The Date of Assessment is a new question which has been included in version 4.05 of the Initial Liability Module to assist in handling policy and other rulebase changes.
The interpretation and application of the provisions of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 change from time to time for a number of reasons including:
- legislative change passed by Parliament;
- changes to interpretation influenced by decisions made by the courts;
- agreement between MCRS and other SRCA administrators concerning consistency;
- indexation of statutory rates under s 13;
- Declarations made by the Minister.
Depending on the nature of the change, the way the legislation is applied may or may not be retrospective. In different circumstances, the application of a change may be based on:
- Date of injury;
- Date an impairment becomes permanent;
- Date of period of incapacity;
- Date of claim;
- Date of decision.
The Date of Assessment has been added to help in ensuring that legislative and policy changes can be applied in a discretionary manner, ie. so that we can target changes to specific cases or groups of cases as the circumstanced demand.