. Prior to this bill we had two years of bills that tinkered around the edges with the make-up of the icare board. That was all we had; we had three of those, waiting for this big workers compensation reform to come through that never came. We heard some modelling was being done. Then the Premier gave the game away at the end of February when speaking at a business conference. He made a comment about young people being a little bit soft and needing to reform the workers compensation system. That tipped us off that something was happening in relation to psychological claims and that this Government might be trying to rewind the progress we have made in understanding mental health and mental illness in this State by decades, and somehow treating psychological injury as though it is different to any other injury.

The Greens then asked about it in budget estimates. I asked the Premier; he got cranky at me and started attacking me. That is, of course, the go-to for a lot of Ministers—both in this government and in the previous one. When they do not like what they are being asked they attack instead. We were told it was somehow Greens talking points to ask valid questions about what was being suggested in relation to workers compensation reform. Then we finally got, out of the Treasurer, the confirmation that the Government was working on something. That surprised the union movement. It was only after that that the unions were briefed and consultation began. I note that the so-called taskforce was put together after we brought this out in budget estimates—from that moment in March. It was really, I believe, put in to retrospectively put in place these reforms that the Premier had already flagged were going to be the reforms that we now see before us today.

When it was first proposed we heard that it was all about business and premiums. We never heard that it was about the budget bottom line, even though anyone who has been paying attention to the financials in the workers compensation system would know that. Statements were made by Government members—the Premier, the Treasurer and others—implying that the Nominal Insurer and the Treasury Managed Fund [TMF] were somehow the same thing and that the whole scheme was under pressure. We had a conflation of the rates of psychological injury applying across the Nominal Insurer as well as TMF and a playing around with the figures that was quite dishonest. Again, if you look back at the last 10 years of data from 2015 in the Nominal Insurer—and for those who are not as familiar with icare and the way that these things work, the Nominal Insurer is the fund that matters for businesses, in terms of the premiums they pay and what happens in that bit of the fund—psychological claims had gone from 5 per cent of total claims to 7 per cent. That is not the massive increase that everybody is talking about.

When we looked at the TMF and the amount of psychological claims that are in the part of the system that the Government is responsible for—the public sector workers—we saw a huge increase on that side of things. That tipped us off that this was really about the budget bottom line. I spent a lot of time trying to get to the bottom of that and wondering why there was this conflation, trying to get business involved. Business has got involved and there has been a lot of lobbying. Small businesses are not so keen, which is understandable because these reforms are more likely to put up their costs than lower them when it comes to litigation and other costs that they would face, such as reputational damage.

It is telling that the big businesses that are coming out in favour of this reform are not at the mercy of the finances of the Nominal Insurer. That are self‑insurers and specialist insurers. Their premiums will not be impacted by what happens here. But they will get the benefit—if you can call it that—of the rules. Companies like Woolworths, for instance—which has been in the news lately for treating its workers poorly and resulting in a lot of burnout and stress from overwork—would benefit from these reforms. But how much they are paying is not tied to the Nominal Insurer at all.

Again, this kind of obfuscation and a merging of the finances has made The Greens, quite frankly, distrust what we are being told. I do not like being misled. Recently we were told that it is about the triple‑A credit rating, which I kind of figured. I acknowledge that the Treasurer does not like that, but that also makes a lot of sense. I admit I have a complete breach of trust and faith in what this Government is now telling me, hence the desire for this inquiry.

It is not hyperbolic or dramatic to say that the bill is about life and death. At least five people committed suicide after harsh changes introduced to the New South Wales workers compensation scheme in 2012. They were entirely preventable deaths, made all the more tragic given the policy backflip that occurred in 2015. Those changes were not even targeting those at highest risk of suicide like the changes before us today. In the past five years, at least 59 people in the New South Wales workers compensation scheme have committed suicide. It is not a made-up concern; it is the statistically likely consequence if the bill passes.

Unless you have looked at the raw data, interrogated the assumptions being used by actuaries and questioned why so many experts and icare itself are not buying into the Government's claims of imminent scheme collapse, unless you have sought to understand the difference between the different parts of the workers compensation scheme and why it is that talking about business premiums and the Nominal Insurer makes no sense, when the numbers show the pressures are all on the Treasury Managed Fund and the Government's own liabilities and budget bottom line, unless you have wondered why it is that the big businesses coming out in support of the reform are primarily the same ones that do not have their premiums set by icare, and that the small business lobby is dubious and raising alarms about whether the reforms will cost them money rather than save them money, and unless you have spent the time to understand the financial underpinnings being used as an excuse for the reform, can you really be satisfied that it is necessary?

Even if you are convinced, against all evidence, that some catastrophic, tangible financial impact will occur to the scheme if the Government does not pass the reform in time for its budget, are you personally satisfied that the reform is the answer—a reform that singles out the most vulnerable workers in the system, those who are so severely ill that they are suicidal or catatonic, unable to look after themselves and nowhere near being able to return to work? Are those workers the ones who ought to be cut off from support, having been injured in the line of work? Is the reform, which has never been recommended in any of the multiple reports of inquiries into the workers compensation system and has been sprung on us with little warning, going to plug the supposed budget hole, rather than reforms that would deal with the actual problems in the system and finally rein in the costs of insurers, claims processors, private rehabilitation providers and the rest of the hangers-on that cost the system far more than they should and make injured workers more ill?

Are you satisfied that the only option is to implement the reforms in the bill—the most cruel and dangerous of all the possibilities? If you are satisfied, with full knowledge of those facts, then you will not support an inquiry. But if you think, as I do, that the bill proceeding will cost lives and that it is at all necessary for some greater good, then I urge you to support an inquiry. An inquiry will finally get to the bottom of what is going on and work out what has driven Labor to betray not only injured workers and the labour movement but also itself. Very few people come into politics without a conscience, but I have seen many lose their way once they have been here long enough. A mixture of hubris and lack of exposure to the world outside of politics for long enough convinces them that what they are doing is somehow necessary for a greater purpose. I do not think any Labor member would have thought two years ago that they would now be sitting here defending a bill that will kill workers.

Labor members often talk about change from within. How far do they have to change themselves from within—to change their own principles and who they are as individuals—in order to contort themselves into a person who is capable of sitting quiet while something so unconscionable, something that would cost actual lives in a more immediate way than anything else they have been asked to support, happens in their name? They may not like me or my party, particularly right now. They may not like the Coalition—most of the time, I do not—or the rest of the crossbench. They may not even like their own party right now. But they need to like themselves. I do not think many of them will like themselves if they let the bill progress. Let us look at the issue properly. Let us work together to fix the workers compensation system in this State. Let us do it in a way that puts workers first and lets Labor members stand true to their promises and principles.

The House voted to refer the Bill to the Public Accountability and Works Committee for inquiry, which Abigail will Chair.

Read the full debate in Hansard here.

Read more about the inquiry and lodge a submission here.

5 June 2025