Policy

Section 6(b)(vii) covers travel between place of work or place of residence for a number of purposes, most related to the operation of the Act. The actual form of the provision is:

6(1) Without limiting the circumstances in which an injury to an employee may be treated as having arisen out of, or in the course of, his or her employment, an injury shall, for the purposes of this Act, be treated as having so arisen if it was sustained:

b) while the employee:

Section 72 of the SRCA requires that Delegates, in deciding the above matters, shall be guided by 'equity, good conscience and the substantial merits of the case, without regard to technicalities'. The term 'technicalities' refers only to matters of minor bureaucratic import (e.g. an old accident report made on a superseded form, etc.), and does not refer to matters of doubtful or missing evidence.

1.A member rode an unregistered motorcycle without a licence. She was struck by a car reversing from a driveway. Serious and wilful misconduct is able to be proven in this case, but as the injury was not caused by that misconduct, rather by the action of the car reversing into the motorcycle, compensation would be payable.

Employees are prevented by S44 of the SRCA from suing the Commonwealth in lieu of claiming workers compensation for post-1988 injuries. Note that other Commonwealth employees are also protected from legal actions by S44 unless acting illegally or not in accordance with their contract of employment.

The issue of instituting an action under S45 (i.e. a restricted action in lieu of acceptance of a permanent impairment lump sum) is discussed in full at Chapter 80 of the Permanent Impairment Handbook.

The entry under 'aggravation' at Section 4 of the SRCA says only:

includes acceleration or recurrence

Aggravation is not separately defined by either the 1971 Act or the 1930 Act, but the above SRCA definition certainly describes the manner in which the term is used for those Acts.

Delegates should decide the matter on the facts, given all the evidence available.  For instance, in the case of a motor vehicle accident, the Delegate should consider:

Please see chapter 26 in the Medical Treatment Manual for the circumstances in which costs associated with travel to obtain medical treatment can be paid under the SRCA. The same considerations listed in Section 16 apply under section 57, except that the minimum round trip of 50 km which applies under section 16 is not relevant.

The Defcare Liability Module result is only a guide, (albeit a very powerful and complete guide) and you are not legally obliged to accept the Defcare result. It is possible to reject the Liability Module result and determine another if you are not satisfied with the Liability Module result. However, as the Liability Module rule base takes all RCG policy into account, this should be an exceedingly rare event!

Claims for the unintended consequences of medical treatment can be quite complex. There have been a small number of cases adjudged at the AAT and Federal Court, coincidentally Defence related cases. The cases of Eaton and Comcare (2002) and Comcare v Houghton (2003) can be used as guides in these types of claims.

RCG policy is currently that:

It should be noted, though, that aggravations that occur on or after 1 July 2004 as a result of MRCA service must be determined under the MRCA only, and not the SRCA.