The Victorian Government plans to appeal the Federal Court's Optus decision to the High Court, WorkCover Minister John Lenders has confirmed, while announcing planned legislative amendments to discourage other employers from leaving the State's scheme.
The High Court has ruled that employers cannot make reinstatement conditional on a medical examination, in unanimously allowing an appeal by a worker who was sacked after refusing to undertake a dangerous task for which he hadn't been trained.
The SA Workers Compensation Tribunal has reinstated payments to a worker suspected of fraud, finding that under no circumstances is WorkCover entitled to ignore established discontinuance procedures.
National: Round-up of the latest safety alerts and guides; Commonwealth: Comcare survey finds high client satisfaction; NSW: WCC recruiting arbitrators; Queensland: 2004 prosecution summaries; Tasmania: Latest rural safety blitz encouraging; Victoria: More briefings announced for new OHS Act.
NOHSC has recommended that Australia aim for the lowest work-related fatality rate in the world by 2009, in its triennial review of the National OHS Strategy.
For the first time in more than a decade, a union has used SA's OHS&W Act to lodge a dispute before the State's IRC. The Commission has ordered rail company Transadelaide to immediately end a practice known as "platform hopping".
In an instructive ruling on managing mental illness in the workplace, the AIRC has ordered an employer to reinstate a worker who breached company hygiene policies during his first episode of schizophrenia.
A study finding that men and women are exposed to different risk factors within the same job highlights the importance of ensuring work is designed to minimise risks for both genders.
A police officer who fell asleep while driving home after working a night shift with overtime has had his compensation claim upheld by the SA Workers Compensation Tribunal.
