Motor Accidents Compensation Amendment (Claims and Dispute Resolution) Bill 2007 
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| Tuesday, 04 December 2007 | ||||||
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Mr MIKE BAIRD (Manly) [7.32 p.m.]: It is my privilege to represent the Opposition on the Motor Accidents Compensation Amendment (Claims and Dispute Resolution) Bill 2007. We have considered the bill in detail and generally we support the changes to the legislation. We support anything that helps people involved in accidents, which are obviously traumatic. The process involved in the resolution of claims and disputes has become too protracted. If people are injured in an accident and are not liable they should not have to wait to access compensation to pay for their treatment or to cover lost earnings. That is the genesis of the bill. Currently some claimants wait years to resolve their claims, which is unacceptable to the Government and to the Opposition.
We support the expansion of the early notification of the process to give claimants with minor injuries earlier access to compensation. Increasing the maximum amount payable through the accident notification form from $500 to $5,000 will enable claimants with minor injuries to pay for treatment and living expenses when they have incurred a loss of earnings due to the accident. The Law and Justice Committee supports increasing this amount, which has remained at $500 since the inception of the Motor Accidents Scheme in 1989. It is clearly time for a review and, hopefully, as this amount is increased more parties will be encouraged to come to the table earlier, thus avoiding lengthy delays and, most importantly, avoiding the need to clog up courts, which obviously have many important matters to deal with. The second purpose of the bill is to remove the section in the 1999 Act that provided the insurer did not have to pay for the first five days of economic loss. I am uncertain why that provision was included in the first place. Claimants should receive compensation from their first day of lost earnings, not five days later. We give credit to the New South Wales Bar Association, which has lobbied for this change for sometime. We are pleased that section 124 of the Act will be repealed to rectify that situation. The third purpose of the bill is to require insurers to provide advance payments—when liability is admitted—to people who are struggling to make ends meet or who are in some form of financial difficulty as a result of their accident injury. We are pleased that assessors at the Claims Assessment and Resolution Service will now have the authority to award interim payments for economic loss in cases of financial hardship. This is a commonsense approach that we certainly support. Some of our reservations relate to the concept of settlement conferences. The New South Wales Bar Association and the Law Society of New South Wales have concerns about adding another layer to the dispute resolution process, and we understand that concern. We support the idea of bringing parties together at the outset rather than waiting for claims to be assessed and disputes acknowledged, and then getting both parties together many months down the track. The concept of settlement conferences makes sense. The original Claims Assessment and Resolution Service was formed to get parties together as a precondition to commencing court proceedings, but that occurred towards the end of the process. The proposed settlement conferences have exactly the same aim: to bring the parties together to resolve the issues, but rather than waiting until the end of the process for the current Claims Assessment and Resolution Service to kick in, settlement conferences bring the parties together at a far earlier date. Andrew Stone of the New South Wales Bar Association, believes if parties want to settle out of court they will and that introducing compulsory conferences prior to the Claims Assessment and Resolution Service adds another layer of bureaucracy. The Bar Association believes that this change will create extra work and burden for claimants, insurers and their lawyers, with little likely increase in the efficiency with which claims are resolved. The Bar Association also does not support charging parties who do not take part in conferences a penalty of up to 25 per cent of the claim. It is one thing to bring the parties together but the Bar Association says parties should not be punished if they do not wish to take part in a conference, and we support that concept. In the implementation of settlement conferences the Government should consider using the existing infrastructure of the Claims Assessment and Resolution Service. We have an infrastructure in place and we have a bureaucracy in place; it would seem logical to extend the operation of the Claims Assessment and Resolution Service to run settlement conferences rather than introduce an additional form of bureaucracy. We ask the Government to consider that. The second and final concern relates to the subpoena power. The New South Wales Bar Association and Law Society believe that expanding the power of the Claims Assessment and Resolution Service in accessing information is going too far. Section 100 (1) (c) provides the power for a Claims Assessment and Resolution Service assessor to direct a claimant to complete a consent or authority for the purposes of obtaining documents relevant to the claim. The concern is that this will allow a Claims Assessment and Resolution Service assessor to direct a claimant to execute what is effectively a freedom of information request. According to the New South Wales Bar Association and the Law Society these powers are more extensive than those of a royal commission. The association argues that almost any information about a person is relevant to a claim they may bring for economic loss. Longstanding health problems, criminal convictions, domestic violence allegations or the need to care for a spouse are all items of information that might be relevant to a claim for economic loss. The New South Wales Bar Association and the Law Society are concerned that this provision gives Claims Assessment and Resolution Service assessors the power to subvert Federal privacy laws. We put those concerns on the table. We understand the sentiment of those concerns and, whilst we are not seeking an amendment to deal with those concerns, we are certainly putting the onus on the Government to take them on board and to look at the subpoena powers and determine, together with the New South Wales Bar Association and the Law Society, whether, potentially, a middle ground could be considered either as part of the legislation or of the review of the legislation. We have certainly put the Government on notice and suggested that it is something that should be considered, together with the Claims Assessment and Resolution Service potentially undertaking settlement conferences. In conclusion, we are not seeking to make amendments to the bill in this House; however, we urge the Government when implementing the bill to take some of these reservations into account. Overall, the sentiment of improving the efficiency of claims—the time in which they are paid—is something that we support. We think that the Motor Accidents Compensation Amendment (Claims and Dispute Resolution) Bill deals with these concerns and most of the tenets contained therein. Add to:          Write Comment
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